A single blast on the TOC alarm—troops in contact—was one thing, and you hustled. But three blasts. . . Bird down. That could be you out there. I beat feet for the TOC every time it sounded if I wasn’t already in the air or scrambling as part of the duty ready force. Now that I was platoon leader, those crazy, magnificent bastards out there were my guys. I stayed next to the radios until aircrews were rescued or bodies recovered. The waiting was an unnerving experience.
When White Platoon leader Captain Cotner went down on the edge of the Michelin plantation, we knew he was a goner. The rubber farm always teemed with enemy because of the overhead cover against air surveillance. I would have been out there with the Blues looking for him except the flight surgeon had red-lined me for three days for excessive flight hours. Instead, all I could do was listen to the radios as the drama played itself out.
Cotner and his two-man crew, Gonzalez and Washington, were low-sniffing for bad guys around the edges of the plantation when enemy machine gun fire riddled the Loach with bullets. Their high bird Cobra rolled in hot on the machine gun while the Loach attempted to limp away. It was so badly damaged, however, that it didn’t get far before it crashed into the rubber trees. Their spreading branches helped cushion the impact. It dropped on through to the ground below.
Soon after the TOC alarm wailed at Tay Ninh, Cotner came up on the air to give his grid location. He reported that all three members of the flight crew were alive but that he heard enemy closing in on them. The problem now lay in finding the downed bird beneath the thick rubber tree foliage before the Vietnamese discovered it.
Although shaken and stunned, the three airmen quickly recovered from the crash as dust and leaves settled. None had been wounded in the fusillade of fire that brought down their Loach. At first, there was only the sudden silence following the pandemonium and adrenaline rush of the smashup. Then they heard the Cobra buzzing past looking for them. At the same moment, they detected Vietnamese voices coming their way.
They found themselves in one hell of a predicament. It was going to be tough for rescuers to see them in the trees; Cotner dared not drop smoke to mark their location because of the proximity of the enemy. There were also no clearings suitable for a PZ anywhere in the vicinity.
Before abandoning the crash site, Cotner grabbed all the Willie Pete grenades he could carry. He didn’t have time to destroy the radios and other gear as SOP required. He sent the torque and observer ahead while he waited in the surrounding trees for the approaching Vietnamese soldiers.
Minutes later, Charlie appeared in a cautious six-man NVA squad. Caution, however, quickly turned to recklessness when the soldiers saw no one around the bird. They began crawling all over it, trying to rip out the radios and anything else they could turn to good use in their own cause. So absorbed were they in their tasks that no one observed Cotner sneaking up on them.
When he was within range, he pulled the pin on a white phosphorus grenade and hurled it at the wreckage. One guy. glanced up in time to see it hurtling through the air. He screamed a warning, but it was too late. The Willie Pete exploded with a horrifying flash of smoke and flame hot enough to instantly melt magnesium.
Cotner immediately tossed two more grenades into the blazing conflagration. Flames consumed the Loach, six NVA soldiers, and the surrounding rubber trees. All would soon be reduced to smoldering ashes.
Fire and smoke marked the site for rescuers. An hour later, Farmer Farmer and Stockton snatched all three Whites out of the rubber trees. There was a great deal of celebrating at the O Club and the NCO Club that night. Mighty Morris sang his songs and beer cans sailed through the air. I must have been growing a crop of melancholy. I kept thinking, There’s always tomorrow and another chance for these brave men to die.