13
LAST CHANCE
O’CONNOR LAY ON his side, watching his designated field of fire through the torn-up grass. Unable to scavenge a weapon from the dead, he was armed only with his suppressed .22 caliber pistol and an old World War II–era bayonet he’d picked up in Fayetteville, near Fort Bragg. The bayonet was the perfect commo tool—for cutting and spooling wire, as a screwdriver or hammer or even a crowbar—but that and a .22 pistol would do little against the numerous enemy he could make out thirty or forty yards distant, seemingly milling around in the tree line. Other NVA were slowly, but increasingly boldly, working their way toward them and the helicopter wreckage. His immediate thought was that these soldiers must consider them easy prey, that they’d move in and capture or kill the American and South Vietnamese puppet soldiers stunned from the crash.
Suddenly, a man appeared near O’Connor’s position. In a single moment, he identified the soldier as NVA and made the decision to play dead, allowing the enemy to move closer and closer until he was just above O’Connor. The soldier looked down and O’Connor lifted his pistol and fired four or five shots into his chest.
Stripping the man of his AK-47, ammunition, and canteen, O’Connor then lugged the body onto its side to use as a sandbag.
Apparently aware that the survivors had left the downed slick, the NVA shifted the bulk of their fire from the wreckage to the area around it, including the two thickets. RPGs ripped across the PZ at grass height, and mortars whistled down toward their positions, with explosions that heaved up earth and sent burning shrapnel into their midst.
O’Connor rose up, just high enough to locate Roy, who was himself low in the grass and on the radio in the other thicket. There was a bullet hole through the emergency radio O’Connor took from his belt and held in his hand. He turned it on anyway and found that he could receive but not transmit. Holding the radio close to his ear, he monitored Roy’s transmissions as he identified targets for Tornow and communicated directly with the gunship pilots.
It was just shy of 4:00 p.m., and the gunships, alternating their runs with F-100 Super Sabres, F4 Phantoms, and A-37 Cessnas, continued to pound both the clearing and the tree line surrounding it. But for every swath of decimated jungle, a different section would light up with barrel flashes and tracers, revealing another NVA rifle team, sniper, or platoon, all being skillfully maneuvered to maintain pressure on the Americans and CIDG in the PZ.
The foliage around the PZ was so thinned out by the devastation that the outlines of bunkers and defensive positions had become visible from the air, hinting at the true scope of the enemy’s strength. “It was a shock,” says Paul LaChance, crew chief on Mad Dog Three. “These weren’t fighting positions they just threw together; there were permanent bunkers. I saw at least two bunkers—and if I could see two, there were more. Later, when we debriefed, I was thinking this had to have been the outer defenses for a regiment, maybe even a division. Not hundreds of troops, but thousands. If not right there, they were nearby and getting trucked in.”
CREW CHIEF Dan Christensen came groggily to his senses in a world that was sideways and shaking so violently he couldn’t see straight. He was lying in the grass, and the trees in the jungle around him were coming out of the ground, with exploding bark and branches and dirt flying everywhere as if a tornado were touching down. He saw the debris from the helicopter and smelled the smoke and burnt oil and remembered—McKibben was dead, and so was Fournier, but what about Fernan? Was he still in the wreckage? They’re going to blow it up…. I gotta move.
He tried to open his mouth, but it was locked up, his jawbone cracked in half in the crash. His pant legs were dark, soaked with blood from where he’d been hit by bullets or shrapnel. He reached for the sidearm on his hip, but the holster was empty. Where’s my pistol? he thought, trying to wriggle himself up. Then what looked like a “human ketchup bottle” moved toward him, a Special Forces soldier whose face, hands, chest, neck, arms, and legs were covered in coagulating, black, caked-on, and smeared blood: Roy Benavidez.
Roy motioned for Christensen to stay down. Pointing up with one hand, a radio in the other, Roy signaled that help was incoming. Christensen gave Roy a thumbs-up. Dropping his chest to the ground, Roy used his elbows to move through the grass toward O’Connor’s group, staying as low as possible as O’Connor and the CIDG provided cover. Roy jerked suddenly to one side, but kept moving.
Roy’s radio was still in his hand when he reached O’Connor. “How bad you hit?” O’Connor asked, and Roy replied, “I don’t know. I think just a flesh wound. I’m fine. How are you guys holding up?”
“Me and Tuan, we’re in bad shape.” He motioned to the CIDG. “This guy is wounded but holding his own. We’re all going easy on the ammo.”
“Save it for anybody coming through there,” Roy said, indicating the intersection where the cart trail entered the clearing to their west.
With the help of the CIDG, Roy and O’Connor rolled the bodies of dead NVA and CIDG, using them as sandbags to fortify their position. As they pulled another body back from the tall grass, intense fire and a fusillade of RPGs hit them. The CIDG clutched his stomach. Roy grabbed his own leg, dragged the wounded man back with him to the perimeter, and urgently asked O’Connor for the radio.
The heavy automatic-weapons fire picked up. O’Connor reached behind him and brought his hand back, covered in fresh blood—he had caught a large metal fragment above his left kidney. He was in so much pain, he couldn’t talk and was on the verge of passing out; the CIDG beside him was moaning, his hands pushed against his stomach.
Spotting the radio beneath O’Connor’s legs, Roy grabbed it and tried to make contact. Its batteries were very weak. He clutched it tightly against his ear, listening for a response, but could hear nothing above the explosions and automatic-weapons fire.
MAD DOG Four had barely touched down at Quan Loi when Pete Gailis and his gunner, Danny Clark, jumped out to refuel and rearm their gunship for the third time that day.
They took on only three-quarters of a tank; less weight in fuel meant they could carry more ammo. Each taking a side of the aircraft, they loaded seven rockets into both outrigger pods, and—careful to stay away from the downward-pointing miniguns (infamous for accidentally discharging)—they ripped off the closure lids of the trays and loaded them with ammo. Next, they replenished the ammo for their M60 door guns. All in all, thousands of rounds of ammunition and rockets fully armed the gunship in ten minutes.
His side finished, Gailis walked away from Mad Dog Four. He could still hear the miniguns, his own M60, the rotors, the engine, the “goddamn noise,” he says. “I’d been on the ground for ten minutes, and it was still ringing in my ears. It was just so loud, I needed some quiet, and as I walked, I was thinking to myself, I do not want to go back there. There’s no fucking way I’m going to get back on that helicopter.”
He stopped and stood, his boots cemented to the tarmac. He took maybe a minute, then turned around and looked at the gunship.
Danny Clark glanced at Gailis and their eyes met, just for a moment. Clark knew Gailis didn’t smoke, but he went over and patted his back and handed him a lighter and a cigarette and said, “I think you might need one of these.”
Gailis held it up to his nose, smelled the tobacco, and started to light it. He stopped. Handing Clark his lighter and cigarette, he said, “Let’s go. Let’s get those guys home.”
AT 4:30 p.m., Roy finally reached a gunship on the weak radio and directed its pilot, Louis Wilson, to the section of the woods where the most fire was coming from. Mad Dog Three immediately swooped in, hitting the area with rockets first, followed by passes with miniguns. The enemy fire quieted, though sporadic gunfire continued to crackle through the air. Bullets thudded against the bodies that formed a low, crescent-shaped wall extending from the side of the anthill.
O’Connor asked Roy to search his pocket for the two remaining syrettes of morphine he knew were there. Injecting O’Connor in the shoulder, Roy looked him in the eye and said, “We’re getting out of here, so don’t sweat it. We’re getting out.” Roy administered the other morphine shot to the CIDG, then gave himself one from the medical bag.
“Batteries are going fast,” O’Connor told Roy, referring to the radio. “Don’t monitor. Save it for tac air only.” Nodding, Roy bandaged O’Connor with some dressings off his harness and placed a tourniquet above O’Connor’s ankle, which continued to bleed from the earlier gunshot wound. He put a pressure bandage on the CIDG’s stomach and inspected the tourniquet around Tuan’s arm.
The interpreter had his AK-47 propped up over the dead bodies stacked around him; his good hand held the rifle steady, finger poised by the trigger. Half dead and barely conscious, he said to Roy, “Don’t leave me, please.” He repeated his plea again while Roy tightened the tourniquet. He repeated it one more time as he passed out. The CIDG with the stomach wound was now unconscious as well. Roy felt for a pulse. Still alive.
Roy returned to O’Connor and told him to hang tight. “I’ll be back,” he said. “We’re getting out of here. Stay down.”
GREYHOUND PILOT Warrant Officer William Darling was not part of the mission package that day, but he had volunteered to assist by monitoring the Special Forces team and staying in contact with the radiomen in the TOC. When the team first reported they’d been compromised, he’d flown with the slicks to Loc Ninh along with Thomas Smith, Yurman’s copilot on the C&C slick who had given up his seat to Major James.
For the past hour Darling and Smith had been helping Waggie patch up Greyhound Three while tuned in on the radio to Tornow, who was alternating the air support in waves—fast movers, then gunships; fast movers, then gunships. There were gaps of silence between runs, during which the status of the men on the ground was unknown. Those monitoring the radio held their breath, wondering if they were in the process of being overrun. Yet every ten or fifteen minutes, Roy’s voice—always accompanied by gunfire—would announce that they were still there, to keep it coming.
A fresh wave of fast movers had just been ordered when Yurman came on the line to request a SITR EP from Waggie.
They were short on aircraft. In addition to Curry’s gunship, Mad Dog One, McKibben’s Greyhound One, and Armstrong’s Greyhound Four were down, leaving just two slicks. “Waggie’s [Greyhound Three] was questionable, sitting at Loc Ninh,” says Yurman, “and Jerry [Ewing, Greyhound Two] was refueling at Quan Loi. He’d been into the PZ twice now. His aircraft had taken rounds, but nothing critical had been hit as far as I could tell. Before I sent him in, I wanted to see if Waggie could fly, because I wasn’t sure Ewing could get everybody on board. Nine guys on the ground, that’s a lot of weight.”
Waggie told Yurman that he was still concerned about the large hole on his tail boom, but that the slick had sounded fine when he’d powered up. “I’ll fly,” he said. “But I need a crew.” Darling—who had flown as Waggie’s copilot in the past—and Smith volunteered on the spot, as did Special Forces medic Ron Sammons, who had been on alert for this mission at Loc Ninh. He would be the bellyman.
“I’ve got a crew,” Waggie reported back thirty seconds later. “We’ll be there as fast as we can.”
They took off immediately, with Darling and Smith wearing the standard protective equipment—a ballistic helmet and chest and back plates, the latter placed under their rears to reinforce the airy nylon-strapped seats of the door gunners. Darling had considered Michael Craig not only a good friend but also “the best crew chief in the country.” When he took Craig’s position, he knew he had big shoes to fill. He also couldn’t help but notice where the nylon straps were stained dark from his friend’s blood.
Like most pilots, Darling and Smith had basic training on the M60 and had sat in the back a few times for fun, blowing off rounds while returning to base or during ash-and-trash (non-assault supply or transport) missions. Neither ever expected to be sitting in those seats while flying into a hot PZ. As they cleared the rubber trees and headed west, they did final checks on the M60s, squeezing off a couple of rounds into the rice paddies to test the weapons.
A full crew of warrant officers flying an extraction just didn’t happen. It was the first and only time Yurman would experience this arrangement. “We’ve got tac air inbound,” he informed Waggie and his new crew. “You’re next.”
WHEN O’CONNOR came to, he had no idea how long he’d been out. He instinctively scanned the area around him. Tuan was moaning and shifting about, as was the CIDG with the stomach wound. Mousseau was with Roy—who, seeing that O’Connor was awake, signaled for him to stay flat and cover his head.
A slick was coming in, and fast movers and gunships were going to “prep” the PZ. O’Connor, who had the metal fragment embedded in his back, asked the CIDG to help him take off his rucksack so he’d be ready to run. He pulled it up beside him as a shield, covered his face, and angled his head toward the embankment. Signaling to Tuan, he said, “Stay down. We’re going to get out of here.”
The first pair of jets streaked overhead and dropped their bombs. “Strike after strike after strike right onto the PZ and back onto the wood lines and the clearing in front of me that intersected with the small road,” O’Connor later wrote. “Branches and slivers of wood, metal, dirt, et cetera, were stinging us; rolling my head from one side to the other I caught some of the hot debris in my left eye and arm. The heat from the jet’s afterburners was unbearable, and I wondered how long it would last.”
Next came the gunships—Mad Dogs Three and Four, plus a fifth gunship that had flown up from Bearcat with First Lieutenant Rick Adams and Chief Warrant Officer Don Brenner, who were well over their allotted flying hours but bringing all the “smoke” (firepower) the 240th could muster.
It was now or never, and the enemy seemed to sense this, for they returned fire in kind, launching RPGs straight up at the gunships, causing the rounds to come down like artillery.
Early in the war, the NVA and Vietcong learned that the safest place during an air strike was as close as they could get to the American position. That is probably what prompted the main force of roughly a platoon to rise—grass and branches stuffed into the meshing of their helmets and clothing—and reveal themselves as they moved forward from the trees and across the cart path, using the downed slick for cover.
From his gunner’s seat on Mad Dog Four, Clark could see dead bodies scattered everywhere; the living NVA would drop down and play possum, making it difficult to ascertain targets. He looked for any enemy movement and pumped rounds into bodies, dead and alive.
Tornow coordinated with two Cessna A-37s to cover the gunships after two sets of fast movers—F-4 Phantoms—dropped ordnance, engulfing half of the PZ in black smoke. “It was a final try,” says Warrant Officer Jesse Naul, Mad Dog Three’s copilot, who looked out his window to see one of the A-37s just above the treetops with its landing gear and flaps down “in an attempt to fly slow enough to strafe alongside us as we went in.”
“The air support was like a swarm of bees,” O’Connor would later write, “and through the middle of it came a lone slick that touched down about twenty–thirty meters from us. I put the last magazine of ammo in my weapon, and I knew this was our last chance to get out.”
THE SKIDS had not yet touched the ground when medic Sammons jumped out of Greyhound Three and sprinted to Roy. Between the whine of the slick’s engine, the fast movers and gunships flying overhead, and the enemy ground fire, the white noise of battle was deafening.
Helping up a CIDG, Roy passed him forward to Sammons, who put the man’s arm around his neck and ran toward the helicopter, where Smith and Darling stood behind their M60s putting out protective fire. The NVA were continuing to advance despite the massive firepower coming at them from Greyhound Three and the gunships making runs overhead.
For both O’Connor and Mousseau, the blood loss from their numerous wounds and the fatigue of the extended battle had finally caught up with them. O’Connor lifted his orange signal panel and Sammons acknowledged his position. Mousseau attempted to move toward the slick but was unable to even crawl, and Roy ran to his side, got down on his knees, and put him over his shoulder.
Covering their flank as best he could, O’Connor watched Roy try to get to his feet, Mousseau on his shoulder. Then, what O’Connor had thought was a dead CIDG rose up from the grass directly behind Roy. For a second, O’Connor wondered about the identity of this CIDG before he realized it was an NVA soldier.
The soldier must have been out of ammunition. Or else he was hoping to capture a live American, a valued prize. Raising his AK-47 like a baseball bat, he clubbed Roy on the back of the head.
Roy went down to his knees, dropping Mousseau. O’Connor took aim, but Roy was already on his feet again, spinning to face his attacker and blocking O’Connor’s line of fire. The NVA butted him in the face with his weapon.
O’Connor was able to get off a few rounds, but missed and was afraid to try again for fear of hitting Roy, who pulled out the only weapon he still carried, a knife, as the NVA lunged at him with his bayonet. The bayonet blade caught Roy across his left forearm, cutting deeply, but he managed to squeeze the barrel of the rifle between his arm and his left side and trapped it. The NVA yanked his rifle free, slicing Roy on the side. Before he could strike again, Roy wrestled him to the ground and thrust his knife deep into the man’s side. Yanking it out, he drove the knife down a second time into his chest. At last the soldier was still.
Staggering to his feet and visibly shaking, Roy turned to face O’Connor. “I’m okay,” he shouted.
O’Connor lowered his AK-47 and yelled back, “My interpreter is still alive—make sure they get him!”
Roy leaned down and tried to retrieve his knife from the NVA’s chest, but it would not come free. Hefting the barely conscious Mousseau back onto his shoulder, he used his free hand to help a wounded CIDG, who was crawling in the direction of the slick, up to his feet. He took the CIDG’s AK-47 in hand, and they lumbered toward the helicopter together while O’Connor struggled to provide suppressive fire to the west, where the enemy was shooting from behind him toward Greyhound Three.
Sammons dove down beside him. “Can you walk?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” O’Connor said.
From the right side of Greyhound Three, Darling on the M60 machine gun faced the incoming wounded. Behind them, a hundred or more uniformed NVA poured from the trees and charged across the PZ. Roy was nearly to the door with Mousseau and the CIDG when he swung the AK-47 toward the tail of the helicopter. Darling immediately snapped his head to the right and saw two NVA coming up from the rear, in a position his machine gun could not reach. Before Darling could move, Roy shot them both dead.
As Roy hoisted Mousseau up into the slick’s cabin, Darling glimpsed a gruesome wound exposed through Roy’s torn shirt: his intestines were spilling out around the forearm he had squeezed against his abdomen. Instead of climbing on board the helicopter, however, he turned around and staggered in the direction of the remaining men.
He won’t make it back, Darling thought.
SAMMONS HELPED O’Connor and a CIDG to their feet, and with their arms around his neck, one on each side, he half-carried, half-dragged the two wounded men toward the helicopter.
Darling fired over the tops of their heads and to their sides to slow the enemy onslaught. Then he signaled urgently to Sammons with a flat hand down, and Sammons dropped to his knees, pulling O’Connor and the CIDG with him.
“You need to crawl the rest of the way,” Sammons shouted. “Go!”
O’Connor glimpsed Sammons as the medic swung around, lifted his carbine, and sprayed fire into the advancing NVA. The pain from his abdominal wound was excruciating for O’Connor. Crawling was impossible, so “I picked up a weapon,” he says, “and used it as a crutch and on my knees worked my way to the chopper with the CIDG behind me.”
Clutching his side and hunched over, Roy ran to him. “We’ll make it,” O’Connor said. “But my interpreter is still back there.”
“Okay, okay!” Roy said, passing O’Connor, passing the CIDG, passing Sammons, and heading for the thicket and into the teeth of the enemy.
O’CONNOR HAD almost reached Greyhound Three when Sammons grabbed the harness on top of his web gear and pulled him and the CIDG the remaining few yards to the skids. He pushed them into the helicopter and climbed in after.
Bullets slammed into the side of the slick and whizzed through the cabin. One found its mark, impacting Darling in the left shoulder and upper chest, spinning him around. He pulled himself back onto the gun and continued to squeeze off suppressive fire for the last man on the ground, who was running for the helicopter, a CIDG soldier in his arms.
In the back of the slick, O’Connor was slumped against a wall, the open door framing the smoldering Cambodian jungle. He saw Darling’s back, his shoulders jolting from the kick of the M60 on full auto, laying out cover fire for the enigma that came into focus: Roy, carrying Tuan. Roy handed off the interpreter and turned again to face the enemy. He “was pulled aboard still firing his weapon,” says O’Connor. “Then he gave a thumbs-up sign to the pilot, and the chopper lifted off.”