Orbiting overhead while orchestrating the rescue, Larry “Woodstock” Hull observed several streams of telltale green tracers tracking the last helicopter. To suppress the threat, he asked another Prairie Fire FAC in an OV-10 Bronco to work the area over with high explosive rockets. As the last UH-1 moved into position, the three Americans on the ground engaged in a bitter firefight with the converging enemy. On their stomachs facing outward in a small wheel formation, Watson, Lloyd, and Hernandez set off their last claymores and continued firing their CAR-15s and M-60 machine gun while simultaneously trying to grab the dangling STABO lines. In a truly remarkable display of bravery, the last Comanchero Slick, piloted by Warrant Officers George P. Berg and Gerald E. Woods, went into a stationary hover while the three team members hooked up the strings. Then the three Americans felt the violent yet reassuring tug as the Huey began clawing for altitude. But the intense small arms fire coming from all directions proved to be more than even the agile Cobras could handle. Probably riddled with bullets, the hovering Huey lurched forward in a drunken fashion, inadvertently snagging the strings, along with the three clinging team members, in the tops of the trees. Acting like an unbreakable leash on a straining dog, the tangled strings jerked the chopper up short, sending it plunging nose first into the dense jungle. At first contact the rotor blades sprayed branches and wood chips in all directions. Then the UH-1, tail number 68-15255, evaporated in a huge orange fireball right on the Laotian/Vietnamese border.
As twilight and weather closed in on the scene, a disconsolate Larry Hull sent the rest of the package back to Phu Bai, while he trolled the treetops along the west wall of the A Shau searching for survivors. The crash site was located right on the Laos-Vietnam border on the down slope of a heavily forested ridge running northwest from Hill 1485. Trying to pinpoint the exact map coordinates using 20-year-old maps in an area covered with mile after mile of featureless jungle was a chore made even tougher by a constant stream of green tracers from at least half a dozen automatic weapons sites. Enemy gunners shot the OV-10 assisting in the mission full of holes, forcing Covey 275 to escort the pilot “feet wet” for the flight back to Da Nang. Woodstock returned to the scene and remained on station until dark, shooting off all his remaining willie pete rockets at the sporadic ground fire still coming from the ridge. For all his troubles, he caught a few AK-47 rounds in the passenger door. It was a miracle that his Covey rider in the right seat, SFC Jose Fernandez, escaped being hit.15
Just before dawn the next morning, a different FAC, Covey 221, headed directly to the crash site and began a slow low-altitude search on the outside chance that someone from the crew or team might still be alive. As the sun rose above the hills on the east wall of the A Shau, the FAC picked up what looked like a mirror flash several hundred meters up the slope from the crash. On his second pass at treetop height, the Covey spotted a lone figure step out of the shadows and wave. The pilot rocked his wings to acknowledge the signal, and an hour later a helicopter package rendezvoused with the FAC in the middle of the A Shau. Since he could not be sure there were no other survivors wandering around the area, the Covey gave strict orders to the Cobras and the Slick door gunners: the only permissible use of guns was to return fire for fire. There would be no LZ prepping and no suppressing fire. Under the circumstances, everyone in the rescue package was extremely nervous as Slick Lead inched over the spot verbally marked by the Covey. Fighting the heavy rotor wash, the survivor limped out of his hiding place and climbed aboard his waiting salvation. The Huey pilot, working his collective to perfection, skillfully lifted his precious cargo up and clear of the trees before transitioning into forward flight. Everyone flew alongside the incredibly lucky Sammy Hernandez all the way back to Phu Bai where he debriefed his ordeal. During the nightmare the day before and hanging from the STABO rig below the Huey, Sammy heard gunfire erupt from directly underneath him. He remembered that he “was high enough almost to run across the treetops, and the next thing I knew, I’d come back crashing through the trees,” falling 30–40 feet into the jungle canopy below. SFC Hernandez’s rope had snagged in the trees and snapped under the added weight of carrying two gear bags. As darkness approached and weather conditions deteriorated, Sammy, initially knocked unconscious by his perilous fall, heard NVA troops moving through the surrounding jungle; he hid in the dense undergrowth and went undetected. By the next morning he had returned to the small clearing used the day before to insert the team, and when he heard an OV-10 overhead, SFC Hernandez crawled into the open and signaled it. In an hour, Sammy Hernandez found himself back at the team’s base camp at Phu Bai.16
By mid-morning on the 19th, CCN had launched a Bright Light team from Da Nang to search for other survivors from the Huey crash. RT Habu, led by SSgt Charles W. Danzer, included SFC Jimmy Horton, Sgt Lemuel D. McGlothren, SSgt James Woodham as the chase medic, and six Bru Montagnards. Accompanying the team as additional members, or “strap hangers,” SSgt Cliff Newman insisted on going along, and SFC Wes Wesley volunteered since he had been on the ground with RT Intruder and knew the approximate location of the crash. The insert went off without a hitch, although several batteries of 37mm guns along the mid-section of the A Shau fired 30–40 rounds at the package as they crossed the valley. Once on the ground, RT Habu was forced to move at a snail’s pace through the double canopy jungle, hindered by layers of smaller trees all interwoven in a tangle of vines, thick brush, and virtually impenetrable stands of bamboo. While the team moved, the Covey ordered two flights of F-4s and went back after the guns that had just fired at his helicopters, fearful that the triple-A positions would play havoc with other SOG packages attempting to work the west wall of the A Shau. Using CBU-24, the fighters destroyed one gun and damaged another. At that point a 57mm battery opened up. The second flight of Phantoms knocked out another gun and silenced the others.17
Shortly after noon, Larry Hull relieved the on-station Covey. As he headed in to land at Phu Bai, Covey 221 cautioned Woodstock over the secure radio, “The Bright Light has a long way to go. My guess is they’ll need lots of air support as they move and when they extract. Be on the lookout for a ZPU [14.5mm heavy machine gun] somewhere on the ridge just above the team. He could give your choppers problems.”18
SFC Jose Fernandez was once again flying right seat in the O-2A Skymaster as Covey rider for Woodstock—this was his second Covey mission. Fernandez informed Danzer that he had the crash site spotted, and since it was only a short distance over the side of the hill in the direction of the A Shau, he would direct the team to it. The thick undergrowth slowed their progress, and they had to snake their way through the wait-a-minute vines and deadfall while Wes used his signal mirror to let Covey know their location. With help from Jose, the team made a couple of course corrections and found the crash site. Then the unexpected happened.
Covey 275 was orbiting above the team gathering information about the crash from Charlie Danzer. On his last pass over the team, Woodstock, from Lubbock, Texas, was in a sharp left hand bank avoiding some heavy machine gun fire—the team could see the top of the Cessna’s wings. Seconds passed and then the team heard a crashing sound; the noise of the O-2’s engines abruptly stopped.
Realizing they had probably lost two more Americans, the members of RT Habu continued with their grisly job at the helicopter crash site. The team found both Comanchero pilots still strapped in their seats. One door gunner, Specialist 4 Gary L. Johnson, was hanging from a tree; Wes and Cliff carefully lowered him down to the ground. Meanwhile, McGlothren and Horton put the two pilots, George Berg and Gerald Woods, in body bags. They also found a single leg but not the rest of the body. It was assumed the body part was that of Specialist 4 Walter E. Demsey, Jr., and that he had been trapped under the helicopter which caught fire when it crashed. The engine and transmission had completely melted into molten metal. The only recognizable part of the Huey was the tail section and rotor mast, without its rotor blade. With darkness and the weather closing in fast, RT Habu placed the bod
y bags on top of the burned out helicopter wreckage and moved off to find a suitable night defensive position.19
Covey 221 located Woodstock’s aircraft with no difficulty. The crash site sat on top of the west rim of the A Shau at an elevation of about 4,700 feet, just inside Laos. From the air, the plane seemed to be partially intact with both wings and the empennage still attached, appearing to have come down in some kind of crash landing. Devastated by the tragedy unfolding in the Valley of Death, everybody stood by anxiously while CCN put together a second Bright Light team. When the choppers finally arrived late that afternoon, the Covey led them to the scene and orbited while the Bright Light team inserted next to the O-2. On the ground, Captain Frederick C. Wunderlich had repelled down from the hovering chopper to the crash with three other team members. They found the damage to be much more extensive than could be seen from above. Wunderlich stated that “The whole top and wing section was shredded down, exposing the cockpit. Both Jose and Woodstock were dead and the crash had broken nearly every bone in their bodies.” With a great deal of difficulty they managed to remove and recover Jose Fernandez’s body. In Jose’s lap they even found the gold baht chain and Buddha amulet Jimmy Horton had given him for safekeeping until Horton returned from the mission. But no matter how hard they tried, they could not get Larry’s body out of the twisted wreckage. As it began to get dark and the team started receiving sporadic ground fire, they put Fernandez in a body bag, strapped him to the jungle penetrator, and hoisted him up, leaving Woodstock still sitting at the controls of his Oscar Deuce.*20
As the daylight faded, RT Habu spotted two STABO ropes. After moving a short distance downhill the team discovered two bodies still attached to ropes hanging approximately 40 to 50 feet over the edge of a steep cliff. At the bottom of the rock face they could just make out the lifeless forms of Doc Watson and Allen Lloyd. In the darkness, the team followed the cliff for another 30 meters and set up a perimeter with their backs to the overhang. Danzer, standing at the edge of the cliff staring down at the heartbreaking scene below, sent a ‘team okay’ to the Covey and advised that they would recover the bodies of their friends in the morning.
For RT Habu, the action began just after dawn on February 20, when the One-Zero asked for an air strike against a concentration of enemy troops to his west. For the past two hours his team had heard sporadic fire close by, including a few rounds from an 82mm mortar. The Covey obliged by controlling Bennett Flight, a two-ship of F-4s, against suspected enemy positions around his team. The blast patterns from the 500-pound bombs looked spectacular, probably because each MK-82 sported a three-foot-long fuse extender protruding from the nose. Instead of burrowing into the dirt making a crater, the 500-pounders detonated when the fuse contacted the surface, lethally blasting the surrounding jungle. With each explosion, the FAC could hear the Bright Light team cheering over the radio. At that point the Covey stood by awaiting the arrival of a large Air Force HH-53 helicopter, call sign ‘Knife,’ to haul out the 12 RT Habu team members, plus the dead crew and team members from the helicopter crash. Waiting on the ground, Jimmie Horton asked Wes Wesley for a cigarette and Wes said, “As soon as we light one, we’ll get hit.” At that very moment all hell broke loose as an NVA counter-recon company attacked RT Habu in force. The scene immediately turned into a close-quarters firefight of unimaginable ferocity and of human survival against the odds. The area erupted in a hail of automatic weapons fire and Claymore mine explosions. Hand grenades rained down on the team, one of them exploding right next to Jimmy Horton; his foot was nearly blown off and was just dangling by shreds.21
In the turmoil, Cliff Newman picked up Horton and what was left of his foot and jumped over the ledge. While attempting to contact the orbiting FAC, Charlie Danzer was also blown over the same cliff by an RPG explosion, his radio smashed beyond repair. Newman got on his URC-10 survival radio and made contact with Covey 221, explaining the grave situation and directing the Covey’s low-level machine-gun strafe against the ridge line just a few yards above his position. The FAC had already launched a set of slicks and Cobras to the area and called on the services of a flight of VNAF A-1 Skyraiders.
After what seemed like an eternity, the two-ship of VNAF A-1s came up on frequency. Even though Newman stood in the open under heavy fire and popped a smoke for his FAC, only small whiffs of yellow sifted up through the jungle canopy. Had the smoke drifted? Was it in the right place? There was no time to make sure since RT Habu was taking murderous fire from three sides. As the Covey fired a willie pete rocket down one side of the team’s perimeter, the big A-1s dropped a string of CBU-25 bomblets down the other. Complicating the situation, typically the rear-ejecting sub-munitions did not drop in a straight line after release but drifted toward the left for 15 feet or so for every 100 feet of altitude. Unfortunately, the shrapnel from a few of the exploding bomblets wounded Sgt Lemuel McGlothren in the back, along with several other Bru team members. At that point, in the middle of a vicious firefight, Wes Wesley ran out into the middle of the clearing with Cliff Newman and popped another smoke, holding it high above his head on the butt of his CAR-15. This time, with corrections from the totally exposed Newman, the FAC pinpointed the team’s exact location and the A-1s did the rest, pounding the NVA on the ridge above the team with Mk-81 250-pound bombs and 20mm strafe.22
With virtually all strike aircraft being funneled into the Lam Son 719 battles just to the north, somehow the Covey obtained another set of F-4s, putting their MK-82s in as close as he dared, about 150 meters east of the team. In a split second the concussion and shock waves from the 500-pound bombs raced over RT Habu, but they were apparently unhurt by the bombs’ lethal force. With some of the ground fire suppressed by the bombs, the Covey next moved the ordnance in much closer to the team, employing the 20mm cannons on the F-4s. Known as the M-61 Vulcan, this six-barrel Gatling gun, firing an incredible 6,000 rounds per minute, stripped the trees almost bare of leaves and cut a swath through the jungle around RT Habu about five meters wide.
Jimmy Horton’s injury required immediate medical attention, so RT Habu called a single Huey into the battle area to medevac their badly wounded friend while the A-1s were still available to provide covering fire. Since there was no LZ, the plan was to take Horton out on a string. The plan, although a noble one, went haywire from the beginning. As the Huey hovered, one of the Bru team members, evidently unaware of the plan, brashly hooked his STABO rig onto the string and away he went, leaving the badly injured Jimmy Horton on the ground with the remainder of the Bright Light team. At that same moment, an RPG was fired at the UH-1 from the ridgeline and exploded, sending hot shrapnel into the helicopter, wounding the pilot and the right door gunner. For its trouble, the Huey sustained 50 more hits from the intense ground fire as it pulled away.23
Some minutes later the Heavy Hook HH-53 arrived with a second set of A-1s. As the big Sikorsky helicopter pulled the team out three at a time via a hoist and jungle penetrator, the FAC worked the Skyraiders ‘danger close’ around the hovering bird. As the HH-53 started to pull the jungle penetrator up with the last three team members attached, the winch suddenly slipped due to the combined weight of the three Americans. Upon being slammed back on to the ground, SSgt Newman, fully aware that his action might lead to certain death or capture, unhooked from the penetrator and elected to stay on the ground by himself in order that the other two team members could be extracted safely. Now the sole target of every NVA soldier in the immediate area, Newman remained on the ground alone, shouting ordnance corrections to the FAC and singlehandedly battling the entire counter recon company. When the penetrator finally came back down, Cliff Newman was the last man out, firing his weapon at the charging NVA soldiers the entire time he was being hoisted. He got a much-needed assist from the Knife door gunner who turned his lethal mini-gun loose against the enemy. Through it all, the first two Bru team members lifted aboard positioned themselves on the open back ramp of the helicopter and used their M-79s to fire CS tear gas gren
ades to slow down the NVA attackers. Finally, with RT Habu safely onboard, the HH-53 headed for the Air Force hospital at Da Nang while four A-1 Skyraiders did victory rolls over the big helicopter before heading back to Thailand.*24
Across the valley, members of another SOG recon team were desperately fighting for their lives on abandoned Firebase Thor. Captain James E. Butler led RT Python, with SSgt Leslie A. Chapman as the One-One. SSgt Larry Brasier and Sgt Reuben Prophett joined the team on their first missions, along with 10 Montagnards. They were inserted the same day as RT Intruder and had been in constant contact, surrounded by hundreds of NVA from the first day.
Jim Butler’s choice of Firebase Thor as the insert LZ proved to be unorthodox as well as controversial. CCN had originally wanted him to insert on the valley floor, but from experience Butler knew that the valley offered no cover and that the tall elephant grass cut visibility to just a few feet. On February 12, he jumped in the back seat of a Covey OV-10 to perform his own aerial reconnaissance of the target area, and as he had suspected, the valley LZs were totally unacceptable. Butler did, however, find a location that suited his mission perfectly: the remnants of old Firebase Thor on the east wall of the A Shau approximately six kilometers due east of the insert LZ for RT Intruder. Armed with a new plan, the leader of RT Python injected his own security precaution into the mission. Butler was convinced that a “mole” somewhere in the chain of command was tipping off the North Vietnamese about LZs, so he announced to all his intention to use the LZs on the valley floor as his primary and backup insertion points. In actuality, he and his Covey FAC were the only ones who knew that Thor was to be the LZ. When the Covey reminded Butler that the six square kilometer “No Bomb Line” boxes—no ordnance could be expended inside the box unless a Prairie Fire FAC controlled the strikes—would be around the wrong LZs, the cagey One-Zero replied, “I’ll take care of it.”*25
A Shau Valor Page 30
