Medal of Honor

by Matt Jackson

  Breakfast in the mess hall had improved over the past year. The normally undercooked bacon and watery powdered eggs had been replaced. Besides the usual fare of crispy bacon, link sausage, eggs to order, fried potatoes with bits of onion and green peppers, and pancakes, there was cold cereal for those so inclined. There was always fresh milk and first sergeant coffee, which was coffee so thick you could stand a spoon up in it. First sergeant coffee was syrup-like, but it did keep one awake. The improvement in the chow could be attributed to one man, Staff Sergeant Greeko. Prior to his arrival almost three months earlier, the mess section tossed it out and if you ate it, fine. If you didn’t, fine. Staff Sergeant Greeko had changed all that. Some mornings, even fresh hot buns were served as well.

  “Hey, Staff Sergeant Greeko, can I take a plate of buns back to Flight Ops? We have some early launches this morning,” Specialist Brown asked as he piled a plate with eight buns.

  “Yeah, but no more than two per man. Who all is in Ops this morning?” Greeko asked, counting buns as they were loaded on the plate.

  “Me and Captain Beauchamp and Sergeant First Class Robinson,” Brown replied.

  “Well, put two of those buns back, then. Got to be sure we have enough for everyone that comes through. If any are left over, I’ll split them with Ops and Maintenance. Since you’re going by the orderly room, take this plate up for the CO and First Sergeant Miller,” Sergeant Greeko said, moving to supervise the food steam table and handing Brown a second plate with four buns on it.

  At 0600 hours, the first of the aircraft started their engines. Start times depended on the mission for the day and how far the crews had to go to get there. Usually by 0830, all the aircraft would be gone except those that had a down day for maintenance, which was never more than two aircraft since the unit had left Cambodia. As things had quieted down since then, Maintenance wasn’t seeing a lot of battle damage to the aircraft. Besides that, Doc Christeson, who had replaced the previous flight surgeon, or Band-Aid Six as the pilots referred to him, wasn’t seeing a lot of sleep deprivation in the flight crews as the flying hours had dropped off considerably. Crews were now averaging six to eight hours a day, and generally everyone was getting a down day about every ten days. Things were almost boring for those crews that had been with the unit before and during Cambodia.

  Doc Christeson was a flight surgeon but not a pilot. This became obvious one day when a new aircraft commander put Doc in the right seat and told him to hover the aircraft out of the revetment. With a shocked look, Doc explained that flight surgeons were never trained to fly the aircraft, just fix the crew members.

  Arriving at the orderly room, Specialist Brown noticed First Sergeant Miller sitting behind his desk.

  “Morning, First Sergeant. Sergeant Greeko said for me to bring these to you and the CO,” he said, holding out the smaller plate with four buns.

  Pushing back from his desk and grabbing his coffee cup, the first sergeant took the smaller plate while at the same time sipping his coffee. “Thanks, I’m sure the CO will enjoy these. Who are those for?”the First Sergeant asked, noticing the larger plate.

  “Those are for us in Flight Ops,” Brown indicated.

  The unit first sergeant’s office was located outside the door from the CO’s office. As the senior noncommissioned officer in the unit, he was the commander’s principal advisor on all matters affecting the enlisted men in the unit. He was also the chief administrator for the unit supervising the personnel clerk.

  A few hours later, the first sergeant knocked on Major Sundstrum’s door. “Excuse me, sir, there’s a lieutenant colonel from Division staff here that wants to talk to you.” Major Sundstrum had been in the unit about five months and had led a flight on day one of the Cambodian Incursion. He was pretty even-tempered and generally liked by everyone. He was about six foot two inches tall with a slim build but always walked hunched over, so he appeared shorter. He had been in a horrific crash on a previous tour and had a bad back as a result, which may have accounted for the hunched walk. He, unlike most pilots, did not sport a mustache. Like most flying majors, he was on his third tour in Vietnam and would be going home once he gave up command.

  “Yeah, send him in,” Major Sundstrum said as he stood and came around his desk. The lieutenant colonel entered and extended his hand.

  “Major Sundstrum, I’m Lieutenant Colonel Bronson from Division G-2. If you have a few minutes, I would like to talk to you.”

  “Yes, sir, have a seat. Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

  “No, I’m good.”

  “Well, sir. What you got?” the major asked as he leaned up against his desk.

  “I was reviewing the mission you flew on July twenty-seventh, when the Blue Max aircraft was shot down at Bu Gia Map. Can you tell me what exactly happened?”

  “Afraid I can’t. I didn’t fly that mission.”

  “Well, you were the air mission commander, weren’t you?”

  “No. I flew later that day for the last extraction out of Cambodia, but Lieutenant Cory was the air mission commander for the first mission of the day. Unfortunately, he went back to the States a couple of days ago. From what he told me, he wouldn’t be much help to you as he didn’t see the missile. He was almost to the landing zone, low and taking small-arms fire, when it was launched from a ridge-line to the west of the LZ.”

  “I was hoping to talk to the mission commander on that one. I spoke to the other Blue Max aircraft commander and he said about the same thing. Are any pilots here that were on that mission and saw the launch?”

  “Let me see.” The major looked at the doorway and called out, “First Sergeant, could you come in here, please?”

  The first sergeant appeared in the doorway. “Yes, sir, what’s up?”

  “Top, could you send someone through the pilot hooches and see if any pilots are there that flew on the mission that had the Blue Max bird shot down? If there are, have them get up here ASAP.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll have Lockwood on it right away. Just got to find that boy.” With that, the first sergeant turned and left the orderly room.

  “Let me ask, why the sudden interest in this? I’m a bit surprised no one has asked about it before now,” Major Sundstrum said.

  “Information flow upward is a bit slow. An aircraft shot down is more of a footnote in the daily briefs, and with the CG’s aircraft going into the hillside, things have been a bit confusing in the head shed. We got around to clearing up the paperwork and came across Blue Max’s after-action report. When we started comparing it with the after-action report the infantry submitted, we thought it best to talk to the air mission commander for this one. You guys don’t normally submit after-action reports, so we wanted to hear your side of this. If this is what I think it is, then we have a game changer,” Lieutenant Colonel Bronson explained.

  “How so?” Major Sundstrum asked.

  “If this is what I think it is, an SA-7 Russian antiaircraft missile, then we have a major problem. The Russians got the specs on one of our Redeye missiles and began developing their own version back in the early sixties. They had trouble copying the Redeye, so they’ve been in the development stage for some time. It’s a man-portable infrared tracking missile. It’s been in the Russian inventory since 1968, but we haven’t seen it here. This could be the first firing of this system,” he explained.

  “Damn. What’s the effective range of this thing?” Major Sundstrum asked.

  “The first production ones were pretty crappy. They had a small charge and were slow in flight. A jet aircraft would outrun them. The missile always tracks to the hottest spot on the aircraft, which is the engine. Actually, the hottest part is four feet behind the aircraft, where the engine heat is the most concentrated, so the missile generally misses a jet. However, on helicopters such as the AH-1, the hottest part is four feet down the tail boom, and helicopters aren’t going to outrun this thing. The reported range on them is up to fifteen hundred meters, but they may be developing the next vers
ion up to twenty-three hundred meters.”

  “That is going to cause problems for airmobile operations if they start showing up in numbers. Any way to defeat the things?” asked Major Sundstrum.

  “About the only way is to fly low and get something hotter than your exhaust out there to distract it—drop a flare or a thermal grenade. But since the tracker has a very narrow view, whatever is used is going to have to be very close to the aircraft,” Lieutenant Colonel Bronson confessed.

  “Sir, you’re just full of good news today, aren’t you?”

  Smiling, Lieutenant Colonel Bronson said, “Well, the good news is that it needs five meters at least to activate the rocket motor, and one hundred and fifty meters to reach maximum speed, so fly low.”

  A knock on the door interrupted the conversation. “Sir, I was told you wanted to see me.” Mr. Sinkey was standing in the doorway. He hadn’t seen the CO since his comments the other night about not raising his hand to elect Mr. Dumas to AC status. My shit is in the wind, Sinkey was thinking.

  “Yeah, you were on the mission when the Cobra went down up at Bu Gia Map. What chalk were you flying?” Major Sundstrum asked.

  “Sir, I was in Chalk Six that day.”

  “Come in and sit down. This is Lieutenant Colonel Bronson from Division G-2. Tell him exactly what you saw,” Major Sundstrum instructed Mr. Sinkey.

  “Yes, sir. Well, we lifted off the firebase at Bu Gia Map and had an eight-minute flight, circling to the south for a northern approach into the LZ. The LZ was sort of in a valley with the firebase on one side and a high ridge on the western side. At H minus six, the Artillery started a four-minute prep on the LZ and Cory gave a time hack. At H minus two, a white phosphorous round hit the LZ, and Blue Max started into its dive. Just as he did, from the top of the ridge-line on the west, this missile or rocket comes up trailing white smoke. At first, it’s just coming up and then it made a slight turn towards the Cobra. It hit the tail boom, just behind the engine, severing it right where it hit. The rotor came off the aircraft intact and sailed away. The body of the aircraft just fell out of the sky. We were all taking ground fire and dropping red smoke to mark where it was coming from. Cory aborted the insertion and had Chalk Two take the flight back while he flew over the downed aircraft. When we got back to the firebase, we debated if it was an RPG or a missile of some sort. We came to the conclusion it was a missile.”

  “Why did you conclude it was a missile?” asked Lieutenant Colonel Bronson.

  “Sir, several of us have been on the receiving end of their rocket-propelled grenades, and they have a black smoke trail behind them. This was white. Also, an RPG flies straight; this thing flew as if it was tracking the Cobra. Lastly, Cory said he thought that ground clutter would prevent a missile from being fired down off the ridge, and that may be why it went after the Cobra and not the lift ships, as we were all pretty much below the ridge,” Mr. Sinkey explained. “Sir, we, the Slicks, were pretty busy. We were taking ground fire before we ever got to the LZ. The flight path was a trail of red smoke being dropped by each aircraft,” Mr. Sinkey added.

  “Thank you, Mr. Sinkey. You have answered my questions,” the lieutenant colonel responded.

  “Thanks, Mr. Sinkey, that will be all,” Major Sundstrum said. Sinkey got up and left the orderly room, thankful that he might be off the CO’s shit list, if he had ever been on it.

  Lieutenant Colonel Bronson sat there for a minute, looking at the notes he had taken. Finally looking up, he asked, “Is that about the same as everyone else’s comments?”

  “Yeah, pretty much. Now what can I tell my pilots?” Major Sundstrum asked.

  Bronson stood and donned his hat. “Nothing for now, but I would consider a lot more low-level flying instead of flying at twenty-five hundred feet. You have a good day, and thanks.” With that, he turned and left.

  Major Sundstrum sat there for a few minutes digesting what Lieutenant Colonel Bronson had just told him. Getting up, he walked into the outer office, where Lockwood and the first sergeant had their desks. Finding a fresh pot of coffee, he started to pour himself a cup, still deep in thought.

  “You look troubled, sir. Anything I can do?” asked the first sergeant. First Sergeant Ronald Miller, commonly referred to as Top, was on his third tour in Vietnam. Initially he had enlisted as a grunt right after Korea. He’d reenlisted for an aviation military occupational specialty, MOS, and moved into aircraft maintenance in the late 1950s, when he’d seen his first helicopter. The Army and aviation was his future he decided. The leadership traits he’d learned as a young sergeant in the infantry carried over well to his roles in aviation, and he’d risen through the ranks to be a true leader of young soldiers and a mentor to junior officers, at least those that were willing to listen to some sage advice. He was not a tall man and he had a slim build, but when people heard his gravelly voice, they listened.

  “Grab a cup and come into my office. I want to bounce some thoughts off you,” the CO said as he walked back to his office. A minute later, the first sergeant came in and took a seat.

  “So what did the colonel want that has you thinking, sir?”

  “You remember that mission Lieutenant Cory led last July that lost the Cobra from Blue Max? Well, the head shed now believes that we may be looking at a game-changing weapon coming into play.”

  “A missile, sir?” the first sergeant asked, taking a sip of his coffee and looking over the top of his cup.

  “Yeah, and that will be a game changer if we start seeing them with any frequency,” answered Major Sundstrum. “We’ve been flying here in Vietnam since 1965 using the same tactics for airmobile operations that we developed in the early sixties back at Fort Benning with the Howze Board. We tested the concepts when we were the Eleventh Airborne Division and validated the Howze Board’s findings. The problem is we didn’t test those findings against missiles as an antiaircraft weapon. Hell, in the early sixties, we didn’t know anything about shoulder-fired missiles as air-defense weapons, tactically. Now we’ve lost one aircraft to one, and I think it’s the first but not the last we’re going to see. I’m considering that maybe it’s time we considered changing our tactics. Get away from flying our missions at high altitude to avoid the .50-caliber weapons and start flying at treetop and low-level in future operations.”

  “What did the colonel say about the effective range of the missiles?” asked the first sergeant.

  “They can reach up to fifteen hundred meters.”

  “What does it take for them to acquire a target?” asked First Sergeant Miller.

  “He said that a hundred and fifty meters was needed for the missile to reach maximum speed, which puts us in the perfect range of the .50-caliber weapons.”

  “Sounds like you have two choices, sir. Fly very high or very low.”

  “The problem with very high is you have to come down through their effective range to reach the LZs.”

  “Sir, I think you just answered your own question. Start running the missions low and fast.”

  “It’s going to make it a lot harder for the flight leaders to navigate. Hell, when I led the flight into Cambodia, I had Lightning Bolt Six sitting up at thirty-five hundred feet, navigating the flight to the LZ for me. I doubt if he’s going to want to do that for every mission now. I sure don’t want to be sitting up there with these things flying around.”

  The first sergeant looked at him over the top of his coffee cup. “Sir, why don’t you get with Lightning Bolt Six and the other company commanders and discuss this with them? They probably don’t know all the facts on that shoot-down. Lightning Bolt Six can probably get a group to start looking at the intel and come up with some answers for us.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right, Top. We’ve only seen this one case, and maybe it was just a test, but I have a bad feeling about this. The quicker we start training for low-level operations, the better off we’re going to be to meet this new threat. I’ll talk to the flight leaders and get them thinking about it,�
� Major Sundstrum decided.

  “Sir, we have some of the best flight leaders I’ve seen since I’ve been around. They’ll figure it out.”

  “I hope so, Top. I hope so.”

  Chapter 3

  Welcome to Vietnam

  The Boeing 707, part of the Flying Tiger fleet of charter aircraft that the military was using, touched down and rolled to a stop. As it was the middle of the night, it was dark out except for a few lights along the flight line. Every window had a face or two pressed against it as the newly arriving soldiers were anxious to see what was waiting for them. As the aircraft came to a stop and the engines shut down, the temperature in the aircraft began to rise.

  When the door in the front of the aircraft finally opened, a very tired-looking noncommissioned officer, or NCO, stepped aboard. “Welcome to Vietnam and Long Binh. When you depart the plane, line up on the two noncommissioned officers outside. Once everyone is lined up, they will escort you to a building where you will brush your teeth with the toothbrush and toothpaste provided. You will brush for one minute. Then proceed out the back and get your bag. Officers will load the light green buses, and enlisted will load the dark green buses. Any questions?” After a pause, he concluded, “The time is twenty-two thirty hours. Okay, let’s go,” and the first rows began to empty.

  Private First Class Jim Dorsey was in the middle of the pack. He had the middle of three seats, with Private Dwayne Thomas and Private First Class Joe Avanti sitting on each side of him. Thomas was from Ohio and Avanti was from Brooklyn, which was obvious as soon as he spoke.

  “Damn, it’s hot here,” Avanti complained.

  “This ain’t hot, this is humid. I know what hot is and this ain’t hot,” Dorsey informed everyone.