by CW Ullman
As he returned to his seat, he saw the coastline and the steel-gray waters of the South China Sea pass under them. He turned to his flying mate and motioned toward the radio.
The copilot clicked the frequency knob to 23, pulled the mic up to his mouth, and in English said, “Mayday, mayday, American vessels, this is ARVN aircraft, over.”
He rested the mic on his leg and silently counted to twenty. There was no response.
“American vessels, this is ARVN aircraft looking for any ships within twenty miles of Bien Hoa, over,” the copilot said.
He waited fifteen counts and felt Trung’s eyes on him. Hearing nothing, he tried again.
“American vessels at sea, this is ARVN aircraft looking for landing space for a Huey, UH 1, over,” the copilot tried one more time. He waited twenty counts. Nothing. He turned to Trung.
In Vietnamese he asked, “Are you sure this is the correct frequency?”
Trung said, “This is the one I was given in Tan Son Nhut. Try another frequency.”
The copilot flipped to five different frequencies with the same message and received no reply.
“Look!” Captain Trung exclaimed while pointing to the front. About twenty miles to the north was a large military ship. The pilot banked the chopper to the left and started flying toward it. He said, “Try an open channel. This time call USS Enterprise.”
The copilot keyed his mic, “USS Enterprise, this is ARVN chopper flying in your direction from your port side. We are approximately twenty miles out from you, requesting to come aboard, over.”
Again, the copilot waited twenty seconds. He brought the mic up to his mouth just as the helicopter’s radio speaker sounded. “ARVN chopper, this is USS Enterprise, received your message. Wait one, over.”
Captain Trung leaned back in his seat, took a deep breath, and slapped his flying comrade on the shoulder. “Man, we did it,” he said.
They waited.
Trung said, “They’re probably clearing space for us and trying to figure out where we can land.”
The onboard radio receiver squawked to life, “ARVN helicopter, this is Enterprise, over.”
The copilot keyed his mic, “Enterprise, this is ARVN craft, over.”
“ARVN chopper, this is Enterprise. We are unable to allow you landing rights at this time, over.” Captain Trung was looking out at the ship. There was no sun and the seas were roiling. A storm was coming; the swells looked fairly high and the troughs between the waves looked eerily deep. He was trying to figure out where they would set down on the ship. He was thinking of swinging out to the west and looping around the ship to show off his flying skills. He would flair the tail and come in quickly. But, then the radio message finally sank in like a punch to his gut and he briefly lost his breath.
A shocked Captain Trung looked at his copilot and in Vietnamese asked, “Did they say ‘unable?’”
The copilot nodded.
“Give me that fucking thing,” Trung said as he reached for the copilot’s mic.
“Enterprise, this is ARVN chopper. Your message was garbled. Would you repeat, over?” Trung asked.
“This is Enterprise. Roger that, ARVN chopper, we are unable, as in disallowing your craft to land at this time on our ship. You are not allowed to come aboard. I repeat you are not allowed to come aboard. Over,” the radio speaker said.
How can they deny us landing rights, Trung thought. Do they know the entire country of South Vietnam is being overrun by the North?
“Enterprise, this is ARVN chopper,” the pilot said. “The country of South Vietnam has fallen to the North and we have nowhere to go. We cannot return to base because we will be killed and even if we wanted to, we don’t have enough fuel,” he said. Under his breath he finished with “fucker.”
“ARVN chopper, wait one. Over.”
There was a two minute delay before the pilots got a response. The radio speaker said, “AVN chopper, I repeat, your permission to come aboard is denied, over.”
“Enterprise, this is Captain Trang Trung. I have an aircraft filled with fifteen children. This is an emergency mayday. Over,” the pilot urged. “Let’s see how they respond to that,” he called to his co-pilot.
There was a thirty-second pause and then the radio, “ARVN craft, this is Captain Derrick, commanding officer of the USS Enterprise. We are a thousand refugees over capacity for this ship to be seagoing and safe. We are in forty knot winds and sixty-five foot swells; if you look out your window to the south, you can see a squall coming. We are hard aweather in dangerous seas. With whatever fuel you have left, you need to find another vessel. If you try to land on this ship, we will have no recourse but to down your aircraft. Do you copy? Over,” said Captain Derrick.
The pilot spoke to the copilot, “How much fuel do we have left?”
“It’s hard to tell, the gauge keeps popping back and forth between empty and 10%,” the copilot said. Trung reached over and flicked the gauge with his middle finger and the needle dropped on 10%.
“Enterprise, are you going to fire upon us, over?” Trung asked.
“If you try to come aboard, you’ll leave me no choice. Good luck. Out.” Captain Derrick said ending the call.
“Good luck? Good luck. Is he crazy?” Do you see any ships nearby?” Trung asked his copilot.
The copilot said, “I think I saw one to our-“
He was interrupted by the first sputter of the engines running out of fuel.
“FUCK!” Trung screamed, as he leaned over and tapped the fuel gauge which registered empty. “We are going to land on that ship. Shoot at us, will you? Go ahead.”
He accelerated the engine to get lift and drifted closer to the ship. The chopper was sputtering as it gained altitude.
Inside the helm of the Enterprise, Captain Derrick had his binoculars trained on the helicopter. He said to his XO, executive officer, “Mr. Jones, tell the portside gunner to open up in front of the helicopter. I don’t want to hit it; I want to scare them. That crazy bastard is going to try and land.”
Mr. Jones repeated the captain’s orders, “Notifying portside gunner. Aye, Captain.”
Jones relayed the order and from the portside the gunner’s tracer bullets lit up in front of the bow of the helicopter. The unstable chopper started to spin as the tail rotor lost speed. “Hold your fire,” the captain said. Through his binoculars he could see the children in the chopper.
The captain yelled, “Goddamit. Goddamit. That thing is going to crash into us. Sound the alarm for the portside to move their people to safety.”
Trung was losing control of the rudder and tail rotor, and in seconds the overhead main rotor would go into auto-rotation and they would either fall into the ocean or crash into the side of the ship. He turned to the children.
“We are going down. You need to abandon the chopper,” the pilot yelled.
At first, everyone was stunned into silence and then they started screaming. My Ling turned to Quang and yelled, “We are going to jump on three. Remember your swimming lessons. Everything is going to be okay.”
“I’m not a good swimmer, My Ling,” her little brother said meekly.
My Ling shook him and said, “On the count of three we have to jump. Don’t be afraid. I will help you,” she looked hard at him and nodded. He nodded back.
She held his hand and yelled, “Take a deep breath. One, two, three, JUMP!”
The downward thrust of the wind blast from the overhead rotor surprised My Ling. Instead of falling, it felt more like being thrown into the water. It hurt when she hit face first. Underwater, she was disoriented and started to swim deeper. It was not until something fell in behind her that she realized she was swimming away from the surface. She turned and kicked hard toward the surface, popped up, and finally got air.
She had lost her grip on Quang in the down blast and searched the near waters, yelling his name. She could still hear the sputtering helicopter overhead and hoped it would not fall on her. When she looked up to see whe
re it was, her heart sank.
Quang was still in the helicopter. She waved at him and beckoned for him to jump. He did not shake his head; he just held onto the post behind the pilot’s seat looking lost and scared.
“Quang, jump! Now! Jump, I will catch you,” My Ling screamed. She kept beckoning to him. With his hand on the post to steady himself, he got ready to leap. When the helicopter bucked and spun, he regripped the pole with both hands. He bent his small, shaking knees to get spring to clear the door, but had waited too long. The helicopter rolled, lurched, and then slammed into the side of the ship where Quang was standing. It ignited a flash fire fed by whatever fuel was left, engulfing the left side of the helicopter in flames.
“Quaaannng,” My Ling cried. Repeating his name again and again in hoarse whispers, she called to the boy she had cared for his entire life as though he was a cherished jewel. From his first days, she would sneak to his bassinet, take him out, and put him in bed with her. She practiced her reading at night as he fell asleep. When it was time for him to walk, she would hold his hands to guide him across the floor and cheer him when he would complete his awkward journey.
She went limp, but soon was startled when something fell out of the sky and thudded in the water partly on her shoulder. She heard people shouting. She stared at the ship, looking to see who was yelling. She kept looking around, but could not find who it was. Scanning to the lower decks, she saw a door with a large opening.
Six sailors were yelling in her direction and pointing at her. The object that had thudded near her was a life preserver attached to a rope. They were gesturing to her but she did not understand what they meant. Then one sailor held up a preserver and stuck his arm through one of the armholes and she understood. Operating on instinct, she turned the vest over looking for the hole. When she found it, she stuck her arm through it. The red-headed sailor then clasped his arms to his chest and pointed at her. She understood that he wanted her to do the same.
Rusty surprised everyone with his focus on rescuing this girl from the ocean. This twenty-year-old surfer from Manhattan Beach, California, also the son of a Navy father, had drafted the other five sailors in his compartment to form this rescue party. He was shouting directions from the ship’s railing.
He yelled, “Ronnie, we need as much slack as possible, the rope is starting to tighten.” Ronnie Yamaguchi, from Hermosa Beach, California, had known Rusty growing up. When Ronnie was done with the Navy, he was going to become a cop with one of the other sailors, Carlos Sanchez, or as they nicknamed him, ‘Baja Charlie,’ except Baja Charlie aspired to be a sheriff with Los Angeles County.
Curtis Johnson, the lone black sailor, was grabbing rope and life vests and tying them together while telling the others to do the same. Curtis knew Charlie from Tulsa where they played football against each other in high school. The last, Gaston Laroche, was born in the south of France and came to America with his parents when he was seven. Gaston’s education at UCLA was interrupted when he received his draft notice. Instead of letting the draft place him in the army, he enlisted in the Navy.
“You’ve got to hold on tight because the rope is going to snap when the slack is gone,” yelled Rusty to My Ling in the water. She could not hear him, but understood from his hand gestures what he meant.
The ship started to turn, which slowed it slightly in the water. Why the ship was turning became evident to the sailors when Rusty looked up from My Ling to the horizon and yelled, “ROGUE! Grab something.”
Just then a rogue wave swept up high enough to block the sun and crash at an angle into the ship. The force of the water shooting through the door into Level D knocked everyone down like bowling pins, swamping them against the interior wall and causing them to let go of the safety line to My Ling.
“ROPE!” Charlie yelled, as the rope was knocked from their hands and slithered across the wet floor toward the opened door. Rusty had gathered himself to grab it, but slipped and fell. He got to his hands and knees and Baja Charlie put his feet on Rusty’s ass and shoved him at the rope, making him slide toward the open sea door as though he was on a frozen lake. Rusty, splayed out on the floor, caught up to the rope, but could not stop, or even slow down, as he slid toward the opening. He wrapped the cord once around his arm and hoped to catch the railing pole with the free arm; otherwise, he would slide out to sea. He was able to catch the pole with his left hand, but his body went over the side.
In a high-pitched voice that almost made Charlie laugh, Rusty squealed, “A little help.” Baja Charlie and Charlie got to the rail, where both grabbed Rusty’s shirt and pulled him onboard.
“Is she still holding on?” Ronnie shouted. The three at the railing looked out to sea and there she was, holding the life vest, bobbing in the water.
Charlie cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Hold on. Don’t let go.”
My Ling did not understand what he was saying. She was being dragged across the water and did not know how much longer she could hold the life vest. She was swallowing a lot of salt water and it was hard for her to catch a breath.
When Charlie turned around to get help from his mates, he was startled to see the refugees crowded up behind him to see what was happening.
He yelled, “Ronnie, get these people on the other side.”
Ronnie spread his arms out and forced the refugees back to the interior wall. “Okay, Poppy san, you guys stay here and don’t let your people move.” No one understood what he said.
He put his hands up in front of them and said, “Stay.” He went back to the railing where they were pulling the girl slowly toward them.
“Curtis, keep your eyes on her and if she starts to slip out of the vest let us know,” Charlie said.
“Aye, aye, but we got another wave coming this way.” Curtis yelled.
They all looked up to see a wave bigger than the last one rolling at them. “Rusty, wrap the rope around the railing and secure it. You guys get back with the refugees and secure them.” He waved at the girl to look behind her. My Ling turned and saw the oncoming swell, wondering if it would slam her into the side of the ship. She looked back at Charlie who made a chest squeezing gesture. He raised a finger and mouthed, “We’ll be back.” The wave rolled under My Ling and blasted into the side of the ship and through the open door. The ship listed so far to one side Charlie thought it was going to keel over. The wave held My Ling higher in the sea than the tallest point of the Enterprise. When the wave rolled under the ship, the ship listed back in My Ling’s direction. When she looked directly up, her view was not of the sky, but the breathtaking immensity of the USS Enterprise that appeared as though it was about to fall on top of her. She became so frightened, she let go of the vest.
Rusty was the first one back at the railing and started pulling on the rope, but it felt different, too easy. He yelled, “Charlie, she let go of it. Does anybody see her?” They searched the horizon.
“There.” said Curtis pointing toward the front of the ship. My Ling had moved ahead of the position where she had just been. She was nearer the bow, which meant they could throw the line and the ship’s forward motion would drag the rope to her.
“Pull the rope in quick, Rusty. We’re gonna try it again. I need slack and get these people back, goddamit,” Charlie said to Ronnie.
“Folks, you’re really pissing me off now. You heard the man,” commanded Ronnie. “Can I get an assist, Laroche?”
Gaston put his hands up and started speaking to them in French, which the oldest ones understood since Vietnam had been a French colony in the 1950s, and most Vietnamese over the age of forty knew the language.
“Here she comes, Charlie, are you ready?” asked Rusty.
Charlie had pulled the life vest onboard, fashioned the rope into a number of loops, and started swinging it back and forth like the lassos he used to pick horses out of herds when he rode in Oklahoma. He made bigger swings with his arm and then heaved it in the direction of My Ling. She was so close by then that she
was hit with the vest and the rope. She separated the rope loops to get to the jacket, and wanted to put her arms through both armholes, but knew she did not have time. She frantically watched the rings disappear, knowing the slack would be gone in seconds and the vest would snap taut. She shoved her arm through one hole, grabbed her wrist with her other hand, and waited for the line to snap. The rope popped tight, pulling her through the water on a wave that was ten feet taller than the ship.
Charlie yelled, “Listen, that wave she’s riding is going to become a trough in seconds; when that happens the ship will list over the top of her. If she doesn’t let go of the rope, we can pull her up to us. But we gotta stay at the railing. Are we good?” Curtis kiddingly shook his head and Rusty nodded.
Charlie cautioned, “It’s gonna feel like we’re going to fall out, so get yourself wedged to the wire.”
My Ling was floating on a ninety-foot-high swell, meaning the Enterprise would be at that height when the ocean swell picked up the ship. Again, the Enterprise listed so far over the top of My Ling, she had to fight the urge to let go of the vest. Curtis, Rusty, and Charlie were leaning against the railing with their legs wrapped around the wires. When they looked out this door in calm weather, they would usually see the horizon where sky met the sea. Now their entire view consisted of a black sea, the center of which held a small girl who could not watch as the Enterprise towered over her.
Charlie called to her, “Don’t let go this time.” Then he yelled to Rusty and Curtis, “PULL WITH ALL YOU GOT!”
They grabbed the rope and started pulling hand over hand with a smooth and rapid rhythm. The girl rose out of the water, dangling by one arm through the hole of the life jacket. My Ling’s hand was losing its grip, when from behind the three at the rail, they heard Gaston yell, “WAVE!”
The ship rolled back in the opposite direction and the water that My Ling was hanging above surged from under her, carrying her up into the door opening of the ship, forcing her and the three sailors back into the room, and slamming them against the interior wall on the other side of the compartment.
