Low Level Hell

by Hugh Mills

  I quickly followed the emergency procedures—pulled up the emergency fuel shutoff and flipped off the master battery switch. This shut down the fuel and electrical systems in case there was a post crash fire. Then I wanted to get out of that cockpit ASAP. I tried to roll over to my right to jump out of the aircraft and into the water. But I couldn't move.

  “You dumb shit!” I muttered, cursing my stupidity. I was still strapped into my seat. I reached down and hit the handle to release my seat belt and shoulder harness.

  The rice paddy water was almost up to the door, so all I had to do was lift my left leg up over the cyclic stick apd roll out. A quick inventory told me that I still had all my body parts and didn't seem to be hurting anywhere. Parker was still struggling with his seat belt, trying to get out of the aircraft, so I stood up to give him a hand.

  Once in the water, Parker leaned back into the aircraft to retrieve his M-60 machine gun and a seven-foot belt of ammo. As he threw the ammo over his shoulder he looked at me and asked, “What in the hell happened, Lieutenant?”

  “I don't know, but whatever it was sure raised hell with the rotor system.”

  We both looked up at the main rotor blades just as they were slowing down to a stop. One of the blades came to a halt right over our heads.

  “My God,” I whispered. A .50-caliber machine-gun round had gone right through the leading edge, about four feet from the tip of the blade, shattering the spar. The only thing holding the blade together was the honeycomb structure in back of the blade's leading edge.

  “My God,” I repeated. “By all rights, that blade should have come off four feet from the end. And if that had happened, the aircraft would have come apart in midair.” Then I noticed Parker's chin. It was bloody and looked like it had been laid open to the bone. He patted the front sight of his 60. When the Loach slammed down into the rice paddy, the impact had thrown Parker's head forward, into the machine gun. Parker was the kind of guy who would never say a word about it.

  I reached back in the ship for the Prick Ten (PRC-10) emergency radio so I could report in to Sinor. The gunship was off to the east, circling at altitude. “Three One, this is One Six. We're down in the rice paddy. We're OK, except Parker nearly cut off his chin when we hit. Keep your speed up, Dino, it's a .50 just west of Thunder II.”

  “Roger that, One Six. I saw the tracers. That's affirmative on the .50 cal.”

  “Hey, Thirty-one, why don't you scramble the ARPs to come in and pick us up. Get Pipe Smoke to yank the bird, then you can get some more guns on station to go after that fifty.”

  “OK, One Six,” Sinor rogered. “ARPs are on the way. Have advised Darkhorse Control that we have a Loach down. How are you fixed for Victor Charlies?”

  “No sign of enemy,” I answered. “What I'm going to do now is climb up and pull the hinge pins on the rotor blades so Pipe Smoke can zip in here and throw a harness around the rotor head and recover this bird.”

  I climbed up on the fuselage to reach the hinge pins. It was a simple procedure of just pulling up the four inverted U-shaped retaining pins and dropping the blades. Parker stood beside me, trying to feel how badly his chin was cut.

  Suddenly the silence around us was shattered by a sharp burst of readily identifiable AK-47 fire. The AK was immediately joined by another enemy weapon—probably a .30-caliber machine gun—firing much faster. Bullets were plunking into the water all around the ship, and I could hear rounds tearing through the aircraft. The enemy was still very much present in the area, and they obviously knew exactly where we were.

  I instinctively ducked my head, then jumped backward off the fuselage into the rice paddy. I landed on my feet in about twelve inches of water, but immediately fell over on my backside—Parker would probably have been laughing at me if he hadn't been busy ducking, too.

  As the enemy rounds let up for a second, Parker ran around the tail of the aircraft and threw himself, and his M-60 and ammo belt, down on top of a nearby paddy dike. Crawling out of the water, I reached back into the cockpit and grabbed my CAR-15 along with a bandolier of magazines, then rolled around the back of the ship and fell prone on the ground next to Parker. Bullets were kicking up all around us. No doubt the enemy had seen us move out from behind the aircraft and were determined to nail us.

  I raised my head just enough to try to see where the fire was coming from. Then I got back on the PRC-10 and fairly well screamed to Sinor: “Three One, we're in deep trouble down here! We've got bad guys to the west of us, bad guys to the west. We're taking heavy fire on the ground from the wood line two seven zero degrees due west our location, at a range of about three hundred yards.”

  “Roger, I'm in,” Sinor said as he rolled the Cobra and began his run right over the tree line. I heard the noise as he punched off several pairs of rockets. The first pair hit a little short; the second and third pairs looked as though they were pretty close to where I thought the fire was coming from.

  As Sinor broke to come around again, I said, “Second and third pairs look like good rocks. Give ‘em hell!”

  On his next pass, all I heard was his minigun fire. Then Sinor came back up on the radio. “I didn't get any rocks off that time. I'm coming back in. I'm recycling rockets, so keep your heads down.”

  Sinor rolled in at about 140 to 160 knots, leveled out nose down, and ran the length of the tree line without firing a single rocket.

  What the hell? I thought as Sinor sped off to the north. Then Sinor came back with the news. “I'm empty. Most of my ordnance was expended during the convoy ambush and I haven't reloaded. ARPs are on the way. I'll keep making dry runs on Charlie to try to keep their heads down. Stay cool.”

  So there we were. Down in a rice paddy, the enemy just three hundred yards away, and we had a defanged Cobra! Sinor continued to make runs, with horrendous fire coming up at him from the enemy. But after about three dry passes, Charlie quit shooting at the Cobra.

  Two things became obvious to Parker and me as we lay there on the dike half in and half out of that foul rice paddy water: the enemy had wised up to the fact that the gunship was out of ammo, and it wasn't the gunship they wanted anyway. Those bastards wanted the Loach crew; they wanted us!

  Just then Parker yelled, “Lieutenant!” and pointed toward the tree line. I immediately saw two men standing at the edge of the jungle not more than 175 yards to my right front. One man wore a blue shirt, the other dark green. Neither had headgear, but both were carrying AK-47s. They apparently hadn't seen Parker and me on the dike, and probably thought we were still in or behind the aircraft.

  One of the VC pointed toward the bird and the other one let go with a burst of AK fire. As he fired, more AKs from the tree line let go—shooting the hell out of the rice paddy where they thought we were.

  Adding to the blanket of fire the AK-47s were sending in, an RPG-7 round suddenly exploded not more than fifteen to twenty yards from us, showering us with mud and foul-smelling water.

  “These sons a bitches ain't kidding,” I shouted into Parker's ear. “They're coming after us!”

  Parker opened up with his machine gun, and I cut loose with my CAR-15. The two soldiers caught the full blast of our combined fire and were blown backward into the grass at the edge of the tree line.

  Parker didn't let up. He kept spraying the jungle and yelling above the chatter of his M-60, “The bastards aren't gonna get me … the bastards aren't gonna get me!”

  He soon shot his belt dry, and at the same time his gun jammed. I worked with his weapon trying to clear it, while he crawled back over to the ship to get another belt of ammo.

  With a fresh six-foot belt, Parker let go again. I fired three more CAR-15 magazines into the jungle behind where we had dropped the two bad guys. Between bursts, I managed to tell Parker, “If they start coming at us, we're dropping this stuff and running for it, got me? We'll run eastbound, toward Thunder Road.” He nodded and kept pumping rounds through the M-60.

  One of our mech units over on Thunder Road wa
s probably trying to get across the stream to help us. It made a lot more sense to head toward them, rather than try to hold off a bunch of enemy soldiers if they decided to rush us.

  Just then, as if fate had suddenly looked down on us and smiled, a Huey came out of nowhere in a steep, descending spiral and hit a hover right across the corner of the rice paddy, not more than twenty feet from us. I grabbed Parker by the back of the neck. “Come on, Jimbo, let's get the hell out of here!”

  Clutching our weapons, we cut across the corner of the paddy and moved as fast as we could in the thigh-deep water toward the hovering UH-1. The Huey door gunner was shooting like crazy over our heads as I climbed out of the rice paddy and dove into the open right door. Parker was right behind me. I grabbed his M-60 as he struggled to get aboard. The Huey lifted off with me still yanking on his arm and half of his body still flailing outside the aircraft.

  Finally, both of us were sitting on the Huey cabin floor, looking at each other, trying to smile. The ship climbed to altitude and headed back to Phu Loi.

  We found out that we were in a command and control helicopter belonging to the commander, 3d Brigade, 1st Infantry Division. He had been in the general area and heard Sinor go up on the Guard push. Realizing that an aeroscout crew was on the ground, the CO had ordered in his C and C ship to snatch us up and zip us out of there. He and his crew had sure saved the bacon of a couple of wet, scared aeroscout crewmen that day.

  Back at Phu Loi, I learned through operations that after Parker and I were out of there Sinor had called in close air support on the wooded area where the enemy was located. The whole sector from the edge of the Rome-plow to about a quarter mile into the jungle was boxed and worked with fast movers.

  Parker's cut on the chin, though serious, wasn't as bad as it had looked the day before. He had gone over to the medic when we got back to base and had it stitched.

  The next morning, we had a requirement to go back out and assist sweep-up units. A scout-gunship team was needed to help look for blood trails and search for the enemy force that had hit the convoy along Thunder Road.

  Realizing that I was going out on the mission, Parker came to me that morning and asked to go. “Look, Lieutenant, I'm fine. I want to go back out there because I've got a score to settle with those bastards.”

  I understood his feelings, but I knew the regulations: “I can't let you fly today, it's not legal. You know as well as I do that stitches are a grounding condition.”

  “Come on, sir, I want to go,” he pleaded.

  I liked his spunk and I finally gave in. “Get in the aircraft, but if the Old Man finds out about this, it's my ass.” He gave me a smile as big as his stitched-up chin would allow and headed off to the flight line with his M-60 cradled under his arm.

  We flew directly to the ambush site. Coming up on the Rome-plowed area in front of the tree line, we saw that some of our tanks were still there. We could see the tracks where 113s had rolled through, policing up the enemy bodies and looking for any personal gear or documents that could be of help to division intelligence.

  To get oriented again, we first made a north-south pass up the west side of the highway, running at about sixty knots and thirty to forty feet off the ground. As I made my turn at the far north end to start back, I saw a VC body lying on the ground. It was behind a large mound of dirt that had obviously been pushed up during the original Rome-plowing of the area. I hauled the Loach around and keyed Parker on the intercom. “Look there, they missed a body. I thought the friendlies picked all those guys up and buried them.”

  Holding in a small circle over the body at ten feet, I took a closer look. He had on long blue pants, a long dark green shirt, and Ho Chi Minh sandals. Then I noticed that there was something around his body. Looking closer I could see it was a map case.

  I got up on Uniform to report to Sinor, who was my gun cover again that day. “Three One, One Six. I've got a dead guy down here with a map case on him. The grunts have missed him. I'm going to go down here and land—it's wide open, no problem. I'm going down and recover that map case.”

  “OK, One Six, roger that. But be careful, he could be booby-trapped.”

  I briefed Parker. “When I land, I want you to get out and get that map case. Get the hook out. I'll put down behind that mound of dirt from the body. You pull the hook over him and stay behind the mound when you pull the body over.”

  Parker jumped out with the grappling hook line over his shoulder and his drawn .45 in hand.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” I yelled to him over the sound of the idling engine. “Take this with you.” I handed Parker the CAR-15 submachine gun. He reholstered his .45 and disappeared around the corner of the dirt mound, cradling the carbine under his arm.

  Just as I lost sight of Parker, I heard the CAR-15 go off, all thirty rounds in a sustained burst. Parker came running around the mound for all he was worth and dove head first into the gunner's compartment. “Get out of here, sir, NOWl He's not dead!”

  I pulled pitch and squeezed the gun trigger to the four thousand rounds per minute stop. The OH-6 shuddered as it spewed tracers and clawed for altitude. The tongue of fire raked over the soldier's body and blew dust and debris across my windscreen.

  “What the hell happened back there?”

  Parket was panting. “The bastard had an RPG round in his hand when I came around the corner. His eyes were closed, the bastard looked dead to me, but as I walked up close to him, he opened his eyes. His left arm was blown away, but he had this RPG round in his right hand. And when I got up close to him he picked the RPG round up and slammed it into the ground, picked it up, and did it again. The son of a bitch tried to blow me up!”

  Ground troops from the security forces were arriving, now cautious at our recent outburst of fire. They came around their APC, weapons at the ready. Before getting too close to the body, one infantryman took a couple of insurance shots to make sure the VC was dead and wouldn't try to detonate the RPG round still tightly gripped in his hand.

  Parker and I were watching from a nearby orbit as the grunts carefully removed the map case and took it back to the M-l 13. Then the officer in the personnel carrier called on FM. “Jackpot, One Six. Charlie was an officer type. We've got maps, and we've got operational overlays. Looks like good stuff for G-2. Thanks for finding this dude. Your crew chief OK?”

  “OK, thanks,” I came back. “Crew chief is OK, other than what I might do to him for shooting up all my CAR-15 ammo into Victor Charlie. You'll get the map case contents back to Brigade?”

  “This is really good intel, One Six. From a quick look at these overlays, it looks like the dinks who ambushed the convoy are headed back to their sanctuaries in the Fish Hook. As far as the map case contents, we're tied up here for a little while. Can you get it down to Tango One [Thunder I Fire Base]? Then they'll get it on back to division.”

  “Roger, we'll get it back to Tango One,” I answered.

  That was Parker's cue to cut back in on the intercom. “Horse shit, Lieutenant,” he said to me jokingly. “No disrespect intended, sir, but I don't care what you say, I'm not getting out of this damn aircraft one more time to screw around with some dink's map case!”

  “Cool it, Jimbo,” I chuckled. “Don't worry about the bad guy, he's dead.”

  “Well, no offense, Lieutenant, but I'd just as soon one of those grunts handle the map case while I stay to-hell inside this helicopter.”

  Smiling to myself, I set the ship down next to the M-113, and one of the infantrymen brought me the map case. I didn't even have to ask Parker to get it.

  That day, 21 July 1969, ended up being a pretty short flying day for Parker and me. We ran the map case on down to Thunder I, turned it over to the brigade S-2, and headed back to Phu Loi. As I cruised leisurely back to base, I wondered again if my decision eighteen months before had been a good one.

  CHAPTER 2

  SILVER WINGS

  Fort Knox, Kentucky, 1967

  I pressed my way up to the
Echo Company bulletin board to see what everybody was reading. Just pinned up, the notice said that the army was looking for more rotary-wing aviators and that interested officer candidates who qualified would be given the opportunity to go on to army flight school after completing officer candidate school (OCS).

  I was interested enough to reread the last part. It said that any candidate wishing to pursue aviator training had to submit to an orientation flight in an army helicopter to be conducted from the Fort Knox airfield on a specified future date. I had never considered being a pilot, but taking an army helicopter ride didn't sound too bad.

  The only problem was getting the time off to do it. We were about mid-course in OCS training at the armor school and our schedules were hectic. But between field problems, inspections, getting demerits, and working off demerits, I signed up.

  I had never ridden in a helicopter. I hadn't even seen many of them down around Hot Springs, Arkansas, where I grew up. Before enlisting in the army, I had belonged to a sport parachuting club. We jumped, of course, from small, propeller-type airplanes, so the concept of being off the ground and flying wasn't all that new to me.

  But flying helicopters? The prospect had never occurred to me. Yet becoming an armor officer candidate at Fort Knox, Kentucky, really hadn't been in my plans, either.

  I had enlisted on 1 February 1967 after one semester of college, with the specific objective of becoming an army airborne infantryman. During basic training at Fort Polk, Louisiana, I decided to go on to OCS. I still wanted the infantry branch but got my second choice, armor, instead.

  When the appointed day came to take the army helicopter ride, I and another candidate who had indicated interest got our proper permissions, and off we went down to Fort Knox airfield. Reporting at the flight line, we were greeted by a young army captain. He introduced himself as the pilot who would be taking us on our orientation flight, then pointed over his shoulder to the little helicopter sitting on the ramp.