Low Level Hell

by Hugh Mills

  I contacted the ground unit on FM: “OK, Gangplank, it's getting dark and pretty soon I'm going to have to break station because I can't see. What do you want to do?” I didn't tell him that the OH-6 had no night navigation capability, and that I had to find my way back to Phu Loi before dark.

  “I hear you, Darkhorse,” Gangplank responded, “but we've got to get our people out before dark. If it gets completely dark on us, I don't know if we'll ever get them back.”

  That message made my mind up instantly. “OK, Gangplank, here's what we're going to do. We've got a pretty good idea where your point men and Three Six's lead element are. There's probably not more than forty meters between them.”

  “Roger that,” he responded.

  “All right, then, we're going to do some shooting … I say again … we're going to shoot as best we can. Can't guarantee that we won't hit your friendlies. But if our fire can pin down Charlie, your guys can move up there and get your people out, providing they're all down in one area. You roger?”

  “I roger. OK, Darkhorse, let's try it. Three Six will move out on your fire.”

  With another glance over my shoulder, I told Farrar, “I'm going to come around again, Al, and go in very slow. I know you probably feel like we're hanging it out pretty far, but they can't see us any better than we can see them.”

  Farrar nodded an OK as I continued. “They'll be shooting at sound—they can hear the airplane but they can't see us very well. If you see any fire coming up, shoot back immediately at the point of their fire. Don't spray a wide area; shoot directly at their muzzle flashes.”

  We made three more passes, and each time came the rips of AKs and light machine guns. Farrar, being ever careful to avoid hitting our ground troops, shot back in short, well-aimed bursts. He was leaning half out of the airplane, responding to enemy tracers that were streaking up at us.

  Gangplank came back on the radio. “All right, One Seven, you're shooting about sixty meters directly ahead of Three Six. You roger? Sixty meters directly to Three Six's front.”

  “OK,” I responded, “I think your lead element is just behind me now…. they're right behind me … I'm coming around again.”

  This time I cranked the OH-6 up to about fifty knots and came in from another direction. I could hear Farrar's M-60 pecking away in the same short, controlled bursts as Charlie's fire came up from below.

  Suddenly, as I was looking down and to my right out of the airplane, I caught the blur of an image out the corner of my left eye. I jerked my head around just in time to see the top of a large dead tree looming up right in front of me. The twisted, blackened limbs looked like a giant claw, poised to snatch the little OH-6 right out of the sky.

  “Holy shit!” I yelled and pulled all the power the bird had. Instantly responding to the controls, the tail flew up, automatically dropping the nose just enough to catch the top of those straggly limbs. With a shocking thump and scraping noise, the tree limbs burst through the front of the ship, sending debris flying into a dirty cloud that momentarily obscured the front section of the OH-6.

  My headset crackled immediately as the gun above me barked, “What's going on down there, One Seven? What was that explosion?”

  Realizing that the Cobra must have seen that sudden gust of dirt and crud flying from my nose, I answered, “Hell, that wasn't any explosion. I just hit a tree!”

  The terrible rush of wind through the cabin made it obvious that the whole front end of the OH-6 had been knocked out. Both Plexiglas bubbles were smashed to smithereens and the wind was whistling through as though I was flying in an open cockpit.

  Amazingly, the aircraft was still flying OK. The rotor system had apparently not been hit and the ship was still responding to my control movements.

  After telling Farrar what had happened, I rang up Gangplank. “I hit the top of a tree up here, but we're OK. I'm going to hover again. How close is Three Six?”

  Taking a few moments to check before answering me, Gangplank came back, “Three Six thinks he knows where the guys are. He can hear one of them moaning. Can you get in there again for one last try?”

  “OK, one more pass. Only this time I'm going to put myself right in the middle of where I think the enemy base camp is, come to a hover, and shoot the shit out of that area with everything I've got. Now, when the door gunner lets go with his M-60, get your people up there and try to get those point guys out. It's the best chance we've got, and it's the last chance we've got. Roger?”

  With Gangplank's acknowledgment, I headed in from the north over what I believed was the dead center of the enemy base camp. Just like every time before, Charlie opened up—AKs on my right side, a heavier light machine gun to my front, and at least two AKs behind me. Because I was at a hover, I could hear and feel the hits. They were ripping through the ship from every direction.

  Farrar had leaned completely out of the OH-6 and was shooting underneath the tail boom at the two AKs behind us. Right in the middle of one of his long bursts, I saw Al fall out of the airplane. My God, I thought. He's hit!

  Looking back, I saw that Al's foot had landed on the skid and broken his fall. His monkey strap had steadied him, and the bungee cord had kept the M-60 from going out with him. I tilted the ship to the left to make it easier for him to crawl back into the cabin. “Where are you hit, Al?” I yelled.

  I could almost hear the chuckle in his voice. “Ah shit, Lieutenant, I just slipped. I'm OK.” Then he let go with another long M-60 blast!

  Just as I was starting to tell Farrar to cool it, that we couldn't take any more hits and were going to pull the hell out and go home, Gangplank burst on the air. “OK, Darkhorse, get out of there … GET OUT OF THERE! WE GOT ‘EM! WE GOT ‘EM!”

  I pulled power and was bringing the nose around in a sweeping right turn when Gangplank came back, “We got everybody out, One Seven. Everybody's alive. Say again, everybody's out and alive. One of the guys is hurt bad—shot through both legs. But they're going to make it.”

  With that happy message, Bruce Foster in the Cobra came up on UHF. “OK, One Seven. Sidewinder has got layers of fighters stacked up overhead waiting for ground to get their people out so they can come in and put Charlie to sleep. You back it out of there and get over to the LZ. When you tell us that all the friendlies are clear, we'll put the fighters down on the base camp area.”

  As the infantry was moving out of the tree line and back into the LZ, I passed the word on to Gangplank. “Get your folks down and out of the way. We've got TAC fighters coming in with heavy ordnance to neutralize the base camp area.” Then I keyed Farrar, “Get me a Willie Pete and a red smoke, one in each hand, and get ready to mark the target.”

  As I moved toward the base area, Al primed the grenades and held both of them out the door, ready to drop them on my command. I asked Foster to tell the FAC to watch for the Willie Pete and the red smoke.

  When we passed directly over what I thought was the base camp location, I hollered, “Now!” and Farrar threw both grenades straight down. From the jungle floor came a solid white explosion, with fingers of burning white phosphorous boiling and shooting out of it. I knew we were right on the button because the AK fire started again.

  Just as I was about to pull power, the Cobra came back, “OK, One Seven, FAC has got your smoke. Get out of there. Get out of there now and come on up to altitude.”

  As I rolled out, Farrar got my attention. “Hey, Lieutenant, take a look at that.” Off to the right, out of the lowering cloud level, came two North American F-100 Super Sabres, one behind the other, drilling in on the white smoke that was still billowing up at the enemy base camp.

  Screaming in fast, the first Sabre ticked off two napalm canisters that landed smack-dab on top of the white smoke and erupted into balls of flame. As the first F-100 peeled off the target, the second one rolled in right behind him and pickled off two more napalm canisters. The long axis of the base camp was completely enveloped by a fierce wall of fire.

  The jets drop
ped two more canisters each, then streaked around one more time as the Cobra warned, “All right, everybody stay clear.” In they came, one behind the other, with 20mms blasting up and down the long axis of the base camp. As I watched their maneuvers, I thought to myself, there is no way any living thing could have survived all the ordnance those F-100s had dumped in there. The FAC came up: “The Sabres are Winchester,” which meant they had expended all their napalm and internal guns.

  One last time, I got on the radio to Gangplank. “Gangplank, this is Darkhorse One Seven. I'm going home. The guns are going to stay with you for a little while in case you need them. We've got Dustoff inbound to pick up your wounded. Take care.”

  “Hey, man,” he came back, “we really appreciate it. Darkhorse sure saved our ass!”

  When Farrar and I touched down at Phu Loi, I could hardly get out of the aircraft. After thirteen hours in the seat of that OH-6, my legs were numb, my buttocks were numb, even the bottom part of my thighs had no feeling in them. My entire body was so exhausted that I even had trouble working the pedals to hover the ship onto the strip.

  Bruce Foster had shut down his Cobra at the same time, and we walked in from the parking area together. He put his arm around my shoulder. “One Seven, you are one crazy son of a bitch!”

  I grinned back at him. “Man, I didn't envy you one goddamned bit, because there you were hanging up there in orbit and couldn't do one single thing all day to help me.”

  After a meal at the O club, I mustered enough energy to get back to the flight line and the little OH-6 that I had flown the hell out of all that day. By thetime I arrived at the ship, Farrar was there, as was the scout platoon sergeant, Tim McDivitt. Sergeant McDivitt had some of the maintenance people going over the aircraft to assess the damage. All the crew chiefs called McDivitt “Toon Daddy,” short for “platoon daddy,” the patriarch of the unit.

  As I reached the ship, I called out to him, “What kind of shape is 249 in, Toon Daddy?”

  He looked at me, and I quote his exact words. “Lieutenant…” He had a way of accenting that first syllable so it came out, L-E-W-W-tenant. “You have screwed up one U.S. Army helicopter … to the max!” He shook his head in disbelief. “Not only is all the goddamned nose Plexiglas blown out of this ship, but you've got thirty to forty holes in her, spread out from the rotor system to the belly and tail boom. It'll sure as hell take some major surgery to get her back in shape!”

  But what had both of us scratching our heads was the fact that this OH-6 aircraft had hung together through thirteen hours of beating, with nothing vital hit, and was still totally flyable. What an aircraft!

  As Toon Daddy was finishing his lecture to me, I noticed that Farrar was still walking around the ship, studying the damage. (As I said before, the crew chief considers the airplane his.) He was especially noticing the two AK holes through the cabin where he had been sitting. I knew he was wondering how in the hell we ever got us and that airplane back to Phu Loi in one piece.

  Suddenly realizing that I was scheduled to fly VR-1 the next morning, I asked Al to help me move my personal gear from 249 over to the bird slated for first up VR. We walked together toward our hootches, then sat down for a minute near the orderly room and lit up cigarettes. As tired as we both were, it was good to “decompress” over a smoke and think back over what we had been through that day.

  Farrar looked at me and hissed out a stream of inhaled smoke. “Shit, sir … holy shit!”

  I grinned back at him. “You know, Al, we flew thirteen hours today. Would you believe that we could ever be in the saddle that long in one operation?”

  “All I know, sir, is that my ass is numb. No, not numb … my ass is dead!”

  “Mine, too,” I mumbled, “but I want you to know that you did pretty goddamned good work today, for a Yankee.” Coming from Cumberland, Rhode Island, Al was used to the Yankee kidding.

  With that, I walked on down to my hootch and hit the rack. I didn't talk to anybody … didn't see anybody … didn't even take off my boots or flight suit. I just stretched out with my feet resting on top of the metal bar at the end of the bunk. I was asleep in moments.

  An hour later the flip-flop noise of shower shoes tracking across the hootch floor awakened me. It was Bob Davis. He shook me by the shoulder until I finally growled, “Huh, what is it?”

  “Hey, Hubie … you asleep?”

  “I'm sure as hell not now,” I groaned, my eyes still riveted shut.

  “You know you got first up VR tomorrow,” he whispered. “Do you want me to take it for you?”

  I answered through my fogginess, “Nah, that's all right. I'll take it.”

  “Well,” he said, “you better go back to sleep. You need the sleep because you look like shit.”

  “Thanks a lot,” I snarled, and drifted off again.

  It didn't seem like more than five minutes when I felt my shoulder being shaken again. This time it was the assistant operations charge of quarters (CQ). “Lieutenant, it's four o'clock. You're first up … it's time for you to get up.”

  I struggled up to a sitting position on the side of the bunk. It was almost like being in a drunken stupor. As I held my head in my hands, I looked down and saw I was still dressed in the same flight suit and boots I had worn the day before.

  My feet were like two blocks of ice. I couldn't move them, and they tingled with prickly pain. I remembered that I had fallen asleep with my feet hung over the rail of the bunk. My limbs were dead from the knees down. I couldn't even walk!

  When the feeling in my feet finally returned, I picked up my CAR-15 and chicken plate and stumbled out to the flight line. I started to run up the aircraft, but decided to wait until I was ready to leave. Maybe by then I'd be more awake and alert.

  I walked over to operations and talked with the gun crew to find out what we were supposed to do that day. The mission called for some VR in the Quan Loi area, looking for base camps and trail activity.

  We got off about 5 A.M. It was a cool, crisp morning, which did its best to snap me back to reality. Our instructions called for us to fly up Highway 13 to An Loc, shut down, and get a briefing from brigade before moving on over to Quan Loi to scout for the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment (ACR).

  We hadn't been in An Loc more than twenty minutes before another OH-6 bearing Bob Davis's tail number roared in from the south. He set down and came running over to my ship.

  “Hey, Hubie,” he panted, “you need to get your ass back to the troop pronto. You have obviously pissed off somebody somethin' terrible and they want to see you at division. Has something to do with yesterday's action. That's all I know!”

  “OK, but what in the hell have I done?”

  “I told you all I know,” Davis responded, “but you better get a move on.”

  I quickly filled Bob in on the briefing, then jumped back into the airplane with crew chief Jim Slater and headed back to Phu Loi.

  It was not unusual when on a nontactical mission for the crew chief to ride up front in the left seat. That's where Slater jumped in, and as soon as we were up and on a direct to Phu Loi, I told him, “Hey, Jimbo, you're going to fly. I'm dead, man.” He grabbed the controls. “Yes, sir! I want to fly, Lieutenant.”

  I pulled my legs up and tried to relax, but my leg muscles still cramped up every time I moved them. I lit a cigarette and thought to myself that I wouldn't last long in this damned war with many more days like yesterday. I wondered what I had done to get called off a mission and back to division.

  Back down in Phu Loi, the operations CQ informed me that I was to go on to division headquarters at Lai Khe and see the G-2. “You are to brief intelligence on what you saw yesterday,” he said, “and Mr. Ameigh will be going with you.”

  Ameigh was my hootch mate. He was a scout pilot and was also the troop historian. But why would he be going back to division with me? By now I was beginning to get pretty worried.

  Ameigh climbed in the left seat with his camera in hand. “What are you carr
ying a camera for, Jim?” I asked him.

  “You never know when there's a good picture waiting to be taken, ol' buddy.”

  The comment went right over the top of my head. But leaving it at that, we flew off to division headquarters, where we were met by a major who was the coordinator of the division commander's staff. He looked at my name tag and the Darkhorse patch on my flight suit. “Lieutenant Mills, the people you actually need to see are not here. I want you to go on up to fire support base Lorraine. There are some people there who want to talk to you.”

  Ameigh and I got back into the OH-6. I began to wonder if I had hit some friendlies on that last smokin' pass over the enemy base camp. FSB Lorraine was home base for Alpha Company, 2d Battalion, 16th Infantry—the same outfit that was pinned down yesterday at LZ Toast. My mind was conjuring up all the kinds of trouble I could be in.

  As I came in on short final over Lorraine, I noticed that all the troops at the base were standing formation out near the helicopter landing area. I landed, shut down the bird, and began walking over toward the formation. Nobody paid any attention to either Ameigh or me until a bedraggled captain came walking up and stuck out his hand. “Are you Darkhorse One Seven … Lieutenant Hugh Mills?” he asked.

  I answered, “Yes, sir.”

  He grinned. “I'm Gangplank Six, the guy on the ground who you spent most of the day talking to yesterday.”

  “Hey … howya doin'?” We looked at each other for a moment. I laughed and said, “Sir, you look like shit!”

  “You don't look a damned bit better yourself, One Seven!” He told me that he and his troops had been in the action area all night. Their lift into the base had dropped them off just an hour ago.

  I asked him quietly, “What am I doing here? Did I hit one of your friendlies on that last pass at dusk?”

  “No. Just hang on, there are some people coming out here to the fire base who want to talk to you.”

  About that time a Huey landed near my OH-6, and out stepped a general grade officer, a lieutenant who was obviously the general's aide, and a colonel wearing sunglasses. He looked like the stereotypical Hollywood press agent.