by Hugh Mills
As I laid my M-16 in the left front seat, he suddenly twisted out of my grasp and bolted away from the airplane. He darted underneath the tail boom, just missing the still-turning tail rotor, and made a running jump back into the rice paddy.
“You little son of a bitch!” I screamed, as I grabbed the M-16 back out of the front seat and ran around to the rear of the aircraft. I intended to fire one round over his head to make him stop and come back to me.
In my haste, I jerked the selector of the M-16 to full automatic, inadvertently firing all twenty-seven rounds that I had left in the magazine. “Damn!” I muttered in disgust.
I watched for an instant as my adversary bounded through the paddy toward a tree line that separated the paddy from the river. He was getting away, and all I had was an empty M-16 and a mind-set—I was either going to get that little bastard or bust my ass trying!
With all my gear on, I probably weighed two hundred pounds or more. But I jumped in the paddy to go after him … and immediately sank to my waist in that water buffalo shit-stinking muck!
I could hardly move. Waving my empty M-16 above my head, I yelled, “Stop! Come back here or I'll let you have it!” He wouldn't know that I had a dry weapon.
But I was losing him. In desperation I turned back to Calloway, who was still holding the idling Loach on the dike. I pointed to the guy and shouted, “Go get him … run him down!”
Calloway, I learned fast, was the kind of pilot you didn't have to tell twice. He picked up the aircraft and took off at a dead gallop, holding the Loach about two feet off the ground.
He cut an arc right over the heads of the rice planters, who started diving into the water in every direction. It made a tremendous splash as all thirty of them screamed (probably a choice Vietnamese obscenity) and simultaneously hit the deck.
My guy was running through the water for all he was worth, with Calloway hot on his trail. I could only watch—my boots were so deeply mired in the slimy gunk at the bottom of the rice paddy that I could hardly move.
I managed to struggle forward a couple of steps while Calloway tried to corner the running Vietnamese. Bob had caught up with the suspect and circled above his head a couple of times, to let him know that he wasn't going anyplace. Then Calloway dropped the helicopter down right in front of him to cut off his route of escape. Rotor wash made the paddy look like a full-blown geyser in Yellowstone Park.
Every time the Loach let down in front of the Vietnamese, he would change direction, like a halfback doing a fancy piece of broken field running. Calloway's OH-6 looked like a yo-yo on a string as he jerked the little Loach up and down, always managing to get down again right in front of the fleeing man and block his progress. Bob, through some damned skillful flying, had the man cornered like a rat in a trap.
As I made my way toward the sparring Loach and the frustrated escapee, I heard a sound in the water very near me. Then I noticed little splashes of rice paddy water kicking up on both sides of me, not more than a few inches away.
What in the hell is that? I thought. Then it quickly occurred to me: Those were bullets hitting the water, obviously aimed at me!
Looking toward the riverbank, about 150 yards away, my eye caught a pair of muzzle flashes coming from the tree line, no doubt a couple of AK-47s winking right at me.
So, there I was, standing ass-deep in the rice paddy with an empty M-16 and no spare ammo, and no way I could tell either the Cobra or scout ship that I was being fired on.
Determined to do something, I reached down into the water and fumbled with the holster flap of my .45. Withdrawing the dripping weapon, I let fly with a couple of rounds toward the river, before realizing how futile it was. Using my .45 at that distance was like fighting a fire a hundred and fifty yards away with a twenty-five-yard hose.
Calloway in the scout ship was about twenty yards away from me by then. He was making diving passes at the prey, forcing him to fall flat down into the water each time he brought the ship around. Every time the man got up to run, Bob would turn his ship sideways in front of him, then rock his skids back and forth, slamming them into the man. Using the side of the skid like a boxing glove, Bob kept knocking the guy ass-over-appetite back into the water.
Having dropped the worn-out man several times, Calloway then expertly maneuvered the Loach over the flailing suspect until one skid rested across the Vietnamese's shoulders, pinning him to the bottom of the rice paddy.
As Bob held the man down in the water, I finally made it to the hovering ship and crawled up to the rear crew compartment. Plugging in my helmet mike, I keyed Fishman: “Three Four, I've got bad guys on the bank of the river at six o'clock right off our tail. They're shooting at me out here. Can you hose down that riverbank before they close in on us?”
With my last word, Fishman rolled in, making a rocket pass down the tree line. When I saw that Paul's rocks were right where I needed them, I backed out of the airplane and told Calloway to raise the ship off the guy while I jumped down to get him.
As the Loach lifted, I was back in the water reaching for the SOB. His eyes bugged as I grabbed him by his shirt collar with one hand and punched him in the face with the other. His eyes rolled back in his head and he went out like a light, his limp body falling into the water.
Calloway moved the Loach in closer so I could pick the guy up and dump him in the back of the aircraft. I didn't even tie him in, just grabbed a cargo strap and bound his arms and legs behind him. He was still unconscious, so he didn't give me any more trouble.
Jumping back in the left front seat of the bird, I grabbed the controls and told Calloway, “I've got it. Let's get out of here!”
As we lifted off the paddy, Calloway looked over at me, his nose crinkled up. “Jesus! You smell like shit!”
“Thanks a lot! By the way, for a student pilot, you did one hell of a job flying back there. A hell of a job … and I appreciate it very much.”
We flew our suspect down the river to an ARVN compound, where he was quickly identified as a major from a VC division located near Dau Tieng. More than that, his interrogation revealed that he was a VC tax collector. It was his job to go out among the local civilian population in that area along the Saigon River and force them to pay taxes to support the VC. He'd hit up the farmers for food and money, and even pressed them into service to carry supplies to the Viet Cong forces. This guy was a pretty big fish to capture—a damned lucky stroke for us, since we were on a routine training mission.
This incident actually provided excellent training. I could have thought forever and never come up with a better example of one of aerial scouting's most basic principles—contrast, or, what's wrong with what you see below you? What's in the picture that shouldn't be there? What's not there that should be there?
In the case of our VC major-tax collector, all the clues were there. The farmers were all planting rice in one direction; this single person was going off in a different direction, moving away from them. Everyone in the group of farmers wore a conical hat; this guy was bareheaded. The farmers paid no attention to our aircraft as we orbited nearby; this person kept sneaking glimpses at us over his shoulder and was moving away from the aircraft. Everybody else in the group was either very old or very young; this man was of military age.
When we got back on the ground at Phu Loi, Fishman came running over from his Cobra. He couldn't believe that the enemy soldier in the rice paddy had turned out to be a VC major. Paul slapped us both on the back. “A VC major? Jesus Christ, I can't believe you guys … I just can't believe you guys!”
The crew chief of our airplane had a different reaction, however. He came over to me with a thoroughly disgusted look on his face. “Shit, sir, have you looked at the back of my aircraft? There's blood, swamp water, water buffalo shit, and all kinds of other crud back there. Ah, shit, sir …”
But that was a mild reprimand compared to what I got when I arrived at my hootch to shower and change clothes. As I walked in the door, Mai, our hootch maid, immediat
ely stopped what she was doing and looked at me. There I was, still soaking wet from my jousting match in the rice paddy. My boots were fouled. Nastiness dripped from my flight suit and made a smelly, dark-colored puddle on the floor.
Mai's nose curled up and she came at me with an up-raised broom. “Ding-wee! You stink bad. You smell like water buffalo. Get out and take shower, and no come back anymore until you no smell so nasty!”
Over the next week or so, the troop got a lot of feedback on the VC major-tax collector incident. Division G-2 and ARVN G-2 were ecstatic about having a VC field grade officer to interrogate. It turned out that he was the chief tax collector for that area, so he was able to tell interrogators where all the local and main force VC units in the area were located. He also knew all the shadow government and chain of command in the villages along his stretch of the river.
For his absolutely masterful piece of flying that day, Bob Calloway was awarded the Air Medal. But the thing that made the episode really unique was the fact that Calloway received this meritorious award for flying the OH-6 … before he was even signed off in the Loach as a scout pilot.
We had a little saying around the troop, which was probably common among American forces all over Vietnam; “We own the day; he [Victor Charlie] owns the night.”
During the day the American soldiers and our allies generally controlled the war. We were the aggressors; in daylight we usually had tactical advantage over the enemy. At night, however, when our forces went back into defensive positions, Charlie stayed out in the jungle. He used the night as a cover for his resupplying and offensive actions. He couldn't stand against us during the day, but he sure could cause us a lot of difficulty once darkness set in.
We received a lot of night mortar and rocket attacks on our base at Phu Loi. Scouts didn't fly operationally after dark, and we valued a good night's sleep to be ready for those first light VRs, which had us in the air by 5 or 5:30 in the morning. The VC seemed to have some insight into this fact. When they hit us after dark, the scout pilots would have to spend the night in bunkers instead of in our hootch bunks. It was cold and damp in those damned bunkers, and the only place to sleep was on hard, rough board benches. Not conducive, you can be sure, to a decent night's rest.
Since it was not unusual for us to catch a few rounds of enemy mortar fire during the night, we'd sometimes just stay in our hootch bunks and try to sleep through it. Rockets were another story, however. Russia supplied Charlie with an individual heavy 122mm rocket that weighed 112 pounds, had a 42-pound warhead, and had a range of ten miles. This weapon could be fired from an easily made and highly portable launching stand. The enemy could set it up in short order by resting the body of the weapon on top of two crossed tree branch supports, preaiming it, and then arming the rocket to fire when two wires made contact after the pan of water they were in evaporated.
One night, after softening us up with a few rounds of 81mm mortar fire, Charlie let us have a few rockets. I was just about asleep in my bunk when a rocket hit out near the runway. The resulting explosion actually lifted the roof right off my hootch. I could see starlight through the gap between the roof and the sidewall! Needless to say all of us spent the rest of that night in the bunker, hard board benches and all.
Trying desperately to sleep that night, I couldn't help but think about those enemy rockets and what it must have taken to get them from their initial supply point to a spot where they could be fired into our airfield at Phu Loi.
Charlie's supply system was rudimentary, but with his dogged tenacity, somehow he was able to transport 122mm rockets—about the size of a telephone pole and weighing every bit as much—from an arsenal somewhere near Hanoi all the way down to Phu Loi. Through monsoons, B-52 strikes, snake-infested streams … along dust-choking trails. Amazingly, these rockets reached a Viet Cong encampment in American III Corps area. All to keep American aerial scout pilots in Phu Loi from sleeping at night.
It didn't take us long to understand what our new troop commander, Major Moore, meant when he told us on that first day that he was going to be involved in everyday combat operations. The previous commander had essentially run the troop from his office desk. Major Charles Moore liked to be in the air in his command and control bird, right above the action.
I found this out in spades on 8 July, the day immediately following the “swimming” experience with the VC major in the rice paddy.
On that day, Chuck Koranda (Three Nine) and I received a frag order for a hunter-killer team to assist the 2d Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry on a sweep mission near the Dead Man, a terrain feature located just south of Boundary Road and west of Highway 13. Our first step was to fly into the 2d Squadron's night defensive position to get briefed on what they wanted us to do for them. They were located up Highway 13 north of Lai Khe in the general vicinity of our Thunder I base camp.
Koranda and I landed outside the wire, shut down, and walked together into the NDP. Chuck met with the squadron's S-2 and got all the map coordinates, details of the operation that 2/11 was about to launch, and the latest information on enemy activity in the area. There was to be a 2d Squadron sweep-and-destroy mission into an enemy base camp thought to be located immediately south of Boundary Road. The intent was to push an armored column up from the southeast to hit the south end of Charlie's base camp. Additional tanks and infantry were positioned to patrol Boundary Road on the north of the camp. This would put the enemy in a vice if he tried to escape through the back door.
Our job was to get out ahead of the main column, guide it through the jungle, and screen to its front and flanks. As the aerial scout, I was to stay on the FM radio and keep Strider Eight (the armored column's CO) continuously informed as to what I was seeing around him.
As the crow flies, it was about ten kilometers from Thunder I northwest up to the enemy base camp area. As the column got underway, Koranda and I took off to circle it a few times and make sure the area was clear.
From my position twenty to thirty feet above the armor, I was fascinated watching the column work its way through the jungle. Out in the lead were five or six M-48A3 diesel-powered tanks with their 90mm main gun turrets pointed forward. The flanking tanks had their turrets turned to the side. The ACAVs (M-113A-ls), with their infantry troops, were in the middle.
Mixed in with the ACAVs were several Zippo tracks, which were Ml 13s with a turret on top that carried a flame dispenser. The flamethrowers were used on bunkers and a variety of other targets when their special kind of devastation was needed. The Zippo tracks were particularly vulnerable to enemy ground fire, however. All loaded up with jellied fuel and tanks of compressed air, they were a choice target for an enemy RPG round.
My door gunner that day was Al Farrar, and as we geared the base camp I told him to be especially alert because we weren't sure whether the bunkers were occupied. The jungle was very thick, double canopy reaching up eighty to a hundred feet. Because of the dense jungle, Koranda told me that he couldn't see where the base camp actually was. I asked Farrar to get a yellow smoke ready to mark the area.
Al reached up to the wire strung across the back of the bulkhead and pulled off one of the smoke canisters. He popped the pin and held it outside the airplane, tipping the top of it toward me so I could verify the yellow color. The color of the smoke we dropped and the color I told Koranda to look for had to match, for obvious reasons.
As we passed over the center of the base camp area, I told Farrar, “R-e-a-d-y … NOW!” He threw the grenade straight down from the aircraft. Yellow smoke boiled up out of the jungle, telling Koranda exactly where to mark the bunker positions on his map.
As we passed over, it was apparent to both Farrar and me that there were people down there. We didn't see any bad guys out in the open, but there were plenty of fresh traffic signs. The trails and the general area were well beaten down; the camouflage strewn around looked all freshly cut; a few pots and pans were lying around; even some clothing was hanging out to dry on lines underneath the tree
s.
After dropping the smoke, I headed back to the column, which was still several klicks away to the southeast. I needed to keep them on a straight-line course to the base camp, as well as scout the area around them again. With the main guns of the tanks pointed either to the dead front or flanks, the vulnerable point for ambush appeared to me to be the immediate left and right front of the column.
I also had to keep a close watch on the north side of the base camp. If Charlie decided to bolt out the back door to the north, I needed to immediately alert the tanks patrolling along Boundary Road.
Running back and forth to check the base camp and check the progress of the column kept on through two Loach fuel loads. Each time I got low on JP-4, Bob Davis and Bruce Foster would come up from our staging area at Lai Khe and take over until I could get back on station.
I had just come back from Lai Khe with my third fuel load when I learned that the troop C and C Huey with Major Moore aboard had pulled in above us. The new troop CO especially liked to watch his hunter-killer teams work during enemy contact and action. With the armor nearing the southern outskirts of the enemy base camp, Moore probably thought that sparks were about to fly.
Moore was a dynamic man who liked to talk on the UHF radio to his aerial teams, especially the scouts. He acted almost like a cheerleader from the sidelines, spurring on his people.
I liked Moore. I didn't mind him suddenly appearing overhead in the C and C ship, to be on hand “to make troop command decisions” when he felt they were necessary. But what did bother me—and most of the other scouts—was his almost continuous use of the UHF radio. The aerial scout talked to his gunship on UHF, and the gun spoke back to his scout on VHF. By using different radios, there was never a voice overlap and no words were ever garbled. Charlie Moore's UHF cheerleading screwed up the equation, because the gun pilot couldn't always hear what his scout was saying.
