TET 1969 - Aftermath

 

Bien Hoa wasn’t all that far from Cu Chi but by the time we arrived, it was getting light. Once we had landed, lined up on the side of an asphalt strip, we were told to meet at the mess hall. I was feeling uncomfortable because I had taken off with in only a T-shirt. The crew chief supplied a field jacket with Spec 4 strips on it. I thought nothing about the rank as we all headed toward the mess hall.

We found a table set up for four in the officer’s side and sat down. The mess hall was a little nicer than ours at Cu Chi. For one thing, rather than huge, floor mounted fans that were supposed to circulate air, they had air conditioning. The mess hall was done in a cherry looking wood, but I didn’t pay enough attention to know if it was actual cherry or plywood that had been stained cherry.

I noticed that some of the officer’s assigned there looked at me strangely, wondering what a Spec 4 was doing on the officer’s side, but I was sitting with three warrant officers, including Schaeffer and Overholt. They probably figured I was the crew chief or something and let it slide. I was fully prepared to tell them the situation, if they had asked, but no one did.

As we ate breakfast, which seemed better than those we got at Cu Chi, but was just a reflection of the new surroundings, the activities of the night, and the fact that it wasn’t our mess hall, Captain Downs circulated among the tables, giving us the news.

He said, “Muleskinners got hit last night. Charlie came through the wire near them and ran through the revetments tossing satchel charges into the Chinooks. Blew up a bunch of them.”

“How many came through the wire?” asked Shaeffer.

“Maybe a platoon, maybe a little less.”

“We got them all?”

One-six grinned and said, “There are a couple still running around inside the wire. Got everyone a little jumpy.”

“I hope we’re in no hurry to get back,” I said.

“We’ve got a couple of ass and trash missions to fly, but the early morning operations have been changed. Got the grunts in the field around Cu Chi. They just walk out the gate to begin their search.”

After we finished eating, our platoon leader, two-six walked over and asked me, “You ever been to the Air America pad?”

“You mean at Ton Son Nhut?”

“Yeah.”

“Once. I think I know where it is.”

“You have to enter through the main control tower and not Hotel Three,” he said, meaning that I’d have to land on the airfield proper rather than flying into the helipad near the biggest PX in the world just on the edge of Ton Son Nhut.

“We’ll all head back to Cu Chi, you’ll need to refuel and then fly over to the Muleskinners to pick up a flight crew and take them to Saigon. They’re going to pick up a new Chinook.”

“Okay.”

“Who’s your peter pilot?”

“Overholt.”

This surprised him. Normally, the junior aircraft commander was paired with the senior peter pilot, putting as much experience in the cockpit was possible. The problem here was that Overholt and I had been in flight school together, he’d arrived in country and at the company a week before I had, yet I had already made aircraft commander and he hadn’t. Although I wasn’t supposed to know, they, meaning the platoon leader and the other aircraft commanders thought that Overholt might resent the situation. They just didn’t want to put us together. Last night’s activities had overruled that concern.

“Okay.”

Once we finished eating, we strolled back out to the aircraft to await instructions. Flight lead, by default, was Downs. He rode up in a jeep, walked toward the nose of his aircraft and waved a hand over his head, telling us to crank.

We flew back to Cu Chi, stopped at POL, which hadn’t been damaged in the attack. The rearm point looked as if it had been hit. There were the remains of the 2.75-inch rockets, the wood from ammunition crates, cardboard, paper, smoke grenades, and other debris was scattered in front. The sign looked as if it had been hit by some of the larger ordnance. The remains still smoked but not everything had been burned.

The smoking remains of the Rearm Point. Photo copyright by Kevin Randle

When the flight took off, out of POL, I broke away from the formation and landed on the Muleskinners’ company pad. As we passed over part of their flight line, I could see the remains of Chinooks in the revetments. Here were huge, twin rotor aircraft, capable of carrying forty soldiers, reduced to a small pile of smoking rubble. There didn’t seem to be enough material in the revetments for a Chinook. Just ash with partially burned rotor blades sticking out at strange angles.

The remains of a Chinook. Photo copyright by Kevin Randle

The Chinook pilots climbed into the back. They didn’t look any worse for wear. They were both in fresh flight suits. One carried a black brief case, flight bag and a revolver in an old west style holster. The other carried a flight bag and wore a shoulder holster with a .45. Neither said a word to me, but one of them talked to the crew chief. With the turbine running, even at flight idle, conversation was difficult.

“They want to know if you know the destination?” said the crew chief on the intercom.

“Yeah. Ask them how everything is.”

A moment later he said, “They lost one man, SP4 Isaac Stringer, Jr. He was killed by an RPG in the maintenance area. They lost a bunch of their airplanes.”

He told the crew chief, who told me, that the VC had punched their way through the wire, blowing up a bunker to do it. They ran toward the Muleskinners’ area, stopping just long enough to blow up the aircraft, and then spread out, over the Cu Chi base camp, looking for targets. Apparently, they had attacked the POL, but the hit the refueling points rather than the storage area and destroyed a couple of hoses which reduced the capacity to refuel aircraft but doing no real damage. They found the rearm point and tried to blow it up, but with only moderate success.

By the time they had moved beyond that, most of the aircraft had been evacuated. The 25^th Infantry, either with their infantry companies or with the military police, had begun searching the camp for the sappers. As we took off for Saigon and the Air America pad, they thought there might be as many as twenty-five or thirty of the enemy still hiding on the camp.

As we took off, I looked back at Cu Chi. I didn’t see much. The fire that always burned on the northeastern side still burned, throwing up a column of smoke that helped us navigate. I didn’t see any real damage, other than that to the Muleskinners’ Chinooks and the minor damage around the rearm point.

It wasn’t long before we had made our way to Saigon, following the standard practice of flying low level to avoid aircraft taking off or landing at Ton Son Nhut, got permission to land directly at the Air America pad, and had touched down. Sitting on the pad was what looked like a brand-new Chinook.

Saigon from the air. Photo copyright by Kevin Randle

The two pilots climbed out, thanked us for the ride, and disappeared toward the hangar. I called the Ton Son Nhut tower to take off, explaining that I was in a UH-1, at the Air America pad, and that I wanted a straight out exit to keep me out of the traffic pattern filled with jet fighters, four-engine transports, and a variety of other fixed-wing aircraft. I had to argue with the tower, operated by Vietnamese who didn’t have the best command of the English language. We finally got our instructions and took off.

We arrived at Cu Chi, refueled, and then headed for the Hornet’s Nest. I parked in the revetment, shut down, and got out of the aircraft. In operations, I learned that the enemy soldiers had all been eliminated. There had been few American or South Vietnamese casualties. The damage had been limited to the Chinooks and the rearm point, through there was some minor shrapnel damage in our company area from the mortars and rockets. That meant something had poked a couple of holes in the corrugated tin of the buildings, ripped up some of the bamboo matting, put holes in some screen, and a few more holes in the tail booms of some of the aircraft.

Our mission on the day after changed slightly, but only because the infantry conducted searches around Cu Chi rather than flying out into the Hobo Woods, the Iron Triangle, or the areas along the Saigon River. We were fully prepared to fly the next day and certainly could have met all our mission requirements. Our only problem was that the pilots had been flying from early morning and had very little sleep the night before. That was not an unusual circumstance.

Of course, TET 1969, was nowhere near as dramatic as that the year earlier. The media seemed to believe that fewer troops engaged and the scale of the attacks had been reduced significantly. In reality, the numbers were about equal, but there weren’t the initial successes of 1968. The news media was surprised in 1968, but, in 1969, they were waiting for something to happen.

Reporters said there was heavy damage at Cu Chi, but I saw nothing to support that idea. Instead, minor damage and disruption, and, of course, the death of Isaac Stringer. About the only difference I noticed was that everyone was armed on the camp. Normally, upon return from the day’s missions, the sidearms and rifles were stored.

The day after that, everything returned to normal, or as normal as it ever got. The reports I read today bear little in resemblance to the facts as I saw them then. While the attack was reported in a long paragraph in a news magazine, the situation, as reflected in that paragraph was less dramatic. The attack, while certainly disruptive to the Muleskinners had no real impact at all on the outcome of the war. It might be classified as a non-event except for those of us who participated. In the history of the Vietnam War, it will probably be little more than a footnote.

TET 1969 - Part One

 

TET 1969 was practically missed by the news media and the histories of Vietnam make almost no mention of it. Yet, given that I was there when the attack took place at Cu Chi, to me, it was one of the most important engagements of the war.

It began with a rocket and mortar attack. A few of the rounds fell near us, waking us, and sending us scrambling for the bunkers. In case I haven’t provided a complete description of these bunkers let me tell you about them. These were little more than trenches dug about four feet into the ground and covered with a plywood roof that held several layers of sandbags, a series of 55-gallon drums covered with PSP and more sandbags. The theory was that anything hitting the sandbags would detonate in the top layer with the lower layers, PSP, and the bottom layers absorbing the shrapnel.

There was a wood bench in the bottom of the trench, and there were areas, about shoulder high that could be thought of as shelves, though they were just places where the dirt had been dug out. Limited equipment, such as aircraft first aid kits and flashlights that didn’t work were stored there.

There were lights, bare bulbs on a long wire looking like oversized, clear Christmas lights, strung from one end of the bunker to the other. As long as the generator was working, there would be light in the bunker. That little thing, lights, made a big psychological difference and might explain why the engineers on the Titanic worked so hard, sacrificing themselves, to keep the lights burning until just minutes before the ship sank.

When I dived in, there were maybe a dozen men in the bunker, sitting on the wooden bench. I was the only one who brought any weapons, grabbing both my .38 and an M-2 carbine. I was wearing a T-shirt and fatigue pants and had stuffed my feet into my unlaced boots.

About that time, the ground attack horn sounded. We had heard it infrequently for six months, mainly when someone caught sight of what they believed to be an enemy patrol near the perimeter wire. I took a position near one bunker entrance and gave the revolver to another pilot who covered the other. We could still hear an occasional explosion far away. Besides, I felt safe enough in the bunker even though I was sitting, basically, in the entrance.

The ground attack horn continued to blare and given the length of the mortar and rocket attack; it could suggest the enemy was making a serious probe. I didn’t expect trouble because, even if they managed to break through the wire, there were was more than a brigade of infantry on the base camp and most of their company and battalion areas surrounded us. More soldiers could be flown in, not to mention the interlocking fire of the artillery at the fire support bases surrounding Cu Chi, and air strikes that could launched by the Air Force.

I was wondering if I was going to have to defend the bunker with two magazines that I had for the carbine when the operations officer ran around a corner of the closest hootch, skidded to a stop near me and announced, “We’ve got to evacuate the aircraft.”

Someone asked, “To where?”

“Don’t know yet. We just need to get them out of the Nest right now.”

I ran from the bunker, back toward my hootch, grabbed my flight helmet and then ran across the company area, to the small footbridge that crossed the ditch by the road that led to the Hornet’s Nest.

There I met WO1 Lance Overholt, a pilot I had known since flight school. He was still a peter pilot rather than an aircraft commander and suggested, “Let’s get your aircraft.”

I had already planned on that.

We ran into the Nest, between helicopters, until we reached the northern corner where mine was parked. The crew chief, along with another man, were working to get the door guns mounted. I tossed my M-1 onto the troop seat and then ran to the rear of the helicopter so that we could untie the blade. That finished, I climbed into the pilot’s seat, looked back and saw that the door guns were mounted. Both men were in the back, working to load their weapons.

I turned on the battery, the main fuel and the start generator, ignoring the checklist. I looked right and left and yelled, “Clear.”

“Clear back here,” shouted the crew chief.

Overholt nodded and I pulled the trigger under the collective that would start the turbine. My eyes were on the gas producer and the engine temperature gauge. We were doing a hot start and it would be very easy to overheat the engine.

Once the turbine caught and the gas producer had reached forty percent, I let go of the trigger. Overholt, sitting there with his gloves and helmet on, and plugged into the radio and intercoms, put his hand on the throttle. I buckled my seat and shoulder belt, put on my gloves and helmet, and then plugged in.

Over the radio I listened to the communications from our operations bunker, the Cu Chi tower, and a couple of other places. Outside, far over the perimeter, were the lights of some kind of aircraft circling. There were some fires burning on the base, but nothing very big ones.

“We have Charlie on the active runway,” warned the tower.

I said, over the intercom to the crew chief and door gunner, “We have suppression on the active.”

That meant that if we saw movement, the door gunners were cleared to fire. No one from our company should be running around on the runway. If fact, there really should be, at that moment, no friendlies there.

Over the radio, Warrant Officer John Schaeffer said, “I’m off and in orbit behind Puff at seven thousand feet.”

Puff the Magic Dragon

We rarely climbed above three thousand feet, outside of small arms range but this sounded like something Schaeffer would do. He was always somewhere he shouldn’t be, doing something he shouldn’t be doing and inspiring us to follow his lead.

“Flight, this is one-six. Join on me.” That was Captain Joseph Downs, the first platoon leader we called Dai-uy Downs. Dai-uy, was, of course, captain in Vietnamese.

I had to laugh at his order. It was night. There were aircraft taking off all over the airfield, including the Hueys assigned to the Little Bears of the 25^th Infantry and the LOHs of the Three-Quarters Cav. I had no idea which aircraft, or which formation one-six was flying.

I lifted to a hover, slowly backed out of the revetment, and turned. I saw two of the Stinger gunships on the assault strip and moved toward them as they struggled to take off. I followed them, taking off to the south, watching the shadowy figures running around below. A burst of machine gun fire ripped through the darkness, the red tracers glowing as they floated upward, nowhere near me. Given that the enemy normally used white or green tracers, I though that the red ones were ours… but then, firing could have come from a captured weapon.

From somewhere else, near the northern side of the runway, another string of tracers erupted. These were green, meaning enemy, and much closer. They looked like glowing golf balls tossed at me. The crew chief opened fire, his ruby tracers, flashing down, at the end of the runway.

One-six was on the radio again, demanding that we all form on him, but still hadn’t provided the information needed to find him. There were helicopters all over the place, each taking his own position somewhere south of Cu Chi, on the far side of Highway One, over the open area.

On the ground there was a hell of a lot of shooting. Green tracers, from AKS or RPD machine guns, were bouncing around, some tumbling upwards, others spinning along the ground. Red tracers, from American made M-16s or M-60 machine guns answered, creating something of a light show about a thousand feet below me. There were a few fires burning, on the northern side of the base camp and in the tiny city of Cu Chi.

Over the intercom, I heard, “French fort firing up at us.”

The French forts were triangular-shaped structures built low to the ground and now occupied by South Vietnamese soldiers who had a habit of shooting at everything without regard to its identity. If they could find nothing on the ground to shoot at, they would fire into the sky. The tracers from the French fort were nowhere near us.

Near the edge of Cu Chi, close to the perimeter of the base camp, someone with automatic weapons was firing upward. The green tracers were rising slowly toward us. I figured they were about a hundred yards away. Behind me, one of the door guns opened fired, the red tracers dropping around the source of the green. The enemy stopped shooting at us.

Puff the Magic Dragon suddenly opened fire, the red of the tracers of his mini-guns combining into a long, glowing stream that looked like a ruby colored ray from a science fiction movie. It bobbed and weaved along the ground, touched something that exploded into orange fire and then disappeared.

“Hornet flight, join on me,” insisted one-six, but he still didn’t provide a location.

“All Hornet aircraft, join on one-six, or make your way to Bien Hoa,” announced Hornet Operations.

Someone asked, “How’s the ground attack going down there?”

“I’m safe in my bunker. I don’t know.”

“All Hornet aircraft,” said one-six, “I’m orbiting at three thousand near Cu Chi city,” finally providing the information to find him.

Overholt asked, “We going to join on him?”

I said, “If I can find him. It’ll be easier than trying to find everyone on the ground at Bien Hoa.”

“Sir, we’re taking fire from the right.”

I glanced out the cargo compartment door and saw a stream of red tracers. That didn’t mean that the South Vietnamese were shooting at us, only that whoever it was had American ammunition. It wasn’t all that close either. Someone shooting at the sound of the aircraft.

“Do I return it?”

“No. We don’t really know who is where down there now. If it gets any closer, then see if you can suppress it.”

I spotted four or five helicopters in a staggered trail formation off to the left and turned toward it, wondering if this was the Hornet flight. As I approached, even in the dark, I could see the white hornet painted on the nose of one of the aircraft. I passed them, turned, and rolled over, catching them. I slowed to 60 knots and said, “Three seven has joined the flight.”

“Roger three seven,” said Downs.

I said to Overholt, “You’ve got it.”

Overholt put his hands on the controls and said, “I’ve got it.”

He took over flying while I sat back and studied the situation. The various radios were alive with chatter, from Air Force pilots, Army pilots, operations, other Hornet aircraft, and AFVN, Armed Forces Radio in Vietnam. The Automatic Direction Finder covered the commercial broadcast bands so that we could listen to music while flying. I had the volume set low, but could still hear the rock and roll in the background.

Below me, I could easily see the base camp, outlined in lights. There were fewer fires now and not as much shooting. Most of the rounds were outgoing. Red tracers bouncing along the ground, most of them on the northern side of the base. Some of it was directed into the edge of Cu Chi city and there seemed to be no return fire.

Schaeffer called, telling us that he had left his position on the wing of Puff, and had now joined the flight. One-six asked for another head count and learned that most of the aircraft had found him.

“Turning toward Bien Hoa,” he announced, and the flight began a gentle maneuver.

Engine Failure

 

Like most assault helicopter companies in Vietnam, we were assigned a daily mission that we called “Ass and Trash.” It meant that we had a round robin, flying from one small base or outpost to another on a regular basis to move people, supplies and mail. We made the circuit once in the morning and once in the afternoon. It took just a couple of hours of flight time and was a single ship mission.

It wasn’t all that long after I made aircraft commander that it was my turn for the mission. I’d made the circuit a couple of times as a peter pilot, so that I knew where we had to go and how to get there. It wasn’t a difficult mission at all. Just make the run and return to Cu Chi.

The morning went off just fine. We finished up and landed in the Hornet’s Nest for lunch in our mess hall. When we finished, and probably about one o’clock (1300 hrs. for those in a military mindset), we took off for the afternoon circuit.

We landed first, at Bao Tri, if I remember correctly. There was an Air American Huey sitting next to the helipad, which didn’t really get in the way. For those who don’t know, Air America meant CIA. The pilots were in civilian clothes and what I noticed were the thick gold bracelets that each pilot wore. That was for them to buy their way out of trouble. We were issued lead… in the form of ammunition for our weapons. They just ignored us. We returned the favor.

There were two passengers for other locations, some supplies and little else. One of the soldiers approached and said that he was about to DEROS (return to the world, as we called it) and hadn’t had a ride in a helicopter. He wondered if he could ride along. I pointed out that he wouldn’t have a way back with us. He thought he could find a ride at Cu Chi. I had no objections and he climbed aboard.

We headed to the Sugar Mill, which is exactly what it sounded like. An old abandoned sugar mill that had been converted into a small military installation. We landed there, did our thing and took off.

I climbed to 2000 feet, which was outside small arms range and above our normal 1500 feet. Just as we reached altitude, the engine quit. Without thinking, I pushed down the collective and entered autorotation.

In flight school, we practiced this all the time. The instructor, at random times, would roll off the throttle, and we’d practice autorotation. Unlike the civilian flight schools, we sometimes shot the autorotation to the ground. Other times, like those civilian schools, we shot to a three-foot hover.

Once we had begun the descent, I mentally ran through the autorotation procedure. Yes, the collective was down. Yes, I had rolled off the throttle. Yes, I had picked out the rice paddy that we’d land in. Yes, I looked at the gas producer gauge and it was at zero.

And yes, the needles were split and not linked as they normally were. The engine RPM and the rotor RPM were on the same gauge. When the engine quit, the engine RPM went to zero while the rotor RPM stayed in the green. Our descent was keeping the rotor spinning.

I keyed the mike for the Guard frequency and said, “May day. May day. May day. This is Hornet 906, complete engine failure two miles north the Sugar Mill. We’re going down. May day. May day. May day.”

The first response was, “This is the Phouc Vinh tower. Can we help?”

I’m thinking, somewhat unkindly, “Yeah, bring your tower down here to help,” but I didn’t say that.

Hornet Operations called and I told them the engine failed.

At about 100 feet above the ground, I began to flare out, which meant I had pulled back on the cyclic and brought the nose up to slow our descent. At about 25 feet, I leveled the skids in preparation for landing. At that time, I began to slowly suck in pitch, slowing up more and bleeding off rotor RPM. As we neared the ground, I continued to pull up on the collective. We touched down and slid about six feet. It had been a gentle landing, but the dirt was up against the chin bubbles and I thought I had lost the skids. When I got out of the helicopter, I saw that the skids had sunk into the soft ground. The skids were fine.

I saw, off to the right, maybe a klick away, several helicopters circling, as if looking for us. I’d said north, but I was actually somewhat northwest of the Sugar Mill. I grabbed one of the smoke grenades, pulled the pin and tossed it into the rice paddy. Within a minute or two, those helicopters were heading in our direction.

It wasn’t long before a helicopter from the Hornets arrived and landed not all that far away. They were directing others toward us. I think they were arranging for a Chinook from the Muleskinners to help us. The Muleskinners were part of our battalion and their company area wasn’t all that far from ours.

I got the passengers out of there on one of the Hueys, along with the co-pilot and the door gunner. That left just me and the crew chief on the ground as we waited for the Chinook. I sat down behind one of the M-60 door guns and the crew chief was behind the other.

There was a small cluster of hootchs, maybe a hundred yards away. A kid, maybe eight or ten came running toward us. I was of the mind that anyone running toward us who we didn’t know was the enemy, but this was a kid. I shouted, using nearly my entire vocabulary of Vietnamese, “Di di mau.” The kid stopped, looked at me and turned and ran away.

It wasn’t long before another Huey landed, and there was a Chinook hovering over us. Several guys from the Huey began rigging our aircraft to sling load it out of there. The crew chief and I were loaded onto the Huey, and once my helicopter was properly rigged, it was lifted up and out of the rice paddy.

When we got back to Cu Chi, I watched the Chinook maneuver to put the Huey down in our maintenance area. I was annoyed to see them drop it from about ten feet. I figured that any damage that caused would be blamed on me, but no one ever said a word.

I thought I was done of for the day, but that wasn’t the way it was. Instead, I was given another aircraft and those guys who had been riding with me were standing there waiting for a lift.

The aircraft was the one assigned to the first platoon leader and as I walked toward it, he said, “Don’t break my airplane.”

Of course, the way things worked out, I managed to get it shot up as we were returning to Cu Chi. No real damage, just a bunch of bullet holes in the airframe. It wouldn’t have been worth a mention, except the co-pilot asked me why the door gunners were shooting. I told him, “Those aren’t the door guns.”

Mini Mortars

 

During the days there was a lot of down time, meaning, of course, that we were waiting for the next mission or combat assault. If we were at Cu Chi, we would be released into the company area to wait. However, we were also often at small airships near fire support bases or at small villages like Trung Lap, Trang Bang or waiting at other airfields. It meant that we needed to find ways to amuse ourselves. You could sleep, read books, play cards or talk with the other flight crews… or you could make mini mortars.

Waiting for the next mission.

A mini mortar was made by pulling the nose off a 7.62 tracer round. You punctured the rear of the bullet so that the material inside would be exposed.  You then pored some of the gunpowder into your hand, forced the bullet into the cartridge, and then poured the gunpower on top of it all. You set it on the ground and used a match to touch of the whole thing.

The gunpowder flared and ignited both the tracer round and the powder below it. The tracer then launched, spinning, into the air. It had almost no penetrating power. It never got more that 25 or fifty feet into the air before falling back to the ground.

Okay. Not exactly the brightest way to spend the down time, but something to do. We were at Dau Tieng, which was a rubber tree plantation to the northwest of Cu Chi. The flight was sitting on the side of the runway and we were waiting for the next mission. We were making mini mortars because, as I said, it was something to do.

Remember, we were all basically young. In the Crusaders, we had one pilot we called Papa. He was the oldest of the pilots and he was… twenty-three. I was, if not the youngest, certainly one of the youngest at nineteen, which might explain our fascination for mini mortars.

At Dau Tieng, we set off a number of mini mortars that caused no damage, fell back and started no fires. The trouble came as an aircraft from another company came in for a landing and one of the tracer rounds went off about that time. It never got very close to the aircraft, and had the round hit the helicopter, it would have bounced off the thin, metal skin. The problem is that the AC saw it, and jerked the controls to avoid the “ground fire.”

That ended our creation of mini mortars. We were told not to do it anymore. Of course, we ignored that, but, from then on, we were careful not to “endanger” any other aircraft.

Smokey

 

In the Hornets, Smokey was a UH-1C, which was assigned to the gun platoon, known as the Stingers. It was set up with a ring near the turbine’s exhaust so that it could inject oil into the hot flames. This produced a thick cloud of blue-gray, whitish smoke that could conceal the flight from enemy bunkers and fire. Smokey would fly along the perimeter of the LZ, slowly, so that he could lay down the smoke screen. It could be quite effective.

I was assigned to the Second Platoon, known as the Wasps. I had a rare day down while most of the pilots were out on missions. There came a point where I was flying nearly every day, but now, at that point, we had nearly a full complement of pilots, so that we were treated to a day off now and then.

I happened to be in Hornet Operations, a big bunker dug into the ground and covered with a thick layer of sandbags and PSP. You had to walk down a long flight of stairs to enter and, best of all, it was air conditioned. That encouraged us to review various documents and manuals.

The call came through that they needed Smokey. The infantry unit had approached a tree line and as the point entered it, he was shot, as was the man behind him. The rest of the soldiers had taken cover, but they were unable to advance to rescue the wounded men. Smokey could cover them as they ran in, grabbed the two wounded soldiers and got back out.

Since I was in Operations, I said that I would take Smokey. We needed a second pilot, and one of the gun team was available. I rad to my hootch, grabbed my weapon and my helmet and ran back out, across the road and into the Hornet’s Nest. I met the other pilot and we ran to the Smoke Ship.

Once we had the engine cranked and the radios operating, we got in touch with the C&C, flown, I believe by Hornet Six, that is the company commander. He directed us to the firefight.

As we approached, we were briefed on the situation and what the Ground Mission Commander, the lieutenant colonel or colonel in the backseat of the C&C wanted us to do. He was, of course, in touch with the company commander on the ground.

The gunships were working over the trees where the enemy bunkers were but I think that was just to keep their heads down. It’s tough to peak out with a minigun hosing down the area or 2.75-inch rockets are impacting around you.

We could see the situation on the ground. We could see some of the tracers coming out of the trees and we had a good idea where the wounded me were. We dove for the trees and as we did, C&C said, “Smokey, you’re not smoking.”

At that instant I hit the button to active the system and we started to created the smoke screen. I could hear the firing all around us, including our door gunners working the area. I felt, through the floor, the enemy rounds hitting the aircraft and thought I could hear them tearing through the thin metal of the cockpit.

Soldiers in a cloud created by Smokey.

We made pedal turns over the bunker area, putting down a very thick cloud of smoke. We finally turned and climbed out, ready to make another run when we learned that the two soldiers had been rescued. The after-action report said:

As the advance element moved forward they were taken under intense enemy fire. The pointman was hit and fell about 10 meters inside the treeline. The second man was also hit and fell at the treeline. The remaining men were pinned down. The air mission commander decided to use the smoke ship to cover the troops. On his first pass the ship received intense enemy automatic weapons fire. He did a pedal turn and made another smoke run. Because of the thick screen, the infantry men were able to recover their wounded and withdraw to better positions. Later there became a need for resupply. Again he made several runs. Because of the smoke, the enemy was unable to bring accurate fire on the resupply ship. During the final extraction he once again made several smoke runs. This kept the enemy from making any hits on the infantrymen or helicopters.

I confess here that I don’t remember much about what else happened. When released, we flew back to Cu Chi, filled out the paperwork, and headed over to the club for a drink. Yeah, I was still 19, but that made no difference here. I was an officer assigned to an aviation unit and had participated in a somewhat hairy rescue of two soldiers. If I wanted a beer or a bourbon, no one cared.

All I really remember at this point was as I walked into the club, someone said, “I can’t believe you did that.”

His surprise was only that I was not a member of the Stingers but was a member of the Wasps.