Low Level Hell: A Scout Pilot in the Big Red One

^{CHAPTER 13} BAD DAY FOR THE ARPs

The next morning, 29 August, we went back out and searched and searched. Nothing. It looked as though, after a day of scouring, we were going to go home empty-handed. It was getting late and we had found absolutely no evidence of recent enemy activity, let alone any traces of the Dong Nai Regiment itself.

It got to be last light and I finally keyed the intercom. “It looks like a dry run, Jimbo. We’ve lost ‘em again.”

I decided to make one more run before heading home, so I pulled in low over a strip of trees that ran from southeast to northwest right near FSB Kien. Watching intently in the fading light along the edge of the tree line, I suddenly spotted people.

Coming into view low, out my right door, was a group of what could only be enemy soldiers, lying on the ground at the base of a couple of trees. They were being perfectly still, weapons resting across their chests, and they were looking straight up at me. They apparently thought that if they didn’t move, I’d pass them by unseen. But they looked ready to shoot if they had to.

I punched the intercom to Parker. “Don’t move a muscle… don’t do anything. We’ve got beaucoup bad guys right below us… right below us in the tree line.”

“I see them, Lieutenant,” he came back calmly. “Looking up at us like they’re waiting for us to make a move.”

I jumped on Uniform to Sinor in the Cobra. “Three One, I got dinks, out my right door in the tree line now. Mark, mark. When I break, you roll.”

Sinor answered, “Roger, One Six, on your right break.”

“Breaking… NOW!” I jerked the ship hard over on her right side to get out of Sinor’s way. In the split second that I put the ship into the turn, the enemy opened up on me with everything they had.

Sinor was back on Victor to me instantly. “You’re taking fire, One Six… heavy fire, heavy fire! Break left… break left now.”

Just as he finished his transmission, I heard a loud impact on the aircraft, and felt a sharp burning, stinging sensation in my right hip. I bent forward to look down at the cockpit floor. I didn’t see anything that looked like a bullet hole. But leaning forward was painful as hell.

I continued my turn out for about five to seven seconds before I noticed that my seat was beginning to fill up with blood. “Ah, son of a bitch!” I groaned. “If I had only flown right on by them instead of making a break and settin’ them off.”

Then it became obvious that my body just didn’t feel right from the waist down. I keyed the intercom. “Hey, Jimbo, I’m bleedin’ like a stuck hog. I’ve been hit.”

“Do you want me up front to help?” he asked.

“No,” I answered, “just hang on tight. I can still fly this thing, but I don’t know for how much longer. I’m going to try to put her down at Contigny.”

Thank God I was close to that fire support base, because I was beginning to feel woozy. Contigny had a small helicopter landing area within the wire near the center of the complex, and I managed to put the bird down in that spot. Parker jumped out of the back, stuck his head in the cockpit, and calmly asked, “Whatcha got, Lieutenant?”

“What I got, Jimbo,” I said, looking for bullet holes and rubbing my hip, “is an AK round in my ass!”

“I see what happened, sir,” Parker said as he pointed to the instrument panel. There was the bullet hole I had been looking for. An AK round had come up through the instrument panel, hit the inner side plate of my seat armor, and ricocheted into my hip. After going through both cheeks of my backside, the bullet then hit the other side of my seat armor, ricocheted again, and flew back out of the airplane through the floor of the ship!

Just then a young soldier came running up to the helicopter. “What, can we do for you, Lieutenant?”

“Have you got a surgeon here?” I asked.

“Yes we do, sir. What do you need?”

I very tenderly lifted myself out of the cockpit and stood—a little wobbly—outside the aircraft. “Well, buddy, I’ve been shot in the butt.”

A smile broke across the young infantryman’s face. “But, sir, that’s not a very dignified place for an officer to get shot.”

“Be that as it may, Private,” I fired back, “I’m still shot in the ass, and would appreciate it all to hell if you would please get the surgeon!”

The battalion surgeon just happened to be at the fire base, and it wasn’t long before he came out to the helicopter carrying his little aid bag.

“Can you walk?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied, “if I don’t have to move double-time anywhere.”

He grabbed my arm. “Well, then, come on back over here to the aid bunker and we’ll take a look at you.”

Parker wanted to stay with the airplane, and I noticed that quite a little crowd of soldiers was beginning to gather around him and the ship. They were interested in looking over the OH-6 and asking Parker questions about it, but in typical Loach crew chief manner, Parker shrugged off their queries. I overheard him tell one man, “Keep your hands off… don’t touch the fuckin’ helicopter!”

But when the doctor got me over to the aid bunker and dropped my flight suit, the crowd wandered over, seeking some new entertainment. As my posterior came into open view and the doc began his examination, I began to hear a lot of one liners followed by muffled yuks and snickers. By that time my fanny hurt so bad I didn’t care.

Finally, after probing and sending spears of pain through my punctured buttocks, the doctor said, “You’re awfullylucky, Lieutenant. No bones were hit. It’s a through-and-through flesh wound, but you’ll have a beautiful scar to show off.”

Finally the doctor told me I could lift my flight suit back up, and a Dustoff was ordered to take me into Doctor Delta.

“But I don’t want a Dustoff,” I said. “I’ve got an aircraft out there on the pad and I’ve got to get it home. I’m sure as hell not going to leave it out here all night.”

The battalion doctor stiffened at my response. “No, you’re not flying! We’ll take care of your gunner here tonight while Dustoff gets you to the hospital, so just go on out there and secure your helicopter.”

When I told Parker what the doctor had said, his eyes got as big as dishes, then his boyish face screwed down into a hard frown. “Oh, no you don’t, sir,” he said to me. “If you think I’m staying out here at a fire base in these boonies, you’re crazy.

“And furthermore, Lieutenant Mills,” Parker continued, “I’d be awful pleased if, right now, you’d get your ass—shot up as it is—back into this airplane and take me home!”

I knew Parker was right. I turned to the medic who had helped me walk back out to the ship. “Tell the doctor thanks, but I’m going on back home to Phu Loi. I feel fine, and I’m not going to leave my crew chief and airplane out here overnight.”

It was about a twenty-minute flight back to Phu Loi. The only way I made it was to roll over in the pilot’s seat so I was resting on my left hip. Also, Parker sat up front with me and I let him fly to take the strain off.

But God, my ass did burn and hurt. I didn’t know why it was throbbing so badly, but I did know what the burning was. The doc had told me that the AK-47 round that passed through my buttock was a tracer!

A few minutes out of Phu Loi I radioed ahead and made the mistake of telling operations, “I’m coming in. One Six is hit. I have been treated at FSB Contigny, but I’m going to need help getting in off the flight line. Get me some help off the line when I get down.”

Unfortunately my help was Davis and Willis. I could hear Willis laughing even before I got the aircraft shut down.

“Tell me it’s not true,” he kept saying. “Tell me it’s not true that you’ve been shot in the ass!”

“OK, OK, you miserable bastard/’ I answered. “I’m shot in the ass. Now help me get the hell out of this aircraft!”

“My God,” Willis went on, “get an ambulance, call in a specialist. This is severe, this is crass. Our fearless leader has been shot in the ass!”

The next day, our troop first sergeant, Martin L. Laurent, came over to the hootch and announced, “Well, Lieutenant, you got your first Purple Heart, and the flight surgeon has grounded you for the next several days.”

I realized my wound was minor, just a scrape compared to the wounds that so many other guys suffered. I was lucky. Even so, every nerve ending in my tail screamed for the next several days, reminding me that a .30-caliber tracer round through the fanny was not as much fun as Willis tried to make it.

The month of September began with Charlie getting more and more aggressive. The enemy was using the Razorback area as the staging point for their offensives, not only into the Michelin and western Trapezoid, but also to renew their attacks on our supply convoys moving up and down Thunder Road between Lai Khe and An Loc-Quan Loi.

On 4 September, Rod Willis and I were asked to fly up to Lai Khe for a G-2 briefing. It was a routine briefing to bring us up to date on what the enemy was doing in the general area of Thunder Road. We left Phu Loi for an early morning flight to Lai Khe. Our flight of two scouts and no Cobra formed a “white team.”

As we passed over an open area just to the south of Lai Khe, I caught a glimpse of movement below. We were no more than three-quarters of a mile out of Lai Khe; I was surprised an enemy soldier would be messing around so close.

I radioed One Seven. “Come right on my wing. I think I’ve got a dink underneath me.”

Willis and I skidded into a tight right-hand turning maneuver over the spot where I thought I saw movement. Sure enough, there was an enemy soldier prone on the ground, amidst a few three-foot-high bushes that made up the only possible cover in this otherwise open area. When he saw us overhead, he made the mistake of jumping up and heading toward some other nearby scrub, firing his AK-47 at us from the hip as he ran. But in this relatively open area, he really didn’t have anywhere to hide.

With Rod tight on my wing, we swooped down over him at about eight to ten feet off the ground, firing short bursts from our miniguns. The enemy soldier dropped dead in his tracks.

As we headed in to Lai Khe, I got on the radio to an ARVN force that was headquartered just to the south in the village of Ben Cat. I told them about our enemy soldier and suggested that they mount a recon party with their adviser and sweep the area.

When we got the ARVN recon report later that day, Willis and I were surprised to learn that they didn’t find just one enemy soldier, but three more KIA. From the information gathered by the ARVNs at the scene, it became apparent that a group of four enemy scouts had been observing and reconning around the division fire base at Lai Khe. I saw only one of them, but the other three were nearby, and when our minigun rounds dropped the one, we got the other three without even knowing it.

The next day we were scheduled to work Thunder Road in support of the supply convoys that were running hot and heavy between Lai Khe and Quan Loi. We had learned in the briefing that enemy forces were deployed along a line from the Razorbacks north to the Parrot’s Beak, with the presumed intention of moving east and hitting our Thunder I, II, III, and IV fire bases to disrupt our supply convoys.

Before first light on the fifth, and before we were even near takeoff time from Phu Loi for our early morning VR, just such an enemy attack was thrown against Thunder III. The fire base was located about ten kilometers north on Highway 13 from Lai Khe and was occupied by our 2/2 Mechanized Infantry soldiers. The enemy attack was very well planned and executed, and was launched at first light. Charlie was obviously aware that our aeroscouts, who probably would have detected their movement, didn’t fly in the dark.

The fighting was nearly hand to hand. The situation at the base got so bad at one point that the enemy actually got through the perimeter wire and was headed with satchel charges directly for the operations bunker. The only thing that stopped him was our Zippo tracks (Ml 13s with flamethrowers), which formed the base’s interior defensive line. Zippos were not stationed on the outer perimeter of bases because they were susceptible to Charlie’s RPG fire. But as the inner defense, they were devastating. And they were on this night. The sappers running for the ops bunker were burned alive as they charged directly into the nozzles spraying flaming jellied gasoline.

With the work of Cobra gunships and the 2/2 guys in the fire base, the attack was repelled. A sweep of the base the next morning found twenty-three NVA dead inside the perimeter wire. All indications were that a hundred or more had been killed trying to get to the wire, but all those enemy bodies had been dragged away by their comrades.

Even in the teeth of his Thunder III defeat, Charlie wasn’t through for that Saturday, 6 September. He struck again later in the day a mile north of Thunder III. There, a battalion-sized enemy force attacked U.S. armored personnel carriers that were moving a small reconnaissance party down Highway 13. A couple of hours after that, and just another mile up the highway, an outposted unit of Bravo Troop, 1st of the 4th Cav (our sister ground troop), was hit.

The enemy didn’t seem to care that they were engaging us in broad daylight, and along a two-mile stretch of our main supply route, where we had massed armor and mechanized forces. The determined Charlie didn’t seem to care, either, about the manpower losses he was taking in such attempts to cut Thunder Road.

In one day, on that little stretch of highway, in those two blatant attacks, the enemy lost more than sixty soldiers. Add those to his losses in the abortive attack on Thunder III, and it became apparent how badly the enemy wanted to stop our flow of supplies north.

The next day, in his continuing battle for Thunder Road, Charlie gave us the surprise of our lives. He not only made our G-2 information look bad, but he slapped us back hard while taking a terrible toll on Darkhorse troop.

Early on that day, Chuck Davison, an Outcast scout pilot, was heading from Phu Loi up to FSB Thunder I to relieve me and Rod Willis on our VR operation. As Davison passed over the same spot where Rod and I had killed four enemy troops a couple of days earlier, he spotted another NVA. Seeing an enemy soldier that close to division HQ shocked him, and he was unable to get a shot before the man quickly dropped out of sight into a spider hole. Not knowing what to think, Davison continued to circle around the area where he thought the hole was. His crew chief, Clinton “Red” Hayes, dropped hand grenades and sprayed a little 60, but failed to see any other enemy.

Then, just as Davison was about to abandon the search and head on to Lai Khe, the enemy soldier popped back out of the hole and emptied an entire magazine of a U.S. M-16 rifle on full automatic right into the cockpit of Davison’s Loach. Bullets crashed through the aircraft and into both of Chuck Davison’s arms, instantly disabling him. Davison crashed practically on top of the spot where he had seen the enemy soldier.

Though painfully hurt in the crash—he was rammed in the kidneys by the butt of his M-60—Hayes crawled out of the wreck and pulled Davison out with him.

Davison’s accompanying Cobra, of course, rolled and fired, but he couldn’t get close with his rockets because he had no contact with his downed scout. An emergency radio was in Davison’s survival vest, but it had dropped out somewhere when Hayes pulled him out of the Loach.

The gun’s next reaction was to immediately call back to the troop and scramble the ARPs to the scene. Willis and I heard the transmission, and we flew off at flank speed to put a cover over the crash area. As we hit 120 knots down the road toward the scene, we could see Davison’s Cobra circling over the area. I radioed him and asked what the situation was.

The gun came back: “The scout is down, the crew is out of the aircraft, and they’ve got enemy all around them.”

Our first responsibility was to locate and cap the crew. We went straight to the crash site, pulled a skidding right turn, and found Hayes and Davison immediately. We could see that Davison was badly injured. Hayes was obviously scared and looked to be in pain himself. As Willis and I took up station right over them, Hayes looked up and gave us a weak thumbs-up.

Within minutes, the slicks bearing the ARPs showed up. Rod left to put them down into a nearby LZ. Shortly thereafter, the aerorifle platoon (now led by infantry Lt. Doug Veitch) was at the crash and tending to the crew.

As a medevac came in to get Davison and Hayes, Major Moore in his C and C ship suddenly appeared on the scene. Apparently he wanted to discuss the situation with his new ARP platoon leader.

As I circled overhead, a tactical conference was going on. Major Moore, Doug Veitch, and the rest of the ARP platoon were all standing around talking as though they were out on a training camp maneuver.

Suddenly VC popped up out of holes all around the gathered group and began firing RPGs and automatic rifles, and throwing grenades. The enemy fire came so quickly and with such intensity that no one had a chance to shoot back. All they could do was hit the ground and hope they didn’t get cut in two by the barrage of fire that had seemingly come out of nowhere.

Major Moore and the entire ARP platoon were standing on top of a major underground enemy tunnel system, located just a few thousand yards from our 1st Division field headquarters in Lai Khe. The enemy’s cunning was perfect. We’d expect their tunnels to be located in more remote jungle areas, or in hillier spots. But right under our noses within a stone’s throw of our division HQ? Right under a wide-open field with only scrub brush to provide cover for the entryway spider holes? Never! But there it was.

After incapacitating over fifty percent of the ARP platoon, the enemy disappeared back down into their spider holes. With no bad guys to shoot at, my first concern was to put a cap over the ARPs while they attempted to restore order. Then it took about forty minutes to shepherd the hard-hit unit away from the ambush site and back to the LZ where slicks returned them to base.

For us to learn of this enemy tunnel network cost us the following casualties:

Maj. Charles L. Moore, troop CO—hurt as he hit the ground diving for cover.

Lt. Douglas S. Veitch, ARP platoon leader—frag wounds in chin, hands, both thighs and legs.

WO Charles W. Davison, scout pilot—multiple bullet wounds in both the right and left upper arms.

Sfc. Harold R. Goatcher, ARP—shrapnel wounds in the right hand.

S. Sgt. James A. Broach, ARP—shrapnel wounds in the neck.

Sgt. Louis J. Baer, ARP—shrapnel wounds to the left knee.

Sgt. Russell H. Clark, Jr., ARP—deep shrapnel cut on his back.

Sgt. Thomas A. Maklary, ARP—frag wounds in both legs.

Sp. Robert A. Hawkins, aid man—shrapnel wounds on his left side.

Sp4. Clinton T. “Red” Hayes, scout crew chief—multiple cuts and bruises on the shoulder and right hip.

Pfc. Daryl J. Fisher, ARP—shrapnel wound of the left knee.

Pfc. Ronald C. Head, ARP—right leg broken, left arm broken, multiple frag wounds in legs and arms.

Pfc. Clarence Holloway, Jr., ARP—broken ear drum, frag wounds in the neck and right arm.

Pfc. Terry D. Houck, ARP—frag wounds in right arm, left leg, and thighs.

Pfc. Jerry F. Kolasinski, ARP—left leg broken and multiple frag wounds in the lower body.

Pfc. Robert A. Krehley, ARP—shrapnel wound in the stomach.

Pfc. David L. Littlefield, ARP—frag wounds in the left leg and right arm.

Pfc. Daniel P. Morrison, ARP—frag wounds in upper back.

Pfc. Larry W. Roop, ARP—frag wounds in left arm and leg.

Ho Van Tau, Kit Carson scout—multiple frag wounds in the back.

Hoang Van Nguyen, ARVN interpreter—frag wounds in the left thumb.

Nguyen Van Chinh, Kit Carson scout—bullet wounds in the head and stomach.

7 September 1969, a bad day for the ARPs and the entire Darkhorse troop.