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

^{CHAPTER 17} COURAGE

Three days later, the troop took another morale drubbing.

On 1 November, we had a hunter-killer team working up in the Thi Tinh River valley, just south of the Easter Egg. While down low working his pattern, the scout picked up a well-traveled trail that led to several bunkers of an enemy base camp. The scout put down a marker, the gun recorded the grid, and the contact information was radioed back to Darkhorse operations. As a result, the ARPs were scrambled to conduct a ground reconnaissance and find out exactly what enemy activity, if any, existed.

I had been assigned Scramble 2 on that day, so I stationed myself in the ops bunker to monitor the radios. I listened as the Horsemen, the four lift platoon Hueys carrying the ARPs, took off north, cleared the base fence, and headed on out over Dogleg Village.

“Two Six, this is Two Three,” the number four Huey called flight lead. “You have a flight of four.” Having thus been notified that his fourth Huey was up in trail, the flight leader, Capt. Morgan Roseborough, ordered, “OK, Horsemen, go echelon left at my command. Ready… now!”

The four Hueys broke trail, with number two sliding over to the left, number three holding its position, and number four sliding over left in behind number two—into an echelon left formation. Captain Roseborough then rogered number four with a couple of fast squeezes on his radio transmitter trigger.

Flying that day in Chalk One (the lead Huey), in addition to flight leader Captain Roseborough, were pilot Bob Holmes, new ARP platoon leader Lt. Jim Casey, crew chief Spec. 4 Eric Harshbarger, door gunner Danny Free, platoon medic Spec. 4 Mike Smith, and a full squad of ARP riflemen.

As the four Hueys passed over Ben Cat and headed toward the Easter Egg, the aeroscout at the contact point was asked to mark the LZ with a colored smoke. This not only told the Horsemen where to put down, but the flow of the smoke also marked the wind direction. In addition, the colored smoke provided a center sector marker for the Cobra, who would normally roll into the LZ for a couple of antipersonnel gun runs to clear any enemy hiding in the grass before the Hue/s dropped in to unload.

Now well into the last leg of their flight to the contact point, the lift Hueys began to drop out of their fifteen-hundred-foot cruising altitude. Reaching about six hundred to seven hundred feet in their descent toward the LZ, Roseborough called for his flight to again go into trail.

Falling back into a straight line, and flying with their main rotor blades not more than ten to fifteen feet apart, the ARP-laden UH-lHs turned onto final. They were fast descending into the marshy little clearing that had just been swept by the Cobra’s several fléchette runs.

At two hundred feet of altitude, Two Six came up again: “OK, Horsemen, we’re clear to suppress both sides of the landing zone… no friendlies… suppress at my command.”

The eight door gunners, with four machine gunners on each side of the formation, were to commence firing on his order and sweep the LZ on both sides before touchdown.

“Open fire,” came Roseborough’s command as the flight of four passed through one hundred feet and steepened its angle downward toward the yellow smoke-marked landing point.

Suddenly the air was shattered by the sound of eight machine guns going off all at once. Hundreds of 7.62mm rounds hammered into the marshy earth with every-fifth-round tracers spitting out a tongue of fire that streaked into the wood line surrounding the LZ.

Bob Holmes, at the controls of the lead Huey, decelerated and brought the flight straight in toward the still-billowing yellow smoke. He had made scores of hostile LZ landings, and knew that he had to move in fast, touch down for maybe three seconds to discharge his load of ARPs, then get out before any trouble developed. Yellow smoke swirled into Chalk One’s windshield. Down… down… the big Huey’s skid shoes settled to within inches of the marshy ground.

At the moment of near touchdown, a thunderous, blinding explosion erupted underneath Holmes’s aircraft. Chalk One lurched upward, shuddered in its death throes, and dropped to the ground.

Following just feet behind, the cockpit crews of Chalk Two, Three, and Four were horror-stricken by what they had just witnessed. The Chalk Two pilot, who now became flight lead, instantly realized that it was imperative to get the ARPs out of the remaining three Hueys and clear the LZ. He urgently yelled into his radio to the two ships behind him, “Get out of here! Chalk One’s hit. Door gunners, no suppression, no firing. Lift off and break right… break right. Let’s get out of here!”

Right on top of that radio message, the Cobra was directing his scout: “Get in there… get in there and cover the LZ. You can’t shoot, there are friendlies on the ground. Don’t know the situation… get in there and advise.”

By that time, the ARP platoon sergeant (who always rode in the trail UH-1, whereas Four Six, the platoon leader, rode with the flight lead) had run forward to assume command of the remaining three ARP squads and secure the landing zone. Though both painfully wounded, Bob Holmes and Doc Smith somehow emerged from the shattered Huey and began helping others out of the smoking, hopelessly wrecked aircraft.

Later the news came from the crash scene that Chalk One had hit a mine as it was about to touch down. It was thought to be a “tilt rod-actuated” mine, which was hard to see once planted because the body of it was covered with dirt. A fine, wire tilt rod poked up about twelve inches off the ground through the grass like a miniature car radio antenna. When something like the belly of an aircraft came in contact with the rod, the mine was actuated and set off the explosion.

The enemy had apparently realized that the clearing was a likely spot for our helicopters to land and insert troops, so they had planted the mine in advance. It was Chalk One’s fate to set down on top of it. The resulting explosion ripped through the belly of the Huey—right under the passenger cabin—and sent fire, shrapnel, and tar-black smoke throughout the interior of the helicopter. Every person in the aircraft was injured in the blast. One man was killed.

Not only was the aircraft and its crew immediately out of action, but one fourth of the ARP platoon’s personnel (including its Four Six, Lieutenant Casey) was lost as an effective fighting force. What more could Charlie have hoped for, with just one randomly placed mine?

Four days later, the fragility of a combatant’s life in the Vietnam War was brought home again to the men of Darkhorse.

I was in the ops bunker monitoring radios because we still had a hunter-killer team out working a VR. Gun pilot Chuck Koranda (Three Nine) was teamed with aeroscout Joe Vad (Darkhorse Nine), and both were heading home from their reconnaissance area up in the Catcher’s Mitt, just north of the Testicles. It was late in the day and they were anxious to get back to base while they still had good light. The Cobra was running a shade over a hundred knots at his usual altitude of fifteen hundred feet; Vad was trailing along about three to four hundred feet below his gun.

As the flight came up on an open field about two and a half miles south of Lai Khe, Vad’s crew chief, Jim Downing, suddenly hit the intercom. “Hold it, sir,” he yelled. “I’ve got movement down there in that field. I can’t tell if he’s friendly or a bad guy. We need to get down lower.”

Vad took a fast look below and, apparently seeing something also, got on UHF to Koranda.

“Hey, Three Nine, this is Niner. My Charlie Echo has spotted movement down there in that open field. Why don’t you do a left one eighty while I go down and check the guy out to see if he’s a friendly.”

Koranda came right back. “OK, Niner, roger. I’ve got you covered… you’re cleared down.”

Joe Vad was a good scout pilot. He had been in the troop longer than I had, even though I was coming up on my year in country. Joe’s scouting experience dictated the way he came in on the contact. He rolled out of altitude and quickly spiraled down to the deck, then he intentionally went low level a good distance away from the field where the individual had been spotted. Once down and out of view, he kicked up his speed, staying right on top of the trees as he steered toward the contact. That way his aircraft sound would be muffled and not give away his presence as he closed on the field. His plan was to push his bird up to about ninety to a hundred knots, pop up over the nipa palms, and drop back down again on top of the spot where the suspect was last seen. It was a quick and dirty tactic designed to surprise and gain a tactical advantage at the same time.

Vad’s approach was perfect. With his finger tight on the minigun trigger, and Downing hanging out of the back cabin door with his 60 at the ready, Darkhorse Nine suddenly dropped down into the clearing.

Sure enough, there he was—just off Vad’s right wing, frozen almost in mid-step as he walked across the clearing. The man’s bulging eyes and terror-stricken face were plainly visible as the OH-6 swept by at nearly a hundred knots.

Downing shouted into the intercom, “VC… VC! He’s a bad guy. Got a weapons pouch on his chest and some kind of weapon. Come around, sir… come around!”

Vad immediately hit his transmit button to Koranda. “I’ve got one VC in the open, Three Nine. I’m rolling in.”

Nine turned hard right to come back around and set up an engagement solution for his minigun. By that time, the enemy soldier was running like a madman across the field, obviously trying to make it to the tree line before the Loach could come around on his tail and bring its guns to bear. After a fast one eighty, Vad dropped down to about two feet off the ground and twisted on more speed to catch Charlie before he made the trees.

Closing fast, and ready to squeeze back the minigun trigger, Vad was within a millisecond of firing when suddenly the enemy soldier stopped dead in his tracks about a hundred yards in front of Vad’s nose. The man whirled, swung his weapon up to his hip, and ripped off a totally blind burst of .30-caliber carbine toward Vad’s onrushing bird!

One of those wildly fired enemy rounds crashed through the bubble of the aircraft and struck Joe Vad squarely in the forehead. The pilot lurched, instantly dead in his cockpit seat. Flying at at least eighty-five knots and now suddenly uncontrolled, the Loach rolled right, crazily back left again, then violently flipped over onto its back and into the ground. The aircraft exploded in a horrible, fiery blast, instantly killing crew chief Jim Downing.

Gun pilot Koranda was thunderstruck. Watching his scout like a mother hen from fifteen hundred feet above the clearing, he had seen Vad make a normal, calculated gun run on the enemy soldier in the field. Then, a split-second later, he saw his scout lurch wildly, pitch into the ground, and explode in a ball of flame. The VC who had fired the fateful shot? Gone. He had vanished into the jungle.

Three Nine did the only thing he could do. He immediately radioed troop ops and scrambled to the scene what few ARPs the troop had left after recent casualties. When the ARPs arrived, Vad’s twisted Loach was still burning. There was nothing they could do except secure the crash site until the fire subsided enough to remove the bodies.

To describe our feelings at the time is impossible. It was an incredible blow to us all. We had lost Sgt. James L. Downing, the courageous soldier who was my crew chief the day we made the blood drop to the ARPs pinned in the bomb crater. And we had lost WO Henry J. Vad, one of our oldest and most experienced scout pilots, a raucous, rowdy man who helped, in his own zany way, take some of the pressure off the rest of the platoon.

The next day, 7 November 1969, the 1st Aviation Battalion chaplain came to the unit to hold a memorial ceremony. Stationed on the table in the front of the room were the somber symbols of our Outcasts lost to enemy action: The steel infantryman’s helmet with a fresh, new camouflage cover, an immaculately cleaned and oiled M-16 rifle, and a pair of fully laced, spit-shined boots.

As the chaplain spoke his few brief words, everyone had his own private thoughts of Downing and Vad. I thought of their courage and of their fear. I thought that one surely can’t have courage without fear. Like all of us, these two men knew that every day they got in their aircraft, the odds were against them. Yet they flew with the confidence that they’d make it through, and they did the best they could do for their country.