Thai Horse

VIETNAM

1972

BLACK PONY DOWN

He hardly felt the hit, but he heard it. The muffled roar shook the stick slightly, and he looked out to see the end of his right wing shatter and flake away. A moment later the familiar and frightening sound of .50 caliber shells rattled the fuselage behind him as the bullets ripped the twin- engine OV-1O. Suddenly the plane began to yaw, then it made a wrenching slip in the opposite direction. The plane dipped slightly toward the good wing and dropped a hundred feet. Cody was fighting the aircraft, trying to get it stable. He pressed the radio button: ‘Mayday’..

Mayday. . . this is Chilidog one to Corkscrew. I’m hit and out of control. . .

The voice was remarkably calm, almost resigned. The only hint of trouble was in the timbre of his voice. It was shaking from the violent action of the plane, like a stereo with too much bass.

They were too low to bail out. Cod y always played it like that, treetop-level stuff. ‘Get down .where you can see the whites of their eyes,’ he would tell his men. From under the umbrella of green foliage, deadly ground fire chewed at the twin-engine assault plane. Fifty-calibers rattled the fuselage.

‘Brace yourself,’ he told his gunner. There was no response. Cody turned in the cockpit and looked back. Rossiter was slumped in the seat, his canopy riddled, his face shot away. But Cody lad no time to feel sorry for the youngster, he was losing the plane. The jungle catapulted toward him. Two hundred yards in front of him was the river an d on the other side of the river was freedom. He knew he’d never make

Before HQ could answer, the pilot was back on.

‘This is Chilidog one . . . half mile north of checkpoint Charlie . . . I’m down to five hundred feet . .

The radio operator answered immediately.

‘Chilidog one, can you make it across the river?’

‘. - . trying . .

The radio operator switched bands and called Rescue. ‘Rescue, this is Corkscrew. I have a Black Pony going in half mile north of checkpoint Charlie, a couple of hundred yards into Indian country . . . Do you read?’

The answer came immediately. ‘Corkscrew, this is Rescue . . . we hear him . . . Got a Huey on the way . .

‘Chilidog one, we have a Huey in the area. Can you stay aloft to the river?’

‘Negative . . . I’m going in . .

The transmission ended suddenly.

‘Shit, we’re losing him,’ the radio operator muttered. He turned to his assistant. ‘Get the Skipper over here fast, Wicker.’

‘On it,’ the assistant, a ruddy-faced seaman first, snapped back and snatched up the phone.

The plane suddenly jerked again - The stick was useless. Cody was trying to get it under control with the rudder pedals, but that, too, was futile. The ship went up on its good wing and then slowly began to roll. The green jungle rushed toward him as he rolled upside down. Cody slammed the stick forward in a last attempt to get control and the plane’s nose rose sharply. Its tail raked the treetops and disintegrated, and the black craft was snapped down into the green tapestry below. Cody shoved the stick forward, away from his chest, and braced himself against the instrument panel, his forearms shielding his face. He heard the plane crumpling around him, the metal screaming as the trees tore it apart. Then it all stopped — the noise, the forward thrust — everything seemed suspended in time.

Cody, hanging upside down, looked over his head and stared straight down at the ground, about twenty feet below hint. The plane was a twisted wreck around him. He looked back at Rossiter, his gunner. The kid’s arms hung down toward the ground.

The canopy was half off, dangling from its tracks. Cody slammed the flat of his hand into it and it toppled away into the trees. He smelled smoke.

He started talking to himself, rattling off the drill. ‘Got to get out,’ he said and, loosening his safety belt, tried to hang out of the plane and drop to the tree limbs. The smell of smoke grew stronger, and suddenly he was free of the plane, arcing through the air. He reached out toward a branch, felt it slap his palm and then slip away. It spun him around so his feet were now below him. Just like a bail-out, he thought as he hurtled toward the ground. Knees together and bent, roll when I hit.

But he hit wrong, and as he landed he heard his kneecap pop, felt the pain burn deep in the leg, coursing down to his ankle. He trapped the scream of pain between his teeth. Sweat boiled out of his skin.

He looked up. The river was twenty yards away, shimmering in the early morning sun. He got up and started hobbling frantically toward it He knew there were bandits all around, but maybe he’d get lucky. Then overhead and behind him he heard a sizzling sound and a moment later the dull thumpf as the gas tanks went. Heat from the explosion wafted down over him, but he kept hopping toward the river, dragging his ruined leg behind him. He didn’t look back. Then he heard the familiar chump, chump, chump of the chopper, off to his left, coming upriver.

Oh God, c’mon, baby, he thought.

Twenty yards to freedom.

‘Corkscrew, this is Rescue one. We have the Black Pony in sight . . .

The Huey was suspended twenty feet above the river. In the belly, Harley Simmons, a young gunner, squinted and peered into the thick foliage, looking for signs of life. The pilot’s voice crackled through the earphones.

‘How about it, Simmons, anything?’

‘I’m looking, Captain, I’m looking. . .

The explosion cut him off. It was almost like slow motion. First the shock wave of the burst rippling through the trees, then the Black Pony disintegrating, then the bright orange fireball boiling up into the sky. Seconds later the ping of bullets sang off the fuselage a few feet from Simmons’s head.

‘We got bandits shooting at us!’ Simmons screamed into his mike.

‘How about our man?’ the pilot relied back.

Then Simmons saw him; he was hobbling from under the awning of fire, heading toward the riverbank. He was almost there-. twenty, thirty feet maybe. But before Simmons could say anything, another round of bullets ripped into the edge of the open hatch, tearing it up. Bits and pieces rattled off Simmons’s helmet. He heard the whine of 9 mm. shells wailing inches from his ear, and fear .charged deeply into him like a bolt of lightning. The plane in the forest exploded again and fire raged through the treetops.

He can’t make it, Simmons said to himself as more gunfire tore at the Huey.

‘I don’t see nothing, Captain,’ he lied. ‘We got bandits chewing us up back here.’

The pilot rolled the belly of the chopper toward the forest and spun around, heading back downriver.

Simmons dropped weakly to his knees. He was shaking all over. Oh God, he thought, what have I done .

But he was too frightened to say it aloud. He heard the pilot’s voice on the intercom: ‘Corkscrew, this is Rescue one . . . We lost him . . .

Cody almost reached the bank when the chatter of an automatic weapon off to his right startled him. He dropped to the ground and crawled to the edge of the water.

The Huey was a hundred feet away, hovering over the river.

Over here, over here! he urged silently. He started to get up, to wave at the chopper. And watched in horror as it peeled away and headed back downstream.

No, he cried to himself, No, no

‘I’m here,’ he screamed desperately.

He stood up, determined to jump into the water and swim to the safety of the other side, at just the moment the sky erupted in fire as the plane disintegrated in flames. The heat roared down over him like a blanket. He covered his face and fell to the ground, huddled against the raging fire in the trees overhead. And as the inferno baked his back and legs he kept crawling toward the river.

Freedom was ten feet away when he gave up.

The commander burst into the radio shack, his face frozen in a scowl.

‘What the hell is it, Wicker?’ he snapped.

‘We just lost a bird, Commander,’ the radio operator answered forlornly.

The commander’s shoulders sagged. He shook his head.

‘Damn!’ he barked. ‘Who was it.’

The radioman hesitated for just a second.

‘Chili one, sir, Lieutenant Cody.’

The commander closed his eyes for a moment and his jaw twitched as he clenched his teeth. ‘Jesus H. Christ,’ he moaned. And a moment later: ‘Okay, get me GHQ, Saigon. I gotta tell the Old Man we just lost his son.’