Hugh Mills - Low Level Hell

My gun pilot on 17 April was Pat Ronan (Three Three). All the scouts enjoyed flying with Pat. He was an aggressive and flamboyant Cobra driver, yet, outside the cockpit, he was quiet and reserved. He had the most impressive and distinctive mustache in the entire troop—a blond, bushy “Yosemite Sam.”

At first light, Pat and I lifted out of Phu Loi and pulled around to a heading of zero three five. It didn’t take us long to reach the target area and pick up the column, which was already en route toward the NVA base camp.

Pat put me down in front of the column to check out the area and sweep the base camp a time or two to see if I would draw any fire. We didn’t know if the camp was still occupied.

The call sign for the mechanized team leader on the ground was Strider One One. Working to his front and flanks, I saw nothing that caused me any concern for his column, so I told him to keep rolling toward his objective grid coordinates.

Flying over the base camp location, I didn’t draw any fire, though there was evidence of recent foot traffic around some of the bunker entrances. I also noted that fresh camouflage had been placed here and there.

On my next sweep over the camp, my crew chief, Al Farrar, suddenly hit the intercom: “Sir, I smell dinks. They’re in here, I know it. I smell ‘em! Don’t get too slow, Lieutenant. They’re in hero, I can smell the fuckers!”

Relatively new to the outfit, Al Farrar was a good-looking nineteen-year-old from Rhode Island. I had flown with Farrar before and knew I could trust his hunches. You actually could smell concentrations of the enemy from the air. I don’t know if it was a lack of basic personal hygiene, their mostly fish diet, or a grim combination of the two. But you could catch a very distinctive odor when enough VC were together in one place—a pungent, putrid odor, heavy and musklike.

I switched my radio to FM transmit. “Strider One One, this is Darkhorse One Seven. My chief smells bad guys. Keep moving heading zero three five, straight for the base area.”

The column commander came back: “Darkhorse One Seven, Strider One One. Roger that. Moving on zero three five.”

Turning out of the base camp area, I came back over the armor column. I checked out Strider’s flanks and then began a slow orbit over the column, watching it work.

Even as an armor officer, I had never seen anything like this. The two main battle tanks in front literally knocked down trees and burst through jungle undergrowth, making a path for the lighter, more vulnerable Ml 13 personnel carriers.

Then I headed back for another look at the column’s front and the base camp just beyond. Damn! As I swept back in over the base camp, there was an enemy soldier—big as life—standing on top of one of the bunkers. I could see his face clearly. No question, he was as surprised as I was.

In the split second it took me to pass over him, I could see that he was wearing a pair of tiger-striped fatigues and was holding an RPD light machine gun. The weapon had a wooden stock, pistol grip, drum magazine, and a bipod hanging from the end of the barrel—not yet pointed at me!

Just as I went over the soldier, he jumped down into the bunker and I could hear Farrar scream, “I’ve got a gomer!” The crew chief didn’t even have time to key his mike. He let go with a yell that I could hear through my helmet and over the noise of the turbine and rotor blades.

Farrar triggered his M-60 and sent a hail of lead at the VC as he dove into the bunker entrance way. I banked a hard, quick right and decelerated to give Farrar a better shooting angle, then got on Uniform to Ronan: “Hey, Three Three, we’ve got enemy on the ground here and taking them under fire.”

Watching what was happening below like a mother hen, Ronan came back instantly: “OK, One Seven, come on out of there and let me work the area with rockets.”

I had been chided the last time for mixing it up too long with the sampans, so I rolled straight out of the area and got on FM to the mechanized team commander. “Strider One One, this is Darkhorse One Seven. You’ve got people in the bunkers ahead of you. I’m going to pull out of here and go up to altitude… the gun is going to work a little bit. Continue your movement and I’ll be back with you as soon as we put some rockets on the ground.”

Strider came back: “OK, Darkhorse, I roger that. We’ll be clear to do a little fire to the front, and we’ve got the Cobra in sight.”

Ronan made a run into the area, shooting rockets. Just as he was beginning to pull out of his run, green tracers arced up out of the base camp, directly toward the Cobra. Ronan broke over the radio, yelling, “Three Three’s taking fire… TAKING FIRE!”

My eyes were glued to the Cobra. As Ronan broke off his run and peeled to the left, I could see his turret depressing underneath him, spraying the area with 7.62 minigun fire.

Hearing Ronan yell and seeing green tracers reaching up for his ship, I snapped. Without another thought, I rolled the little OH-6 practically on her back and aimed the ship right straight back into the bunker complex with my minigun trigger depressed.

“One Seven’s in hot!” I managed to shout. It never occurred to me that, up to this point in time, no scout pilot had ever rolled in on a target in an effort to protect a gunship. I shot a descending run right in on top of the bunker, firing the minigun all the way. Coming up off the guns, I moved out a distance over the trees and then climbed back up to altitude.

By this time Ronan was back up to altitude and ready to let fly again. Peeling over to his left, he asked, “Are you out of there, One Seven?”

“Yes,” I answered, “I’m coming out to the right.”

“Three Three will be in hot from the north.” With that, the Cobra rolled in shooting a second time, and again I could hear his pairs of rockets leave the tubes and trail smoke toward the base camp bunkers below. And, again, green tracers arced up toward him. “Three Three is taking fire… taking fire again.”

Watching the base camp carefully for the source of the fire, I called Ronan. “One Seven’s in hot from the south. Three Three, make your break to the left so I won’t shoot into you.”

In I went with minigun blasting, chewing up the terrain where I had seen the green tracers coming from. Between the rockets and minigun fire, the VC must have been taking casualties, or else they were burrowed awfully deep into the tunnel complex beneath the bunkers. We were causing a hell of a commotion topside.

We made one or two more hot passes, then Ronan went in cold a couple of times to see if he drew any fire. He didn’t, so I went down for a fast scouting pass to confirm Charlie’s demise.

While I was making a low, quick check of the damage done by Ronan’s rockets, I caught a glimpse of another enemy soldier out the corner of my eye. This one was dressed in dark navy blue clothing and was hunkered down in a stretch of trench line that ran between two bunkers.

I instantly slid the OH-6 around into a decelerating right turn and looked the soldier square in the face. Probably thinking that he had me cold—which he did—the VC raised his AK-47. His weapon seemed aimed right between my eyes. As I stared, my crew chief let go with his M-60. The soldier lurched backward, practically cut in half by machine-gun fire.

Holy shit, I thought. HOLY SHIT! Beads of sweat pricked my forehead as I realized the situation that Farrar had just pulled me— us —out of.

Just then Ronan radioed that another hunter-killer team had come up on station to relieve us. The scout pilot taking my place was Jim Ameigh (One Five), one of my hootch mates. I briefed him on the situation, flying him through the base camp area and back over Strider One One, then joined Ronan for the flight back to Phu Loi. On the way back, I really didn’t think too much about the action. It didn’t seem like any big deal. But I had forgotten about ops officer Capt. John Herchert.