Hugh Mills - Low Level Hell

“Pretty big, sir, about .30-caliber size. Wait a minute and let me check some more.” He crawled back and opened the engine cowling doors. “Nothing seems to have fallen out. Looks OK to me. How do you feel about it, sir?”

“If you hadn’t told me, Al, I’d never have known we had three battery vents. Let’s fly.”

For more than ten grueling hours, we continued that method of engaging, drawing fire, disengaging, refueling, and coming back in again. At no time during that period did we ever see the enemy who was shooting at us. Nor were we able to see more than one leg and foot of the people down on the point.

To top that off, the progress of the lead element in moving forward to retrieve their people was practically nil. In spite of our repeated passes, Charlie was still able to keep our infantry pinned to the jungle floor in a vicious cross fire.

To add to our frustrations, it was now about 8 P.M. and beginning to get dark. Farrar and I had been flying since eight that morning, and we still weren’t sure how much we had been able to help Alpha Company.

I contacted the ground unit on FM: “OK, Gangplank, it’s getting dark and pretty soon I’m going to have to break station because I can’t see. What do you want to do?” I didn’t tell him that the OH-6 had no night navigation capability, and that I had to find my way back to Phu Loi before dark.

“I hear you, Darkhorse,” Gangplank responded, “but we’ve got to get our people out before dark. If it gets completely dark on us, I don’t know if we’ll ever get them back.”

That message made my mind up instantly. “OK, Gangplank, here’s what we’re going to do. We’ve got a pretty good idea where your point men and Three Six’s lead element are. There’s probably not more than forty meters between them.”

“Roger that,” he responded.

“All right, then, we’re going to do some shooting… I say again… we’re going to shoot as best we can. Can’t guarantee that we won’t hit your friendlies. But if our fire can pin down Charlie, your guys can move up there and get your people out, providing they’re all down in one area. You roger?”

“I roger. OK, Darkhorse, let’s try it. Three Six will move out on your fire.”

With another glance over my shoulder, I told Farrar, “I’m going to come around again, Al, and go in very slow. I know you probably feel like we’re hanging it out pretty far, but they can’t see us any better than we can see them.”

Farrar nodded an OK as I continued. “They’ll be shooting at sound—they can hear the airplane but they can’t see us very well. If you see any fire coming up, shoot back immediately at the point of their fire. Don’t spray a wide area; shoot directly at their muzzle flashes.”

We made three more passes, and each time came the rips of AKs and light machine guns. Farrar, being ever careful to avoid hitting our ground troops, shot back in short, well-aimed bursts. He was leaning half out of the airplane, responding to enemy tracers that were streaking up at us.

Gangplank came back on the radio. “All right, One Seven, you’re shooting about sixty meters directly ahead of Three Six. You roger? Sixty meters directly to Three Six’s front.”

“OK,” I responded, “I think your lead element is just behind me now…. they’re right behind me… I’m coming around again.”

This time I cranked the OH-6 up to about fifty knots and came in from another direction. I could hear Farrar’s M-60 pecking away in the same short, controlled bursts as Charlie’s fire came up from below.

Suddenly, as I was looking down and to my right out of the airplane, I caught the blur of an image out the corner of my left eye. I jerked my head around just in time to see the top of a large dead tree looming up right in front of me. The twisted, blackened limbs looked like a giant claw, poised to snatch the little OH-6 right out of the sky.

“Holy shit!” I yelled and pulled all the power the bird had. Instantly responding to the controls, the tail flew up, automatically dropping the nose just enough to catch the top of those straggly limbs. With a shocking thump and scraping noise, the tree limbs burst through the front of the ship, sending debris flying into a dirty cloud that momentarily obscured the front section of the OH-6.

My headset crackled immediately as the gun above me barked, “What’s going on down there, One Seven? What was that explosion?”

Realizing that the Cobra must have seen that sudden gust of dirt and crud flying from my nose, I answered, “Hell, that wasn’t any explosion. I just hit a tree!”

The terrible rush of wind through the cabin made it obvious that the whole front end of the OH-6 had been knocked out. Both Plexiglas bubbles were smashed to smithereens and the wind was whistling through as though I was flying in an open cockpit.

Amazingly, the aircraft was still flying OK. The rotor system had apparently not been hit and the ship was still responding to my control movements.

After telling Farrar what had happened, I rang up Gangplank. “I hit the top of a tree up here, but we’re OK. I’m going to hover again. How close is Three Six?”

Taking a few moments to check before answering me, Gangplank came back, “Three Six thinks he knows where the guys are. He can hear one of them moaning. Can you get in there again for one last try?”

“OK, one more pass. Only this time I’m going to put myself right in the middle of where I think the enemy base camp is, come to a hover, and shoot the shit out of that area with everything I’ve got. Now, when the door gunner lets go with his M-60, get your people up there and try to get those point guys out. It’s the best chance we’ve got, and it’s the last chance we’ve got. Roger?”

With Gangplank’s acknowledgment, I headed in from the north over what I believed was the dead center of the enemy base camp. Just like every time before, Charlie opened up—AKs on my right side, a heavier light machine gun to my front, and at least two AKs behind me. Because I was at a hover, I could hear and feel the hits. They were ripping through the ship from every direction.

Farrar had leaned completely out of the OH-6 and was shooting underneath the tail boom at the two AKs behind us. Right in the middle of one of his long bursts, I saw Al fall out of the airplane. My God, I thought. He’s hit!

Looking back, I saw that Al’s foot had landed on the skid and broken his fall. His monkey strap had steadied him, and the bungee cord had kept the M-60 from going out with him. I tilted the ship to the left to make it easier for him to crawl back into the cabin. “Where are you hit, Al?” I yelled.

I could almost hear the chuckle in his voice. “Ah shit, Lieutenant, I just slipped. I’m OK.” Then he let go with another long M-60 blast!

Just as I was starting to tell Farrar to cool it, that we couldn’t take any more hits and were going to pull the hell out and go home, Gangplank burst on the air. “OK, Darkhorse, get out of there… GET OUT OF THERE! WE GOT ‘EM! WE GOT ‘EM!”

I pulled power and was bringing the nose around in a sweeping right turn when Gangplank came back, “We got everybody out, One Seven. Everybody’s alive. Say again, everybody’s out and alive. One of the guys is hurt bad—shot through both legs. But they’re going to make it.”

With that happy message, Bruce Foster in the Cobra came up on UHF. “OK, One Seven. Sidewinder has got layers of fighters stacked up overhead waiting for ground to get their people out so they can come in and put Charlie to sleep. You back it out of there and get over to the LZ. When you tell us that all the friendlies are clear, we’ll put the fighters down on the base camp area.”

As the infantry was moving out of the tree line and back into the LZ, I passed the word on to Gangplank. “Get your folks down and out of the way. We’ve got TAC fighters coming in with heavy ordnance to neutralize the base camp area.” Then I keyed Farrar, “Get me a Willie Pete and a red smoke, one in each hand, and get ready to mark the target.”