Hugh Mills - Low Level Hell

Those first several months of 1969, the enemy in III Corps avoided, when they could, any large-scale military actions. The Tet Offensive of 1968 had cost the NVA so much in human casualties and material losses that they had pulled remaining manpower back behind the Cambodian border to lick their wounds. Charlie employed mostly sapper actions, small force ambushes, and standoff attacks with rockets and mortars to disrupt allied operations.

Using these kinds of methods to conserve manpower and equipment, the enemy was hard to find banded together in any numbers. Therefore, most of our aèroscout VR missions went out to search the 1st Division’s TAOR, trying to find, fix, and hold these small enemy elements for their intelligence value.

Since I was used to finding the enemy only in either singles or very small groups, I was shocked at what I saw while flying over fire support base Gela early on the morning of 13 May 1969.

I had been asleep when the CQ came into the hootch and awakened the Firefly team (a Huey equipped with searchlights and night flares, and two Cobra gunship crews). I roused myself and looked at my watch. It was 0230. I heard the CQ tell the groggy pilots, “Gela is under attack… need to scramble a team north.”

I was marked up as scout Scramble 1 for first light that morning, but, lacking a full complement of navigational instruments, OH-6s did not fly at night. When a scramble call came in during the dark hours, a red team (two Cobras) responded along with a Huey flare ship.

I couldn’t get back to sleep after the Cobra crews took off, so I finally just got up, dressed, and went over to troop operations. I wanted to see what was going on. Besides, it wouldn’t be long before daybreak. After a few minutes of listening to the radios and checking out the operational maps and condition boards, I began to get an idea of what had happened.

The 1st Battalion of the 28th Infantry was positioned at Gela, a fire support base located south of the Michelin and just east of an area we called the Onion. At 0143, an enemy force of unknown size had hit Gela with heavy 82mm mortar fire, followed by a strong ground attack that had made its way into the perimeter wire.

The scrambled Firefly and gun team had arrived at the scene, and the ops room radios blared the high-pitched talk between the infantry commander on the ground and the gun pilots circling overhead.

With first light at Phu Loi, my Cobra cover (Dean Sinor, Three One) and I got off as Scramble 1 and headed to Gela. It was about 0600.

Arriving on station, we fell into trail with Mike Woods, Three Five, and Bruce Foster, Three Two, the red team of guns that had been scrambled at 0230.

Woods and Foster gave us a situation report (sitrep) as we circled and looked down on the still-smoldering fire base. “OK. The attack occurred at 0143 and continued through the night. They took some initial fire down on the southeastern side of the compound from the tree line at seventy-five yards. Fire was returned. But the heavy enemy attack came from the northwest with a supporting attack out of the tree line on the northeast. The enemy got as far as the wire. There are bodies in the wire, multiple dead on the outside of the wire. They did not reach the perimeter. They had sniper fire… most of fire was returned. Base artillery is now cold.

“We have engaged one heavy machine gun and two recoilless rifles due north of the compound at seventy-five yards and another heavy machine gun southeast of the compound at one hundred fifty yards. All known gun locations have been hit by our air strikes or Spooky [AC-47 aircraft armed with miniguns and illumination flares] and some tac air. Ground wants to get a scout down over the base and fan out in concentric circles for a BDA and body count. Try to find the enemy guns, and make sure there aren’t a lot more people out there still kicking around between the jungle and fire base.”

I rogered all that and then got my rules of engagement.

“OK, One Six, you got friendlies on the inside of the wire. You have no friendlies on the outside of the wire. I say again, no friendlies outside the wire. You have a complete free-fire outside the wire.”

Before I headed down, Sinor came up on FM to the infantry commander on the ground. “Four Six, this is Darkhorse Three One. I’d like to get you to hold your external fires, hold your indirect fires. I’m going to put the scout down now directly over the base and let him work outward to give us a bomb damage assessment and also try to locate survivors, wounded, and the direction of enemy retreat.”

I monitored Four Six’s response. “Darkhorse, roger. We see the scout on station. We’re going to hold our external and indirect fires. Last fire received on the perimeter was from the direction of three two zero degrees at two hundred yards—light automatic weapons fire. Haven’t had any fifty or recoilless rifle fire since you guys took out that position about three minutes ago. We’ve got a Dustoff inbound, and while fire is shut down for the scout we’ll go ahead and bring in Dustoff if you’ll be good enough to cover him.”

“Roger, Four Six, I’m putting the scout down. I’ll cover the Dustoff insertion. Your contact this frequency for the scout is Darkhorse One Six.”

Then Sinor came back to me. “OK, One Six, are you ready to go down? You’ve got free-fire but use caution toward the friendlies. Any questions?”

“No, I’ve got what I need.”

From fifteen hundred feet, Gela looked like a five-pointed deputy’s badge lying on the ground, with a wreath of three strands of concertina wire around it. Dropping down on top of the base, I could see that each star point was protected with gun positions that swept—with a wide field of cross fire—anything that came across the clearing and into the wire.

The adrenaline always flowed as I dropped down onto a target. You never knew who or what was down there. I made my first couple of passes at about forty feet, smokin’ between eighty and ninety knots. That gave me a quick look around out to the base perimeter without much worry of getting rounds into my bird.

“My God!” I murmured as I slowed and dropped down on Gela’s perimeter wire. This had to have been one hell of a fight. There were bodies everywhere!

Grotesquely entangled on the barbs of the concertina were numerous enemy corpses—ripped, bloodied bodies dressed in black shorts and pajamas, blue tops, and Ho Chi Minh sandals, AK-47s still gripped tightly in their hands. The sight burned an image in my mind.

Taking in the devastation, my crew chief, Crockett, hit the intercom. “Shit, sir, look at all the bad guys. They’re everywhere! There’s more enemy below us right now than I’ve seen all together in Nam since I got here!”

I was thinking the same thing. This was the first time I had ever seen this kind of enemy concentration. I wondered if the bad guys had decided to come out of Cambodia in larger force and start hitting us in strength.

Fixated on the battle scene below me, I suddenly realized that I needed to get away from the wire and start looking for any live enemy who might be around. Our infantry in Gela needed answers to some questions: Was the base still under siege? If not, where did Charlie go? How many dead did he drag away? What kind of weapons were out there? Could the base finally come down off full alert?

I moved my orbit out to the tree line. It looked as though Gela had been completely surrounded by the enemy, with the major attack coming out of the northwest. At three two zero degrees, I saw many body drag marks and blood trails leading off into the jungle. The enemy usually tried to recover his dead and wounded from the battlefield by dragging them back along their route of attack. By leaving as few casualties as possible on the field, he hoped to confuse U.S. and ARVN forces as to the extent of his losses.