Hugh Mills - Low Level Hell

“Move out into a little clearing for a second, One Six, so I can see if I can pick you up.”

Moving into an area that offered some terrain contrast to the back of my bird, I keyed back, “Have you got me yet, or do you want me to drop a yellow smoke?”

“We’ve got you, One Six. Don’t need a smoke… move back into your pattern.”

On about the third route west, I noticed that we were coming up on what looked like a small valley within the valley. There were fairly high wooded hills on each side that extended from about halfway up the main valley to what appeared to be about the western limit of my search leg. I headed between them, more than a little apprehensive about flying into such tight quarters. I started my three sixties just as soon as I entered the eastern end of the valley.

Though you never knew where you’d find bad guys, this looked like a perfect place for trouble. Besides, my built-in warning alarm was going off in the nape of my neck, telling me I needed to be extra careful in here. I keyed the intercom. “I’ve got a funny feeling about this place, Al. Keep your eyes peeled and your 60 cocked.”

I had no sooner gotten the words out of my mouth when I passed over a fairly heavy wire strung across the valley. A wire? I thought. If it is, it’s sure as hell out of place in the middle of this jungle. I swung around to take another look. “What do you make of that wire that just went under our nose?” I asked Farrar.

“I see it, Lieutenant. Looks like it’s tied to trees across the valley from each other. I don’t know what the hell—”

“You know what I think we got, Al? Could that be a radio antenna?”

Punctuating my question was a tremendous burst of ground fire coming up on the front and left side of the aircraft. Not from just one weapon, but from AK-47s and .30- and .50-caliber machine guns.

As I jerked a hard right turn and tried to dive for the treetops, I screamed into the radio, “I’m taking fire… taking fire!” Farrar’s 60 went off in response.

Just as I turned, I caught new fire from across the valley coming up at me from twelve o’clock dead ahead. I was getting hit… I could feel the hits in the airplane. All the time Farrar’s M-60 kept firing.

“Son of a bitch!” I yelled. “We must have found a goddamned NVA radio station on the end of that wire, or they were just waiting to ambush us!”

Meeting the new fire head-on, I instinctively pulled another hard right. Fortunately I still had forty to fifty knots of speed to help get our asses out of there. However, my last right turn headed us right back into another blanket of enemy fire, coming up again from the opposite side of the valley. Also, I had caused Carriss to abort his rocket run on the targets because I had pulled right in front of him. He had to yank up his nose to avoid hitting me.

I had let go a blast of the minigun and Farrar was still giving them hell, his 60 blazing. He was leaning out of the airplane, down under the tail boom, and shooting 60 lead out behind us.

Going like a bat out of hell, I pulled away from the ambush kill zone. “Hit ‘em,” I yelled at Carriss. “Hit the bastards! I’m clear… I’m clear!”

“Did you get a smoke out?” asked Carriss.

“Shit,” I muttered, and looked back at Farrar. His eyes were as big as billiard balls. “Lieutenant, sir, I ain’t going back in there for nothin’. If you’re going back in there, you can just let me out.”

I keyed Carriss back. “No, we didn’t get a smoke out.”

“Ah-h-h, One Six, I think I spotted the source of your fires. I’m going to roll in and put some rockets down. What have you got down there?”

“I’ve never seen an enemy radio station before, Three Eight, but I think I’ve got one. While you expend your load, I’m going to start a spiral climb to altitude.”

“Roger, One Six. I’m in hot.” I watched Carriss break for his run.

Coming into fifteen hundred feet of altitude, I began to have trouble with the aircraft. Scanning the instrument panel, I saw that my turbine outlet temperature (TOT) gauge was running in the yellow and pushing the red line at nearly 749 degrees centigrade. Torque pressure was low and dropping. It was obvious that some of the enemy rounds had gone through my engine combuster. I wouldn’t be able to stay in the air much longer.

As Carriss came back up after his run on the ambush targets, I told him I was going to have to get back to Quan Loi and put the ship down. There wasn’t any question that I had taken a bunch of hits.

He wanted to escort me back to base, but I suggested that he stay on the NVA radio station and bring in some artillery and tac air. Carriss argued, but I assured him that I could already see the “plantation strip” (our name for the Quan Loi base runway) and that I really thought I could nurse the Loach in. He pulled back toward the target to set up some big stuff.

When the airplane was down safely at plantation, Farrar and I counted nineteen bullet holes in the ship. The rotor blades were hit. The nose was hit. The belly was hit. The tail boom had been hit, and there were about four rounds through the crew compartment, any one of which could have gone through Farrar.

Damn, I thought as I crawled underneath the Loach’s belly, we just about got our asses shot off! Once again, I was amazed at the little OH-6’s ability to take that kind of punishment and still get us back to base in one piece. But it was obvious that there was no way this aircraft would fly again in the shape she was in.

Farrar was still contemplating the four holes near his seat position, and I could see that his hands were shaking. His head was also shaking, but when he saw me he started laughing.

I looked down at my own hands. My whole body was shaking like a leaf. We both stood there on the tarmac, shaking and laughing uncontrollably.

Farrar broke the moment. “Son of a bitch, sir. You know a man could get killed doing this.” I threw my arm around his shoulder and we walked away to see if we could hitch a Huey ride home.

I had been platoon leader of the Outcasts less than a month, gaining more confidence every day in my aircraft, in my scouting ability, and in my scouts. But the stress had a way of building, also. Though I was getting shot at almost every day, I never got used to it. But getting shot at was usually the way a scout found the enemy, and finding the enemy was our basic job.

The army TO&E (Table of Organization and Equipment) called for ten scouts in the platoon. Six, or possibly eight, however, were all we ever had. A typical combat flying month would usually add up to between 130 and 160 hours in the air for each scout pilot. It meant that each scout was flying an average of five hours a day. Everyday. Thirty days a month!

It was tough—flying constantly under pressure, constantly in fear—and it took its toll. It was a constant game of trying to second-guess the enemy. It was a constant worry—about your airplane, about your crew chief, about learning your scouting craft well enough to survive.

The aeroscout platoon worked wherever it was needed within the 1st Division’s geographical area of tactical interest. For about ten days in the early part of June ‘69, the Outcasts were called upon to provide scout cover for the Rome plowing work that was being done for the opening of the Song Be Road, officially known as Highway 1A.

The initial roadbed was built by the French sometime during the nearly hundred years of their Vietnam occupation. Highway 1A started down around Phu Cuong (just west of our base at Phu Loi), and ran generally north up along the western extremity of War Zone D. It wound its way up through Dogleg Village and Claymore Corners (another American-named landmark so-called because it formed a giant intersection where highways 2A, 1A, and 16 all came together just east of Lai Khe), then over the Song Be River bridge just north of Claymore Corners, on up through Phuoc Vinh and Dong Xoai, and finally to Song Be somewhat south of the Cambodian border. From altitude, the narrow little red dirt road looked like a rust-colored snake, slithering up through the jungle, rubber plantations, and Vietnamese villages along the way.