Hugh Mills - Low Level Hell

I slowed and nodded my head vigorously to let him know that I had seen him. He tried to wave back without giving away his position, and then rolled back over on his stomach to use his weapon again.

The other man with Gratton must have been Mitchell. He was face down and not moving, so I didn’t know whether he was dead or alive.

Located right in back of Gratton and Mitchell was an enemy bunker. Fire from that position was what had the point men pinned down.

I immediately keyed the FM frequency to Harris. “Four Six, this is One Six. I found Gratton. He and his other point man are about forty meters out to your northeast. They’re down near a little mound in the earth that’s giving them some protection. Gratton looks OK and knows that we’ve found him. I think the other guy is hit. For right now they’re OK where they are. They can’t get back to you anyway because there’s a hot gook bunker located right behind them. You copy?”

The same bunker that was blocking Gratton’s retreat suddenly decided that my little bird was getting entirely too nosy. Every time I made a pass over the area, he’d open up, and his fire was beginning to get pretty accurate! I could hear and feel an occasional hit.

Realizing that I was taking fire, Koranda came up on VHF from the Cobra and told me to get out of there. But I decided to stay down to keep a cover on Harris’s gang. I told Koranda I would try to go fast enough to avoid giving the bad guys a good shot.

Jim Bruton was getting a hell of an introduction to flying scouts. Having just gotten to the troop, he probably couldn’t follow what was going on, but he could feel me jinking that little bird all over the sky and see the muzzle flashes that were sending up enemy rounds, and feel them tearing through the ship. Bruton was probably scared to death. But so were the pilot and crew chief, perhaps more so.

I was impressed with the way Bruton handled himself while on the receiving end of the first shots ever fired at him. He never said a word as he sat in the left seat, doing the best he could to help the situation.

Even experience didn’t keep Jim Downing from being amazed at the enemy beehive below us. He kept keying the intercom: “Jesus, sir, there’s dinks everywhere! Bunkers everywhere. Three o’clock low… bunkers. Man with an AK at twelve o’clock low… bunker with SGM. Shit, Lieutenant!”

All I could say was, “OK, OK, Jim. I got it. I got it!” I kept the airspeed up to about sixty knots and kept jinking the ship to give Charlie a different look every time I came around for another pass.

I rolled back in over Gratton’s position to see how he was doing. He was over on his back again and had an M-16 magazine on his chest. Each time I came over, Gratton looked at us and jabbed his finger at the magazine.

Downing was quick to figure out the sign language. “He needs ammo, sir, for the M-16. He’s dry!”

“OK,” I answered, “how many bandoliers do you have with you back there, Jim?” Downing carried a backup M-16, which he stowed under his seat, and I knew that he would have some extra ammo.

“About six, Lieutenant.”

“OK,” I said. “Get three of them. We’ll come in and hover over Gratton and drop him the ammo.

“Now, Jim,” I continued, “I’ll have to come in slow and hover down easy. You’re going to have to bull’s-eye the first time. If we miss, I don’t know what kind of chance we’ll have to try it again. OK?”

“I understand, Lieutenant,” he answered. “I’ll do my best.”

I went in right on the trees. Downing was hanging out of the cabin door with the bandoliers in his hand waiting for the right moment to throw them down. I kept the left side of the aircraft toward the VC bunker so that Downing would make less of a target. We slid in right over Gratton and hovered down as low as I could get. Then Downing let go of the ammo.

The bandoliers landed right between Gratton and Mitchell. Bull’s-eye! Gratton rolled over, reloaded the M-16, and started squeezing off short bursts at Charlie again.

As I regained altitude, taking a couple more AK hits in the tail boom, Koranda called me.

“Nice shot, One Six. I’ve got Dustoff coming in, right about now. Let’s try and get him to send a stretcher down and pick up the head wound.”

Flipping to FM so that both the Cobra and Bob Harris on the ground could hear, I answered. “Four Six, this is One Six. Three Niner says that Dustoff will be here right away and wants us to try and get the Huey in. I don’t think that the bad guys will let a medevac in without blowing them to pieces. How do you feel about it?”

Harris came right back. “Let’s get him in here if we can, One Six. Earlier I waved away one Dustoff feeling that he’d never be able to hover in here and stay in one piece. Now Doc says he’s bingo on blood expander for Hamilton and he’s bleeding to death. Let’s do it!”

By this time, Dustoff was coming in at altitude, and wanting to know where to make the pickup. I came up on Uniform to give him directions. “Dustoff, this is Darkhorse One Six. We need you to hover into the base camp over the bomb crater, drop a litter, and extract a bad head wound. Can you handle that?”

“Darkhorse One Six, this is Dustoff. I don’t know but we’ll try. We understand that the area is not controlled—that it is still hot.”

“You copy right… the area is still hot. In fact/it’s very hot. But we’ve got a soldier down who needs blood fast and he won’t make it unless we get you in there.”

“I’ll give it our best shot, Darkhorse,” he came back. “Mark my area.”

“Roger, Dustoff. Get on my tail and I’ll lead you in the best way. When I say, ‘mark, mark,’ you’ll be right over the bomb crater. Drop down and make the pickup.”

Dustoff rogered and fell in behind me. I took him down low on the trees and circled around once to get the Huey in on an approach that avoided as many of the major VC gun emplacements as I could. As we came in over the bomb crater at about forty knots, I called to Dustoff, “Now… mark, mark!” Then I pulled a hard right and watched the Huey skid to a hover right over the crater and Harris’s ARPs.

The moment Dustoff decelerated, the base camp below erupted with what seemed to be every weapon the VC had.

“Taking fire!” the Huey pilot screamed. “Goda-mighty! I’m taking fire… heavy fire!”

I instantly jerked the Loach into a tight right bank around the medevac ship and keyed the intercom. “Dustoff will never make it out of there, Jim, unless you get Charlie’s head down. Get on the M-60 and start shooting. Be careful firing into our friendlies. Just spray to keep VC heads down, not to hit anybody.”

Downing opened up. He poured several long bursts into the base camp below, doing his best to make Charlie duck while the medevac ship struggled for altitude.

With Downing still shooting to cover its retreat, Dustoff staggered off to the northwest toward Dau Tieng. The Huey had taken all the punishment it could handle and still stay airborne.

I then came up on FM to Harris. “Four Six, this just isn’t gonna work. We’ve got another Dustoff flying into a nearby ARVN base camp to stand by, but to bring him in here would be murder. What do you think?”

“Roger, One Six,” Harris came back, “but Doc says that Hamilton won’t last another ten minutes unless he gets whole blood. We’ve got to do something!”

I thought as I circled another time or two. Then I made up my mind and got on the intercom to Bruton and Downing. “Look, this OH-6 is a hell of a lot more agile and a smaller target than that Huey. I think we can get in and out of there before Charlie can get us. So I’m going to go over to the Dustoff that’s waiting at the ARVN base camp, get the blood, and we’ll come back and drop it in.”