Hugh Mills - Low Level Hell

By then, however, all the Darkhorse warrants still in the club had gathered around the bar and weren’t going to let those two hotshot RLOs off the hook.

The taunting went on until one of the lieutenants, finally feeling that he had to defend the honor of the airborne, grabbed the toad and began trying to get it into his mouth. The lieutenant closed his eyes, opened his mouth as big as he could, and tried to stuff the creature down his throat. The toad was kicking and croaking and making a hell of a fuss.

Every time the lieutenant would just about get the toad’s body inside his mouth, he’d gag and retch and throw the thing back up on the bar. We’d grab the regurgitated toad and christen it “airborne qualified” by lifting it up to arm’s length and dropping it back on the bar. Then, pouring some beer on the bar top, we’d slide the toad along through the foam and duly pronounce the poor thing “carrier qualified.”

After all this foolishness, I finally said to the lieutenants, “You guys can quit trying to shit us now. You obviously can’t hack it!”

That inspired one of the jump troopers to try again to get the now-slimy toad down his throat. He had gotten it about halfway down when the toad hitched his legs and let out a thunderous croak. Back out it came, with the bewildered lieutenant leaning against the bar dry-heaving.

Now Bill Jones, in his obviously inebriated state, shifted himself on his bar stool, looked the lieutenants in the eyes, and announced: “You know, I don’t think you guys are snake eaters at all. Let me show you what a real Darkhorse aeroscout can do.”

With that, Jones picked up the toad, threw back his head, dropped in the creature and, in one gargantuan gulp, swallowed it down whole!

The two lieutenants looked at each other in total disbelief. They began to turn green. Then they both raced out the front door and began heaving.

Jones’s eyes were bugged out and he had a funny look on his face. As soon as the two lieutenants were out the front door, he immediately took off for the back door. Once outside, he began making violent groaning noises. Then he coughed, gagged, and retched until, finally, he heaved up the still-struggling toad. As the dazed toad limped away, our equally dazed aeroscout returned to the bar and ordered up another drink. We never saw the two airborne lieutenants again.

Wednesday, 26 August, was the start of a three-day series of events that culminated with a most unusual combat engagement.

During that time most of our scouting operations were concentrated in the western Trapezoid—a hotbed of enemy activity. Enemy soldiers and supplies were almost constantly infiltrating south into the area from their sanctuaries behind the Cambodian border and from their intermediate staging area in a string of low mountains called the Razor-backs.

On 26 August, while looking for trails and other signs of these infiltrators, a Darkhorse scout team out on routine VR made an enemy contact up near FSB Kien. The contact appeared heavy enough that Darkhorse ops decided to alert elements of 2d Battalion, 2d Mechanized Infantry Regiment, which were then located at FSB Kien.

When the infantry (call sign Dracula) moved out to where the aeroscout had made his initial contact, our troops ran into the outskirts of a huge bunker area. At that point I went up to the contact area with my gun-ship to help coordinate operations.

As soon as I moved in over the enemy base camp, about four AK-47s let go at me. Things were really hot down there! Dracula had advanced to the base camp perimeter ançl run into a veritable buzz saw.

What we needed, and fast, was for some tac air to get fast movers and heavy stuff in there to bust up the bunkers so our friendlies could break into the area and clean it out. I immediately went up on the net for our FAC, who turned out to be our Australian OV-10 driver, Sidewinder One Five. We gave him the target information and asked specifically for any heavy stuff he might have around.

It wasn’t long before Sidewinder had a brace of Martin B-57 Canberras loaded with five-hundred-pound bombs vectored into the area. Guided by Sidewinder’s Willie Pete rockets, they gave the base camp a hell of an iron bomb shellacking!

When Sidewinder’s jets were finally winchester, he asked that a little bird be put back down for a BDA. I dropped back down when the smoke and dust started to clear. The Canberras had raised a lot of hell down there. The bombs had blown away all the overlying jungle vegetation and I could clearly see the square outlines of the bunker structures. It was immediately obvious that this was a very large base camp with many bunkers, connecting trench lines, and doughnut positions for .50-caliber antiaircraft guns.

I reported in as I circled the base area. “We have three bunkers, five by five, partially destroyed. There are two bunkers, five by seven. Looks like about 50 percent destroyed. We’ve got two bunkers, probably eight by eight. One bunker ten by ten. We’ll call those destroyed—the roofs are caved in. We’ve got numerous small arms and equipment spread in the area. We’ve got about forty feet of trench line, looks like four, negative… make that five bodies KBA. They’re in the trench line.”

With the BDA, we had to break station. It was beginning to get dark and fuel was low. All the time we were doing the BDA, Drac had been moving in closer to base camp. We wondered how much more trouble they would run into that night.

As I climbed away, I contacted them on FM. “Dracula, this is Darkhorse One Six. We are breaking station because of fuel and darkness. The base area has been hit good and is pretty well opened up. You do have some KBA bodies down there. Good luck to you tonight. We’ll be back on top of you first thing tomorrow morning.”

We were back out at first light on 27 August. As we came up on the enemy base camp, my gun, Paul Fishman (Three Four), radioed the friendlies on the ground to report our presence and tell them we were ready to go back to work.

“Drac Three Two, this is Darkhorse Three Four. We’re overhead with a hunter-killer team and I’m going to put the little bird down to do a VR for you. Is there any particular area that you want him to work?”

Dracula came back. “Negative, Darkhorse. We fought an engagement here last night until about 2400. The enemy backed off about then and we’re going to try to reestablish contact this morning. So let the scout go whatever direction he wants and keep us posted on what you find. We had light casualties but we got to Charlie pretty good. Their KIA are unknown, however, because they dragged away all the bodies during the night.”

As I listened to the conversation, I was looking down at Drac’s night defensive position. I could see ACAVs and some supporting M-48 tanks all loggered up in a wagon wheel situation. I figured that right over them was the best place for me to go down low level; then, if I had any problem, I could put the bird down in the middle of friendlies. I dropped down to the treetop altitude and pulled a hard right-hand turn to bring me right on top of the NDP. I intended to start working concentric circles outward from our position.

As I rolled around and started outbound, I caught a glimpse of an enemy soldier’s body lying on the ground face up, not more than forty yards from the tanks and ACAVs. I went back for another look. It looked like an NVA soldier in a dark, electric blue uniform, no sandals, no headgear. His brown eyes were wide open and staring right up at me. An AK-47 was beside him on the ground and he had the weapon’s ammunition pouch on his chest. He had obviously been hit because I could see some wound damage to his leg and quite a bit of blood on the pant leg of his uniform.

I wondered what the heck he was doing lying out here. Why hadn’t he been dragged off with the rest of the enemy wounded and dead during the night?