Hugh Mills - Low Level Hell

Thank God First Sergeant Laurent was a tolerant man. Not only did he have to shepherd all the new soldiers and young NCOs, but also a troop full of young warrants and officers. In our final inspection before leaving that night for the party, I remember the first sergeant saying to one of our number, “Young warrant officer, hold on there just a minute. I can readily understand that you are duly proud of that Army Commendation Ribbon with ‘V that you’re wearing, but damnit all, son, it goes behind your Silver Star. The Silver Star ribbon goes in front! Now, will you please fix that before you go parading into the party for the battalion commander?”

Decked out in our starched and pressed khakis, spit-shined low quarters, and overseas caps, we all took off across the runway to the 1st Aviation club.

We had to hand it to them, those battalion guys really knew how to throw a party. They had a floor show with Filipino performers and an open bar with plenty of booze. The place was fairly well rockin’ right along.

We had so much fun that we stayed late. At about 10:30 or 11 P.M. we noticed that one of the majors from the battalion staff was taking a fancy to one of the female performers. That was all Rod Willis needed. He sure as hell wasn’t going to let a major get the best of him, not when it came to a member of the fairer sex. So every time the major left to get another drink or go to the restroom, Willis tried to snake this young lady. Both men were more than just a little inebriated, and we all knew that sooner or later there was going to be trouble.

The next time the major went to the John, he came back to find Willis sitting at the lady’s table with his arm snugly around her shoulder. The good major stomped back over to the table, struck a very majorly demeanor, and yelled, “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Vm talking to this lady. She didn’t invite you to this table, and you need to get the hell away from here!”

Rod remembered, thank God, that the man was a major. So, showing unexpected and uncommon respect for the gold oak leaf on the major’s collar, Rod very politely excused himself from the young lady’s presence and walked over to the bar where I was standing.

Then the lady, evidently having had enough of the bickering, got up and left. Instead of that breaking the chain of events, her leaving served only to further infuriate the major. His face turned beet red. He clamped his hands on his hips, stomped over to Willis, and stuck a forefinger into Rod’s face. “All right, Lieutenant,” he fumed, “I want your goddamned name and unit!”

Rod got this shit-eatin’ grin on his face. He continued drinking his beer but didn’t say a word in reply.

“You’re the sorriest excuse for an officer of the United States Army that I ever saw,” the major raved on. “Your conduct was unbecoming an officer, and an insult to every man who wears an officer’s uniform. That young lady was my girl and you shouldn’t have been messin’ around with her. Do you hear that, Lieutenant?”

I was proud of Rod. Though he kept grinning, he didn’t say a word back to the major.

With a few more stabs of his finger into Rod’s now-blissful face, the major ended his tirade with the threat, “… and don’t you forget it!” Then he stormed off, still hurling expletives over his shoulder.

With the major’s final departure, Rod let go with one of the most heinous giggles I’ve ever heard. Nothing sounded very funny to me. “For Christ sakes!” I told him. “For a guy who just got his ass chewed out from one end to the other by a ranking battalion staff officer, I don’t understand what in the hell you’re laughing about.”

“Well,” Rod replied, “do you know that for the last thirty-five seconds that he was rantin’ and ravin’ I was actually pissin’ all over the major’s left leg, and he was so fuckin’ busy reading me off that the son of a bitch didn’t even know it! How do you like that, One Six, for a little piece of low and slow aeroscout response to an enemy action?”

Willis had unzipped himself during the height of the staff officer’s berating diatribe, and surreptitiously urinated all over the major’s leg and shoe! I knew it would be only a matter of seconds until the good major realized what had happened. I grabbed Rod, who was still giggling and watching the wet-legged officer across the room. “Let’s all get the hell out of here while we can still save our skins!”

It was so late by then that no jeeps were available to take us from the club back to the troop. But wanting to didi the area with no further delay, we started half-walking, half-staggering back across the centerline runway ramps toward our hootches.

With the amount of booze we had in our tanks, some celebrators encountered navigational difficulties and didn’t make it back to the troop at all. They were discovered the next morning sound asleep in a low spot on the tarmac runway. Thank God Phu Loi didn’t have many nighttime flight operations.

Somehow, and thank goodness, we never heard any more about One Seven’s dramatic drenching of the staff major’s leg. But Rod was Rod, and he was developing a singular reputation. Since coming to the scouts a few months back, Rod Willis had already become known around the troop for flying with what might be called “a touch of wild abandon.” He routinely returned to the base from scouting missions with sprigs of foliage, whole tree limbs, and sometimes even pieces of livestock impaled or otherwise hanging off his aircraft.

On at least four occasions, Rod didn’t even make it back to Phu Loi in his own aircraft. He had either hit something, or something had hit him, hard enough to bring down his Loach—with Willis and his crew chief always walking away unhurt from the wrecked airplane. I was never quite sure whether Willis was simply a bad pilot, or couldn’t see where in the hell he was going, or just didn’t give a damn.

On this particular day, Willis and I were wingmen on the early morning VR of the Thi Tinh River valley from approximately Ben Cat north to the area of the Michelin rubber plantation. There were two hunter-killer teams with Sinor (Three One) and me working VR-1, and Phil “Combat” Carriss (Three Eight) and Rod Willis to relieve us on VR-2.

At first light both teams took off from Phu Loi and headed directly up to Lai Khe. The VR-2 team would land and shut down at Lai Khe while VR-1 went right on to the mission area; we’d relieve each other about every two hours. After awhile, we’d move the operations base from Lai Khe to Dau Tieng, as our search pattern progressed farther northwest.

While working one of my patterns near the Ben Cat-Tri Tarn province line, I spotted a foot trail that ran east and west across the river valley. As I dropped down closer on it, I could tell that it had had some recent light foot traffic. Swinging the Loach around, I followed the trail west into the jungle for about seven hundred to eight hundred yards. Just as I stalked around a sharp turn in the path, I saw ten to twelve VC soldiers below me walking in column.

I banked hard and hollered to Sinor, “I’ve got dinks! VC on the trail, mark, mark. VC on the trail right below me!”

Parker opened up on the column and his M-60 immediately dropped four VC out of the middle of the group. The rest scattered into the jungle, trying to escape Parker’s red-hot fire.

I pulled the Loach into another hard right and came around 180 degrees. Parker was still firing out his door as I cut loose with the mini-gun. I kept kicking left and right pedal to spray both sides of the trail with 7.62.

After making that run, I came back in again and asked Parker to pop a smoke. “It’s already out, sir,” he said. “It went out on the first pass.”