Hugh Mills - Low Level Hell

“Negative,” Sinor came back. “I’ve been up on Guard, but no response. Nobody but us chickens around until we get the ARPs in here.”

“OK,” I answered, “why don’t you and Three Eight cover us on both flanks, one on the left and one on the right. I’ll make my run in between you from north to south. I’m going in and pick up the crew before those guys get blown away.”

I rolled around and headed in directly toward the downed bird. “One Seven, this is One Six. I’m coming in to get you while the guns try to keep Charlie’s head down on the flanks. You need to mark me a place where I can set down.”

I studied the ground as I steered directly for One Seven’s ship. It was fairly open, obviously the site of an old fire base right there near the Thi Tinh River. The high, thick grass would make it hard as hell to see anything at ground level.

As I reached the area, I arched slightly off to the side of Willis’s ship so I could land right beside it. I wanted it to be a short run for Rod and Stormer, so we could get back out of there in a hurry.

Sinor and Carriss rolled in and put rockets down on both sides of the trees. Willis jumped up out of the grass, holding his CAR-15 in both hands about chest high, parallel to the ground. He was rotating the weapon toward him, signaling me to land.

I kept my eyes riveted on Rod while Parker watched out the side for any trouble that might be coming from his direction. I got right on top of Willis and decelerated to almost zero at about four feet off the ground.

My rotor wash blew Rod’s hair flat on his head. It also parted the elephant grass around the site and laid it level against the ground, almost like a giant’s foot had stomped on it and mashed it down.

Then, suddenly, as I began to let down the last few feet, to my absolute horror I saw below me what appeared to be about a ten-foot section of rolled-up concertina wire. As if brought to life by my rotor wash, the barbwire roll began to uncoil out of the elephant grass. It was almost like watching a slow-motion movie.

Like a long, writhing serpent, that damned ugly section of wire unfurled and came right up off the ground. It fluttered up over Willis’s head, past the cockpit door, and was sucked right on into my tail and main rotor blades.

In the instant it took to happen, there was nothing I could do to stop the stuff from choking down my engine. But before it did, the ship spun uncontrollably in two or three violent revolutions before finally slamming down hard into the ground, right beside Willis.

I immediately chopped the throttle, jerked up the fuel shutoff knob, cut the master battery switch, and rolled out the cabin door. Parker, unhurt in the slam-down, jumped out of his backseat. We both looked up at the grisly strands of barbed concertina wire wound tightly around the Loach’s main rotor system. The tail rotor was gone altogether, having separated completely from the aircraft.

“Ah-h-h SHIT, sir!” Parker spat.

“Ah-h-h shit isn’t the half of it,” I sputtered. “Wait till I get my hands on that goddamned Willis!”

The enemy soldiers were going crazy with this new development—they now had two Loach crews down in their playpen. Bullets were flying everywhere around us, and I was madder than hell!

By this time, Willis was back up off the ground where he had thrown himself when he saw me spin in. He jumped into my face and hollered, “You stupid son of a bitch! What the hell are you doing crashing your stupid airplane into the goddamned concertina wire. You’re supposed to be rescuing me. Now you break up your aircraft, and here we both are with no way to get our asses out of this mess!”

I shoved my face right back into his. “You stupid son of a bitch. If you had picked a better landing zone we’d both be out of here by now and not standing around with two busted-up airplanes in the middle of a goddamned firefight!”

Rod burst out laughing. I started to grin. Then both of us were laughing hysterically over the sheer insanity of the situation.

Our crew chiefs, however, failed to see the humor. Stormer, with an ugly cut on the side of his head, had set up his M-60 and gone prone on one side of Willis and me. Parker had done the same on the other side. They were ready to chop down anything that moved toward us through the grass.

Stormer looked around over his shoulder at us. “Jesus Christ, sir, can we get the hell out of here? Come on, Lieutenant Willis, we need to get out of here before Charlie decides to come and get us!”

That snapped us back to reality. Rod and I hit the prone position and I grabbed Willis’s radio. “Hey, Three One,” I yelled, “One Six is now down with One Seven.”

“So I see, One Six,” Sinor came back. “Are you OK?”

“Both crews are OK,” I answered, “but I’ve got a main and tail rotor strike. We’ve got to get out of here. Gooks are close by. Keep the ARPs coming. We’ll sit tight till they get here. You copy?” He rogered.

Glued to the ground, we began to notice that hostile fire from the tree lines on both sides of us had stopped. The VC must have figured they had either gotten us or perhaps we had created so damned much fuss and confusion in cracking up two helicopters that Charlie had used the diversion to escape the area.

It was just a few minutes later that we began to hear the distant whop, whop, whop of Huey rotors. It was the ARPs coming inbound to get us.

I got on the emergency radio to Wayne McAdoo, who I knew would be in the lead slick. “Watch out, Two Six, we’re in an old fire base here. There’s an old tank run beside us. Set down on that road, because there’s all kinds of crud lying around in the elephant grass. I had a rotor strike from concertina wire in here.”

He rogered and moments later brought the ARPs flight of four slicks in on the old tank road about twenty yards away from us. The appearance of four more helicopter targets started the unfriendlies firing again, and they promptly drilled several AK-47 holes in McAdoo’s tail boom. As we raised our heads, trying to see through the elephant grass, the ARPs off-loaded and made their way over to us, sighting on the downed helicopters. The point man and his backups flared out around us and kept making their way toward the enemy tree line.

Then Bob Harris, whose headquarters element was always back in the middle of the platoon, came sauntering up. Obviously feeling that the enemy had gone, Four Six had his CAR-15 drooped over his shoulder, his helmet off (as usual), his bright red hair and freckled complexion shining like a mirror in the sun.

He walked over to Willis’s ship and took his time looking over the shot-up bird. “One Seven, what happened to you?”

“Damnit, Four Six, can’t you see that I got the holy heck shot out of me!”

Harris smiled, stroked his chin, and then asked me, “So-o-o, One Six, what in the hell are you doing here?”

“I just listened to Willis,” I answered, but before I could elaborate Rod cut in.

“Come on guys, cut the crap. I would like to go home!”

A couple of weeks later, we had the opportunity to worry about Rod Willis again. This time, however, he was hovering over an old French fort in the bush, rather than over a young Filipino lady in the 1st Aviation club.

On 25 October, Rod and I took our VR-1 and VR-2 teams up to Dau Tieng to scout the eastern side of the Michelin rubber plantation. It was an area where Charlie was always up to something.

Rod took the VR-1 slot that day and I stayed at Delta Tango to relieve him on station with the VR-2 team. I was monitoring the radios back at Dau Tieng as One Seven reached the eastern side of the plantation and dropped down low level to start his patterns.