Hugh Mills - Low Level Hell

Harrell—typically not wearing his helmet—was crawling on the tank bust, M-16 in his right hand and dragging his shrapnel-riddled left arm beside him. Every few seconds, he’d pull himself up on his knees, brace his rifle on his bloody left arm, and fire off a burst down the trail to his southeast. He had plenty of targets down that way—and they could easily overrun his position and split the ARP blocking force.

It was a frustrating situation. The Cobras had worked up some artillery, and Sidewinder Two Two had been called to the scene to order up some of his fast movers. But we couldn’t use any of that muscle until Harrell could get organized and tell us where our friendlies were located on the ground. Time was running out. It didn’t look to me as though Four Six could hold much longer against what was surely a very large force hammering against his flank.

There was only one thing I could think of that might help relieve some of the pressure. It was not exactly a happy thought, but it was the only one I had at the moment.

I keyed the intercom to Parker. “OK, Jimbo,” I said, “we’ve been here before. The only thing I know to do is get back in there low and slow, make ourselves enough of a pain in Charlie’s ass that he pays more attention to us and leaves Four Six alone long enough to get his people reorganized.”

I got back two quick squelches from Parker’s intercom. He understood and was ready.

As I hovered back toward the trail, I hit the intercom again. “If you can definitely identify the enemy and can make a positive shot, fire at will, but don’t hang it out too far. I’m hanging it out far enough for both of us. Here we go!”

I hovered in toward the contact point at a very low airspeed, fish-tailing the boom and rocking the aircraft back and forth as I went. As I figured, the heavy fire was suddenly diverted to us. We began to take hits; we could hear and feel the rounds crashing through the Loach’s skin and passing through the open interior of the ship.

I yelled to Harrell on the FM freq. “I’m trying to draw the fire away from you. Get your people into one area. Get yourself reorganized into a position so we know where you are and can shoot.”

I could see Four Six trying to drag himself along the trail. His RTO, who had also been hit, was crawling slowly behind his platoon leader, painfully trying to keep up.

Still taking intensive enemy fire, I hovered right in over Harrell and looked him square in the face. He was badly hurt. I could see the anguish in his eyes. His left arm and hand looked like punctured raw meat, covered with blood and red dust from the trail.

He let his RTO catch up with him, then grabbed the radio handset. “We’re in deep shit, One Six. I think I’ve got only about twenty men left to hold them off. They’re trying to overrun us. Every time we move, they come at us again.”

I empathized with him, but there still wasn’t a damned thing more I could do. If the enemy had chosen that very moment to overrun our people down there, we couldn’t have fired a single shot for fear of shooting into the midst of our own soldiers.

The stalemate continued for almost another thirty minutes. I would draw away from the trail for a minute or so, then run back in to decoy Charlie’s fire. The ship was taking terrific punishment, but neither Parker nor I had been hit. Somehow, that sturdy little OH-6 just kept on flying.

The time was enough, however, for Harrell to get his people consolidated and organized on the trail. His earlier guess was accurate—he had only about twenty ARPs left to try to keep the enemy at bay.

Suddenly Four Six’s voice boomed into my phones. “Fire’s picking up, One Six. I think they’re pushing… I think they’re coming!”

I looked down. Harrell was standing up in the middle of the trail, pointing his weapon to his southeast and letting go with a full magazine of ammo. All his other ARPs were firing off in the same direction. The lid was obviously coming off.

I yelled at Parker. “Open up. Do what you can… fire at will!”

We found ourselves sitting on top of one of the fiercest firefights I had ever seen. We, of course, couldn’t see the enemy, or whether Parker’s barking 60 was knocking any of them down, but it was obvious that our twenty friendlies were holding off a much larger force… and could be overwhelmed at any second.

Four Six finally got enough of a breather to talk to me again, in a calm but noticeably apprehensive voice. “We got a lot of people down here, One Six. I shit you not, we got a whole lot of people, and they’re trying to flank us. They’re moving off the trail and heading northeast on our flank. My God, there’s a lot of people down here!”

“Four Six, One Six. How many people have you got?”

“More than a hundred,” he answered.

I silently mimicked his, my God! This was the largest concentration of enemy troops we had ever jumped in the field. And here we were not able to shoot at them, not even able to see them as they prowled around in the jungle.

Harrell came back again. “One Six, they’re definitely moving toward the northeast. They’re trying to move around me on my east flank and head on up north. What in the hell is up there that they want to get to so bad?”

While airborne, scouts never had the free hands or time to even look at a map, but Harrell’s question caused me to reach for mine. I cradled the collective on my knee, then reached around with my left hand to pull the chart out of its pocket, located between the two pilot seats. I probably looked like a juggler in his first talent show as I tried to watch where I was going, handle the controls, and spread out the map.

But I managed it, and my eye quickly went to the grid where the ARPs were located on the tank bust trail. Looking north of that point about two hundred yards, I saw a little stream that apparently carried runoff water down south; at that point, the stream ran mostly east and west through some pretty rough terrain. It looked to me as though the stream formed a natural obstacle that the enemy would have to cross in order to escape north to the Michelin.

I decided that was a fine place to throw in some heavy stuff. Even though it was only a couple of hundred yards from our friendlies, we could blow up everything around the stream at that point and contain the enemy’s flight.

I called up the FAC to set the plan in motion. “Sidewinder Two Two, this is Darkhorse One Six. You see where the Little Blue crosses through that low area just north of the ARPs about two hundred yards?”

He answered in his now-familiar Aussie twang. “Roger, One Six. I got it.”

“OK, then,” I continued, “I’ve got heavy enemy troops moving that way from the south, probably a hundred or more on the run, trying to flank our friendlies and didi to the rubber. You work up your first set of fast movers and I’ll make one pass over and give you a smoke.”

Sidewinder rogered, and I headed into a big sweeping right turn over the area just south of the streambed. As I looked down, I saw whole groups of underbrush and bushes, but they were moving! The “bushes” were, in fact, enemy soldiers with camouflage capes across their backs. They were obviously the lead element of enemy troops who had flanked Harrell’s ARPs.

No wonder Four Six had his hands full. His little unit of twenty riflemen was all that stood between what must have been a battalion of bad guys and their otherwise open and clear flight path.

As I passed low over the stream, I yelled to Parker. “Smoke… drop the smoke… now!” and the red smoke canister was on its way.

I keyed Sidewinder. “Hit the smoke… red smoke is out. Enemy troops are moving north-northeast.”

Sidewinder came right back. “Negative smoke… negative smoke!”