Low Level Hell Page 4

  As soon as we were on the air cav side of the runway, I noticed a big change in the way things looked. At least the drab paint color changed. Back on the battalion side, the numeral 1 was painted big and red everywhere; it represented the division's shoulder patch insignia. Here everything was painted red and white, U.S. Cavalry flag colors. I mean everything—the signs, the hootches, even the rocks on the ground that outlined the walkways. I said to myself, here's the good old cavalry pride and spirit; I'm really going to like this place!

  In front of the flight operations building, a large concrete sign announced Troop D (Air), 1st Squadron, 4th U.S. Cavalry—Darkhorse. I liked the name Darkhorse. It had pizzazz and said something about the flair and fighting spirit of the troop.

  On the runway I saw a lineup of sleek, new AH-1G Cobras and OH-6A scout ships. These were the first Cobras I had seen up close, but I knew that the armament they carried was awesome. They had the firepower to ruin the day of anyone on the receiving end. Their 7.62mm miniguns could pump out four thousand rounds a minute. Then there was the 40mm grenade launcher, and the arsenal of 2.75-inch rockets under each stubby little wing. That aircraft was like a flying tank!

  The troop first sergeant, Martin Laurent, met me at the door of the orderly room and relieved me of my duffel bag. The troop commander—Major Cummings—was right there also to shake my hand and introduce himself, then he pointed me into his office. Offering me a seat, he settled himself behind his desk. After studying me for a moment, he broke the silence. “Where you from, Mills?”

  “Arkansas, sir … Hot Springs.”

  He nodded and picked up my file that First Sergeant Laurent had laid on his desk. “I see you're an armor officer and right out of flight school. Do you have any special qualifications we should know about?” he asked, leaning back in his chair.

  “No,” I responded, “I'm basically qualified in utility aircraft with training as a gunship pilot. I'm not qualified in the Cobra, but I certainly would like to fly scouts. I've wanted to be a scout pilot ever since I first saw the OH-6A.”

  The major pushed even farther back in his chair, stroked his chin a couple of times, and then wrung his hands together. I could tell that this was not what he had in mind. “I appreciate knowing your feelings, Lieutenant,” he frowned, “but I don't have any vacancies in the scouts right now. What I do need is a lieutenant in the slick platoon.”

  Damn, I thought.

  “However,” he continued, “the platoon leader over in scouts is Lieutenant Herchert, and he might be moving over to flight operations one of these days soon. If that happens, I'll see to it that you get first crack at scouts.”

  After a bit more small talk, the major wound things up. “Mills, I'm assigning you to our lift platoon. Their mission is to airlift our aerorifle platoon using the Hueys. Any questions?”

  “No, sir,” I said, “I guess I'm the new guy, and I'd better learn what's going on in the lift section.” Then, lying through my teeth, I added, “Yes, sir, the lift platoon will be just fine.” All I could do was hope that the major picked up on my disappointment, and would remember my request for scouts as soon as there was an opening.

  As I left the Old Man's office, I met another lieutenant who was staríding in the orderly room. He turned to me. “Hi, you the new guy?”

  “Yes, my name's Mills and I'm going to the lift section.”

  “Great,” he said. “I'm Wayne McAdoo, assistant platoon leader for the slicks. We're called the Clowns, or the Flying Circus. Come on, I'll walk you over to the hootches and help you find a bunk.”

  McAdoo took me across a small drainage ditch to the troop officers' hootches. As I entered, I noticed that connecting the hootch to the next building in line was a large built-up bunker with no exterior entrance. Sandbags covered the whole thing from top to ground level. I was told that, in case of incoming rocket and artillery fire, we could dive into the bunker without having to go outside the hootch. The entrance hole was located right at the foot of my bunk.

  McAdoo helped me move my clothes into the wall locker, then suggested that we meet some of the other guys. Bunking across from me was a warrant officer dressed only in ragged cutoff khaki shorts and a pair of shower shoes. He was comfortably propped up on his bunk, listening to the rock music that flooded the room from the stereo player. Warrant Officer Bob Davis was from Barberton, Ohio, and a scout pilot. He had been in Vietnam for only two to three weeks. The more I looked at him, the more I was convinced that I had seen him someplace before. As it turned out, Davis had been in flight school at Fort Rucker at the same time I was.

  Everybody in the hootch was friendly, but nobody came rushing up to greet me. They just nodded approvingly, and invariably asked the same question: “Where are you assigned … slicks, guns, or scouts?” Continuing around the hootch with McAdoo, I next met Barney Stevens, a slick pilot and a warrant officer first class. Then there was 1st Lt. Dean Sinor, CW2. Benny Parker, and, finally, Capt. Don Trent. Sinor, Parker, and Trent were Cobra pilots in the gun platoon.

  It became obvious that the pilots didn't live together in their respective platoon hootches. Every hootch had a mixture of gun, scout, and slick pilots. There was no caste system; every man had the same basic living area, consisting of an army standard metal folding bunk with a book-thin mattress, covered with what looked to be a nylon camouflage poncho liner. Every man had a foot locker at the end of his bed, as well as an individual wall locker. And everybody—to a man—had a portable, pedestal fan. In each of the hootches was a small bar space with a hot plate, refrigerator, small storage area, and generally a television and a stereo set with tape deck. Not a bad setup for the middle of a war zone.

  The next person I met was Bob Harris, the aerorifle (ARP) platoon leader. He filled me in on the platoon's job and how his twenty-eight-man unit of select infantrymen fit into overall troop operations.

  Next stop was supply, where the first thing I was given was an APH-5 flight helmet. “It's supposed to be bullet resistant,” the supply sergeant told me. Next, I went to the arms room for the issue of a personal weapon. The armorer handed me the pilot's standard side arm, a .38-caliber model number 10 Smith and Wesson revolver. While he was shoving the .38 across the counter to me, I was studying the rack behind him, filled with .45 automatic pistols, 1911 Als, and M-16 and CAR-15 rifles. I was particularly intrigued by the CAR-15; it was a shortened version of the M-16 that had been developed for commando use.

  I pushed the .38 back across the counter. “I really don't want a revolver. How about one of those .45 s?”

  He looked a little surprised. “But, sir, not one of the pilots carries a .45.”

  I grinned at him. “But I'm just not one of the pilots, and I would rather have a .45.”

  “Lieutenant, you can have whatever side arm you want,” and he reached behind him for a .45 automatic and a couple of magazines of ammo.

  “And I would also like one of those CAR-15s.”

  “Sorry, sir, the CAR-15s are reserved for the Cobra and scout pilots.”

  “OK, then, how about an M-16?”

  I knew that the armorer was beginning to wonder just what kind of a first lieutenant he had run into. But he reached behind him, pulled out an M-16, and signed it out to me along with the .45. Most pilots coming into Vietnam for the first time probably didn't have a real preference as to what firearms they were issued. But I had been around guns all my life—my Uncle Billy had introduced me to guns as soon as I was old enough to hold one. I just felt more secure with a hardhitting .45 strapped on.

  The other equipment issued included flight suits, jungle boots, aircraft crewman's body armor, and a flare gun. Also a strobe light, survival kit, flight gloves, mosquito net, blankets … plus an item I'd never seen before—a blood chit—a large silk document with a big U.S. flag on it and paragraphs of information in several languages. As the supply sergeant handed it to me, he said, “If you get shot down and have to approach a Vietnamese for assistance, he'll be able to read on
e of these dialects and know that you're a downed American pilot in need of friendly help.” Oh, sure, I thought.

  The rest of that first afternoon was free and I used it to look around the field. Fortunately, I met one of the troop pilots who was about to fly an OH-6A down to the Saigon PX. He asked if I wanted to ride along. I couldn't jump in fast enough for my first in-country flight, and in a scout ship at that. I strapped myself in the left seat and immediately began surveying the instrument panel. It was much simpler than the Huey, which carried all kinds of navigational avionics.

  I noticed that the pilot and I were sitting in armored seats, which brought home the fact that I was now in a combat zone. There were tungston carbide plates beneath the seats, in the seat backs, and in a wraparound shield that provided partial armor protection to the pilot's right side, and the co-pilot's left side. “Chicken plate” was also worn to protect against rounds coming into the aircraft from the front. Of course, that still left your head, arms, and legs as targets of opportunity, but it was a lot better than nothing. Besides the armor protecting the pilot and observer, this combat-equipped OH-6 also had armored engine components, such as the fuel control and compressor unit.

  I was surprised by the short, amount of time it took the pilot to get the little OH-6 into the air. The pilot's hands raced through the pre-flight checks and engine start procedures. We were cranked, checking the tower for takeoff, and in the air before I would have even gotten around to putting my finger on the starter-ignition button.

  It was just a 20-minute flight down to Ben Hoa, which was the Air Force's big base at Saigon, located right next to Tan Son Nhut airport where I had come into country just six days ago. The Ben Hoa base was huge. You could probably see one of every kind of aircraft that the United States had in Vietnam at the time.

  We landed at a place called Hotel Alpha, a big, open area with a chain-link fence around it. Our approach was to the large blacktop pad inside the fence, followed by a short hover into one of the available parking spots.

  We checked our weapons with the security guard at the gate and walked across the street to the PX. (In later trips to the PX in Saigon, we would avoid checking our sidearms by sticking them under our clothes and telling the gate guard that we weren't carrying any. Or we would check them with the guard, but have “spares” conveniently stowed away. The command considered Saigon secure and didn't want soldiers wandering around with guns and no adult supervision, but we always felt more comfortable having our personal weapons on us.)

  We were back to the troop by about 1830, and I had logged my first in-country flight. One point three hours of co-pilot flying time. Not exactly airlifting troops to a hot LZ in a slick, but a thoroughly enjoyable trip in an OH-6 scout bird!

  My first breakfast in Delta Troop ended up being no breakfast at all. Instead, as I was walking up to the mess hall, all hell broke loose. In the stillness of that early morning, there was the heavy thud of an explosion from the direction of the ARP-crew chief hootch area. I froze.

  It was still very dark, at 5:30 A.M. that first morning after I was assigned into the unit. Though officers took their evening meal at the O club, everybody went to the troop mess hall for breakfast and lunch. I had just headed up the troop sidewalk from my hootch, and was adjacent to the orderly room.

  It sounded as though the explosion wasn't more than forty to fifty feet away. Then I heard screaming and cries of pain, telling even this fresh in-country newbie that somebody was badly hurt. My first instinct was to drop into a crouch beside the orderly room, pull out my .45, and chamber a round.

  Moments later a man ran around the corner of the building and suddenly appeared in the dark right in front of me. He looked Vietnamese—probably an enemy sapper who had infiltrated the base area and thrown the grenade I just heard.

  My .45 was up and on him. Shoot, I told myself, and my finger tightened on the trigger. But in that split second I somehow noticed that he was wearing U.S. camouflage fatigue pants, and boots—shined boots. No black pajamas or sandals!

  I released the trigger, and the man stumbled toward me and collapsed into my arms. He was bare chested and had small, bleeding pepper marks all over his upper body where he had evidently been hit by shrapnel. He was not dead, but his eyes were closed and he was obviously in shock and in a great deal of pain.

  He was Vietnamese all right, now that I could see his face close up. But why was he wearing our pants and boots?

  As I was trying to pull him over to the orderly room and prop him up against the wall, Bob Harris came running up from his hootch just around the corner, his CAR-15 at the ready. “What the hell's going on?” he demanded.

  “I don't know, but an explosion just went off back in there.” I pointed toward the ARP hootch area.

  Harris leaned down close to the man's face. “You OK, Toi? What happened?”

  “Holy shit! Is this one of your guys?”

  “Yes, he's one of my Kit Carson scouts.”

  “Thank God,” I groaned. “I nearly put a .45 round right between this guy's eyes. What do you want me to do now?”

  “You stay right here, and I'll go around this way and see what happened,” Harris snapped as he disappeared around the corner.

  A few minutes later, I learned that about six of our men had been hurt by what was thought to be an indiscriminate round that the enemy had lobbed into the ARP-crew chief hootch area. It had landed between the hootches where the men shaved and got cleaned up in the morning. Toi was one of them, and when he was hit by the enemy grenade shrapnel, he ran. Right into my arms.

  In just over one day at Phu Loi, I had already seen evidence of my first enemy fire, and had almost shot one of the ARP platoon leader's prized Kit Carson scouts—former Viet Cong who became indispensable members of our fighting units and were always in short supply.

  For the next four days Wayne McAdoo served as my mentor, showing me things that flight school didn't teach—such as how to land with your tail rotor shot out, combatlike autorotations, tricks of flying under in-country conditions—techniques that were not yet in the books.

  I flew more than seven hours in the command pilot's seat of Wayne's UH-1D while he sharpened me up for the in-country check flight. I wasn't too rusty, but it had still been about two months since I had actually been at the controls of a Huey.

  Shortly thereafter, I was checked out and declared ready for immediate piloting duty in the lift platoon. As it happened, however, there wasn't yet room for me there. Not for a week or ten days, until a couple of the guys were rotated back home. Without a permanent slick piloting job, I got my only flying duty in C and C. The usual purpose of these flights was to transport squadron and troop commanders to base camps, fire bases, and night defensive positions (NDPs) for conferences with ground commanders. I flew maybe four C and C missions before a regular piloting opportunity opened up for me to airlift the ARPs.

  As much as I grew to admire the work done by those guys in the aerorifle platoon, I never did like being a slick driver for them. Every day during that stint, I watched the early morning hunter-killer visual reconnaissance (VR) teams take off, heading out to find and engage the enemy. I desperately wanted to go.

  The plight of the slick pilot was to sit on the ground and wait. Wait until the scout uncovered some sort of enemy activity that warranted the Cobra relaying the pulse-pounding call back to the base: “Scramble the ARPs!” Sometimes we took the ARPs directly into an LZ, but sometimes the order would be to just move the aerorifle platoon out of Phu Loi to another base closer to the point of action. After getting them to the new location, we'd just shut down the aircraft and wait for the possibility of a later call to move them into the action zone.

  So, again, we'd wait. We'd read, sleep, maybe crawl up on the doghouse of the Huey to get a little suntan. And wait.

  CHAPTER 3

  SCOUTS

  By the middle of March ‘69, being a slick driver looked as though it might become my life's profession. Not a day passed that
I didn't wonder if Major Cummings had forgotten all about moving me to scouts. But while I was flying slicks, and wishing for scouts, I was learning. I was getting some in-country experience that helped me dry out a bit behind the ears.

  I was becoming familiar with the 1st Division's tactical area of operational responsibility (TAOR). Vietnam's III Corps geography (war zones C and D) was getting pretty familiar to me: from the city of Saigon, the Dog Bone, and VC Island in the south to, roughly, Phuoc Vinh on the east, the Cambodian Parrot's Beak and Fishhook to the west on up to the Cambode border on the north.

  And I learned about going into hot LZs with enemy AK rounds tearing through the airframe, staying “in trail” while all hell broke loose around you. Though I desperately wanted out of Hueys and into OH-6s, I knew that I'd never sell slick pilots short on raw determination and basic courage. Slicks were not gunships. They weren't equipped with the firepower to deal with an enemy trying to shoot you out of the sky. The mission was to breach the enemy ground fire, stay in trail formation, touch down in that LZ long enough for the ARPs to jump out of the ship (usually no longer than about three seconds), and then get the hell out of Dodge. At fifteen hundred feet or more, where ground fire wasn't a hazard, most Huey pilots kept their seats adjusted high enough to see well out of the cockpit. But as their ships hit final into the landing zone, the pilots would pop the vertical adjustment so that the seat dropped down inside the seat armor plate. When the seat was all the way down, the top of the armor shield was just about at eye level—eyeball defilade, we called it. Then, when enemy rounds cracked through the aircraft, only your legs, part of your arms, and the top of your head were outside the armor plate. The front of your body was protected by the “chicken plate,” and the .45 holster, tucked neatly between your legs, protected your masculinity.

  In addition, I learned how to plot and call artillery strikes on a hostile target to neutralize the area before taking a flight of Hueys into the landing zone. And, on the ground, I also gained fame as the greatest rat killer in the history of hootch number 28, having some legendary face-offs with the very large Vietnamese rodent.