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“Where and how many?” I asked.
“Over on the north side of the road in the bamboo. Must be fifty guys, and they’re digging, it looks like,” he indicated.
I refocused my eyes and sure enough, there these guys were.
“Hey, Sergeant Davidson, do you see those guys down there?” I asked the psyops soldier.
“Yes, sir. That’s an NVA unit we’re attempting to Chieu Hoi,” he replied.
“The hell with this. Instead of talking them out, let’s hit them with some artillery to convince them,” I said.
“Sir, we can’t do that. We have to talk them out.” Sergeant Davison sounded stressed.
Now this was the third time I was clearly seeing the enemy, the first being back on the river flying Night Hunter Killer, and I couldn’t shoot at those guys from some bullshit reason. Dave had been recently killed, in part by these guys and in part by the engineer battalion commander. It reminded me of a popular cartoon at the time of two vultures sitting on a tree limb; one says to the other, “Patience my ass, I want to kill something.” I wanted to kill something.
“Sergeant Davidson, I don’t think they can really hear what he’s saying flying up here. I’m going to take us down a bit so they can better hear him. Also, a lower altitude will let you concentrate your leaflet drop better,” I informed him.
“Damn, that would be great, Mr. Cory. None of the other pilots will go below twenty-five hundred feet. The best altitude is fifteen hundred.”
“Fifteen hundred, you say. Yeah, I can do that. These guys want to surrender.” And I lowered the power and switched my communications so only my copilot could hear what I was saying.
“Pete, tune in Quan Loi Artillery. Plot this location and give them a ‘be prepared’ fire mission.” He looked at me with a question but said nothing.
“Hey, Sergeant Davidson, we’re at fifteen hundred. How’s this?” I asked.
“This is great, sir. Although Captain Ngnan is a bit nervous at being this low,” he replied. Sergeant Davidson and Captain Ngnan were having a vigorous conversation in the back with Captain Ngnan pointing out the aircraft, shouting at Sergeant Davidson and looking at me. I didn’t speak Vietnamese, so I had no idea what his problem was. I just flew my aircraft, but I had my suspicions.
“Mr. Cory,” Sergeant Davidson said, “Captain Ngnan is worried that they may start shooting at us as we’re lower than he likes. He wants you to fly higher.”
“Tell Captain Ngnan that these guys want to Chieu Hoi and he just needs to talk a bit more convincing. I’m sure he can talk them out onto the road,” I replied. Sergeant Davidson went back to a conversation with Captain Ngnan, who was really looking upset.
“Taking fire!” screamed Specialist Francis, my door gunner. I banked hard out of the orbit but held altitude. Sure enough, about four or five green tracers were coming up at us, but none were accurate enough to hit us. Before I could say anything, Francis, who was now looking straight down as I made the hard right turn out of the orbit, opened up with his M60 machine gun into the group of guys on the ground. More fire came up towards us. I pulled in some more power and took a wider orbit.
“Quan Loi Arty, Chicken-man One-Niner, fire mission,” my copilot called into the radio.
“Chicken-man One-Niner, Quan Loi Arty, send it, over.”
About two minutes later, Captain Ngnan was having a shit fit as the first rounds impacted on the road intersection. As the second flight of six rounds was adjusted and landed in the middle of the group, Sergeant Davidson was in panic mode. “Mr. Cory, you can’t be hitting them with arty. They’re supposed to surrender.”
“Sergeant Davidson, my first responsibility is to the safety of my crew while accomplishing the mission. They started shooting at us, which told me they had no intention of surrendering. You told me you wanted an altitude of fifteen hundred feet, and that’s what I was flying when they fired first. I was just protecting my aircraft and doing what you asked. You may want to tell Captain Ngnan that I bet they’re more receptive to his speech now. I’ll take us back up to twenty-five hundred and continue to orbit if you like.”
Captain Ngnan was in no mood to continue his speech and indicated that he wanted to go back to Quan Loi. When we reached Quan Loi, the psyops captain, US, was waiting for us. Captain Ngnan started jabbering and pointing at me. They were taking the equipment out of the aircraft when the captain came over and climbed on the skids.
“You know Captain Ngnan isn’t real happy with you, don’t you?” he asked.
“Hey, sir, he doesn’t write my efficiency report. Did what was asked and protected my aircraft and crew, yours too,” I replied.
“Well, I guess we’ll have to write this one up as a mission failure,” he said with a smile on his face, and he patted me on the shoulder as he departed my aircraft. He was an infantry officer in a shitty job.
The next psyops mission was almost a payback. We flew to Tay Ninh on the northwestern side of the division operations area. We had worked in this area several months before but hadn’t been back in some time. Landing, we were met by the psyops team on the helipad. No loudspeaker this time, just boxes of leaflets—lots of boxes. As they loaded, the team leader, a sergeant first class, broke out a map. I could see he was an infantry grunt as well. He wore a First Cavalry Division patch on both shoulders, which told me this wasn’t his first tour in Vietnam.
“Sir, we need to fly to this location, and we’re going to drop leaflets,” he said as he pointed at his map.
“Okay.” I got out my map and started plotting the location. “Holy shit. This puts us right on the Cambodian border, if not over!”
“Yes, sir. And could we fly at, say, eight or nine thousand feet?”
“What? At that altitude, those leaflets will be scattered all over Vietnam and Cambodia as well. We never fly that high.”
