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“Roger, Flight. Let’s head south back to Jamie,” I called out.
“Song Be Arty, Chicken-man One-Niner, fire mission?”
And we turned the rest of the destruction over to the King of Battle, after we told him where to place his balls. Returning to the TOC, we briefed the S-3 on the mission and told him we were done for the night as the weather was starting to turn for the worse and the flare ship wasn’t instrument equi
pped to fly in bad weather. We had a good night.
The next day, others did not fare so well. Bill Hess was breaking in a new platoon leader, an RLO, in to flying in Cambodia. The mission was a resupply with fifteen water cans and two priests on board. Chaplains in general and priests in particular were not seen very often going into company locations. Bill was letting the lieutenant make the first approach into a hover hole that was really not much of a problem as it was a natural clearing surrounded by bamboo, which was also surrounding a small metal-roofed house.
“Slow your approach, you’re coming in a bit hot,” Bill instructed the lieutenant.
As the lieutenant started to decelerate, the aircraft experienced a low side compressor stall and began to lose power, settling rapidly. The lieutenant was pulling up the collective, trying to keep from crashing, which only increased the loss of power and the rapid descent. Bill didn’t have time to react as they were running out of airspeed and altitude and were inside the dead man’s curve. They crashed into the roof of the house and rolled over, with the rotor blades chopping bamboo like a giant lawn mower. When things stopped, everyone was hanging upside down and suspended about ten feet in the air on a pillow of bamboo. The biggest fears were fire and being impaled on a bamboo spear when they released their seat belts. Eventually everyone got out okay. It must have been the fact that priests were hard to come by and God did not want to lose two to Bill and the lieutenant.
Chapter 43
Rock Island East
Almost every day, new cache sites were being discovered and they were huge, covering three and four acres in size. One was so large it was named Rock Island East. Located north of Loc Ninh, the amount of materiel in each site was too much to haul out so it had to be destroyed in place. Tons of rice; million rounds of small-arms ammunition; new medical supplies that had been flown into Cambodia on Air France and then trucked to these sites. There were twenty-seven bunkers on Rock Island East and each was so large that it took an eighty-man unit one day to clean out just one of these bunkers. This was just too much to evacuate, and it had to be destroyed. The seven-man demolition team brought three hundred cases of C-4 plastic explosives, with thirty sticks to a case; twelve cases of det cord with three rolls to a case and one thousand feet per roll. In addition, the NVA were not far away and were probing the demolition crew’s work.
From Bu Dop, a loud rumbling noise could be heard in the distance. Unlike an arc light bombing run, which rumbled for a good minute, this was just one noise that dissipated quickly. About thirty minutes later, four aircraft from C Company arrived with their commander, Major Lawson, as the flight leader.
I had flown with his company before on a couple of air assault insertions. He led all his company’s air assault missions. I liked flying with this group as he was a squared-away commander in my book and kept the mission as well as the safety of the flight crews in mind, maintaining a balance. I was supposed to join his flight for an assault later in the day and would just be waiting here for that mission to kick off. Might as well let him know I was here, so I walked over to his aircraft, where he was just opening a C-ration meal.
“Hey, sir, Chicken-man One-Nine, attached to you for this afternoon’s flight.” Naturally I saluted as I approached.
Returning my salute, he said, “Dan, how you doing? Glad to have you with us today. Want a C?”
“I think I’ll pass on that, sir.” Looking over the aircraft that came in with him, I noticed only four. “Sir, I thought this was going to be a six-ship lift. We missing someone?” I asked.
“Yeah, I had a bird earlier go down for maintenance and am waiting for a replacement to get up here.” He started chuckling. “I got to tell you the damnedest story. Sit down.” He slid over a foot so we both could sit in the cargo door.
“Do you remember watching Keystone Cops when you were a kid?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, this morning it was that, Keystone Cops. We had five ships to pick up the demo team located at Rock Island East. The PZ was a three-ship, so we went in three and two. The demo charges were all set, and the NCOIC of the demo team, MSG Land, lit the fuses as the last two aircraft came in. Not a problem, the fuses had a ten-minute burn.
“MSG Land strolls back and climbs aboard Chalk Four and they start to come out. As Four pulls power, it starts bleeding off. He can’t get off the ground with his load, and he is not overloaded. I’m sitting up at twenty-five hundred and watching this. Land jumps out of the aircraft and walks—walks, mind you—over to the burning fuses, about twenty-five yards, and starts cutting them. In the meantime the crew chief is our working on the engine.
“As Land walks back to the aircraft, the crew chief closes the cowling and tells the pilot they’re good to go. Land gets to the aircraft and the pilot tells him to light the fuses, so he walks back, lights them and moves back to the aircraft, only now the fuses will blow in seven minutes. He gets in the aircraft; they start to lift and again no power. Pilot tells Land to cut the fuses. Land hops out, as does the crew chief, and this time Land is trotting over to the fuses.
“About this time a charge that was set to blow, keeping the NVA away, goes off on the far side of the site. Someone set it off. Land lights the fuses and trots back to the aircraft. They attempt to take off and still can’t. Pilot sends Land back to cut the fuses again, and this time he’s jogging over to the burning fuses. He cuts them and jogs back to the aircraft. Just as he gets to the aircraft, the pilot must have told him to go back and light the fuses because he takes off in a sprint back to the fuses.
“We can see some gooks on the far side of the site, moving cautiously as another charge went off that was booby-trapped. Land gets to the fuses, which now only have a four-minute burn because he’s cut them three times. He lights them and is sprinting back to the aircraft. They try to come out, but still the bird won’t get off the ground, so the pilot kicks him off with two other and they go back to Chalk Five. They climb in and Chalk Five can’t get off now because he’s overloaded, so he kicks those three out and tells them he’ll come back.
“As he’s coming out of the PZ, and without telling anyone, Chalk Three, who dropped his pax off, comes over the trees and lands. Land and team jump in, and Land tells the pilot he has one minute before it blows. Land had figured he was going to die right there from the blast with everything going off at once. That aircraft with only three pax came out of the PZ so fast it had to be a record. Pilot said he pulled forty-three pounds of torque and the aircraft shot out of there. He figured that the shock wave was going to kill them even in flight.”
“Did they get out of there okay?” I asked, my eyes the size of saucers.
“Yeah, they were fine. When we got to Firebase Buttons and dropped everyone off, people there said they saw the mushroom cloud over Rock Island East, fifty klicks away.”
“Sir, I think we heard it here and we’re about that far as well. Must have been a hell of an explosion,” I said, shaking my head.
“It was, and one that I don’t ever want to be around again,” Major Lawson said. “Well, I have a flight brief to get up at the TOC. See you later.” And he stood and headed to the Brigade TOC.
Walking back to my aircraft, I was wondering why they just didn’t drop a stick of B-52 bombs on the place. Wouldn’t be much left after that.
Chapter 44
