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“Oh, Mr. Ritchie, that is sick,” Mondie spoke up. Being from New York City, Mondie had only seen meat in packages and not on the hoof.
Lovelace was a bit more practical. “Those chickens and pigs best not shit on my aircraft or that captain is going to be cleaning it up.” They did have a habit of doing that, especially if the guns were fired. Everyone hoped that wouldn’t be necessary. As they touched down, the captain came forward between Ritchie and Zuccardi.
“Here’s the location of each unit and their call signs. An American NCO is with each unit and will be monitoring the radio as well as talking to you.”
“That’s good, sir, as my Vietnamese is limited to ‘You number ten GI.’”
The captain chuckled and shook his head. “Then I suggest you don’t get captured anytime soon, Mr. Ritchie.”
“Don’t intend to, sir.”
“Okay, after your last resupply, refuel and come back here to shut down. I’ll be here to brief you on the next mission. Any questions?”
“No, sir, we’ve got it,” Ritchie said. With that, the captain exited the aircraft along with his Vietnamese counterpart, who addressed the Vietnamese soldiers standing next to the supplies to be loaded. As he walked away, they started loading everything.
“Lovelace, take the water cans first, and only thirty. Have them take the C-rations off until all the water cans are loaded.” As Lovelace had them start correcting the load, Ritchie turned to Zuccardi.
“Only want thirty water cans on the first lift until we see what the LZ is like. Thirty water cans gives you a manageable, efficient load for the first time in. It also gives them time to fill canteens before the second load so we can backhaul the empty cans. The first hover hole I went into with Cory was so bad we only got in with fifteen water cans. That was the hover hole from hell. You were on that one, weren’t you, Lovelace?”6
“No, sir. Lieutenant Cory had a habit of getting the worst hover holes every time. Use to scare the crap out of me. The worst I was with him on was a time with Grampa. That was the worst hole, and don’t you ever take us into one like that,” Lovelace whined.
“Your call, Lovelace. You can see back there; we can’t from up here. We just fly the aircraft, you tell us where to go.”
“We’re up, Mr. Ritchie,” Mondie indicated. The Vietnamese had the aircraft loaded with thirty water cans but couldn’t understand why that was all Ritchie was taking. Mental block and language barrier, Ritchie thought.
“Coming up,” Ritchie indicated as he raised the collective, and the aircraft came to a three-foot hover. Checking his power, he was satisfied that it was sufficient for the load and started forward, increasing speed and altitude. Climbing to twenty-five hundred feet, Zuccardi called the unit they were supporting on FM 2.
“Snake Six-One, Chicken-man One-Two, over.”
After a minute or so, they heard an American voice with a Southern drawl. “Chicken-man One-Two, Snake Six-One, go ahead.”
“Snake Six-One, Chicken-man One-Two is inbound to your location. Pop smoke.”
“Roger, smoke’s out.”
“Gads, that was quick,” Zuccardi commented.
“He was expecting us and had it ready to go. There it is,” Ritchie said. In the distance, red smoke appeared, drifting up on the side of a small clearing.
“Snake Six-One, I have Rosie Red smoke.”
“Affirmative, Chicken-man One-Two. Recommend you land north to south as we have light wind from the south. Tree height is lowest on the north side.”
“Roger, Snake Six-One,” Zuccardi responded. “Did you get that?” he asked Ritchie.
Ritchie was looking over the landing zone out the left side of the aircraft. “Yeah, but we need to be careful about going too far north. That border is right over there.” After a pause, he added, “Okay, we’ll make our approach north to south but tight over the landing zone. Left-hand pattern on this trip with ninety-degree turn to final. The LZ is partial filled with water, so we’ll go long over the water and land on the south side. Never land in a pond, but stay at a hover as you don’t know what’s just below the water level. Could be stumps or logs. Stay on your toes, guys.”
With that, Lovelace and Mondie raised their guns and began scanning the vegetation as Ritchie circled the LZ while losing altitude. As the aircraft continued downward in a wide spiral, Zuccardi sat looking over to the left, occasionally glancing at the instruments to see that all was normal. As the aircraft passed through three hundred feet, Ritchie lowered the collective more to accelerate the loss of altitude over the north end of the landing zone and decelerated rapidly, dropping into the landing zone. As soon as the aircraft was a few feet above the ground, the crew cleared him to land after ensuring that there were no stumps to poke holes in the fuel tanks or logs that would bend the skids. They also cleared the tail rotor so there were no tail rotor strikes, which could amount to having to replace the blade or cause a serious crash. Zuccardi started to reach for the controls out of habit, stopping short as Ritchie pulled in more collective, arresting the rapid descent and gently setting the aircraft on the ground. Zuccardi just sat there with a look of fright on his face. This was his first nonstandard flight school approach. He was learning to be a combat pilot now.
Ritchie looked over. “You don’t wanna be hanging around the treetops low and slow in the dead man zone when you have space to come in fast and settle in quickly. You g
ot to have airspeed or altitude and preferably both, but if you don’t have either and your engine quits, you’re going to have a bad day. When we get back and shut down, pull out the -10 and we’ll go over the dead man zone parameters.”7 In the meantime, Vietnamese soldiers were grabbing water cans and hunkering down beside them in anticipation of the rotor wash when the aircraft took off.
“You’re up, Mr. Ritchie,” Lovelace said as the last water can was removed. The crew cleared him to come up. Pulling up on the collective and easing the cyclic forward, Ritchie moved the aircraft up and forward, clearing the tops of the nearest trees by a few feet, at which time he increased his power but moved the cyclic forward rapidly, increasing airspeed instead of altitude.
“Let’s stay low-level back to the firebase. You have the aircraft.”
“I have it,” said Zuccardi as he took the controls.
