“Roger, Roaring Tiger, that’s good enough for me. Let me take a look at your Lima Zulu and see what we can do. Can you pop smoke? Go.”
Yankee Papa, now nearly overhead, began a lazy orbit as we prepared to mark our LZ, it being the small clearing extending downward from just below the top of the hill upon which we stood. Unfortunately, the hill’s level crest was not part of the clearing.
“Slope’s too great for him to set it down, sir. I’ll bet on it,” Sergeant Luden commented.
May be right, Ken,” I replied, “but it’s his call. All we can do is mark it for him and hope.”
He nodded in agreement, pulled the pin on a purple smoke grenade, and threw it down the hill, where it came to rest in a clump of dry elephant grass.
“Roger, Roaring Tiger,” Yankee Papa transmitted, moments later.
“Got your grape. Let me give it a quick looksee. Stand by.”
After orbiting us once more at a lower altitude, he said, “Okay, Roaring Tiger. Think we can do it, but that hill falls off pretty damn fast, so I’ll be setting down as close to the top of it as I can. I’m coming in now.”
It almost worked. Yankee Papa attempted to land his cumbersome bird parallel to the side of the hill as near to its wooded, fairly level crest as possible. Creating a mighty backwash, it descended slowly, not more than fifteen meters from where we stood watching.
The H-34 is a three-wheeled helicopter, its two weight-bearing wheels on the front of the aircraft’s fuselage. As Yankee Papa’s left-front wheel touched and began settling into the hill’s soft upper slope, its rightfront wheel, facing downhill, remained suspended above the ground.
The helicopter started to tilt dangerously. Its pilot, belatedly recognizing that the hill’s slope was too great, attempted to throttle back up and lift off again. But it was too late. Increasing the engine’s RPM merely amplified the aircraft’s downhill cant, hastening the inevitable.
The helicopter momentarily lifted itself off the ground and then, suspended in air and as if in slow motion, lazily rolled over on its side, its belly facing us and its main rotary blades—still spinning at top pitch—nearly perpendicular to the earth below. We watched in shock as it went plunging, crashing down the side of the hill. Within seconds the whirling blades struck the jungle’s edge at the base of the clearing, throwing foliage, tree limbs, dirt, and dust into the air.
Suddenly one of the main rotary blades freed itself from the aircraft’s engine and, along with other debris, spiraled upward toward where we stood. It crashed to the ground ten to fifteen feet in front of us.
Then, for a brief moment, an eerie silence settled over the landing zone. The helicopter was obscured in a haze of dust and smoke at the base of the hill.
“Jesus H. Christ!” Luden said.
“Oh, shit!” I said.
“Think we’re gonna need us another dust off, Skipper,” Kipler commented, grinning at the two of us somewhat oddly.
“Uh… you got that right, Chief,” I replied. Then, with the plight of the helicopter’s crew in mind, I turned to Luden, only to find he had already grabbed a couple of the nearest Nungs and was on his way down the hill.
Turning back to Kipler, I said, “Kip, get hold of base and tell ’em what happened. Tell ’em to pass it on to Yankee Papa in Danang. Tell ’em we’re gonna need a dust off. Tell ’em… oh, shit, just give ’em a sitrep. Okay?”
“Right, mate,” he responded, as I began running down the hill after Luden.
I had moved but thirty meters or so before my right foot suddenly gave way from under me, and I felt a stabbing pain in my ankle. Retrieving my foot from the hole into which it had plunged, I saw a long slender bamboo spike protruding from my canvas jungle boot just below the ankle.
Holy mother of Mary! A goddamn pungi trap. What else can go wrong? I reached down and pulled the spike from the side of my foot.
Continuing down the hill toward the crash site, I ran into Ken, his Nungs, and Yankee Papa’s crew moments later. The crew, carrying the helicopter’s M-60 machine guns, appeared to be unhurt.
“Hey, sir, goddamn miracle. Not a scratch on any of ’em,” Ken said. But he was limping badly.
“Uh… yeah, got a little problem here,” he said, noting my concerned look and pointing to his right foot. It was much worse than my minor wound. The entire side of his boot and the flesh underneath lay open as if cut by a surgeon’s scalpel.
“Fell into a damn pungi trap. You believe that? You believe anyone could be that fucking clumsy?” he said.
“Uh… yeah, I do, Ken,” I replied. “And we got to get you out of here. Your whole foot’s laid open!”
“Sir, it’s really not that bad, and I’d prefer to stick with the patrol. Couple pills, a battle dressing—I can make it.”
AR Of course we both knew he couldn’t. However, before I could say anything else, the pilot of our bent and broken helicopter, a Marine Corps captain, came forward and with a stoic expression asked, “Who’s in charge of this circus?”
“I am, I guess, sir,” I replied.
“Well, Lieutenant—you are a lieutenant, I presume, noting that discolored bar on your collar—you owe the United States Marine Corps seventy-five thousand dollars for one H-34 helicopter. Now how do you like them apples?”
As I looked at him aghast, he smiled and said, “Hey, Army, just joking. My fault, and don’t worry about it. Worthless piece of shit anyway, outlived its usefulness. Ah, now, have you called anybody ‘bout getting us out of here?”
I told him we had, and we continued up the hill together. Nearing its top, just feet from where Kipler was standing, we were suddenly, apparently, taken under fire by an unseen enemy.
Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!
We hit the ground.
“Where’s it coming from?” I yelled to Kipler.
“Coming from our LZ, Skip,” he replied, standing above us and smiling as if this was turning out to be a pretty good day after all.
“Your marking grenade landed in some dead elephant grass down there. The bird’s backwash blew us up a bit of a fire, which is now burning in a clump of bamboo. Mates, that’s bloody bamboo you hear exploding.”
He paused momentarily, allowing us time to regain our composure and to laugh at ourselves as we did so—although on the whole there was really very little to laugh about.
“Skip, called base and gave ’em a sitrep,” he continued. “Sanford [the team’s communications sergeant] just called back and said Danang’s gonna have a Huey out here in thirty minutes or so. Same time, I told him to pass on that the crew’s okay.”
While waiting for the Huey, Kipler pulled me aside and suggested I accompany the others back to Danang to have my foot taken care of.
“May not be bothering you much right now, sir, but I promise you it’ll be hurting like hell later on.”
“No way, Kip! You’d be left as the only round eye on the op, and Nungs or no Nungs, we don’t do things like that. ‘Sides, it’s a very minor cut. Once we get these people out of here, I’ll take a couple no-sweat pills, slap a battle dressing on it, and be as good as new.”
He smiled as if he knew better but said, “Okay, Skipper. You’re the boss.”
The sun had set and darkness was rapidly approaching when we heard the Huey overhead. Although I suppose one could argue as to which of us had proven ourselves least qualified to land a helicopter on our downward-sloping LZ, I decided to ask our visiting Marine captain, the pilot of the downed H-34, to bring the Huey in. He at least spoke the Huey pilot’s language. Besides, if the government should find me liable for the loss of its H-34, one helicopter was all I could afford on lieutenant’s pay.
After talking to the airborne Huey a couple of minutes, the captain turned to us and said, “Okay, he’s gonna land in basically the same attitude I did.”