The next morning at our briefing, we learned that the French owner of the real tea plantation next door had complained.
“To the VC?” Connors asked from the back of our crowd of forty pilots assembled in the Big Top.
“No, not to the VC, to us,” said Williams. “He says that our being so close to his farm is going to cause him damage. He wants us to move the refueling depot and the troops.”
“Are we?” somebody asked.
“I don’t know. The Colonel went to see him this morning.”
“Unbelievable!” Connors said. Williams stiffened as Connors continued. “We’re donating lives to free this stupid country, and that French asshole is still paying off the VC and doesn’t want us to get our scummy army too close to his tea bushes. I think we should accidentally napalm the cocksucker!”
Williams ignored Connors and continued the briefing, but a lot of us agreed with Pat.
As it turned out, we didn’t napalm him; nor did we move the depot. The Cav simply agreed to stay away from his plantation. We were instructed to avoid flying over the place, especially at low level.
“The longest week began on a sun-drenched Sunday morning in a small clearing, designated Landing Zone X-Ray, in the Chu Pong foothills. Intelligence had long suspected the Chu Pong massif of harboring a large Communist force fed from the Cambodian side of the border. X-Ray seemed like a likely spot to find the enemy, and so it was.” I read this in Time, the week after the Tea Plantation incident.
The results of nearly two weeks of searching and probing by the Cav were hundreds of dead NVA soldiers and a very good idea of where to find the main force of three NVA regiments. On November 14 our battalion lifted the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry (Custer’s old unit) into LZ X-Ray, where they were expected to make contact. Our sister company, the Snakes, made the first assault in the morning and received very little opposition. By early afternoon, though, the two companies of the Seventh Cav they had lifted in had been surrounded, and suffered heavy casualties. Our company was assigned to support the Snakes, to lift in reinforcements.
We picked up the troopers at the Tea Plantation, eight to each Huey. It was easy to tell where we were going. Although we were still fifteen miles away, the smoke was clearly visible from all the artillery, B-52 bombers, and gunship support concentrated around the LZ to keep the grunts from being overrun. As we cruised over the jungles and fields of elephant grass, I had the feeling this was a movie scene: the gentle rise and fall of the Hueys as we cruised, the perspective created by looking along the formation of ships to the smoke on the horizon, the quiet. None of the crews talked on the radios. We all listened to the urgent voices in the static as they called in air strikes and artillery on their own perimeters, then yelled that the rounds were hitting in their positions.
LZ X-Ray could accommodate eight Hueys at once, so that was how the ships were grouped in the air. Yellow and White in the first group; Orange and Red in the second. Leese and I were Red Two. As we got closer to X-Ray, the gap between us and the first group got bigger to allow time for them to land, drop off the troopers, and take off.
Five miles away, we dropped to low level. We were flying under the artillery fire going into the LZ.
A mile ahead of us, the first group was going over the approach end of the LZ and disappearing into the smoke. Now the radios came alive with the pilots’ calling in where the fire was coming from. The gunners on all the ships could hear this. Normally it was helpful, but this time, with the friendlies on the ground, they could not fire back. Yellow and White were on the ground too long. The artillery still pounded. The massif behind the LZ was completely obscured by the pall of smoke. We contin ued our approach. Leese was on the controls. I double- or triple-checked my sliding armor panel on my door side and cursed the army once again for not giving us chest protectors. I put my hands and feet near the controls and stared at the scene.
“Orange One, abort your landing. Fire in the LZ is too heavy,” a pathfinder called from X-Ray. Orange flight turned, and we followed. There was a whole bunch of yelling on the radios. I heard two ships in the LZ call out that they were hit badly. What a mess. Orange flight led us in a wide orbit two miles away, still low level. Now A1-E’s from the air force were laying heavy fire at the front of the LZ along with the artillery and our own gunships. What kept everybody from flying into each other I’ll never know. Finally we heard Yellow One call to take off, and we saw them emerge from the smoke on the left side of the LZ, shy two ships. They had waited in the heavy fire while the crews of the two downed ships got on the other Hueys. One crew chief stayed, dead. One pilot was wounded.
We continued the orbit for fifteen minutes. I looked back at the grunts who were staring at the scene. They had no idea what was going on, because they had no headsets.
“Orange One, make your approach,” the pathfinder called. Apparently a human-wave attack by the NVA on the LZ was stopped. “Orange One, all eight of the ships in your two flights are keyed to pick up wounded.” “Keyed” meant that they had groups of wounded positioned to be loaded first.
“Roger. Red One copy?”
“Red One roger.”
Orange One rolled out of the orbit and we followed. The A1-E’s were gone, but our gunships came back to flank us on the approach. Even with the concentration of friendlies on the ground, the gunships could fire accurately enough with their flex guns and rockets, so the grunts allowed them to. Our own door gunners were not allowed to fire unless they saw an absolutely clear target.
We crossed the forward tree line into the smoke. The two slicks that had been shot down were sitting at the front of the LZ, rotors stopped. That made it a little tight for eight of us to get in, but it was okay. The grunts jumped off even before the skids hit the ground. Almost before our Hueys had settled into the grass, other grunts had dumped wounded men, some on stretchers, into our ships. No fire. At least nothing coming our way. Machine guns and hundreds of rifles crackled into a roar all around us as the grunts threw out withering cover fire. The pathfinder, hidden in the tree line somewhere, told us everybody was loaded and to take off to the left. Orange One rogered and led us out. Fifty yards past the perimeter, some of the ships took hits, and we cleared all our guns to fire. Our ship was untouched.
After we dropped off the wounded, Leese and I were delayed by taking some men to an artillery position, separating us from the rest of the company for a half hour.
We were on our way to rejoin them when we saw a fighter get hit near X-Ray. It was a prop-driven A1-E. This scene, too, was right out of the movies. Orange flames burst from the root of his right wing and billowed back toward the tail, turning into coal-black smoke. The flames flared thicker than the fuselage and in moments hid the multipaned canopy. The pilot was either dead or unconscious, for he did not eject. The plane screamed toward the ground from about 3000 feet, not more than half a mile from Leese and me. Black smoke marked its path as it streaked into the jungle at a steep angle, exploding instantly, spreading wreckage, and bursting bombs, unspent ammo, and fire forward, knocking down trees.
I made the mistake of calling our headquarters to tell them of the crash.
“Roger, Red Two, wait one,” was the answer in my phones.
“Ah, Red Two, Grunt Six has relayed instructions that you are to proceed to the site of the crash and inspect same.”
T wanted to go flying around where an air-force plane just got shot down like I wanted to extend my tour. Leese advised flying by very fast and taking a quick look-see. I dumped the Huey from 3000 feet, using the speed of my dive to swoop over the burning swatch in the jungle.