"Welcome to the 249th General Hospital, Mr. Rollason. I'm Major Gray, head nurse on this ward."
"Nice to meet you Major."
"How was your breakfast?” she asked.
She seemed like a good old gal, so I answered the way I felt.
"Fine, Major, except for the hair on the eggs. I saved them, would you care to have a look?"
"Certainly not, that's horrible....hair on your eggs!?"
"Yes, Ma'am, long black ones.
"I'll talk to the kitchen."
She put some fresh sheets on my bedside table and then started to peel off the dirty ones. I asked if it was OK for me to try and swing off to the right side of the bed and stand on my right leg, while she made the bed. She told me that I had better wait and ask the doctors for permission. She did not want to assume the responsibility if anything happened. I couldn't blame her. I thanked her and told her I would ask when they came around.
The Spec-six that had gone to the PX for me previously was on duty that morning; I talked with him about checking out the price on one of the five inch screen Sony TV's. I didn't want to ask him to do too much at one time. He said he'd check some prices for me on his way home that evening. This was great, I was on my way to becoming a Japanese soap opera addict, even though I didn't know it at the time.
I tried reading that morning, while waiting for the doctors to make their rounds. Eventually they came. They had not been by the day before, because they had been in surgery. They strolled onto the ward and began examining the, post OP, patients at the far end first. They moved along briskly, talking while they poked and probed. Eventually they came by my bed and examined me, talking among themselves as they looked at my X-rays.
I was not able to hear much of what they said, but believing I would return to my unit in a few months, I started to ask questions.
"How long will it be before I'll be able to go back to my unit, Major?"
"I'm afraid you will be going State-side. It will be about one year before you’re walking well again."
"You have got to be kidding, right? That's just not possible.....it’s..., it’s just a broken leg isn't it?"
"Well, not exactly, don't worry, you will be OK."
They quickly moved on to the next patient, while I thought about going into shock. How in heaven's name could it possibly take a year? I'd be going back to the states. Gee, I should have waited to write to my folks. Everything had suddenly changed. I would have to write them again, and write Emily also. Oh well, I just figured I'd try to make the best of a bad thing. They say the Army takes care of its own, I told myself. The government knows best, yeah right? Perhaps I could call my folks and Emily if I could get to a telephone.
When the doctors left the ward I asked Captain Jack Clark if I could have another drink of his Scotch, I needed a lift. I was so shocked when the doctors were there that I had forgotten to ask them about standing off to the side of my bed on my right leg, but then I could do it next time they came around.
A couple of days later Spec-six Thompson brought me my TV. After I thought about it I was not too sure how smart a move it had been to get the TV, everything would be in Japanese, but then I believed that I would be able to follow the stories, by just looking at the pictures. At least it seemed logical and it would be something to pass the time. He had dropped it off and left immediately. I was so excited, like a kid at Christmas time opening up packages. I carefully broke the packing tape and pulled the staples from the lid, flicking them into the ashtray on my bedside table. I awkwardly wrestled the small set from its box and removed the packing material. There, in all its glory, sat my sparkling, brand new, five inch black and white Sony. There was only one problem. I could not for the life of me plug the little bugger in and I was dying to try it out. I would feel like an ass if I had to call a nurse or a corpsman in just to plug in my TV, so I just lay back and waited. Maybe the waiting would make it better when I did get to turn it on.
The ward was quiet, all of the patients were still in their beds, even the excitement of my TV arriving had little effect on the routine of the day. I closed my eyes and dozed off while waiting for someone to happen by. Being on the traction ward, it was not as if I could ask somebody near by to jump out of bed and plug me in. There was no sense in getting too excited getting the TV working, it was just a matter of time and time was all I had.
I was awakened by the sound of the lunch wagon rolling up with its clattering dish ware, and stopping at the foot of the bed. I immediately, before the food service person could unload my tray, asked if she would please plug in my TV; I said this while looking at her through sleepy eyes and holding up the plug. She removed my tray from the stainless steel cart, placed it on my table and plugged me in. Ha Ha, at last.
"Thank you, thank you very much."
I noticed, still through blurry eyes, that she wasn't bad looking at all.
"Doing anything later on, Miss? You could stop by and visit with me....."
She blushed slightly, said nothing and went about her business.
I ate lunch quickly to free up the bedside table for use as a TV stand. The bedside table is an adjustable (height wise) table that goes across the bed from one side and can be used by a bed ridden patient for eating, writing, washing etc.
I placed the Sony on the table and moved it out between Jack and me. Figured that I might as well share, then I turned it on. I clicked through the channels to see how many stations I could pick up and to get an idea of what was on each of them.
There was, what I believed to be, soap operas. The characters were from the Japan of antiquity. The main character being a samurai warrior who could easily take on fifteen to twenty other warriors at one time and always comes out on top. Of course this was always done in the defense of a fair maiden. All the talking was in Japanese, but it was fun to watch and full of action.
The next show that we watched was Bonanza with dubbed in Japanese. It was really amusing seeing and hearing Hoss Cartwright and the others, seemingly conversing in Japanese while riding into town or walking into a saloon in the old west.
Finally the pas de resistance, sumo wrestling. Sumo rates in the same category as baseball in the states, and perhaps it rates even higher since it is such an ancient sport. Sumo wrestlers start their training while very young, like three or four years old. They learn or rather start to learn the tricks of the trade early. Eventually as they grow older they learn to tuck their testicles up inside their bodies and bind them up. This is more efficient than an athletic supporter's cup. Those of us that could see the TV enjoyed it, but that was only two of us. It definitely would not due to stare at the tiny screen continually. I'd have to find a few other ways to pass the time even though it was enjoyable.
Supper came and my eyes were aching from all the TV watching. I could not believe that they ached from watching TV per se, but from watching the small screen from a distance. I was trying to share the picture and it was giving Jack and me both headaches. My right eye was still a bit fuzzy from my accident, all the TV watching probably contributed to the strain. I fell asleep that night still watching TV, the last image that I remembered was one of sumo wrestlers ritualistically purifying the ring with salt.
The breakfast wagon woke me up. The nurses seemed to be easier on the traction patients. They let us sleep longer before making us wake up and wash up, which was usually after breakfast. It really felt strange just lying in bed until breakfast time. I had gotten so use to going to bed between 2300 hours and midnight and getting up between 0300 to 0330 hours and getting three to four hours sleep with an occasional longer night accommodating this hospital life was really going to take some getting use to.
The days moved by slowly, my chatting with Jack and TV watching were punctuated with increasing numbers of naps, which were becoming longer and longer and more and more frequent; I wasn't sure that I had ever slept so much.
I had dozed off again, which was getting to be a normal occurrence, when I was jolted from my dream world by an almost constant gagging and coughing sound emanating from the far end of the ward in the post operative area. The gagging and coughing was periodically, every twenty to thirty seconds, drowned out by a barrage of voices variously talking and yelling such things as "NO!! NO!!" "Just swallow, just keep on swallowing, that's all you need to do. Just swallow and breathe."
As it turned out, Jack told me later, this was a scene that was repeated quite frequently on the post operative ward. Men would come in from Vietnam with gun shot wounds or grenade or other shrapnel type wounds, with a great amount of torn up lacerated tissue. Blood clotting would develop, and so forth, hence "Phlebitis". Part of the treatment was the insertion of a tube into the stomach, via the nose and then down the throat. Hence the repeated commands to swallow and also the continual coughing and gagging from the patient trying to swallow the tube, which would be attached to a suction pump.
I was glad when the ordeal was over, with its near blood curdling cries, moans, gasps, coughs, and such Maybe it was worse having been awakened by it all from a good dream. I was just glad it was over and that I could get back to some heavy duty sleeping before lunch time.
Since I had left Vietnam and the strictness and discipline of Alpha Troop I had started to grow a mustache, which after these weeks in the hospital was starting to take shape nicely. I could lie about and feel that I was actually accomplishing something, although not much; growing hair is no great accomplishment in my book.
I started to lay some plans for having my whole bed moved down the hall to where a pay telephone was located. The plan was to call my parents first and then Emily during the same excursion. All I would have to do would be to con a couple of corpsmen into pushing me down to the phone. First I would have to figure out what time of day to make my move. I wanted to call when my Dad would be at home as well as my Mom. I would have to give it some thought and decide what would be best, along with calculating the time difference.
JUST CONCENTRATE....RELAX....YOUR FEELING DROWSY!
While growing up I had developed a keen interest in hypnotism and had seriously studied and then practiced on cousins and friends for years. I had also practiced, even more extensively on myself with self hypnosis, for a number of years. Practicing since entering the service just was not feasible until now, because I was too busy with training and Flying and then Vietnam. The hospital situation with its unlimited and uncommitted time line would be the perfect place to practice my self hypnosis. I remembered some of the more fantastic claims made about hypnotism. I had read where common colds had been averted for years using suggestions, which it was theorized, increased the number of antibodies in the immune system. I was unable to recall all of the details, but I did remember how fascinated I had been with the inquiries. One thing I did remember in detail was an experiment that I had done with a cousin of mine. He had a sore throat. Under hypnosis I had suggested that the circulation would temporarily increase to the throat area and the soreness would go away, so that his throat would heal faster. After I suggested this I had watched in amazement as his throat turned a bright pinkish color from the increased circulation. I had always taken my study of hypnosis very seriously and considered myself to be on at least a Para-professional level.
As I remembered these things I figured that it certainly would not hurt, and perhaps it would help to heal the broken leg faster. It was worth a try. If nothing else self hypnosis was a great way to pass the time and was a good exercise in self discipline. I decided to give it a try. There was absolutely nothing to lose in any event.
I positioned myself as comfortably as possible on my bed and began the process of relaxing my body to begin self hypnosis; talking myself into an altered state of consciousness. I had placed a suggestion in the subconscious that I would wake up when my subconscious detected the sound of the incoming mess wagon. It worked, waking up feeling more rested than I had in quite some time and for the first time took notice that the girls that brought the meals around were Japanese, civilians, I guessed. I spoke to the girl as she brought me my tray, she did not seem to understand anything that that I said. There was no wonder any longer that the girl here previously had not replied when I was talking to her. She had probably realized that I was addressing her, but had been unable to fathom what I was saying.
I ate and then watched TV until sleep overtook me around 0200 hours in the morning.
Breakfast came as usual the next morning, hair and all. Again I felt more rested even though I had a comparatively short sleep. I guess I was getting used to being constantly on my back and with leg in the air, a totally unnatural position. It was X-ray day; we all waited in anticipation to find out if progress was being made inside our bodies. There was one fellow across the ward that was, he had been told, about ready to be shipped state side. All he needed was a good report from the day's X-ray and he would be packed for shipment in a new body cast. I did not know the fellows on the other side of the ward. Matter of fact I did not even know the guys on my side of the ward that were more than a bed or so away.
The X-ray machine was driven onto the ward around mid-morning and the technician began to X-ray the traction patients, the short timer being the first in line. The technician moved the portable machine into place with great precision and expertise for a lateral shot of the patient's leg. The thickness of the leg was measured, the width and breadth for the shot were determined, the exposure calculated and the aperture set on the head of the X-ray machine. The technician reached for and retrieved a large sixteen by twenty, or about that size, plate, in its heavy metal shielded frame, from a rack on the side of the machine. He held it up and attached some metal letters to the edge before explaining to the patient how it was to be held. He wanted it done in this particular way, so that a good lateral picture could be taken. Then, holding the plate high, to move it carefully over the patient's leg, he clumsily let it slip from his hands. The heavy film holder dropped directly, edge first, onto the leg and re-broke the fragile setting of the femur.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
My War - Installment 37
It was mid-morning, after I had taken a nap that they came with a gurney to take me across the hall to my new bed. I was pushed into my new ward and unloaded into an empty bed, between two guys that were in traction. I noticed that my new bed also had a traction frame, in fact, that entire end of the twenty or more bed ward was set up as a "traction patients only" section. I was told that a doctor would be coming by in a short while, to set up my traction; just another great new experience to look forward to.
After I was lifted into the bed, with much grunting and groaning from the corpsmen, the cast and I must have weighed a considerable amount, one of the corpsmen went for a plaster saw. He came back, plugged the saw in, and started cutting my body cast in half. The cast was being split so that the top section could be lifted off. It took quite a long time to go up the outside of each leg, up to just below my armpit and then down the inside of each leg. I was a bit concerned as the saw approached my crotch. When the saw cut was completed they took some pliers-like chrome plated spreaders and opened the top of the cast a little. Then they took bandage scissors and cut the cotton wrapping before they finally lifted off the top section of the cast. It was kind of like removing a mummy from his/her crypt.
"Don't try to lift your legs from the lower section of the cast no matter how strong the urge, Sir!"
"I won't promise, but I'll try not to. OK."
They pulled a sheet up to cover my nakedness, and laid back to wait for the doctor.
"I was told that they didn't pin your leg in Qui Nhon, Sir" said one of the corpsmen.
"Huh, what? Oh hello. What did you say?" I had dozed off for a few minutes.
"They didn't run a pin, of silver wire, through your leg for us to hook the traction clamp to. Normally it would have been put in the OR, when they put your cast on. We will have to get some K-wire and run it through your leg before I can hook up your traction."
"Sounds like that could be real fun, right? Tell me, when will all of this take place and where?"
"I'll get the stuff and will do it now. Here!"
"Wonderful,” I thought to myself.
He was back in no time at all with a nice little stainless steel tray full of sterile goodies, covered by a sterile towel. The men in the beds beside me all pushed themselves up on their elbows to watch the proceedings. The doctor pushed his wheeled table, with all his instruments on it, up between the beds on my left side.
"Well, Mr. Rollason. Have you ever had one of these before?"
"No!" I replied.
"Well, I've never done one either. We will do our first one together."
Very reassuring, I said. He marked a spot on the outside of my left leg just below the knee joint with a felt tipped pen. Then he put a mark on the inside of the leg opposite the first. He took a hypodermic, filled it with a local anesthetic, and injected some of the fluid into my leg at each of the pen marks. At least he looked like he knew what he was doing; I was impressed. The local was to deaden, or lessen, what was to come next. He reached under the sterile towel and withdrew a stainless steel hand drill and a straight length of, what he called, silver K-wire. It looked more like a thin silver rod as he fitted it into the drill's chuck.
"And what, might I ask, are you going to do with that, doctor?"
"Now that the marked areas are deadened we will, excuse me, I will simply drill the wire through your leg."
"Just like that, Huh?"
"Yes, just like that."
He placed the tip of the wire on the pen mark, as I placed one hand on each edge of the mattress, he started to turn the crank on the hand powered drill.
I didn't feel much, as some blood began to trickle from the drill hole. The poor black fellow on my left side fainted. I just squeezed the mattress when the drilling felt uncomfortable.
"I can feel it! I can feel it! The damn thing's going in crooked!" I said as calmly as possible.
"Ha, Ha." Nervously. You really can't feel it. The pressure is all that you feel. Don't worry."
"Pressure my ass, Doctor; I can feel that wire or what ever going in crooked."
As I spoke the wire popped out of the front of my leg below the knee cap. The doctor looked slightly embarrassed. He turned and we eyed one another up. We both raised our eyebrows. He reversed his cranking motion and withdrew the wire. He checked it, straightened it and began to drill a second time. Even after all that it came out a bit off target, but then nobody's perfect.
He proceeded to align the wire, with equal pieces extending from either side of my leg. He attached a clamp to the wire. The clamp was either a stainless steel, or chrome plated mechanism sort of "U" shaped that had a little toothed gripper device on each end to grab hold of the wire. In the center of the "U" shape implement, at the top, a weight line was attached, weights were added to the line, I was officially in traction.
The traction frame embraced the entire bed, coming up from the four corners of the bed to a height of about four feet. It was hard to judge the exact height lying down. To the uprights another rectangular frame was attached at the top. To this frame there were interconnected cross-members to which pulleys and other devices, such as a trapeze or pull up bar. which I could use to pull myself up into a semi-sitting position.
I raised my right leg from the bottom portion of the cast, placed my foot down beside the bottom section, placed my hands beside me and lifted my self up so that the cast could be removed from beneath me. Ah ha, at long last I was released from the confining itchy grip of the cast. I was free now to explore the entire breadth of my single sized mattress.
When I had first arrived at Alpha Troop I was asked to select a method of notification for my next of kin, in the event that I would either be seriously injured or killed. I had chosen to notify my parents myself if injured, that is other than some tremendously debilitating injury, like if my arms were blown off or something like that, where I could not write for myself. I figured that since I was free from the cast I would be able to write to them and tell them that I had been injured. It would be easier coming from me, I thought, than from some official, impersonal, telegram or what ever. All I needed were some writing materials.
I had been in luck, so to speak, my pay had been straightened out just about one and one half weeks before sustaining my injuries. It would probably take another couple of months, or longer, for it to catch up with me in the hospital. The luck I had was good, since I had not been paid the small amount that I would normally have received, my pay had ballooned and accumulated into a tidy sum. The sum of which was in my wallet at that time.
One of the corpsmen, and older Spec-six, had been very friendly to me and had offered to go to the PX if there was anything that I wanted. When he came by with my lunch I asked him if he would pick up some paper, envelopes, and a pen for me. He said he would be happy to. I was also informed that I could just wait and pay him after he had picked up the items; then there would be no question as to correct pricing and so forth. I was quite pleased with this arrangement.
I wrote to my parents that afternoon to inform them of where I was and what I was doing. "....I'm in Japan, in a hospital, the 249th General. I got hurt last week. All that happened was that I broke my leg, other than that I'm doing fine. I'll tell you more, when I know more... Love Sam."
I spent some of the afternoon writing other letters and chatting with some of the other men around me in this traction ward. One of the important letters that I wrote was to a girl that was going to the high school that I graduated from. I really don't know how she had decided that she liked me or that she loved me, but I wasn't about to argue with a girl as good looking as she was. Her name was Emily; she was a few years younger than I. I had known her sister, who was a year ahead of me in school. Both of them were good lookers, I had never dated either one. It was hard for me to fathom the sudden interest in me, but as I said there was no point in arguing over my good luck. I could see her in my mind's eye, long auburn hair cascading down over full breasts; dark, warm, brown eyes that made me yearn for her, full lips ready for kissing. I would definitely have to keep writing to her and see her when I got away from Vietnam and back to the States and Pennsylvania. Perhaps my luck with women was changing.
One of the men beside me was a captain, another helicopter pilot. He had been shot down in the 506 Valley the day I had discovered the NVA that were set up for the pre-truce ambush. He was in traction like everyone else around that end of the ward. I was hesitant at first to tell Captain Clark that I was the one that was, in fact, responsible for his predicament. But, then he wouldn't be able to get out of his bed to get at me if he had a mind to. He did not even hint at being angry or upset; instead he offered me a drink of his scotch. He told me that it had been prescribed by the doctor.
Scotch was not my favorite, matter of fact I do not believe I had a favorite, but I accepted his cordial offer. The prescription was probably one to help alleviate the obvious boredom of traction.
While we continued talking a fellow came on to the ward walking behind a self propelled, Rube Goldberg type, contraption, which turned out to be a portable X-ray machine. He drove the machine up beside my bed and said hello. Taking a large film holder from a cabinet under the X-ray machine he placed it under the area of the broken left femur. He fiddled with the machine adjusting it and exposed the film. He repeated the procedure shooting a few different angles before finishing. With the portable X-ray machine the doctors could keep weekly progress reports on all of us traction fellows.
After the X-ray technician left, Captain Clark and I talked some more. He was interested in hearing about the outcome of that day, in the 506 Valley, which had sent him to the hospital. He was a nice enough guy, in his mid-thirties, I guessed. His hair was reddish over his freckled narrow face. His constant smile was infectious, not to mention it was good for moral. We had another short snort before supper that afternoon while continuing to talk. It seemed to hurt him to hear of the outcome and the disaster at LZ Bird, it hurt me too.
I could see that the days here were going to be long tedious and extremely boring, with not being able to move away from the prison of my bed, traction frame, cables, and weights, which bound me. I would most certainly have to work on a system or regimen to cope with this down time. (A term used to indicate none flying time, like when an aircraft is grounded.)
My options for passing the time were few; the first and biggest obstacle being, getting use to total inactivity. When a person is accustomed to continual physical activity, since childhood, it is certainly a major adjustment when suddenly the most vigorous things he can do are to shave, brush his teeth and go to the toilet, the latter being the most strenuous.
Oh, yea my options. I could just lay there and watch everybody else just laying there watching everybody else. I could get the doctor to prescribe some booze and take up serious drinking. Maybe I could get the Spec-six to go out onto the common market, since I finally had some money, and pick up a little Sony TV for me and a cheap record player, stereo of course, and a bunch of records and... Whoa! Now there was a plan. I was too young to get serious about much. I could not get interested in things that required a lot of metal activity, I could not figure out why. Since I was totally inactive, I figured that I might as well get used to inactive things and become expert at them?
I tried reading a book that Captain Clark had loaned me, but I could not even start to get interested in reading it for some darn reason. I guess that I just had to do some more adjusting to my new situation. I had only been laid up for eight or nine days, and I was all ready losing track of time. I was so bored that I longed for anything different to happen, even for the doctor's rounds. Speaking of doctors I had not seen one since the guy who had drilled the K-wire through my leg the day after my arrival. Captain Clark had told me that they normally made daily rounds. Usually they told new patients what to expect, in the way of treatment, and how and where their treatment would take place.
Supper came and went and then the excitement of getting ready for bed, washing, brushing teeth-the whole works, crept up on us. The wash up time became more interesting when a female type nurse, nice looking, arrived with my wash basin and told me that she had come to give me a sponge bath. I was supposed to have had one right after the cast had been removed, but something had prevented my getting one. I was happy to be getting one then. I thought that it would help me to sleep better anyway, as well as something nice to dream about. I thoroughly enjoyed the washing that she gave me. She would lather up the sponge and then gently wash me, a small section at a time. It was unfortunate for me that she made me do some of the washing, but then too much is too much.
It took some time to accustom myself to sleeping flat on my back, at least I must have been getting use to it, I slept pretty well. I only had to call for a urinal twice during the night.
AND SO IT WENT
Breakfast was brought by at about 0800 hours each morning. It seems to always be the same, identical to the first one that I had at that hospital, even down to the hair on the scrambled eggs. When breakfast was over it was time for the bed clothing to be changed, another of the daily chores. An old nurse, a major, came by to change my sheets.
After I was lifted into the bed, with much grunting and groaning from the corpsmen, the cast and I must have weighed a considerable amount, one of the corpsmen went for a plaster saw. He came back, plugged the saw in, and started cutting my body cast in half. The cast was being split so that the top section could be lifted off. It took quite a long time to go up the outside of each leg, up to just below my armpit and then down the inside of each leg. I was a bit concerned as the saw approached my crotch. When the saw cut was completed they took some pliers-like chrome plated spreaders and opened the top of the cast a little. Then they took bandage scissors and cut the cotton wrapping before they finally lifted off the top section of the cast. It was kind of like removing a mummy from his/her crypt.
"Don't try to lift your legs from the lower section of the cast no matter how strong the urge, Sir!"
"I won't promise, but I'll try not to. OK."
They pulled a sheet up to cover my nakedness, and laid back to wait for the doctor.
"I was told that they didn't pin your leg in Qui Nhon, Sir" said one of the corpsmen.
"Huh, what? Oh hello. What did you say?" I had dozed off for a few minutes.
"They didn't run a pin, of silver wire, through your leg for us to hook the traction clamp to. Normally it would have been put in the OR, when they put your cast on. We will have to get some K-wire and run it through your leg before I can hook up your traction."
"Sounds like that could be real fun, right? Tell me, when will all of this take place and where?"
"I'll get the stuff and will do it now. Here!"
"Wonderful,” I thought to myself.
He was back in no time at all with a nice little stainless steel tray full of sterile goodies, covered by a sterile towel. The men in the beds beside me all pushed themselves up on their elbows to watch the proceedings. The doctor pushed his wheeled table, with all his instruments on it, up between the beds on my left side.
"Well, Mr. Rollason. Have you ever had one of these before?"
"No!" I replied.
"Well, I've never done one either. We will do our first one together."
Very reassuring, I said. He marked a spot on the outside of my left leg just below the knee joint with a felt tipped pen. Then he put a mark on the inside of the leg opposite the first. He took a hypodermic, filled it with a local anesthetic, and injected some of the fluid into my leg at each of the pen marks. At least he looked like he knew what he was doing; I was impressed. The local was to deaden, or lessen, what was to come next. He reached under the sterile towel and withdrew a stainless steel hand drill and a straight length of, what he called, silver K-wire. It looked more like a thin silver rod as he fitted it into the drill's chuck.
"And what, might I ask, are you going to do with that, doctor?"
"Now that the marked areas are deadened we will, excuse me, I will simply drill the wire through your leg."
"Just like that, Huh?"
"Yes, just like that."
He placed the tip of the wire on the pen mark, as I placed one hand on each edge of the mattress, he started to turn the crank on the hand powered drill.
I didn't feel much, as some blood began to trickle from the drill hole. The poor black fellow on my left side fainted. I just squeezed the mattress when the drilling felt uncomfortable.
"I can feel it! I can feel it! The damn thing's going in crooked!" I said as calmly as possible.
"Ha, Ha." Nervously. You really can't feel it. The pressure is all that you feel. Don't worry."
"Pressure my ass, Doctor; I can feel that wire or what ever going in crooked."
As I spoke the wire popped out of the front of my leg below the knee cap. The doctor looked slightly embarrassed. He turned and we eyed one another up. We both raised our eyebrows. He reversed his cranking motion and withdrew the wire. He checked it, straightened it and began to drill a second time. Even after all that it came out a bit off target, but then nobody's perfect.
He proceeded to align the wire, with equal pieces extending from either side of my leg. He attached a clamp to the wire. The clamp was either a stainless steel, or chrome plated mechanism sort of "U" shaped that had a little toothed gripper device on each end to grab hold of the wire. In the center of the "U" shape implement, at the top, a weight line was attached, weights were added to the line, I was officially in traction.
The traction frame embraced the entire bed, coming up from the four corners of the bed to a height of about four feet. It was hard to judge the exact height lying down. To the uprights another rectangular frame was attached at the top. To this frame there were interconnected cross-members to which pulleys and other devices, such as a trapeze or pull up bar. which I could use to pull myself up into a semi-sitting position.
I raised my right leg from the bottom portion of the cast, placed my foot down beside the bottom section, placed my hands beside me and lifted my self up so that the cast could be removed from beneath me. Ah ha, at long last I was released from the confining itchy grip of the cast. I was free now to explore the entire breadth of my single sized mattress.
When I had first arrived at Alpha Troop I was asked to select a method of notification for my next of kin, in the event that I would either be seriously injured or killed. I had chosen to notify my parents myself if injured, that is other than some tremendously debilitating injury, like if my arms were blown off or something like that, where I could not write for myself. I figured that since I was free from the cast I would be able to write to them and tell them that I had been injured. It would be easier coming from me, I thought, than from some official, impersonal, telegram or what ever. All I needed were some writing materials.
I had been in luck, so to speak, my pay had been straightened out just about one and one half weeks before sustaining my injuries. It would probably take another couple of months, or longer, for it to catch up with me in the hospital. The luck I had was good, since I had not been paid the small amount that I would normally have received, my pay had ballooned and accumulated into a tidy sum. The sum of which was in my wallet at that time.
One of the corpsmen, and older Spec-six, had been very friendly to me and had offered to go to the PX if there was anything that I wanted. When he came by with my lunch I asked him if he would pick up some paper, envelopes, and a pen for me. He said he would be happy to. I was also informed that I could just wait and pay him after he had picked up the items; then there would be no question as to correct pricing and so forth. I was quite pleased with this arrangement.
I wrote to my parents that afternoon to inform them of where I was and what I was doing. "....I'm in Japan, in a hospital, the 249th General. I got hurt last week. All that happened was that I broke my leg, other than that I'm doing fine. I'll tell you more, when I know more... Love Sam."
I spent some of the afternoon writing other letters and chatting with some of the other men around me in this traction ward. One of the important letters that I wrote was to a girl that was going to the high school that I graduated from. I really don't know how she had decided that she liked me or that she loved me, but I wasn't about to argue with a girl as good looking as she was. Her name was Emily; she was a few years younger than I. I had known her sister, who was a year ahead of me in school. Both of them were good lookers, I had never dated either one. It was hard for me to fathom the sudden interest in me, but as I said there was no point in arguing over my good luck. I could see her in my mind's eye, long auburn hair cascading down over full breasts; dark, warm, brown eyes that made me yearn for her, full lips ready for kissing. I would definitely have to keep writing to her and see her when I got away from Vietnam and back to the States and Pennsylvania. Perhaps my luck with women was changing.
One of the men beside me was a captain, another helicopter pilot. He had been shot down in the 506 Valley the day I had discovered the NVA that were set up for the pre-truce ambush. He was in traction like everyone else around that end of the ward. I was hesitant at first to tell Captain Clark that I was the one that was, in fact, responsible for his predicament. But, then he wouldn't be able to get out of his bed to get at me if he had a mind to. He did not even hint at being angry or upset; instead he offered me a drink of his scotch. He told me that it had been prescribed by the doctor.
Scotch was not my favorite, matter of fact I do not believe I had a favorite, but I accepted his cordial offer. The prescription was probably one to help alleviate the obvious boredom of traction.
While we continued talking a fellow came on to the ward walking behind a self propelled, Rube Goldberg type, contraption, which turned out to be a portable X-ray machine. He drove the machine up beside my bed and said hello. Taking a large film holder from a cabinet under the X-ray machine he placed it under the area of the broken left femur. He fiddled with the machine adjusting it and exposed the film. He repeated the procedure shooting a few different angles before finishing. With the portable X-ray machine the doctors could keep weekly progress reports on all of us traction fellows.
After the X-ray technician left, Captain Clark and I talked some more. He was interested in hearing about the outcome of that day, in the 506 Valley, which had sent him to the hospital. He was a nice enough guy, in his mid-thirties, I guessed. His hair was reddish over his freckled narrow face. His constant smile was infectious, not to mention it was good for moral. We had another short snort before supper that afternoon while continuing to talk. It seemed to hurt him to hear of the outcome and the disaster at LZ Bird, it hurt me too.
I could see that the days here were going to be long tedious and extremely boring, with not being able to move away from the prison of my bed, traction frame, cables, and weights, which bound me. I would most certainly have to work on a system or regimen to cope with this down time. (A term used to indicate none flying time, like when an aircraft is grounded.)
My options for passing the time were few; the first and biggest obstacle being, getting use to total inactivity. When a person is accustomed to continual physical activity, since childhood, it is certainly a major adjustment when suddenly the most vigorous things he can do are to shave, brush his teeth and go to the toilet, the latter being the most strenuous.
Oh, yea my options. I could just lay there and watch everybody else just laying there watching everybody else. I could get the doctor to prescribe some booze and take up serious drinking. Maybe I could get the Spec-six to go out onto the common market, since I finally had some money, and pick up a little Sony TV for me and a cheap record player, stereo of course, and a bunch of records and... Whoa! Now there was a plan. I was too young to get serious about much. I could not get interested in things that required a lot of metal activity, I could not figure out why. Since I was totally inactive, I figured that I might as well get used to inactive things and become expert at them?
I tried reading a book that Captain Clark had loaned me, but I could not even start to get interested in reading it for some darn reason. I guess that I just had to do some more adjusting to my new situation. I had only been laid up for eight or nine days, and I was all ready losing track of time. I was so bored that I longed for anything different to happen, even for the doctor's rounds. Speaking of doctors I had not seen one since the guy who had drilled the K-wire through my leg the day after my arrival. Captain Clark had told me that they normally made daily rounds. Usually they told new patients what to expect, in the way of treatment, and how and where their treatment would take place.
Supper came and went and then the excitement of getting ready for bed, washing, brushing teeth-the whole works, crept up on us. The wash up time became more interesting when a female type nurse, nice looking, arrived with my wash basin and told me that she had come to give me a sponge bath. I was supposed to have had one right after the cast had been removed, but something had prevented my getting one. I was happy to be getting one then. I thought that it would help me to sleep better anyway, as well as something nice to dream about. I thoroughly enjoyed the washing that she gave me. She would lather up the sponge and then gently wash me, a small section at a time. It was unfortunate for me that she made me do some of the washing, but then too much is too much.
It took some time to accustom myself to sleeping flat on my back, at least I must have been getting use to it, I slept pretty well. I only had to call for a urinal twice during the night.
AND SO IT WENT
Breakfast was brought by at about 0800 hours each morning. It seems to always be the same, identical to the first one that I had at that hospital, even down to the hair on the scrambled eggs. When breakfast was over it was time for the bed clothing to be changed, another of the daily chores. An old nurse, a major, came by to change my sheets.
Monday, October 26, 2009
My War - Installment 36
"Two bucks it’s our men GW. Want to bet on it? Two-to-one. If it’s the NVA, I'll owe you four bucks. OK?"
"C'mon, Sah. Doan kid like dat."
We waited; GW did most of the watching. My eyes cleared a little. The noise was getting closer and GW's tension was evident, and it appeared to be mounting. Finally we could distinguish voices, we could not tell just then, but we hoped that they were speaking English. GW and I were both happy when we could tell that the words were clearly English.
Our rescuers seemed to be more concerned about the NVA than we had been, from the sound of their talk as they approached.
There was a squad or almost a squad of men, my vision was still quite fuzzy. GW told me they had two stretchers with them. They moved up on the east side of the crash site. I, with GW's aid, got up and stood on my right leg. Under my own power I held my left pant leg and hopped over the rubble to the waiting stretcher. I lowered myself down onto the canvas. As soon as I was down they lifted it and almost started to run up the mountain, apparently fearing for their own safety.
My leg was very limp and I had no control over it at all other than to move it by hand and I still had no feeling in it. It kept bouncing off of the stretcher and dragging on the ground. I ordered the men to stop, put the stretcher down and take my boot laces to tie my feet together. This would keep the leg from bouncing off and causing more damage. Then they took off running again. That worked fine and there were no further incidents while moving to the evacuation helicopter, a "D" model Huey, located somewhere up the mountain.
Not only the rescue squad, but the pilots to were anxious to get out of the area. I was quickly slid into the helicopter and off we went, headed for our infirmary at LZ Hammond.
"You want any morphine, Sir?" the corpsman asked me once we were in the air.
"No!! I'm doing fine just now, maybe later. Thanks anyway."
During the flight to the med-evac (Evacuation) pad at LZ Hammond the corpsman kept asking me if I wanted any morphine. I continually assured him that I did not need it, that I felt pretty good. We landed at the med evac pad at LZ Hammond within thirty minutes of our take off. Alpha Troop had been notified and I was met at the infirmary by our Executive Officer and Captain White.
Everything started to move quickly at the med-evac. Medics were working on me, splinting my left leg, jerking and twisting, and giving me a number of unknown shots. Concurrently I was being questioned and debriefed. I found it hard to keep my mind on what I was talking about with all the manipulations that were going on, happily for me; I continued to keep my cool. I turned over my SOI during my debriefing.
In my mind I figured within two or three months as best I'd be back with A Troop, flying Scouts again. How long could a broken leg possibly take to heal?
I was told that my personal effects would be shipped to me after I was set up in a hospital. I was becoming drowsy from one of the many shots that had been given to me. Dumbly and numbly I apologized for losing one of our ships. I then bid farewell to Dave and the EO.
"See you later," I mumbled.
I was flown to the hospital at Qui Nhon and became one of the people stuck, waiting in the hallways. I was not even sure what I was waiting for. I waited in the hallway for what seemed an eternity. Time dragged on and on, images of the day whirled through my drugged consciousness, as I lay on the gurney. I was finally taken into the OR. I kind of expected, since I was headed to the OR, that they were going to operate and either pin my femur, running a rod into the center of the bone from the hip down, or they would put a plate on it, using screws and metal plat to align the break for healing. Heck I'd be back with Alpha sooner that I expected. All these thoughts swirled around in my drowsy mind.
When I awoke in the recovery room I found that I was in plaster from my upper chest to my toes. I was going to be shipped to an Army hospital in Japan early the next morning, or perhaps the following day.
The evening seemed to pass by slowly. I couldn't sleep. Someone came by with books and I selected a science fiction novel, but couldn't get interested enough, just then, to read it. I got some smokes from somebody and lay there most of the night occasionally trying to have a smoke to calm the nervousness I had acquired due to my inactivity. I was a bit depressed, to say the least. My dream had been at least temporarily, I thought, plucked away from me. Well, this kind of thing was just one of the consequences of war, of shooting and being shot at. I'd make the best of it, however it would come out.
The next day passed uneventfully. I picked at my food finding that none of what they had at the hospital came close to what I had been used to getting from Buzz. I would be shipped out in the morning to Japan by way of Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. That seemed like a round about way to get to Japan, but then I was in no hurry since I was not going under my own steam.
We were stacked in a C-141 transport, layer upon layer. From my vantage point on the bottom of the stack and with the limited movement I had, due to the large cast, I couldn't see how many layers there were, but it had to be quite a few. There was very little distance between me and the bottom of the next stretcher, perhaps eight to ten inches at best. I had been awake for over two days straight, except for the time in the OR, and was glad for having not slept because, right at that moment, there was absolutely nothing to do but sleep, so I did. I didn't wake up, not even to take a leak, until they were unloading us at Clark Air Force Base to drive us to the hospital.
We were carried in as if we were so much meat to push around. I was rolled, like a log, onto a bed, one in a long line that was holding the wounded that were in transit. The only items, personal effects, which I had with me, were my wallet, my ID card, and a few pieces of script money, the book which I had picked up at the hospital in Qui Nhon and the almost empty package of Pall Malls. I had stuffed all of the articles into the top of my cast.
I like the others lay lost in my private thoughts all during the afternoon hours. Hardly anyone stirred on the ward, very few medical staff was seen, because in transit patients had all been stabilized before shipment, so there were few chances of any emergency.
The few smokes I had, dwindled and were gone quickly, being bummed by people around me that were also bored. Supper came and I ate for something to do. After supper I noticed a Red Cross Lady moving through the ward with a basket on her arm. When she came close enough I could see that her basket was full of little complimentary packets of four smokes, the type that used to be, standard fare in “C” rations, and given with meals on board the airlines and were also given out as free samples. My unit in Vietnam had been receiving free packages of cigarettes with regularity.
The Red Cross Lady came up to my bed and asked.
"Would you like some cigarettes young fellow?"
Yes, please, why not."
"What kind would you like?"
I knew nothing of brands nor did I really care, this was something free, I thought.
"Anything."
"Here you are. That will be twenty-five cents."
"That will be what?"
"Twenty-five cents, please."
"You can have your smokes lady. I don't need them anyway."
I spent the entire night reading my science fiction book, finishing it as dawn was breaking sending slivers of golden tropical sunlight into the dingy ward.
I was anxious to get moving and get to where ever I was going to end up in Japan. That was the second time the Red Cross had left a bad taste in my mouth that was really lousy.
Breakfast and most of the morning passed by before we were once again loaded into, jeep type, ambulances and trucked, like so much cargo, to an awaiting C-141.
We landed at Tachekawa Air Force Base, right outside of Tokyo, where we were unceremoniously transported to the Base hospital to await our further disposition to individually assigned hospitals. No one had any idea about what hospital they would go to. We would each find out when we got there. There were no choices, but then again it was the only game in town that I was allowed to play just then.
Another sleepless night, in a strange bed; unable to move, or even take a piss unaided. This definitely was not my style, having to call someone so I could take a leak.
The following day I was flown via Huey over the congestion of Tokyo, then the largest city in the world, to the 249th General Hospital. Ah, home at last. I was unloaded and taken to the third floor and placed on a post operative ward. I had been in route, since I was shot down, a total of five days or there about.
My first hospital trauma came shortly after my arrival. A young nurse, cute thing, came up to me with some paper work and started asking questions; the usual stuff, name, rank and serial number. When she asked my rank I told her I was a Warrant Officer, I then immediately started to recite my serial number. She interrupted me.
"Oh, come on private, stop it. This will be part of your permanent medical records."
"I am a Warrant Officer, helicopter pilot."
"I told you to stop fooling around. Now what are you a private or a private first class?"
I was becoming pissed off, but I kept my cool.
"I am a Warrant Officer, and I do not appreciate your questioning me, and doubting my word, in front of these enlisted men.”
I reached into the top of my cast for my wallet. I pulled it out and extracted my Identification Card from its leather pocket. I wiped off the dirt and dust before handing it to the nurse. She looked it over, handed it back, and then turned a bright crimson before quickly leaving. I never saw her again during my months at the 249th General Hospital.
A DUMP IN TIME SAVES NINE
With the five days on the road, plus the day's flying when I got shot down, it had been six days since I had taken a dump. I rang for a corpsman. When he arrived I asked for a bed pan, by this time someone had marked my chart and hung it on the end of the bed, so everyone knew I was an officer.
"Yes, Sir, I’ll be right back."
He came back with a bed pan and some help to maneuver me and my cast onto the stainless steel fixture. I was tilted onto one side so that they would be able to place the pan.
"Sir, I'm afraid they didn't cut the back of your cast out. We'll have to get a plaster saw and make an opening."
"Great, could you do it fast? It has been about six days, and I feel like I am about to explode."
One corpsman went and quickly returned with the oscillating plaster cutting saw. I was unceremoniously rolled over onto my stomach; one man went to work immediately with the saw. In a few minutes I was told that all was well, an adequate opening had been fashioned into the cast. I was ready for action.
The bed pan was lined up with the newly cut passage and I was rolled back over and on top of it. I was no sooner in position than I let loose with a brown torrent that had been under great pressure. There was only one problem. I was or rather the cast was not lined up properly with the bed pan. The hole that they had cut was not lined up with my anus. To top it off the corpsman admitted that the opening appeared to be too narrow.
There was crap everywhere, on the bed, in the cast, in the bed pan and some even managed to find its way on to the floor. I felt extremely embarrasses, as well as sorry for the corpsman that would get stuck with having to clean all this up including me. I was helpless to be of any aid to him. Talk about a shitty job. Anyway, the pressure was off and I slept well that night for a change.
The following morning I felt pretty good. I was getting use to not being able to move anything, but my head, neck, and arms. I ate a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, and jelly. It wasn't bad, other than the hair in the eggs, it was really a good breakfast.
The ward that I was on was not really the post operative ward that I had been told I was going to be placed in. Everyone looked too healthy for it to be a post OP ward. I learned, when my breakfast tray was collected, that, later that morning, I would be moved to the proper ward, across the hall, that being the post OP ward I wondered why I was to be put in a post OP area, it just didn't make any sense to me.
"C'mon, Sah. Doan kid like dat."
We waited; GW did most of the watching. My eyes cleared a little. The noise was getting closer and GW's tension was evident, and it appeared to be mounting. Finally we could distinguish voices, we could not tell just then, but we hoped that they were speaking English. GW and I were both happy when we could tell that the words were clearly English.
Our rescuers seemed to be more concerned about the NVA than we had been, from the sound of their talk as they approached.
There was a squad or almost a squad of men, my vision was still quite fuzzy. GW told me they had two stretchers with them. They moved up on the east side of the crash site. I, with GW's aid, got up and stood on my right leg. Under my own power I held my left pant leg and hopped over the rubble to the waiting stretcher. I lowered myself down onto the canvas. As soon as I was down they lifted it and almost started to run up the mountain, apparently fearing for their own safety.
My leg was very limp and I had no control over it at all other than to move it by hand and I still had no feeling in it. It kept bouncing off of the stretcher and dragging on the ground. I ordered the men to stop, put the stretcher down and take my boot laces to tie my feet together. This would keep the leg from bouncing off and causing more damage. Then they took off running again. That worked fine and there were no further incidents while moving to the evacuation helicopter, a "D" model Huey, located somewhere up the mountain.
Not only the rescue squad, but the pilots to were anxious to get out of the area. I was quickly slid into the helicopter and off we went, headed for our infirmary at LZ Hammond.
"You want any morphine, Sir?" the corpsman asked me once we were in the air.
"No!! I'm doing fine just now, maybe later. Thanks anyway."
During the flight to the med-evac (Evacuation) pad at LZ Hammond the corpsman kept asking me if I wanted any morphine. I continually assured him that I did not need it, that I felt pretty good. We landed at the med evac pad at LZ Hammond within thirty minutes of our take off. Alpha Troop had been notified and I was met at the infirmary by our Executive Officer and Captain White.
Everything started to move quickly at the med-evac. Medics were working on me, splinting my left leg, jerking and twisting, and giving me a number of unknown shots. Concurrently I was being questioned and debriefed. I found it hard to keep my mind on what I was talking about with all the manipulations that were going on, happily for me; I continued to keep my cool. I turned over my SOI during my debriefing.
In my mind I figured within two or three months as best I'd be back with A Troop, flying Scouts again. How long could a broken leg possibly take to heal?
I was told that my personal effects would be shipped to me after I was set up in a hospital. I was becoming drowsy from one of the many shots that had been given to me. Dumbly and numbly I apologized for losing one of our ships. I then bid farewell to Dave and the EO.
"See you later," I mumbled.
I was flown to the hospital at Qui Nhon and became one of the people stuck, waiting in the hallways. I was not even sure what I was waiting for. I waited in the hallway for what seemed an eternity. Time dragged on and on, images of the day whirled through my drugged consciousness, as I lay on the gurney. I was finally taken into the OR. I kind of expected, since I was headed to the OR, that they were going to operate and either pin my femur, running a rod into the center of the bone from the hip down, or they would put a plate on it, using screws and metal plat to align the break for healing. Heck I'd be back with Alpha sooner that I expected. All these thoughts swirled around in my drowsy mind.
When I awoke in the recovery room I found that I was in plaster from my upper chest to my toes. I was going to be shipped to an Army hospital in Japan early the next morning, or perhaps the following day.
The evening seemed to pass by slowly. I couldn't sleep. Someone came by with books and I selected a science fiction novel, but couldn't get interested enough, just then, to read it. I got some smokes from somebody and lay there most of the night occasionally trying to have a smoke to calm the nervousness I had acquired due to my inactivity. I was a bit depressed, to say the least. My dream had been at least temporarily, I thought, plucked away from me. Well, this kind of thing was just one of the consequences of war, of shooting and being shot at. I'd make the best of it, however it would come out.
The next day passed uneventfully. I picked at my food finding that none of what they had at the hospital came close to what I had been used to getting from Buzz. I would be shipped out in the morning to Japan by way of Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. That seemed like a round about way to get to Japan, but then I was in no hurry since I was not going under my own steam.
We were stacked in a C-141 transport, layer upon layer. From my vantage point on the bottom of the stack and with the limited movement I had, due to the large cast, I couldn't see how many layers there were, but it had to be quite a few. There was very little distance between me and the bottom of the next stretcher, perhaps eight to ten inches at best. I had been awake for over two days straight, except for the time in the OR, and was glad for having not slept because, right at that moment, there was absolutely nothing to do but sleep, so I did. I didn't wake up, not even to take a leak, until they were unloading us at Clark Air Force Base to drive us to the hospital.
We were carried in as if we were so much meat to push around. I was rolled, like a log, onto a bed, one in a long line that was holding the wounded that were in transit. The only items, personal effects, which I had with me, were my wallet, my ID card, and a few pieces of script money, the book which I had picked up at the hospital in Qui Nhon and the almost empty package of Pall Malls. I had stuffed all of the articles into the top of my cast.
I like the others lay lost in my private thoughts all during the afternoon hours. Hardly anyone stirred on the ward, very few medical staff was seen, because in transit patients had all been stabilized before shipment, so there were few chances of any emergency.
The few smokes I had, dwindled and were gone quickly, being bummed by people around me that were also bored. Supper came and I ate for something to do. After supper I noticed a Red Cross Lady moving through the ward with a basket on her arm. When she came close enough I could see that her basket was full of little complimentary packets of four smokes, the type that used to be, standard fare in “C” rations, and given with meals on board the airlines and were also given out as free samples. My unit in Vietnam had been receiving free packages of cigarettes with regularity.
The Red Cross Lady came up to my bed and asked.
"Would you like some cigarettes young fellow?"
Yes, please, why not."
"What kind would you like?"
I knew nothing of brands nor did I really care, this was something free, I thought.
"Anything."
"Here you are. That will be twenty-five cents."
"That will be what?"
"Twenty-five cents, please."
"You can have your smokes lady. I don't need them anyway."
I spent the entire night reading my science fiction book, finishing it as dawn was breaking sending slivers of golden tropical sunlight into the dingy ward.
I was anxious to get moving and get to where ever I was going to end up in Japan. That was the second time the Red Cross had left a bad taste in my mouth that was really lousy.
Breakfast and most of the morning passed by before we were once again loaded into, jeep type, ambulances and trucked, like so much cargo, to an awaiting C-141.
We landed at Tachekawa Air Force Base, right outside of Tokyo, where we were unceremoniously transported to the Base hospital to await our further disposition to individually assigned hospitals. No one had any idea about what hospital they would go to. We would each find out when we got there. There were no choices, but then again it was the only game in town that I was allowed to play just then.
Another sleepless night, in a strange bed; unable to move, or even take a piss unaided. This definitely was not my style, having to call someone so I could take a leak.
The following day I was flown via Huey over the congestion of Tokyo, then the largest city in the world, to the 249th General Hospital. Ah, home at last. I was unloaded and taken to the third floor and placed on a post operative ward. I had been in route, since I was shot down, a total of five days or there about.
My first hospital trauma came shortly after my arrival. A young nurse, cute thing, came up to me with some paper work and started asking questions; the usual stuff, name, rank and serial number. When she asked my rank I told her I was a Warrant Officer, I then immediately started to recite my serial number. She interrupted me.
"Oh, come on private, stop it. This will be part of your permanent medical records."
"I am a Warrant Officer, helicopter pilot."
"I told you to stop fooling around. Now what are you a private or a private first class?"
I was becoming pissed off, but I kept my cool.
"I am a Warrant Officer, and I do not appreciate your questioning me, and doubting my word, in front of these enlisted men.”
I reached into the top of my cast for my wallet. I pulled it out and extracted my Identification Card from its leather pocket. I wiped off the dirt and dust before handing it to the nurse. She looked it over, handed it back, and then turned a bright crimson before quickly leaving. I never saw her again during my months at the 249th General Hospital.
A DUMP IN TIME SAVES NINE
With the five days on the road, plus the day's flying when I got shot down, it had been six days since I had taken a dump. I rang for a corpsman. When he arrived I asked for a bed pan, by this time someone had marked my chart and hung it on the end of the bed, so everyone knew I was an officer.
"Yes, Sir, I’ll be right back."
He came back with a bed pan and some help to maneuver me and my cast onto the stainless steel fixture. I was tilted onto one side so that they would be able to place the pan.
"Sir, I'm afraid they didn't cut the back of your cast out. We'll have to get a plaster saw and make an opening."
"Great, could you do it fast? It has been about six days, and I feel like I am about to explode."
One corpsman went and quickly returned with the oscillating plaster cutting saw. I was unceremoniously rolled over onto my stomach; one man went to work immediately with the saw. In a few minutes I was told that all was well, an adequate opening had been fashioned into the cast. I was ready for action.
The bed pan was lined up with the newly cut passage and I was rolled back over and on top of it. I was no sooner in position than I let loose with a brown torrent that had been under great pressure. There was only one problem. I was or rather the cast was not lined up properly with the bed pan. The hole that they had cut was not lined up with my anus. To top it off the corpsman admitted that the opening appeared to be too narrow.
There was crap everywhere, on the bed, in the cast, in the bed pan and some even managed to find its way on to the floor. I felt extremely embarrasses, as well as sorry for the corpsman that would get stuck with having to clean all this up including me. I was helpless to be of any aid to him. Talk about a shitty job. Anyway, the pressure was off and I slept well that night for a change.
The following morning I felt pretty good. I was getting use to not being able to move anything, but my head, neck, and arms. I ate a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, and jelly. It wasn't bad, other than the hair in the eggs, it was really a good breakfast.
The ward that I was on was not really the post operative ward that I had been told I was going to be placed in. Everyone looked too healthy for it to be a post OP ward. I learned, when my breakfast tray was collected, that, later that morning, I would be moved to the proper ward, across the hall, that being the post OP ward I wondered why I was to be put in a post OP area, it just didn't make any sense to me.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
My War - Installment 35
"Sure thing sweetie."
She started massaging my toes and feet with baby oil, then slowly and tenderly worked her way up my legs kneading my knotted leg muscles into relaxation. I thought to myself, "that for the couple of dollars that it was costing me, I could handle this as a daily ritual. Maybe I could move to Japan when I got out of the service." As I lay there naked, I thought about my R&R, "which would be coming up before too long. Where should I go, Japan, Hong Kong, Bangkok, or Australia to visit relatives in Sidney." I was drawn to thoughts about Japan or Bangkok; it would be one of those two, definitely!
The massage was intoxicating. At that particular moment anybody at all could have come through our small curtained room without my noticing anything but the dancing fingers of my masseuse.
"Hey'a Di wee youa loll ovel ona back, yes?"
"Oh yes "These chicks probably didn't know what they were saying. I could probably have asked her anything and she would just say yes.
I rolled over onto my back trying to not act very embarrassed, she again started at my toes and feet and moved upward. She stopped as she approached my groin and then went to the top of my head and worked downward to each hand and finger and then to my neck and chest and then south again.
I started day dreaming about R&R again, commonly referred to as Rest and Relaxation or Rape and Ruin, and where I would go, what I would do, who I might go with, when sh... she suddenly grasp my penis with a baby oiled hand.
I met Jack in the street in front of the massage parlor. We picked up the few personal items that we had seen at local vendors, and then went to the rendezvous point and waited for Ramirez, while having a coke.
Jack had come down with the clap from his massage parlor visit. I didn't indulge a smart move on my part. While remembering Jack's past agony and trips to the infirmary for his drips he abruptly bolted off his bunk, startling me, and darted for the door.
"Forty," he yelled and was gone.
OPs meeting was totally unenlightening that evening. Just more of the same was in store working west of Granite Rock. The only interesting part of the meeting was when Jack jumped up and ran out yelling Forty-three, to a resounding round of applause from all present.
We spent the remainder of the evening at the Scout tent joking around and playing cards. The shock and horror of Bird had been pushed into the recesses of our minds. The rotting bodies near Bird's old location were the only tangible reminders. Through the dim light and pipe smoke laughter and smiles were shared, friendships were made stronger. I felt part of it all, not just because I could keep my pipe lit by now, but because I actually fit in. We meshed with one another like a smoothly operating gearbox. We all did our jobs and did them well. We relied on one another and knew without a doubt that there was not another Scout that would not willingly risk his life for another Scout or G.I. That's why Scouts had to be tried by fire before they became Scouts, nothing less would do.
I went to sleep that night knowing that I had found my niche in life, the place where I really fit in, where I was appreciated by the others that I worked with. It was a terrific feeling of...I slept content.
DOWN, BUT NOT OUT....I THOUGHT
I had finished my morning rounds and was sitting enjoying coffee in Buzz's Mess tent before breakfast was ready. I was already done with my preflight, just killing time while waiting to eat. I would be flying on Ken this day, he and I would be alternating with the team of Smitty and Jack. We would be working with a friendly ground unit out of Granite Rock. They had been out on a search and destroy mission, working the mountains to the south west of Granite Rock's CP (Command Post), near where I had wiped out the abandon NVA compound.
We finished our first light and then flew a few other short missions before refueling in preparation to relieve Smitty and Jack. We were overlapping our reconnaissance to provide continuous support to the ground unit. Some NVA had been spotted in the region in the preceding few days and we wanted to keep up our surveillance pressure, hoping to make contact and start another battle.
Ken and I were moving in to replace Smitty and Jack, when Jack called over FM radio.
"One-six - one-eight."
"Roger, one-eight - go."
"We saw a beautiful tiger down there, don't let 'em get ya."
"Roger, one-eight. I copy, any other news."
"None yet good luck See you guys later One-eight - out.
"Roger one-eight. One-six over and out."
We took over the recon, first moving in and hovering over the ground unit, identifying ourselves. Ken took off toward the lower slopes of the mountains, while I worked the upper ridges and northern slopes of the upper half of the mountain.
I had been doing reconnaissance on top of most the mountain ridge for thirty-five to forty minutes. GW and I had had perhaps scanned an area some one half to one kilometers away from the ground unit, flying west along the top ridge. Then I began banking, starting a 180 degree turn, moving down the face of the mountain. This maneuver would cause us to move toward our men again. I had finished my turn when unexpectedly, from my left rear, we started receiving automatic weapons fire. The engine had been hit and was, obviously, severely damaged. Oil pressure had quickly dropped to nothing and the engine temperature immediately started to rise. I pressed my intercom button and began speaking loudly, but clearly and calmly I spoke to GW, in the right seat.
"Well GW. It looks like we'll have to put her into the jungle today."
GW had been with me when we had gone down before, but not into the jungle. To my utter surprise GW went berserk. I could hear him yelling even though he had not pressed his intercom button. I had received some small pieces of shrapnel in my side. The way GW was acting, he must have believed that me to be seriously wounded; and about to buy the farm. If that were the case he'd be minced meat anyway and have to bend over and kiss his ass good bye.
GW suddenly lurched over toward me and tried to grab the controls from me, for some damn dumb reason. I had to physically force him away from the controls, while talking to him over the intercom, assuring him that I was OK, that he needed to let me do the flying. And that his actions could hamper me from doing any emergency procedures.
"Hey." I yelled, at the top of my lungs, to get his attention, to try and break his hysteria. "Get hold of yourself GW old boy. I have enough to do without your going bonkers on me and my having to fight with you."
Again I was speaking calmly, just very loudly, which at this time seemed to upset him even more for some reason, although he did move and stay away from the controls.
Every second counted. My flying instincts had taken over automatically, and I had started to initiate emergency procedures for ditching into trees, while mentally and physically wrestling with GW.
At tree top level everything happens quickly, especially when you’re getting shot down. The idea behind the emergency ditching procedure is to zero out the airspeed therefore the groundspeed and then bring the helicopter straight down into the trees with the tail in a downward attitude. Tail first if you will. These procedures is accomplished by lowering collective pitch, pulling back on the cyclic pitch to slow forward motion and then as the tops of the trees are approached to pull cyclic back more and flaring the ship. Just before entry into the foliage the pilot pulls in collective pitch so that entry is as slow as possible.
During the time I was fighting GW I should have called the ground unit that we were working with to tell them what was happening. I just didn't have time for that call with all the hysteria that GW was exhibiting, and with everything else that was going on. I did have time to maneuver close enough to the unit we were working with, that they saw us going down. We were extremely fortunate that they did see us.
At that particular point everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. The tree tops slowly came closer. GW's wild movements were drawn out and seemed to take longer to complete. The limbs of the tree tops malingered as they moved to envelop the helicopter. Then, the next thing I knew we were through the trees and had stopped on a pile of the broken down tree limbs and rubble about five feet above the ground. We had made it alive!
I felt fine, I was alive, but my vision was somewhat blurred. I needed to sit for a little while and evaluate our situation. For some reason there seemed to be no hurry since my immediate appraisal indicated, from my cursory glance, that all was well. GW leaped from his open broken door. He hit the ground running and scurried over debris, screaming...
"Let's git outa' heah foor dis hera ma'er fucka' blow up!!"
I kept calm and called to GW, having had a few more moments to look around. Tree limbs lay broken and strewn about. Pieces of broken Plexiglas filled the cockpit. I took a few more moments to further survey the situation. I realized for the first time that my left leg was missing, but I didn't think that I was bleeding or anything. What was wrong?
GW was continuing in his hysteria and wanted to leave the area as fast as possible.
I continued to keep calm and yelled to GW. "Hey GW, could you help me find my leg first."
It had even surprised me how calmly I had said that, having just realized that I could not see or feel my left leg, from the hip down. GW turned to face me, apparently terror stricken, with eyes as big as saucers. He paused and seemed to come to grips with himself. He got control and came back at my bidding.
As the minutes passed my head began to hurt and I noticed that my right arm, lower back, right leg, and neck among other things hurt. My vision was fading to almost nothing, but my left leg still did not hurt at all. I looked around some more blurry eyed. My flight helmet was not on my head it was split in half from impact with the cyclic stick, one piece lay in the cockpit, and the other half was on the ground outside my door. Those helmets were supposed to withstand the force of eight Gs (gravities) of pressure. I had a very large lump across my forehead which, to my touch, felt like the visor on a cap. My shoulder harness must not have worked. It certainly did not engage the way it was supposed to, letting my torso snap forward, causing my head to strike the cyclic.
I began to feel around for my leg, expecting to find a mangled bleeding stump, thinking that I would see the rest of my leg near by or wrapped around the engine or what ever. The quarter inch armor plate behind my back was actually, partially, bent in a curve around my back. I continued to feel around. I located my leg. It had been shoved, by a tree limb, through the metal fire wall behind me and was twisted around the motor somehow, I couldn't see it, but I could feel it with my left hand.
The bubble of the cockpit had been shattered on impact. What appeared to have happened was: that limbs had come through the bubble, hit my legs, snapped my whole body like a whip and then the fork of a limb had grabbed and driven my left leg into and through the metal firewall and into the engine compartment. I asked GW to pull away the bent armor plating. After he had done that I reached out and grabbed onto a broken limb in front of me. I pulled for all I was worth, trying to extract myself from the mangled metal. It took some time and a great deal of effort to begin to loosen my leg and body from the wreckage. My leg had been stretched out, that is the thigh, over the broken femur, like a rubber band about to break. A few more inches of forward movement probably would have torn it off completely.
I continued to yank on the limb in front of me and eventually, I literally popped loose and fell the five feet to the ground, landing on my back. The abrupt landing knocked the wind out of me, and it took a few minutes to recover.
I had flipped while falling to the ground and in my new position I was partially under the broken helicopter, gas was dripping onto my face and into my eyes further hampering my vision. My left leg was laying flat across my chest, diagonally with the toes of my jungle boot pointing toward the sky. I still had no feeling of any kind in my left leg. I lifted it and lowered it to the ground, while untwisting it.
GW aided me in crawling away from the wreckage a few yards. He was exceptionally nervous and believed the enemy would be there to get us at any moment, he was probably right.
"Let's git outa heah, Sah!"
"You go ahead GW. I just want to lay here for a few minutes before I do anything."
I believe GW disliked the idea of being alone worse than the idea of staying with me. I told him to grab our machine gun, some ammo and grenades from the helicopter so we would be able to make a stand if we had too. Just then I didn't much care what happened, I just wanted to lay still and get my eye-sight back.
"This crash just might have ruined our day GW," I commented to him.
GW became a little more composed as time passed. We waited to see who would reach us first, our men or the NVA. I was comfortably propped on a fallen tree at that time, holding my pistol at ready, just in case the enemy got to us first. We would at least go out in a blaze of glory. Forty-five minutes to an hour passed on the ground. In the distance we could hear the faint beginnings of noises; men moving in the jungle.
She started massaging my toes and feet with baby oil, then slowly and tenderly worked her way up my legs kneading my knotted leg muscles into relaxation. I thought to myself, "that for the couple of dollars that it was costing me, I could handle this as a daily ritual. Maybe I could move to Japan when I got out of the service." As I lay there naked, I thought about my R&R, "which would be coming up before too long. Where should I go, Japan, Hong Kong, Bangkok, or Australia to visit relatives in Sidney." I was drawn to thoughts about Japan or Bangkok; it would be one of those two, definitely!
The massage was intoxicating. At that particular moment anybody at all could have come through our small curtained room without my noticing anything but the dancing fingers of my masseuse.
"Hey'a Di wee youa loll ovel ona back, yes?"
"Oh yes "These chicks probably didn't know what they were saying. I could probably have asked her anything and she would just say yes.
I rolled over onto my back trying to not act very embarrassed, she again started at my toes and feet and moved upward. She stopped as she approached my groin and then went to the top of my head and worked downward to each hand and finger and then to my neck and chest and then south again.
I started day dreaming about R&R again, commonly referred to as Rest and Relaxation or Rape and Ruin, and where I would go, what I would do, who I might go with, when sh... she suddenly grasp my penis with a baby oiled hand.
I met Jack in the street in front of the massage parlor. We picked up the few personal items that we had seen at local vendors, and then went to the rendezvous point and waited for Ramirez, while having a coke.
Jack had come down with the clap from his massage parlor visit. I didn't indulge a smart move on my part. While remembering Jack's past agony and trips to the infirmary for his drips he abruptly bolted off his bunk, startling me, and darted for the door.
"Forty," he yelled and was gone.
OPs meeting was totally unenlightening that evening. Just more of the same was in store working west of Granite Rock. The only interesting part of the meeting was when Jack jumped up and ran out yelling Forty-three, to a resounding round of applause from all present.
We spent the remainder of the evening at the Scout tent joking around and playing cards. The shock and horror of Bird had been pushed into the recesses of our minds. The rotting bodies near Bird's old location were the only tangible reminders. Through the dim light and pipe smoke laughter and smiles were shared, friendships were made stronger. I felt part of it all, not just because I could keep my pipe lit by now, but because I actually fit in. We meshed with one another like a smoothly operating gearbox. We all did our jobs and did them well. We relied on one another and knew without a doubt that there was not another Scout that would not willingly risk his life for another Scout or G.I. That's why Scouts had to be tried by fire before they became Scouts, nothing less would do.
I went to sleep that night knowing that I had found my niche in life, the place where I really fit in, where I was appreciated by the others that I worked with. It was a terrific feeling of...I slept content.
DOWN, BUT NOT OUT....I THOUGHT
I had finished my morning rounds and was sitting enjoying coffee in Buzz's Mess tent before breakfast was ready. I was already done with my preflight, just killing time while waiting to eat. I would be flying on Ken this day, he and I would be alternating with the team of Smitty and Jack. We would be working with a friendly ground unit out of Granite Rock. They had been out on a search and destroy mission, working the mountains to the south west of Granite Rock's CP (Command Post), near where I had wiped out the abandon NVA compound.
We finished our first light and then flew a few other short missions before refueling in preparation to relieve Smitty and Jack. We were overlapping our reconnaissance to provide continuous support to the ground unit. Some NVA had been spotted in the region in the preceding few days and we wanted to keep up our surveillance pressure, hoping to make contact and start another battle.
Ken and I were moving in to replace Smitty and Jack, when Jack called over FM radio.
"One-six - one-eight."
"Roger, one-eight - go."
"We saw a beautiful tiger down there, don't let 'em get ya."
"Roger, one-eight. I copy, any other news."
"None yet good luck See you guys later One-eight - out.
"Roger one-eight. One-six over and out."
We took over the recon, first moving in and hovering over the ground unit, identifying ourselves. Ken took off toward the lower slopes of the mountains, while I worked the upper ridges and northern slopes of the upper half of the mountain.
I had been doing reconnaissance on top of most the mountain ridge for thirty-five to forty minutes. GW and I had had perhaps scanned an area some one half to one kilometers away from the ground unit, flying west along the top ridge. Then I began banking, starting a 180 degree turn, moving down the face of the mountain. This maneuver would cause us to move toward our men again. I had finished my turn when unexpectedly, from my left rear, we started receiving automatic weapons fire. The engine had been hit and was, obviously, severely damaged. Oil pressure had quickly dropped to nothing and the engine temperature immediately started to rise. I pressed my intercom button and began speaking loudly, but clearly and calmly I spoke to GW, in the right seat.
"Well GW. It looks like we'll have to put her into the jungle today."
GW had been with me when we had gone down before, but not into the jungle. To my utter surprise GW went berserk. I could hear him yelling even though he had not pressed his intercom button. I had received some small pieces of shrapnel in my side. The way GW was acting, he must have believed that me to be seriously wounded; and about to buy the farm. If that were the case he'd be minced meat anyway and have to bend over and kiss his ass good bye.
GW suddenly lurched over toward me and tried to grab the controls from me, for some damn dumb reason. I had to physically force him away from the controls, while talking to him over the intercom, assuring him that I was OK, that he needed to let me do the flying. And that his actions could hamper me from doing any emergency procedures.
"Hey." I yelled, at the top of my lungs, to get his attention, to try and break his hysteria. "Get hold of yourself GW old boy. I have enough to do without your going bonkers on me and my having to fight with you."
Again I was speaking calmly, just very loudly, which at this time seemed to upset him even more for some reason, although he did move and stay away from the controls.
Every second counted. My flying instincts had taken over automatically, and I had started to initiate emergency procedures for ditching into trees, while mentally and physically wrestling with GW.
At tree top level everything happens quickly, especially when you’re getting shot down. The idea behind the emergency ditching procedure is to zero out the airspeed therefore the groundspeed and then bring the helicopter straight down into the trees with the tail in a downward attitude. Tail first if you will. These procedures is accomplished by lowering collective pitch, pulling back on the cyclic pitch to slow forward motion and then as the tops of the trees are approached to pull cyclic back more and flaring the ship. Just before entry into the foliage the pilot pulls in collective pitch so that entry is as slow as possible.
During the time I was fighting GW I should have called the ground unit that we were working with to tell them what was happening. I just didn't have time for that call with all the hysteria that GW was exhibiting, and with everything else that was going on. I did have time to maneuver close enough to the unit we were working with, that they saw us going down. We were extremely fortunate that they did see us.
At that particular point everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. The tree tops slowly came closer. GW's wild movements were drawn out and seemed to take longer to complete. The limbs of the tree tops malingered as they moved to envelop the helicopter. Then, the next thing I knew we were through the trees and had stopped on a pile of the broken down tree limbs and rubble about five feet above the ground. We had made it alive!
I felt fine, I was alive, but my vision was somewhat blurred. I needed to sit for a little while and evaluate our situation. For some reason there seemed to be no hurry since my immediate appraisal indicated, from my cursory glance, that all was well. GW leaped from his open broken door. He hit the ground running and scurried over debris, screaming...
"Let's git outa' heah foor dis hera ma'er fucka' blow up!!"
I kept calm and called to GW, having had a few more moments to look around. Tree limbs lay broken and strewn about. Pieces of broken Plexiglas filled the cockpit. I took a few more moments to further survey the situation. I realized for the first time that my left leg was missing, but I didn't think that I was bleeding or anything. What was wrong?
GW was continuing in his hysteria and wanted to leave the area as fast as possible.
I continued to keep calm and yelled to GW. "Hey GW, could you help me find my leg first."
It had even surprised me how calmly I had said that, having just realized that I could not see or feel my left leg, from the hip down. GW turned to face me, apparently terror stricken, with eyes as big as saucers. He paused and seemed to come to grips with himself. He got control and came back at my bidding.
As the minutes passed my head began to hurt and I noticed that my right arm, lower back, right leg, and neck among other things hurt. My vision was fading to almost nothing, but my left leg still did not hurt at all. I looked around some more blurry eyed. My flight helmet was not on my head it was split in half from impact with the cyclic stick, one piece lay in the cockpit, and the other half was on the ground outside my door. Those helmets were supposed to withstand the force of eight Gs (gravities) of pressure. I had a very large lump across my forehead which, to my touch, felt like the visor on a cap. My shoulder harness must not have worked. It certainly did not engage the way it was supposed to, letting my torso snap forward, causing my head to strike the cyclic.
I began to feel around for my leg, expecting to find a mangled bleeding stump, thinking that I would see the rest of my leg near by or wrapped around the engine or what ever. The quarter inch armor plate behind my back was actually, partially, bent in a curve around my back. I continued to feel around. I located my leg. It had been shoved, by a tree limb, through the metal fire wall behind me and was twisted around the motor somehow, I couldn't see it, but I could feel it with my left hand.
The bubble of the cockpit had been shattered on impact. What appeared to have happened was: that limbs had come through the bubble, hit my legs, snapped my whole body like a whip and then the fork of a limb had grabbed and driven my left leg into and through the metal firewall and into the engine compartment. I asked GW to pull away the bent armor plating. After he had done that I reached out and grabbed onto a broken limb in front of me. I pulled for all I was worth, trying to extract myself from the mangled metal. It took some time and a great deal of effort to begin to loosen my leg and body from the wreckage. My leg had been stretched out, that is the thigh, over the broken femur, like a rubber band about to break. A few more inches of forward movement probably would have torn it off completely.
I continued to yank on the limb in front of me and eventually, I literally popped loose and fell the five feet to the ground, landing on my back. The abrupt landing knocked the wind out of me, and it took a few minutes to recover.
I had flipped while falling to the ground and in my new position I was partially under the broken helicopter, gas was dripping onto my face and into my eyes further hampering my vision. My left leg was laying flat across my chest, diagonally with the toes of my jungle boot pointing toward the sky. I still had no feeling of any kind in my left leg. I lifted it and lowered it to the ground, while untwisting it.
GW aided me in crawling away from the wreckage a few yards. He was exceptionally nervous and believed the enemy would be there to get us at any moment, he was probably right.
"Let's git outa heah, Sah!"
"You go ahead GW. I just want to lay here for a few minutes before I do anything."
I believe GW disliked the idea of being alone worse than the idea of staying with me. I told him to grab our machine gun, some ammo and grenades from the helicopter so we would be able to make a stand if we had too. Just then I didn't much care what happened, I just wanted to lay still and get my eye-sight back.
"This crash just might have ruined our day GW," I commented to him.
GW became a little more composed as time passed. We waited to see who would reach us first, our men or the NVA. I was comfortably propped on a fallen tree at that time, holding my pistol at ready, just in case the enemy got to us first. We would at least go out in a blaze of glory. Forty-five minutes to an hour passed on the ground. In the distance we could hear the faint beginnings of noises; men moving in the jungle.
My War - Installment 34
*** I nodded to GW and he dropped the smoke canister into the brush below. I hovered back a little to keep clear of the column of smoke. We looked below to the clay ware when, slowly from the brush and bodies, a man in the uniform of a North Vietnamese Officer emerged and raised his arms up in the air in a gesture of surrender. Now this was an interesting development.
"Granite Rock six-five - Apache one-six."
"Go one-six, six-five."
"We have an NVA Officer here at this location in a posture of surrender."
"You what one-six?"
"When we marked our location with smoke a man in NVA Officer's uniform got out for among the dead bodies and surrendered to us. We will remain on station until your ground unit arrives. We will have to leave within the hour. What is your squad's position?"
"Roger one-six, we copy on the NVA Officer. The squad should arrive in plenty of time one-six."
"Roger six-five. One-six copies. Over.
I remained hovering over the NVA Officer until the ground unit arrived and took custody of the man. I checked out with the ground unit and Granite Rock and took out for LZ Pony and some needed fuel.
I reported my capture to our CO. He made arrangements for one of our ships to pick up the NVA Officer and take him to Division for questioning. It would be interesting to see if we would learn anything from this man that had given himself up to me.
GW and I headed for home after refueling. Ken had called me earlier; we met just south of Pony. I was proud of our accomplishments of the afternoon. I didn't know whether we would learn much if anything, but just nabbing the guy was more than we had done in some time.
By OPs meeting time all that we knew was that my prisoner was at Division being interrogated by our intelligence section. So far all they seemed to know for sure was that he was a Captain from the Twenty Second North Vietnamese Regiment. From Granite Rock's ground unit we learned that there had been a large number of dead NVA throughout the area, in addition to where the Captain had come out. GW and I already knew that, we had seen the man crawl out from among the bodies. We would continue working the same areas, for the next few days, especially around Granite Rock's AO. We didn't need another incident like LZ Bird. The capture of this NVA officer seemed to confirm that the enemy was still in the area and hopefully he was still broken up and disorganized.
After three days of interrogation we heard that there had been twenty odd pages of report extracted from my little yellow Captain. He had been questioned by our intelligence people for one day, but had not spilled the beans. He had then been turned over to the South Vietnamese ARVN for questioning and had apparently been questioned using a different modality. He still did not talk. He was then returned to U.S. intelligence and questioned for another half day; still no results. Finally he was told that he would be returned to the ARVN if he refused to talk. He started to spill his guts.
He was the training officer of the Twenty Second North Vietnamese Regiment. He had been hiding for six days in a pile of dead bodies, until GW and I through much perseverance accidentally found him and he surrendered to us. He had bullet wounds through both of his calves, but luckily, for him, his condition was not serious.
They had been in the 506 Valley because they had planned to over run LZ Pony right before the Christmas Truce, which we managed to break up. LZ Bird had been planned for immediately after the Christmas Truce, which they were able to accomplish. They had planned well digging tunnels and emplacements completely around Bird, had communication set up, had sneaked inside the perimeter during the truce and booby-trapped the artillery pieces. That was the most interesting part of his story. There had been lots of other information which we learned in generalities and occasionally specifics. We learned where they came from in North Vietnam; where their supplies were stored; where their supplies came from and the routes over which the supplies had come.
There had to have been other information to have filled over twenty pages of report. I wished that I could have seen it all, especially since I caught the guy. All this information from the Twenty Second North Vietnamese Regimental Training Officer and it turned out that GW and I got absolutely no credit. I had personally thought that we deserved something and we were not even mentioned by name as having taken part in any of the whole operation. I was pissed to say the least!! If it had not been for GW and I there would not have been anyone to interrogate. One of the ranking officers in the Cav. probably got all of the credit. I kept my mouth shut.
We were back at it for the next few days without much luck. It had been well over two weeks since the Bird incident. Every time we flew past Bird we were reminded of the massacre by the bodies. Bodies of NVA soldiers were still lying around the fields. Stomachs swollen, stretching the material of their shirts against the buttons. Lips were eaten away by insects, swollen tongues in swollen faces grotesquely smiling at us. Eyelids were also eaten away leaving dead, dehydrated, unseeing eyes exposed to stare up at us as we hovered by. With each day's passing they lay there and with each day their condition worsened. It was all quite a gruesome reminder of the loss of life at LZ Bird that happened on both sides.
We were beginning to work some of the mountains and valleys to the southwest of Granite Rock, still looking for the remnants of the NVA Regiment. The information we had gained through the NVA Captain had, and was being used to plan air strikes on supply lines and depots, outside our AO. We were working some of the leads from other information received from him at that time.
Ken and I were each working different sides of a small valley when George and I happened upon a number of make-shift buildings, in a compound, enveloped by the dense jungle below. We came to a complete hover over the trees and then began working the area more closely. There was no one present in the compound, which I felt may have been a hospital or infirmary type set up. It did look as if the huts had seen recent use.
"Apache one-one - Apache one-six."
"Roger One-six. Go."
"We have some sort of compound here. I'm going to call in some artillery and mix it up some; we have a defensive concentration very close by."
"Roger, one-six. One-one copies, over."
I called Granite Rock and gave them the defensive concentration number. Within a few minutes I had rounds on the way which hit dead on the defensive location. Once the huts were zeroed in I called for a change of rounds to high explosive and literally wiped out the entire compound. There wasn’t one building left usable on the mountainside. I had used one of the concentrations that we had set up and it made me feel good to be able to put it to use.
That was the first time that I had actually had a volley hit directly on the defensive concentration on the first try. It had been a simple matter to adjust then, far easier than adjusting while under heavy enemy fire.
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A F
That evening, when I got back, I heard that Jack had been on the ground all day. I wondered what the problem had been. Had something happened? Had he been wounded earlier in the day? I went to look for him so that I could find out what was wrong. I had to keep an eye on my hootch mate.
As I walked from the heliport toward our hut Jack ran by without stopping or speaking.
"Hey Jack. What's wrong?"
He didn't stop or answer. He just kept running. Had I done something to upset him? Then I noticed that he seemed to be running toward the "Shitter". Surely he didn't have to take a dump so badly that he had reached the point or rudeness. He probably just had a case of the runs, which was a common occurrence with the daily use of malaria pills. I dropped my concern knowing he was moving about unfettered, so I started off again for the hut.
I lay down on my rocket boxes enjoying the absence of the air mattress, the bare wood covered only with my old mummy bag felt glorious. I dropped the mosquito net over the bunk, closed my eyes and day dreamed about my car of the future.
Jack came in through the door a few minutes later. I opened my eyes and glanced up at him. He was as white as a lily.
"How's it going Jack? What's wrong? You look like death warmed over."
"I've got the shits."
"Pretty bad, eh? It looks like you've about crapped yourself away."
"Ohhh...my ass-hole is as sore as a boil. I can't even sit any more. I've shit thirty-eight times so far today and when I'm not shitin' I'm fartin'."
"Did you go to sick call?"
"Yes, they said I've either had a bad reaction to all the daily malaria pills or I've got Amoebic dysentery. Which ever it is, it feels like I've shit away about three quarters of my insides. I can hardly stand it, the pain that is, to touch my ass to wipe it, is excruciating.
"That's really terrible Jack, I wish there waaa..."
Jack ran out the door for number thirty-nine. I closed my eyes again, thankful that my luck was better than Jack's. I had had some brief bouts with the runs because of the pills, but no more than ten or fifteen dumps at the most, which made me sore enough. I couldn't imagine how it would feel to crap almost forty times in one day!
Jack came back groaning and tried to sit on the edge of his bunk. He was unsuccessful in sitting, so he tried to lie down. His behind was so sore that he could not even lie on his back, so he rolled over onto his stomach, all the while continuing to moan. Jack's moaning reminded me of some moaning of his from a month earlier. I leaned back on my bunk and started to remember that instance a month earlier.
Jack and I had made a quick trip to Phu Cat one afternoon, when we couldn't fly. The weather was lousy and we were due to have a day off any how. We had jumped a ride into Phu Cat with Ramirez. He had dropped us off on the north end of, what he referred to as, the business district of the town. We strolled down the main, dirt road and browsed at the shops and ever present throngs of conical hatted villagers. Everyone was out selling everything and anything you could think of. It certainly wasn't like WW II in Europe where you could trade cigarettes and Hershey bars for almost anything. Here the Vietnamese were the ones with the cigarettes and Hershey bars, and everything else that we couldn't get through our supply lines. I bought some film for my camera and had a Coke, something else we couldn't get at LZ Hammond. It seemed that the Black Market was working well for the Vietnamese. We flew in all the supplies, personal and military and they ended up with them in their Black Market to sell back to us.
As we continued down the street I noted where I would be able to buy some deodorant and other necessary items, before heading for home. Since bathing was such a luxury, being so hard to come by and such a pain in the butt to acquire, we decided to go to a massage parlor. Oriental massage parlors, at least the ones I had been to in Saigon and those in Japan that I had read about, would start the massage process by bathing and then a trip to the steam room and then a massage and then another bath. The idea of a real bath lured us into the first massage parlor that we happened upon.
It certainly was not the greatest facility, but the call of the bath was irresistible. Perhaps I was fooled by the sign on the building, it should have read "public bath". There was one large room which we partitioned along the sides by a grid of wires. Curtains hung from the wires forming small cubicles. Each cubicle contained a padded table to lay down on for the massage. Jack and I were joined by two young women in shorts and halter tops, not bad lookers either. We were then led away to our little room.
"Youa takee croths offa, Di wee, yes."
"Yes."
"Why not," I said to myself. I folded my clothes and put them where I could keep an eye on them.
"Youa wate Di wee be light bak, yes."
She left the room but quickly returned with soap, towels, and a large basin of warm water. She pulled a small stool from under the massage table and motioned for me to sit down. Embarrassed somewhat, I jumped down, naked as a jay bird and sheepishly, sat on the stool, covering myself with my hands. The girl dipped her sponge into the water, grabbed some soap and began to lather me all over. I just sort of leaned back a little and concentrated on enjoying the attention that I was getting, and the bath. Bathing too often would cause the mosquitoes to swarm all over you. It was as if removing the dirt was like putting up signs which read, "Mosquitoes welcome, bite at will.”
She had started at my head and moved down across my body, titillating every part of me from head to toe. She then scooped up some of the water, using an old aluminum sauce pan and rinsed off the soap. There was no steam bath, but I could live without one. She then motioned for me to crawl back up on the table face down.
"Di wee, youa on tabr, ray down face, yes?"
"Granite Rock six-five - Apache one-six."
"Go one-six, six-five."
"We have an NVA Officer here at this location in a posture of surrender."
"You what one-six?"
"When we marked our location with smoke a man in NVA Officer's uniform got out for among the dead bodies and surrendered to us. We will remain on station until your ground unit arrives. We will have to leave within the hour. What is your squad's position?"
"Roger one-six, we copy on the NVA Officer. The squad should arrive in plenty of time one-six."
"Roger six-five. One-six copies. Over.
I remained hovering over the NVA Officer until the ground unit arrived and took custody of the man. I checked out with the ground unit and Granite Rock and took out for LZ Pony and some needed fuel.
I reported my capture to our CO. He made arrangements for one of our ships to pick up the NVA Officer and take him to Division for questioning. It would be interesting to see if we would learn anything from this man that had given himself up to me.
GW and I headed for home after refueling. Ken had called me earlier; we met just south of Pony. I was proud of our accomplishments of the afternoon. I didn't know whether we would learn much if anything, but just nabbing the guy was more than we had done in some time.
By OPs meeting time all that we knew was that my prisoner was at Division being interrogated by our intelligence section. So far all they seemed to know for sure was that he was a Captain from the Twenty Second North Vietnamese Regiment. From Granite Rock's ground unit we learned that there had been a large number of dead NVA throughout the area, in addition to where the Captain had come out. GW and I already knew that, we had seen the man crawl out from among the bodies. We would continue working the same areas, for the next few days, especially around Granite Rock's AO. We didn't need another incident like LZ Bird. The capture of this NVA officer seemed to confirm that the enemy was still in the area and hopefully he was still broken up and disorganized.
After three days of interrogation we heard that there had been twenty odd pages of report extracted from my little yellow Captain. He had been questioned by our intelligence people for one day, but had not spilled the beans. He had then been turned over to the South Vietnamese ARVN for questioning and had apparently been questioned using a different modality. He still did not talk. He was then returned to U.S. intelligence and questioned for another half day; still no results. Finally he was told that he would be returned to the ARVN if he refused to talk. He started to spill his guts.
He was the training officer of the Twenty Second North Vietnamese Regiment. He had been hiding for six days in a pile of dead bodies, until GW and I through much perseverance accidentally found him and he surrendered to us. He had bullet wounds through both of his calves, but luckily, for him, his condition was not serious.
They had been in the 506 Valley because they had planned to over run LZ Pony right before the Christmas Truce, which we managed to break up. LZ Bird had been planned for immediately after the Christmas Truce, which they were able to accomplish. They had planned well digging tunnels and emplacements completely around Bird, had communication set up, had sneaked inside the perimeter during the truce and booby-trapped the artillery pieces. That was the most interesting part of his story. There had been lots of other information which we learned in generalities and occasionally specifics. We learned where they came from in North Vietnam; where their supplies were stored; where their supplies came from and the routes over which the supplies had come.
There had to have been other information to have filled over twenty pages of report. I wished that I could have seen it all, especially since I caught the guy. All this information from the Twenty Second North Vietnamese Regimental Training Officer and it turned out that GW and I got absolutely no credit. I had personally thought that we deserved something and we were not even mentioned by name as having taken part in any of the whole operation. I was pissed to say the least!! If it had not been for GW and I there would not have been anyone to interrogate. One of the ranking officers in the Cav. probably got all of the credit. I kept my mouth shut.
We were back at it for the next few days without much luck. It had been well over two weeks since the Bird incident. Every time we flew past Bird we were reminded of the massacre by the bodies. Bodies of NVA soldiers were still lying around the fields. Stomachs swollen, stretching the material of their shirts against the buttons. Lips were eaten away by insects, swollen tongues in swollen faces grotesquely smiling at us. Eyelids were also eaten away leaving dead, dehydrated, unseeing eyes exposed to stare up at us as we hovered by. With each day's passing they lay there and with each day their condition worsened. It was all quite a gruesome reminder of the loss of life at LZ Bird that happened on both sides.
We were beginning to work some of the mountains and valleys to the southwest of Granite Rock, still looking for the remnants of the NVA Regiment. The information we had gained through the NVA Captain had, and was being used to plan air strikes on supply lines and depots, outside our AO. We were working some of the leads from other information received from him at that time.
Ken and I were each working different sides of a small valley when George and I happened upon a number of make-shift buildings, in a compound, enveloped by the dense jungle below. We came to a complete hover over the trees and then began working the area more closely. There was no one present in the compound, which I felt may have been a hospital or infirmary type set up. It did look as if the huts had seen recent use.
"Apache one-one - Apache one-six."
"Roger One-six. Go."
"We have some sort of compound here. I'm going to call in some artillery and mix it up some; we have a defensive concentration very close by."
"Roger, one-six. One-one copies, over."
I called Granite Rock and gave them the defensive concentration number. Within a few minutes I had rounds on the way which hit dead on the defensive location. Once the huts were zeroed in I called for a change of rounds to high explosive and literally wiped out the entire compound. There wasn’t one building left usable on the mountainside. I had used one of the concentrations that we had set up and it made me feel good to be able to put it to use.
That was the first time that I had actually had a volley hit directly on the defensive concentration on the first try. It had been a simple matter to adjust then, far easier than adjusting while under heavy enemy fire.
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A F
That evening, when I got back, I heard that Jack had been on the ground all day. I wondered what the problem had been. Had something happened? Had he been wounded earlier in the day? I went to look for him so that I could find out what was wrong. I had to keep an eye on my hootch mate.
As I walked from the heliport toward our hut Jack ran by without stopping or speaking.
"Hey Jack. What's wrong?"
He didn't stop or answer. He just kept running. Had I done something to upset him? Then I noticed that he seemed to be running toward the "Shitter". Surely he didn't have to take a dump so badly that he had reached the point or rudeness. He probably just had a case of the runs, which was a common occurrence with the daily use of malaria pills. I dropped my concern knowing he was moving about unfettered, so I started off again for the hut.
I lay down on my rocket boxes enjoying the absence of the air mattress, the bare wood covered only with my old mummy bag felt glorious. I dropped the mosquito net over the bunk, closed my eyes and day dreamed about my car of the future.
Jack came in through the door a few minutes later. I opened my eyes and glanced up at him. He was as white as a lily.
"How's it going Jack? What's wrong? You look like death warmed over."
"I've got the shits."
"Pretty bad, eh? It looks like you've about crapped yourself away."
"Ohhh...my ass-hole is as sore as a boil. I can't even sit any more. I've shit thirty-eight times so far today and when I'm not shitin' I'm fartin'."
"Did you go to sick call?"
"Yes, they said I've either had a bad reaction to all the daily malaria pills or I've got Amoebic dysentery. Which ever it is, it feels like I've shit away about three quarters of my insides. I can hardly stand it, the pain that is, to touch my ass to wipe it, is excruciating.
"That's really terrible Jack, I wish there waaa..."
Jack ran out the door for number thirty-nine. I closed my eyes again, thankful that my luck was better than Jack's. I had had some brief bouts with the runs because of the pills, but no more than ten or fifteen dumps at the most, which made me sore enough. I couldn't imagine how it would feel to crap almost forty times in one day!
Jack came back groaning and tried to sit on the edge of his bunk. He was unsuccessful in sitting, so he tried to lie down. His behind was so sore that he could not even lie on his back, so he rolled over onto his stomach, all the while continuing to moan. Jack's moaning reminded me of some moaning of his from a month earlier. I leaned back on my bunk and started to remember that instance a month earlier.
Jack and I had made a quick trip to Phu Cat one afternoon, when we couldn't fly. The weather was lousy and we were due to have a day off any how. We had jumped a ride into Phu Cat with Ramirez. He had dropped us off on the north end of, what he referred to as, the business district of the town. We strolled down the main, dirt road and browsed at the shops and ever present throngs of conical hatted villagers. Everyone was out selling everything and anything you could think of. It certainly wasn't like WW II in Europe where you could trade cigarettes and Hershey bars for almost anything. Here the Vietnamese were the ones with the cigarettes and Hershey bars, and everything else that we couldn't get through our supply lines. I bought some film for my camera and had a Coke, something else we couldn't get at LZ Hammond. It seemed that the Black Market was working well for the Vietnamese. We flew in all the supplies, personal and military and they ended up with them in their Black Market to sell back to us.
As we continued down the street I noted where I would be able to buy some deodorant and other necessary items, before heading for home. Since bathing was such a luxury, being so hard to come by and such a pain in the butt to acquire, we decided to go to a massage parlor. Oriental massage parlors, at least the ones I had been to in Saigon and those in Japan that I had read about, would start the massage process by bathing and then a trip to the steam room and then a massage and then another bath. The idea of a real bath lured us into the first massage parlor that we happened upon.
It certainly was not the greatest facility, but the call of the bath was irresistible. Perhaps I was fooled by the sign on the building, it should have read "public bath". There was one large room which we partitioned along the sides by a grid of wires. Curtains hung from the wires forming small cubicles. Each cubicle contained a padded table to lay down on for the massage. Jack and I were joined by two young women in shorts and halter tops, not bad lookers either. We were then led away to our little room.
"Youa takee croths offa, Di wee, yes."
"Yes."
"Why not," I said to myself. I folded my clothes and put them where I could keep an eye on them.
"Youa wate Di wee be light bak, yes."
She left the room but quickly returned with soap, towels, and a large basin of warm water. She pulled a small stool from under the massage table and motioned for me to sit down. Embarrassed somewhat, I jumped down, naked as a jay bird and sheepishly, sat on the stool, covering myself with my hands. The girl dipped her sponge into the water, grabbed some soap and began to lather me all over. I just sort of leaned back a little and concentrated on enjoying the attention that I was getting, and the bath. Bathing too often would cause the mosquitoes to swarm all over you. It was as if removing the dirt was like putting up signs which read, "Mosquitoes welcome, bite at will.”
She had started at my head and moved down across my body, titillating every part of me from head to toe. She then scooped up some of the water, using an old aluminum sauce pan and rinsed off the soap. There was no steam bath, but I could live without one. She then motioned for me to crawl back up on the table face down.
"Di wee, youa on tabr, ray down face, yes?"
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
My War - Installment 33
"Here Ted my boy."
I reached over and took a CS grenade from where it was hanging in the cockpit and held it out to Ted. He took it and held it in his hand. "Cripes was this guy for real. Whose side was he on?" Maybe he was just slow, or then maybe he was terrified of doing the wrong thing. Perhaps he was just stupid. At least he was polite. "He can't be that dumb, can he? They wouldn't have let them in the service if he were that dense, would they?"
"Pull the pin and drop the grenade out your door Ted."
I wanted to be sure he knew which door to use. Fortunately all this was faster in reality than it sounds. As slow as Ted was, what ever was down below could have been miles away before we would be able to react. Ted finally dropped the CS canister out his door. I moved backwards and hovering remained motionless watching what would happen.
The usual thick white smoke of the CS would soon be drifting out from the leaves. We hovered and waited. At least what ever was below us was not shooting at us. What was going on? No smoke, no thick white smoke at all was coming out from the greenery below. I was almost ready to move back and drop another grenade myself, thinking the first had been a dud or that Ted had forgotten to pull the pin. I looked once again to where the grenade had been dropped. The trees started to shake violently and then the surrounding greenery, which appeared to be bushes, began to quake. The rumbling foliage rustled in a path moving up hill, suddenly out came a huge elephant, pitifully wagging his head from side to side in an anguished manner.
Poor devil must have inhaled the entire contents of the canister, seeing that no smoke, at all, had appeared at the drop site. I really felt sorry for the elephant. I personally knew what CS felt like to a short human nose. It must surely have been agonizing with a nose of those proportions.
"Yea, war's hell, what do you think elephant? I'm sorry." I said to myself.
I heard one-zero key his mike, but all I heard were a few snickers, half muffled by the sounds of men trying to catch their breath. I could imagine the guff I'd catch for this one when it got around. Stuff like: Did you here about the elephant attacking Rollason’s ship today? The trunk of the matter is, Rollason is just down right cruel to animals, and on and on.
Oh well, another day in the life of a Scout. We finished our day's reconnaissance and started for home. I hoped that my day or rather one of the events did not precede me home. I could use a few minutes peace before the heckling would begin. There is something very interesting and exciting about seeing an elephant in the wild, even if it was under such unique circumstances.
We landed and shut down, after refueling. Ted was still high on the day’s reconnaissance, at least that's what I told myself.
"Sir?"
"Yes Ted. What's up?"
"Do ya think I could fly with ya tomorrow?"
"Heaven forbid." That was the last thing I wanted, a near blind observer, well for the benefit of Ted, a guy who had trouble seeing anything that was even pointed out to him, flying with me, in a tight situation - he was likeable enough, but.
"Ted. It's not up to me. You'll have to talk to Captain White about that. I want to be totally up front with you Ted. Truthfully, in my opinion, I don't believe that you’re ready to fly Scouts yet. You have to be able to see, to detect even the slightest movement on the ground. You don't seem to be able to detect movement at all. You would be putting yourself and the pilot that would be with you in more danger than he would like to be in. Talk to Captain White if you would like to. He might let you fly with him, so that he can evaluate you too."
"Yes Sir. I'll talk to Captain White."
I was glad to have extracted myself from talking any longer to Ted. A whole day was enough. He really was a nice fellow, but dumb is dumb and enough was enough.
I walked briskly from the helicopter to my hut and some of the peace and quiet that I had longed for earlier. I sat on my bunk, grabbed my guitar case, opened it and pulled out the guitar. The gut strings looked tattered from use where they had been pushed against the frets, but to my ears, still lightly buzzing from twelve hours of engine, rotor, and radio noise, they sounded sweet and soothing. I strummed a few tunes before going to mess. I felt relaxed and ready for anything. I had done lots of flying these last few days, it had all been great fun. I felt a little guilty for having had so much fun. But, fun or not, orders were orders, I was doing my job, doing what I was told to do and enjoying all of it, not just the past few days.
Buzz had a great meal for us that night, roast beef, canned I guess, and everything that goes with it. It just never ceased to amaze me what he did with what he had, or with what he had and how he got it. We all sat around the mess tent at the crude wooden tables, we ate and chatted about the day. As we drank coffee and ate chocolate cake the other Scouts told us that they still had no definite sightings and no contact with the NVA. They agreed that only their instincts assured them that the NVA were still close by and that they were just keeping low, licking their wounds so to speak. Dave and I added that there was no reason to suspect that they had fled into the larger mountains. There had been absolutely no physical signs of their presence, anywhere, in the mountains.
"The only enemy that's up there seems to be carrying trunks, eh Sam?"
"Right, Bob. They were a real menace, swarming over the mountain's side covering everything in sight. We were terrified."
We sat around the mess tent for some time talking and drinking coffee.
"You notice all the big pieces floating in the coffee this evening?" said somebody back in the shadows.
"Where did they come from?" asked Dana.
"All our water is pumped from local supplies, such as streams, rice paddies, etc., into the tank trailers and then chemically treated. I don't believe it’s filtered at all. Usually it runs through a screen, maybe they forgot to screen this batch. Just spit the big pieces out on the ground. That's one advantage of having dirt floors."
I didn't know who it was that came out with that long explanation, but it sounded logical enough. I left the tent and went to relax in my hut for a few minutes.
It felt good to stretch out on my bunk under the mosquito netting, after sitting for so many hours. No matter how much you like something or like doing it, it's a good idea to change pace or at least position every once in a while. Laying there I got so comfortable that I almost dozed off. It was a lucky break for me that Jack came by the hut on his way to the Scout tent or I might have slept straight through the OPs meeting.
There was nothing new at the OPs meeting that night, but it would have been in bad taste to miss it. We would all be, that is all the Scouts, working the mountains to the west of LZ Bird, again trying to push the enemy into showing themselves; pushing them enough to get them pissed off sufficiently to start taking some pot shots at us. I was spared any comments from the CO about my elephant and was kind of hoping the others would let it rest as well. I really didn't care, I just figured that if they joked with me very much they were showing their jealousy. Elephants weren't something you got to see everyday, even in Vietnam, and especially in the wild.
The OPs meeting broke up early so I figured I'd head for the Scout tent and practice smoking my pipe. Pipes are a bit of a pain. First, to do it right you have to know what tobaccos to choose. The heavily flavored or scented ones often use oily concoctions to flavor or scent, the tobacco, therefore causing the tobacco and the pipe to burn hotter. Also to help the pipe burn cooler and smoke more smoothly it has to be broken in; a cake has to be built up inside the bowl, the cake is made of, I suppose ash or some residue from the burnt tobacco and helps to dissipate the heat of the burning tobacco. So now you see why I was going to practice smoking pipe.
As usual when I arrived, Jack and I lived sort of across camp from the other Scouts; everyone had already stoked up their pipes and were contentedly lounging about puffing away. Clouds of blue smoke floated about in familiar patterns in the dimly lit interior of the tent. A few of the guys were sipping drinks from Christmas stocks of spirits that they had received from home. I enjoyed just sitting, watching, and listening to the older men, there were some real characters. I was having enough trouble just keeping my pipe lit. I thought of Hollice Elijah Moore while I tried puffing away. He always had a pipe in his mouth.
Most of the guys must have made their snide remarks at evening mess, the only thing they wanted to do then was play gin and talk small talk. That was fine with me. I didn't much feel like talking shop anyhow. Nobody seemed to be talking shop much since Bird that would pass with time; at least I hoped it would.
I joined in and added to the cloud of smoke around the card table and watched the heated battle for supremacy in points. I had a gin and tonic complements of Bob, while I sat with my pipe continually going out. If I could keep interested in smoking the pipe long enough I guessed that I'd learn how to operate the darn thing.
I went back to the hut mellow and relaxed. I brushed the pipe taste from my teeth and slipped into the hut. Heavens to mergatroid there was an un-inflated air mattress on the foot of my rocket box bed. I removed the mattress from its plastic bag and unfolded it, then placed the rubber valve to my mouth and began to blow. After ten minutes or so of huffing and puffing, the mattress was inflated to a medium firmness. I figured I'd sleep like a baby that night. I unrolled my sleeping bag, we kept them rolled up to keep out the scorpions and other critters, and lay down trying to decide if this air mattress was actually comfortable or whether I preferred the wooden boxes with just the bag. The least I could do was to give it a try.
I thought the morning would never arrive. I just couldn't figure why I wasn't smart enough to wake up all the way and get the heck off of that big elongated marsh-mellowy mattress. It sure is funny how we fool ourselves into not getting out of bed and rectifying something that is bothering us. It really was horrible, soI figured I'd return the stupid thing later that day or maybe I'd do somebody else a favor and throw it away. I never thought it would end up being torture trying out a mattress.
It took me longer than usual to wake up that morning, just maybe a lack of sleep. I sat in Buzz's mess tent and waited, drooling, for the coffee to finish boiling. I don’t know what I looked like, but if I looked anything like I felt I must not have looked very good at all.
I drank a large cup of coffee and then went back to the hut to wash up for the second time that morning, hoping that the cold water would wash more of the sleep from my tired eyes. It seemed to work so I went back for more coffee and breakfast; I was starting to feel human again. I never thought a mattress could be so cruel.
I would be flying wing on Dave that day. We left and headed back to the free fire zone west of LZ Bird. The day was uneventful. We just prayed that our presence was doing what we expected it to that is being there, keeping the NVA on edge.
The next few days were repeats. We continued heavy recons all over the region west of the remains of Bird, but were still unable to engage the enemy other than for brief sporadic moments of fire.
It had been slightly over one week since the LZ Bird massacre and we were still trying to relocate the enemy command post and engage them in battle. I was flying wing on Ken; we had spent most of the day doing hour after hour of fruitless reconnaissance. Ken broke away to check some of the defensive artillery concentrations in Granite Rock's AO (Area of Operation). I stayed to the west, out of the way, and continued to work some of the multitude of little cove-like valleys that ran down the mountains. GW was flying with me that day and he just wasn't acting right. Something was obviously bothering him. Something was wrong, he just was not himself. He was nervous and moody and could not pay attention to, or see anything. He acted as if he had a premonition of doom and disaster.
I was at tree top level, as usual, and was about to turn into another shoot when I noticed a number of large clay crocks about five in all, the type we usually found large caches of rice stored in. Oddly enough there was a pile of bodies laying near the crocks.
"Hey GW see those crocks and bodies under the brush there?"
"Hey Sah, man-I doan wanna see no crocks an bodies."
"Come on GW. We'll just mark them with smoke and call Granite Rock to come and take care of it all."
"OK. let us'n do it and git out'a heuh. Sah."
"Well, we'll see, GW."
I hovered over to the crocks and placed them and the bodies under GW's door. We seemed in no danger so I asked GW to hold off marking the grain until I made contact with Granite Rock.
"Granite Rock six-five - Apache one-six."
"One-six, Granite Rock, go ahead."
We have a cache of rice here, which we are getting ready to mark for you. There is also a pile of bodies, North Vietnamese type, that are here in this same location. Over."
"Roger one-six, we copy. We have a patrol working in that area. Mark your position now."
"Roger six-five, marking.
I reached over and took a CS grenade from where it was hanging in the cockpit and held it out to Ted. He took it and held it in his hand. "Cripes was this guy for real. Whose side was he on?" Maybe he was just slow, or then maybe he was terrified of doing the wrong thing. Perhaps he was just stupid. At least he was polite. "He can't be that dumb, can he? They wouldn't have let them in the service if he were that dense, would they?"
"Pull the pin and drop the grenade out your door Ted."
I wanted to be sure he knew which door to use. Fortunately all this was faster in reality than it sounds. As slow as Ted was, what ever was down below could have been miles away before we would be able to react. Ted finally dropped the CS canister out his door. I moved backwards and hovering remained motionless watching what would happen.
The usual thick white smoke of the CS would soon be drifting out from the leaves. We hovered and waited. At least what ever was below us was not shooting at us. What was going on? No smoke, no thick white smoke at all was coming out from the greenery below. I was almost ready to move back and drop another grenade myself, thinking the first had been a dud or that Ted had forgotten to pull the pin. I looked once again to where the grenade had been dropped. The trees started to shake violently and then the surrounding greenery, which appeared to be bushes, began to quake. The rumbling foliage rustled in a path moving up hill, suddenly out came a huge elephant, pitifully wagging his head from side to side in an anguished manner.
Poor devil must have inhaled the entire contents of the canister, seeing that no smoke, at all, had appeared at the drop site. I really felt sorry for the elephant. I personally knew what CS felt like to a short human nose. It must surely have been agonizing with a nose of those proportions.
"Yea, war's hell, what do you think elephant? I'm sorry." I said to myself.
I heard one-zero key his mike, but all I heard were a few snickers, half muffled by the sounds of men trying to catch their breath. I could imagine the guff I'd catch for this one when it got around. Stuff like: Did you here about the elephant attacking Rollason’s ship today? The trunk of the matter is, Rollason is just down right cruel to animals, and on and on.
Oh well, another day in the life of a Scout. We finished our day's reconnaissance and started for home. I hoped that my day or rather one of the events did not precede me home. I could use a few minutes peace before the heckling would begin. There is something very interesting and exciting about seeing an elephant in the wild, even if it was under such unique circumstances.
We landed and shut down, after refueling. Ted was still high on the day’s reconnaissance, at least that's what I told myself.
"Sir?"
"Yes Ted. What's up?"
"Do ya think I could fly with ya tomorrow?"
"Heaven forbid." That was the last thing I wanted, a near blind observer, well for the benefit of Ted, a guy who had trouble seeing anything that was even pointed out to him, flying with me, in a tight situation - he was likeable enough, but.
"Ted. It's not up to me. You'll have to talk to Captain White about that. I want to be totally up front with you Ted. Truthfully, in my opinion, I don't believe that you’re ready to fly Scouts yet. You have to be able to see, to detect even the slightest movement on the ground. You don't seem to be able to detect movement at all. You would be putting yourself and the pilot that would be with you in more danger than he would like to be in. Talk to Captain White if you would like to. He might let you fly with him, so that he can evaluate you too."
"Yes Sir. I'll talk to Captain White."
I was glad to have extracted myself from talking any longer to Ted. A whole day was enough. He really was a nice fellow, but dumb is dumb and enough was enough.
I walked briskly from the helicopter to my hut and some of the peace and quiet that I had longed for earlier. I sat on my bunk, grabbed my guitar case, opened it and pulled out the guitar. The gut strings looked tattered from use where they had been pushed against the frets, but to my ears, still lightly buzzing from twelve hours of engine, rotor, and radio noise, they sounded sweet and soothing. I strummed a few tunes before going to mess. I felt relaxed and ready for anything. I had done lots of flying these last few days, it had all been great fun. I felt a little guilty for having had so much fun. But, fun or not, orders were orders, I was doing my job, doing what I was told to do and enjoying all of it, not just the past few days.
Buzz had a great meal for us that night, roast beef, canned I guess, and everything that goes with it. It just never ceased to amaze me what he did with what he had, or with what he had and how he got it. We all sat around the mess tent at the crude wooden tables, we ate and chatted about the day. As we drank coffee and ate chocolate cake the other Scouts told us that they still had no definite sightings and no contact with the NVA. They agreed that only their instincts assured them that the NVA were still close by and that they were just keeping low, licking their wounds so to speak. Dave and I added that there was no reason to suspect that they had fled into the larger mountains. There had been absolutely no physical signs of their presence, anywhere, in the mountains.
"The only enemy that's up there seems to be carrying trunks, eh Sam?"
"Right, Bob. They were a real menace, swarming over the mountain's side covering everything in sight. We were terrified."
We sat around the mess tent for some time talking and drinking coffee.
"You notice all the big pieces floating in the coffee this evening?" said somebody back in the shadows.
"Where did they come from?" asked Dana.
"All our water is pumped from local supplies, such as streams, rice paddies, etc., into the tank trailers and then chemically treated. I don't believe it’s filtered at all. Usually it runs through a screen, maybe they forgot to screen this batch. Just spit the big pieces out on the ground. That's one advantage of having dirt floors."
I didn't know who it was that came out with that long explanation, but it sounded logical enough. I left the tent and went to relax in my hut for a few minutes.
It felt good to stretch out on my bunk under the mosquito netting, after sitting for so many hours. No matter how much you like something or like doing it, it's a good idea to change pace or at least position every once in a while. Laying there I got so comfortable that I almost dozed off. It was a lucky break for me that Jack came by the hut on his way to the Scout tent or I might have slept straight through the OPs meeting.
There was nothing new at the OPs meeting that night, but it would have been in bad taste to miss it. We would all be, that is all the Scouts, working the mountains to the west of LZ Bird, again trying to push the enemy into showing themselves; pushing them enough to get them pissed off sufficiently to start taking some pot shots at us. I was spared any comments from the CO about my elephant and was kind of hoping the others would let it rest as well. I really didn't care, I just figured that if they joked with me very much they were showing their jealousy. Elephants weren't something you got to see everyday, even in Vietnam, and especially in the wild.
The OPs meeting broke up early so I figured I'd head for the Scout tent and practice smoking my pipe. Pipes are a bit of a pain. First, to do it right you have to know what tobaccos to choose. The heavily flavored or scented ones often use oily concoctions to flavor or scent, the tobacco, therefore causing the tobacco and the pipe to burn hotter. Also to help the pipe burn cooler and smoke more smoothly it has to be broken in; a cake has to be built up inside the bowl, the cake is made of, I suppose ash or some residue from the burnt tobacco and helps to dissipate the heat of the burning tobacco. So now you see why I was going to practice smoking pipe.
As usual when I arrived, Jack and I lived sort of across camp from the other Scouts; everyone had already stoked up their pipes and were contentedly lounging about puffing away. Clouds of blue smoke floated about in familiar patterns in the dimly lit interior of the tent. A few of the guys were sipping drinks from Christmas stocks of spirits that they had received from home. I enjoyed just sitting, watching, and listening to the older men, there were some real characters. I was having enough trouble just keeping my pipe lit. I thought of Hollice Elijah Moore while I tried puffing away. He always had a pipe in his mouth.
Most of the guys must have made their snide remarks at evening mess, the only thing they wanted to do then was play gin and talk small talk. That was fine with me. I didn't much feel like talking shop anyhow. Nobody seemed to be talking shop much since Bird that would pass with time; at least I hoped it would.
I joined in and added to the cloud of smoke around the card table and watched the heated battle for supremacy in points. I had a gin and tonic complements of Bob, while I sat with my pipe continually going out. If I could keep interested in smoking the pipe long enough I guessed that I'd learn how to operate the darn thing.
I went back to the hut mellow and relaxed. I brushed the pipe taste from my teeth and slipped into the hut. Heavens to mergatroid there was an un-inflated air mattress on the foot of my rocket box bed. I removed the mattress from its plastic bag and unfolded it, then placed the rubber valve to my mouth and began to blow. After ten minutes or so of huffing and puffing, the mattress was inflated to a medium firmness. I figured I'd sleep like a baby that night. I unrolled my sleeping bag, we kept them rolled up to keep out the scorpions and other critters, and lay down trying to decide if this air mattress was actually comfortable or whether I preferred the wooden boxes with just the bag. The least I could do was to give it a try.
I thought the morning would never arrive. I just couldn't figure why I wasn't smart enough to wake up all the way and get the heck off of that big elongated marsh-mellowy mattress. It sure is funny how we fool ourselves into not getting out of bed and rectifying something that is bothering us. It really was horrible, soI figured I'd return the stupid thing later that day or maybe I'd do somebody else a favor and throw it away. I never thought it would end up being torture trying out a mattress.
It took me longer than usual to wake up that morning, just maybe a lack of sleep. I sat in Buzz's mess tent and waited, drooling, for the coffee to finish boiling. I don’t know what I looked like, but if I looked anything like I felt I must not have looked very good at all.
I drank a large cup of coffee and then went back to the hut to wash up for the second time that morning, hoping that the cold water would wash more of the sleep from my tired eyes. It seemed to work so I went back for more coffee and breakfast; I was starting to feel human again. I never thought a mattress could be so cruel.
I would be flying wing on Dave that day. We left and headed back to the free fire zone west of LZ Bird. The day was uneventful. We just prayed that our presence was doing what we expected it to that is being there, keeping the NVA on edge.
The next few days were repeats. We continued heavy recons all over the region west of the remains of Bird, but were still unable to engage the enemy other than for brief sporadic moments of fire.
It had been slightly over one week since the LZ Bird massacre and we were still trying to relocate the enemy command post and engage them in battle. I was flying wing on Ken; we had spent most of the day doing hour after hour of fruitless reconnaissance. Ken broke away to check some of the defensive artillery concentrations in Granite Rock's AO (Area of Operation). I stayed to the west, out of the way, and continued to work some of the multitude of little cove-like valleys that ran down the mountains. GW was flying with me that day and he just wasn't acting right. Something was obviously bothering him. Something was wrong, he just was not himself. He was nervous and moody and could not pay attention to, or see anything. He acted as if he had a premonition of doom and disaster.
I was at tree top level, as usual, and was about to turn into another shoot when I noticed a number of large clay crocks about five in all, the type we usually found large caches of rice stored in. Oddly enough there was a pile of bodies laying near the crocks.
"Hey GW see those crocks and bodies under the brush there?"
"Hey Sah, man-I doan wanna see no crocks an bodies."
"Come on GW. We'll just mark them with smoke and call Granite Rock to come and take care of it all."
"OK. let us'n do it and git out'a heuh. Sah."
"Well, we'll see, GW."
I hovered over to the crocks and placed them and the bodies under GW's door. We seemed in no danger so I asked GW to hold off marking the grain until I made contact with Granite Rock.
"Granite Rock six-five - Apache one-six."
"One-six, Granite Rock, go ahead."
We have a cache of rice here, which we are getting ready to mark for you. There is also a pile of bodies, North Vietnamese type, that are here in this same location. Over."
"Roger one-six, we copy. We have a patrol working in that area. Mark your position now."
"Roger six-five, marking.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
My War - Installment 32
I was to fly alone that day, we had an odd number of helicopters and every other Scout would be flying in a team trying to keep pressure on the NVA. I didn't have a first light that morning so I lounged around the mess tent stuffing myself with eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee until it was time to go. I made a pass by the hut, dropped off my writing materials and grabbed my flight helmet and camera. The day would be an interesting one. At least I was convinced that it would be.
When I approached the helicopter Beau was there waiting and when he saw me coming he began to untie the rotor blades.
"Morning, Beau. Where's your cowboy hat?"
"What's that, Sir?"
"I just asked where your cowboy hat was. You know we are to be herding cattle today, don't you?"
"Come to think of it, I guess that I did hear something to that effect. How did you rate that duty?"
We took off and flew into the sunrise on our way to the round-up. It didn't take us long to locate the cows among the grassy, abandoned, valleys of the free fire zone. It was a pretty sight to see the cows lazily grazing, scattered across one of the little cove-like valleys. I didn't know how many cows there were supposed to be. I thought that some could have fallen, an easy prey, to the tigers which inhabited these mountains. Beau and I assumed that the majority were there together in the one herd.
We flew in behind the cows and began to drive them ahead of us, toward the main valley where we would turn them east and drive them to safety. As luck would have it, with our being a lone ship, we started to receive some sporadic machine gun fire; there must have been a small NVA force at the far end of the valley, behind us. I increased the pace of the round-up and got the cows bunched up and moving steadily ahead of us. Again I thanked the Lord that the NVA were such lousy shots.
We came to the junction with the main, east running valley and a few cows tried to stray back up the valley, some skittish ones tried to move west. I quickly hovered backward and turned them toward the others in the herd. Caught up in the spirit of the drive I pulled my pistol from its holster and shot a few rounds behind some strays to try and bring them up with the others. I really doubt that they heard the shots above the loud noise of the engine and rotor.
I called in the position of the NVA, from which we had received fire, to Granite Rock and for some reason they accepted my coordinates without comment or question. They must have relayed the message to another team in the area to check it out. Beau and I had our priority assignment and they were moving along nicely then toward the east, where we would be rid of our charges. We continued to move the herd along at a slow, but steady pace. Only occasionally did we have to break away to head off a stray. We were really enjoying ourselves and the respite that this little cattle operation afforded us.
We frequently heard radio messages from the other Scout teams, which were working to our north. None seemed to be having much luck in keeping definite tabs on our enemy. One team had taken up the coordinates that we had given to Granite Rock and were directing artillery in, pounding that position with some success. If nothing else we were continuing to harass the enemy and keep them disgruntled, moving and broken into smaller groups.
We left the herd in a quiet pasture-like area in the free fire zone, while we went to Pony for fuel. There was little chance that anything would happen for the few minutes that we would be absent.
We returned to our round-up detail as quickly as possible and gathered up the few cows that had straggled away from the herd. Anxious to finish our task we started to push the cows a biut faster when we reached the more open areas of the valley. We had not been told to do anything other than move the cattle out of the free fire zone and as far as we knew no one would assume the task on the ground when ever we finished. There was only one problem. Usually it is said that when you assume too much you make an ass out of you and me (ass-u-me). I decided to go ahead and at least move the herd, which numbered thirty-five or so, to the closest village and let the natives worry about them. This little mission had .taken more of our time than we expected and our finish time was being pushed well into the afternoon. With no other team member to fly with we went back home and called it a day.
We were greeted with: "Howdy pardner and how are the Rawhide Rangers this evening. How are things on the Ponderosa," and other stupid quips. A mediocre attempt to get us riled. We had enjoyed the day immensely, although it would have been a lot more fun on horseback.
The Scouts had no real good fortune that day other than to lay in some artillery in the cul-de-sac where Beau and I had drawn fire. It was their consensus though that the enemy seemed to generally be moving west to northwest, into the rugged highland mountains. I was anxious to see what we would be doing in the next few days.
The OPs meeting that evening confirmed or supported the findings of the Scouts. I surmised that all the information that OPs had, must have come from the Scouts, surely there could hardly be agents on the ground in an, evacuated, free fire zone. The Scouts would continue working the areas where they had left off that day. What did that mean for me since I had not been a part of the day's reconnaissance missions? Would another ship be ready or what? My question was no sooner thought than it was answered directly. I would be flying wing on Dave and we would go over to the big mountains further to the west and scout around. Perhaps we would be able to determine if the N.V.A. had penetrated that apparently uninhabited region. I personally couldn't see what advantage the enemy would have in separating themselves from the more populated coastal region…that is other than to regroup and access the damage done to them over the past few weeks. They couldn't win a war in isolation. In any case I was sure that it would be an interesting day, flying in the mountains.
The events of the past few weeks had dampened everyone's spirits to a certain degree. Gatherings seemed to be a little more somber in some way. LZ Bird would not be manned again and, in fact, everything that showed signs of our having been there had already been removed. I spent the late evening hours playing guitar or attempting to, I was improving, with Jack's instruction. Occasionally I would take a break to rest my fingers and then I would try and write some short letters.
A NEW A.O.
I was delighted to see a clear sky with stars shining when I got up the next morning. We had not even had many mortar attacks in the recent past, which were usually compliments of the friendly local Viet Cong. With all my morning chores finished I sat in the mess tent and stuffed my face with a hearty breakfast while waiting for mission time. We would fly directly to the big mountains do a short recon and then refuel at Pony and continue.
We passed Granite Rock and then banked to the right and headed west northwest into the mountains. The sky had remained mostly clear with some rolling cumulus clouds, which assumed varying odd shapes as they moved eastward. The jungle below us was very dense and gave the feeling of impenetrability, of never having been touched by mankind. Even in areas where the vegetation looked close to the ground, it was impossible to know how tall it really was. That's how totally covered the terrain was. At the head of every little junction of ridges or mountains there was a beautiful waterfall cascading, sometimes for several hundred feet, before they and their streams were totally lost from sight in the jungle.
In some areas mist hung over the tree tops in a heavy curtain of undisturbed, tranquil beauty, reinforcing the feeling that nothing had passed that way in eons; there had been no bombs, napalm, bullets or feet. Once in a while, in a high tree and brush covered valley, the top of an ancient ruin protruded through the greenery. It was really a neat place, the whole area was fantastic. It was not feasible to even speculate where the large stone building blocks had come from. The vegetation had grown for hundreds of years perhaps, unchecked by man's presence, covering more than it left revealed. I thought that it would be great fun to explore these mountains at ground level.
I was disappointed when we had to leave to refuel. We had been flying at tree top level as usual and were working an unfamiliar area away from all friendly units. We had to be sure of our position, at all times, in the intricate maze of mountains and valleys, plus, I definitely wanted to, immediately, return to continue my personal adventure. It seemed that at any moment we might burst through into a hidden valley and be in Shangri-la, that's how beautiful and enchanting the area was in my eyes.
We refueled and returned to the spot where we had left off. The only signs of movement or life, which we had seen in these mountains, had been those of animals, monkeys and birds, in the tops of the trees. However not knowing the terrain beneath or what it was hiding, we continued searching.
I had a new observer this day, better described as a volunteer or observer tryout, with me that day. It was felt that there was little chance of contact, so it would be a good day to start breaking him in. This young fellow was really enthusiastic about being an observer; maybe he was tired of walking. He only had one fault that I could detect thus far, that being that he couldn't see anything below us, even when I pointed it out to him.
"Ted."
No answer, but his lips were moving. There was a glimmer of hope.
I yelled at him. "Ted. You have to push the intercom button before you talk and hold it down while talking. When you’re finished talking you release the button."
"Yes Sir," he yelled back.
"Did you see that large group of monkeys back there in the trees?"
"What monkeys, Sir?"
"The ones we just flew over."
"No Sir."
And so it went. Maybe he was just too thrilled with the act of flying. I was anxious for signs of improvement, but I figured I'd give him the benefit of the doubt. I'd hate to have him as an observer if I were in a tight situation.
"Did you see that flock of birds over beside those temple ruins? Did you see them?"
"No Sir."
"Patience, patience," I said to myself; "at least he's honest." We continued to scout the mountains moving further and further into the wilderness.
There weren't even any Montagnard villages in these mountains. They could have lived there and been left alone by everybody. It would take too long for any one to get there by foot to make it worth while to harass anyone who would live there.
Every now and again I would ask Ted if he saw an animal, or bird, or waterfall, or ruin and he seemed to be settling down. At least he was beginning to take notice of a few things below him.
By late afternoon we had pretty well worked the area that had been assigned to us. We were flying in the eastern region of the mountains again, in a brushy looking area near some ruins, when I noticed some definite movement, in the brush and trees. The movement appeared to radiate upward from ground level, indicating that it was some mammal on the ground making the foliage move.
"Ho, Ho."
"Apache one-zero. Apache one-six."
"Go one-six."
"I have some movement on the ground over here, we are going to double back and check it out…over."
"Roger one-six…One-zero standing by."
"Did you see that Ted?"
"What!"
"Here we go again," I thought to myself.
"What I've just been talking to one-zero about."
"Oh, that. No Sir."
By that time I had come back around and was hovering over the trees where I had seen the movement.
"We are hovering over the spot where I saw some movement Ted. The spot is directly below you, out of the door."
"Yes Sir…So what?"
Talk about thick. I thought he had been improving.
"I want you to take one of the CS canisters, pull the pin and drop it straight down into those small trees. OK?"
"Yes Sir! What CS canister Sir?"
When I approached the helicopter Beau was there waiting and when he saw me coming he began to untie the rotor blades.
"Morning, Beau. Where's your cowboy hat?"
"What's that, Sir?"
"I just asked where your cowboy hat was. You know we are to be herding cattle today, don't you?"
"Come to think of it, I guess that I did hear something to that effect. How did you rate that duty?"
We took off and flew into the sunrise on our way to the round-up. It didn't take us long to locate the cows among the grassy, abandoned, valleys of the free fire zone. It was a pretty sight to see the cows lazily grazing, scattered across one of the little cove-like valleys. I didn't know how many cows there were supposed to be. I thought that some could have fallen, an easy prey, to the tigers which inhabited these mountains. Beau and I assumed that the majority were there together in the one herd.
We flew in behind the cows and began to drive them ahead of us, toward the main valley where we would turn them east and drive them to safety. As luck would have it, with our being a lone ship, we started to receive some sporadic machine gun fire; there must have been a small NVA force at the far end of the valley, behind us. I increased the pace of the round-up and got the cows bunched up and moving steadily ahead of us. Again I thanked the Lord that the NVA were such lousy shots.
We came to the junction with the main, east running valley and a few cows tried to stray back up the valley, some skittish ones tried to move west. I quickly hovered backward and turned them toward the others in the herd. Caught up in the spirit of the drive I pulled my pistol from its holster and shot a few rounds behind some strays to try and bring them up with the others. I really doubt that they heard the shots above the loud noise of the engine and rotor.
I called in the position of the NVA, from which we had received fire, to Granite Rock and for some reason they accepted my coordinates without comment or question. They must have relayed the message to another team in the area to check it out. Beau and I had our priority assignment and they were moving along nicely then toward the east, where we would be rid of our charges. We continued to move the herd along at a slow, but steady pace. Only occasionally did we have to break away to head off a stray. We were really enjoying ourselves and the respite that this little cattle operation afforded us.
We frequently heard radio messages from the other Scout teams, which were working to our north. None seemed to be having much luck in keeping definite tabs on our enemy. One team had taken up the coordinates that we had given to Granite Rock and were directing artillery in, pounding that position with some success. If nothing else we were continuing to harass the enemy and keep them disgruntled, moving and broken into smaller groups.
We left the herd in a quiet pasture-like area in the free fire zone, while we went to Pony for fuel. There was little chance that anything would happen for the few minutes that we would be absent.
We returned to our round-up detail as quickly as possible and gathered up the few cows that had straggled away from the herd. Anxious to finish our task we started to push the cows a biut faster when we reached the more open areas of the valley. We had not been told to do anything other than move the cattle out of the free fire zone and as far as we knew no one would assume the task on the ground when ever we finished. There was only one problem. Usually it is said that when you assume too much you make an ass out of you and me (ass-u-me). I decided to go ahead and at least move the herd, which numbered thirty-five or so, to the closest village and let the natives worry about them. This little mission had .taken more of our time than we expected and our finish time was being pushed well into the afternoon. With no other team member to fly with we went back home and called it a day.
We were greeted with: "Howdy pardner and how are the Rawhide Rangers this evening. How are things on the Ponderosa," and other stupid quips. A mediocre attempt to get us riled. We had enjoyed the day immensely, although it would have been a lot more fun on horseback.
The Scouts had no real good fortune that day other than to lay in some artillery in the cul-de-sac where Beau and I had drawn fire. It was their consensus though that the enemy seemed to generally be moving west to northwest, into the rugged highland mountains. I was anxious to see what we would be doing in the next few days.
The OPs meeting that evening confirmed or supported the findings of the Scouts. I surmised that all the information that OPs had, must have come from the Scouts, surely there could hardly be agents on the ground in an, evacuated, free fire zone. The Scouts would continue working the areas where they had left off that day. What did that mean for me since I had not been a part of the day's reconnaissance missions? Would another ship be ready or what? My question was no sooner thought than it was answered directly. I would be flying wing on Dave and we would go over to the big mountains further to the west and scout around. Perhaps we would be able to determine if the N.V.A. had penetrated that apparently uninhabited region. I personally couldn't see what advantage the enemy would have in separating themselves from the more populated coastal region…that is other than to regroup and access the damage done to them over the past few weeks. They couldn't win a war in isolation. In any case I was sure that it would be an interesting day, flying in the mountains.
The events of the past few weeks had dampened everyone's spirits to a certain degree. Gatherings seemed to be a little more somber in some way. LZ Bird would not be manned again and, in fact, everything that showed signs of our having been there had already been removed. I spent the late evening hours playing guitar or attempting to, I was improving, with Jack's instruction. Occasionally I would take a break to rest my fingers and then I would try and write some short letters.
A NEW A.O.
I was delighted to see a clear sky with stars shining when I got up the next morning. We had not even had many mortar attacks in the recent past, which were usually compliments of the friendly local Viet Cong. With all my morning chores finished I sat in the mess tent and stuffed my face with a hearty breakfast while waiting for mission time. We would fly directly to the big mountains do a short recon and then refuel at Pony and continue.
We passed Granite Rock and then banked to the right and headed west northwest into the mountains. The sky had remained mostly clear with some rolling cumulus clouds, which assumed varying odd shapes as they moved eastward. The jungle below us was very dense and gave the feeling of impenetrability, of never having been touched by mankind. Even in areas where the vegetation looked close to the ground, it was impossible to know how tall it really was. That's how totally covered the terrain was. At the head of every little junction of ridges or mountains there was a beautiful waterfall cascading, sometimes for several hundred feet, before they and their streams were totally lost from sight in the jungle.
In some areas mist hung over the tree tops in a heavy curtain of undisturbed, tranquil beauty, reinforcing the feeling that nothing had passed that way in eons; there had been no bombs, napalm, bullets or feet. Once in a while, in a high tree and brush covered valley, the top of an ancient ruin protruded through the greenery. It was really a neat place, the whole area was fantastic. It was not feasible to even speculate where the large stone building blocks had come from. The vegetation had grown for hundreds of years perhaps, unchecked by man's presence, covering more than it left revealed. I thought that it would be great fun to explore these mountains at ground level.
I was disappointed when we had to leave to refuel. We had been flying at tree top level as usual and were working an unfamiliar area away from all friendly units. We had to be sure of our position, at all times, in the intricate maze of mountains and valleys, plus, I definitely wanted to, immediately, return to continue my personal adventure. It seemed that at any moment we might burst through into a hidden valley and be in Shangri-la, that's how beautiful and enchanting the area was in my eyes.
We refueled and returned to the spot where we had left off. The only signs of movement or life, which we had seen in these mountains, had been those of animals, monkeys and birds, in the tops of the trees. However not knowing the terrain beneath or what it was hiding, we continued searching.
I had a new observer this day, better described as a volunteer or observer tryout, with me that day. It was felt that there was little chance of contact, so it would be a good day to start breaking him in. This young fellow was really enthusiastic about being an observer; maybe he was tired of walking. He only had one fault that I could detect thus far, that being that he couldn't see anything below us, even when I pointed it out to him.
"Ted."
No answer, but his lips were moving. There was a glimmer of hope.
I yelled at him. "Ted. You have to push the intercom button before you talk and hold it down while talking. When you’re finished talking you release the button."
"Yes Sir," he yelled back.
"Did you see that large group of monkeys back there in the trees?"
"What monkeys, Sir?"
"The ones we just flew over."
"No Sir."
And so it went. Maybe he was just too thrilled with the act of flying. I was anxious for signs of improvement, but I figured I'd give him the benefit of the doubt. I'd hate to have him as an observer if I were in a tight situation.
"Did you see that flock of birds over beside those temple ruins? Did you see them?"
"No Sir."
"Patience, patience," I said to myself; "at least he's honest." We continued to scout the mountains moving further and further into the wilderness.
There weren't even any Montagnard villages in these mountains. They could have lived there and been left alone by everybody. It would take too long for any one to get there by foot to make it worth while to harass anyone who would live there.
Every now and again I would ask Ted if he saw an animal, or bird, or waterfall, or ruin and he seemed to be settling down. At least he was beginning to take notice of a few things below him.
By late afternoon we had pretty well worked the area that had been assigned to us. We were flying in the eastern region of the mountains again, in a brushy looking area near some ruins, when I noticed some definite movement, in the brush and trees. The movement appeared to radiate upward from ground level, indicating that it was some mammal on the ground making the foliage move.
"Ho, Ho."
"Apache one-zero. Apache one-six."
"Go one-six."
"I have some movement on the ground over here, we are going to double back and check it out…over."
"Roger one-six…One-zero standing by."
"Did you see that Ted?"
"What!"
"Here we go again," I thought to myself.
"What I've just been talking to one-zero about."
"Oh, that. No Sir."
By that time I had come back around and was hovering over the trees where I had seen the movement.
"We are hovering over the spot where I saw some movement Ted. The spot is directly below you, out of the door."
"Yes Sir…So what?"
Talk about thick. I thought he had been improving.
"I want you to take one of the CS canisters, pull the pin and drop it straight down into those small trees. OK?"
"Yes Sir! What CS canister Sir?"
My War - Installment 31
*** All of the teams were intent on their missions. We all wanted very badly to relocate the NVA and engage them in another skirmish or full blown battle. We felt that the NVA must have set up a command post somewhere close by, at least within a few kilometers. They may leave their dead on the battle field, but they surely would give some care to their wounded, which had to be numerous after the past week battles. That many soldiers just didn't disappear into thin air. They had to be close by! All we had to do was find them.
We started back to Pony to refuel again. There were some other Scouts behind us that I did not recognize, but that meant little to me at that moment. Ken and I landed at the POL point, and as usual our observers jumped out to refuel us, our engines at idle. GW was with me again on that day. He stood by the door as he filled the left tank. H-13s have two elongated, egg-shaped tanks, one on either side behind the cockpit. GW looked slightly bored while standing there. Abruptly his face contorted into a look of terror. He waved wildly with his hands, motioning for Ken and I to move away as quickly as we could. His gesticulations were infinitely more readable than words. Both Ken and I cranked in the power as fast as we could and lifted away, Ken turned to the left and I turned to the right. We both did hovering pedal turns when we were well clear of the POL.
As we turned the scene that appeared before us was a turbulent one. An H-13 was slowly and recklessly beginning to spin out of control. For some reason the tail rotor had stopped. The tail rotor is really an anti-torque rotor which counteracts the torque of the main rotor and engine. What had happened was that the Scouts who had come in behind us, to refuel after we finished, had come in and tried to set down in the small POL area, immediately to our rear. One of them had set down and his tail rotor had caught on a piece of old loose barbed wire at the perimeter. The barbed wire had twisted around the tail rotor shaft freezing the ninety-degree gear box. The pilot must have felt it and thought he just bumped something with the stinger, the tail rotor guard. Unfortunately, for him, he had lifted off and when he did he started spinning. He should have immediately put the helicopter back down, but he didn't, so it started to spin faster and faster. That was when G.W. had signaled us. The next thing he knew he was up side down in the POL area.
"Apache one-one, one-six."
"Go, one-six."
"Never a dull moment, Eh, Over."
We moved off and waited until we could get in to finish refueling. There was only enough room for one ship to set down. We were quite fortunate that neither the pilot nor his observer had been seriously injured. The pilot had managed to keep away from the rubber fuel bladders, either by luck or skill. Here would be another job for either a Chinook or a Huey. The H-13 would have to be sling-loaded back to a maintenance area for major work.
We were not detained very long and were soon refueled and on our way back to continue our search to find the NVA that had done this outrageous act. This fight would probably be our last recon for the day. We had all been putting our hearts into our missions that day, spurred on by the tragedy at LZ Bird, but to no avail.
Ken and I were working further to the north and west of LZ Bird, but still only a few kilometers by direct line. We were beginning to loose the direct sunlight and it was very hard to see into the jungle very well, harder than normal. The jungle in that particular part mountains terrain seemed exceptionally dense. It actually appeared to be impenetrable in the dwindling light. We made the decision to hang it up for the day, we would return to the same spot in the morning, when we would have better light and be able to see better.
That evening we heard the report on LZ Bird, it was not what we wanted to hear. Investigation revealed that communication lines, concealed and running on the ground around the outside of the entire perimeter had been found. To our disbelief, there had been camouflaged fox holes around Bird, the artillery pieces had been booby-trapped within the compound; booby-trapped so that when fired they would blow up. The NVA had unmistakably spent the entire Christmas truce....setting up to over run LZ Bird. Maybe it was part of a larger plan; maybe it was a retaliatory strike for our killing so many NVA before Christmas. Perhaps someday we would know the reasons or maybe we would never know; even so I speculated.
I went to sleep uneasily that night wondering for a long time if that same kind of thing....the thing that happened at LZ Bird, could happen to us here at Hammond. Then I thought of some Bible verses that renewed my calm:
Luke 12:4 "And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do."
Matthew 10:28 "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."
So what difference did it make if we were over run? If it was time to die, then....we would die. I did not know then or even have inkling, that in years to come our....some of our own countrymen, some of them very important, could have cared less if we had all died. We were here fighting for our country even if it was in an obtuse and round about manner.
After mulling all this over in my mind, I slept well and was ready in the morning to resume the search. At the mess tent that morning a number of the Scouts sat together and we discussed our missions of the previous day. Ken mentioned how strange it was the thickness of the vegetation we had noticed yesterday evening at the end of our reconnaissance and that he realized that the jungle was the thickest he had ever seen....but, that....that particular region, the one Ken and I had been working and had left the previous afternoon was by far the densest, and heaviest vegetation that we had ever come across. There was something strange about it. His mentioning that fact gave someone else at the table and idea.
"That sounds a bit fishy to me. The jungle growth doesn't change that abruptly in those mountains, the vegetation and foliage is rather homogeneous. There may be a false canopy in the area of the jungle to hide something. What do you others think?"
"You might have something there Bob," said Dave. "Ken, you and Rollason get back there right after first light. Smitty and Jack will join you guys. Hit that area hard. You say you couldn't see through or into the canopy at all, eh?"
"That's right Cap. Thicker than hair on a dog's back." I said.
"Yep, check it out. I think you may have found them."
We excitedly finished eating breakfast and nervously sloshed down more cups of coffee while waiting for daylight to draw near enough for take off. We were all anxious to see if our collective suspicions were correct. None of us really knew how the difference in foliage mattered that much, it certainly had be poor visibility. It was just a hunch, but a damn good one. We cranked up even before the first hint of daylight broke over the eastern horizon. The sun would have to be up and shining brightly, on that particular piece of jungle real estate, for us to see it properly. By the time we would finish our first light missions and rendezvous at LZ Pony the light would be perfect.
We took off from Pony, Ken and I in the lead, since it was our area we were all headed toward. We pushed it, balls to the wall and within a few minutes we were hovering over the jungle canopy. The weather had cooperated, the sun shown brightly above the eastern horizon. It was Smitty that first detected what the irregularity in the canopy was. After he mentioned it to us it became clear and recognizable. The devilish little yellow bastards had somehow climbed those huge trees and had actually woven a second canopy of leaves and limbs under the natural tops of the trees. It was crazy, crazy, but very effective, crazy like a fox.
We decided to drop a few grenades into the thick matted leaves and try to blow a hole in it to get a better look. We lined up and flew over the same area, each dropping a fragmentation grenade. We succeeded in making a small opening. Sure enough, far below there were NVA scurrying about. The next thing we knew we were being shot at blindly through the false canopy and tree tops. We continued to drop fragmentation and white phosphorus grenades, We hoped to blow more holes with the frags and with the white phosphorus, we were trying to catch some of the canopy on fire.
I backed away and called for Navy air strikes, which we could get relatively fast; there was a carrier not too far off the coast. We could do little damage ourselves, so it became our duty to direct the air strikes from tree top level and wreak as much havoc and damage as possible. We theorized that the NVA were not dug in. They were relying on the false canopy to keep their position undetected. Our hope was that we had caught them off guard and so doing could hurt them.
About twenty minutes after we called for them the Navy was coming in for their first bombing run. We had marked the area with smoke just prior to their arrival so that they could come straight in and make a drop quickly. Then before any additional runs we would hover in and reevaluate and remark if necessary. The bombs would at least open up some larger holes for us to look into.
The Navy pilots came across, strafing the jungle with 20 mm canons before dropping some HE type bombs (High Explosive), and some napalm. As we saw the napalm explode, in their huge fireball explosions, we knew that they would remove some of the thick foliage. After this second pass we hovered over and could see that we had indeed done some damage and had them wounded, confused, and on the run. We remarked some places with smoke and the Navy came back in quickly for their third run. One Navy pilot radioed that he was receiving heavy 20 millimeter canon fire (a large automatic weapon probably 21mm) and wondered how we managed to hover over the enemy at tree top level.
"You guys must have balls the size of coconuts," he stated as he headed out to load up with more bombs.
The Navy continued to bombard the mountain side under our direction. Smitty and Jack had gone to refuel and would be relieving us on station as forward observers; we would alternate for the remainder of the day. The area we were bombing was becoming larger as the NVA unit or units below continued to break up and disperse in all directions. It looked as if we had killed quite a few NVA, but we wouldn't know for sure until we could get some men in on the ground. In the mean time we kept hitting them with bomb after bomb, hoping to add hysteria and fear to the already confused enemy force and the devastation on the jungle covered mountain.
The NVA were going in so many different directions we would probably be chasing them for weeks as they would try to regroup. We had them totally disoriented. Their unit was breaking up completely. We finished out the morning calling in volley after volley of HE artillery rounds from Granite Rock, hitting some areas where the NVA seemed to be headed, cutting off their advance in that direction.
At about 1245 hours we set out for Bong Son, so that we could shut down and have some lunch. We sat our helicopters down alongside the PSP airstrip at Bong Son and broke out the "C" rations. We ate and then relaxed for a little while, discussing our strategy for the afternoon. The large NVA unit had been broken up. There was no way of telling how many had been killed that morning, but we could not relent. We all had to keep the pressure on and push them, striking when and where we could. It would be our job, as Scouts, to do the finding and pushing. To keep an eye on them if possible or to at least continue reconnaissance and by so doing apply pressure. The enemy, would know just by our presence, even if we could not see each other directly, that we were on their tails. We left Bong Son and kept up our recon until darkness began to overtake us.
HEAD 'EM UP, MOVE 'EM OUT
It appeared that we were forcing them to move in a westerly direction into the free fire zone, which had months before, been cleared of civilians. At the OPs meeting that night we learned that when the civilians were moved out that there had been one mistake made; there had been one little item forgotten. Cows! The United States had been shipping U.S. livestock into Vietnam, in a program to help improve the domestic breeds of the region. There was a fairly large herd that was, sort of, running wild in the free fire zone. Now that there was the potential for some real battles in the free fire zone, those in command had thought it best to quickly move the cattle eastward, to relative safety.
"Rollason, I hear tell you have some experience herding livestock with a helicopter and some experience with cows. Is that right?"
"Well, I guess you could say that Sir." Someone must have mentioned my deer chasing in flight school and dairy cow experience as a kid in Pennsylvania.
"Where are these cows located, Sir?"
"You’re the Scout. They shouldn't be too hard to find."
"Yes Sir, no problem."
The other Scouts would continue to hound the NVA as best they could. I would have some fun on the next day herding cattle….Eee Haaa!!
I was kidded all that evening in the Scout tent about the next day's assignment. I went along with it for a few hours. When I got ready to leave I stood up and walked, bow legged, to the doorway. I turned and gave them a "see you later pardner". Then I retreated to the privacy of my own hut to relax away the rest of the evening, or at least until Ops meeting.
Dana had moved out during the Christmas truce so there was, it seemed, plenty of room in our tiny hut. I had not really gotten to know Dana, but that's how it goes. Jack and I had been sharing quarters for months, and had gone through flight school together, although we had not known each other then, and still didn't know each other very well.
We started back to Pony to refuel again. There were some other Scouts behind us that I did not recognize, but that meant little to me at that moment. Ken and I landed at the POL point, and as usual our observers jumped out to refuel us, our engines at idle. GW was with me again on that day. He stood by the door as he filled the left tank. H-13s have two elongated, egg-shaped tanks, one on either side behind the cockpit. GW looked slightly bored while standing there. Abruptly his face contorted into a look of terror. He waved wildly with his hands, motioning for Ken and I to move away as quickly as we could. His gesticulations were infinitely more readable than words. Both Ken and I cranked in the power as fast as we could and lifted away, Ken turned to the left and I turned to the right. We both did hovering pedal turns when we were well clear of the POL.
As we turned the scene that appeared before us was a turbulent one. An H-13 was slowly and recklessly beginning to spin out of control. For some reason the tail rotor had stopped. The tail rotor is really an anti-torque rotor which counteracts the torque of the main rotor and engine. What had happened was that the Scouts who had come in behind us, to refuel after we finished, had come in and tried to set down in the small POL area, immediately to our rear. One of them had set down and his tail rotor had caught on a piece of old loose barbed wire at the perimeter. The barbed wire had twisted around the tail rotor shaft freezing the ninety-degree gear box. The pilot must have felt it and thought he just bumped something with the stinger, the tail rotor guard. Unfortunately, for him, he had lifted off and when he did he started spinning. He should have immediately put the helicopter back down, but he didn't, so it started to spin faster and faster. That was when G.W. had signaled us. The next thing he knew he was up side down in the POL area.
"Apache one-one, one-six."
"Go, one-six."
"Never a dull moment, Eh, Over."
We moved off and waited until we could get in to finish refueling. There was only enough room for one ship to set down. We were quite fortunate that neither the pilot nor his observer had been seriously injured. The pilot had managed to keep away from the rubber fuel bladders, either by luck or skill. Here would be another job for either a Chinook or a Huey. The H-13 would have to be sling-loaded back to a maintenance area for major work.
We were not detained very long and were soon refueled and on our way back to continue our search to find the NVA that had done this outrageous act. This fight would probably be our last recon for the day. We had all been putting our hearts into our missions that day, spurred on by the tragedy at LZ Bird, but to no avail.
Ken and I were working further to the north and west of LZ Bird, but still only a few kilometers by direct line. We were beginning to loose the direct sunlight and it was very hard to see into the jungle very well, harder than normal. The jungle in that particular part mountains terrain seemed exceptionally dense. It actually appeared to be impenetrable in the dwindling light. We made the decision to hang it up for the day, we would return to the same spot in the morning, when we would have better light and be able to see better.
That evening we heard the report on LZ Bird, it was not what we wanted to hear. Investigation revealed that communication lines, concealed and running on the ground around the outside of the entire perimeter had been found. To our disbelief, there had been camouflaged fox holes around Bird, the artillery pieces had been booby-trapped within the compound; booby-trapped so that when fired they would blow up. The NVA had unmistakably spent the entire Christmas truce....setting up to over run LZ Bird. Maybe it was part of a larger plan; maybe it was a retaliatory strike for our killing so many NVA before Christmas. Perhaps someday we would know the reasons or maybe we would never know; even so I speculated.
I went to sleep uneasily that night wondering for a long time if that same kind of thing....the thing that happened at LZ Bird, could happen to us here at Hammond. Then I thought of some Bible verses that renewed my calm:
Luke 12:4 "And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do."
Matthew 10:28 "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."
So what difference did it make if we were over run? If it was time to die, then....we would die. I did not know then or even have inkling, that in years to come our....some of our own countrymen, some of them very important, could have cared less if we had all died. We were here fighting for our country even if it was in an obtuse and round about manner.
After mulling all this over in my mind, I slept well and was ready in the morning to resume the search. At the mess tent that morning a number of the Scouts sat together and we discussed our missions of the previous day. Ken mentioned how strange it was the thickness of the vegetation we had noticed yesterday evening at the end of our reconnaissance and that he realized that the jungle was the thickest he had ever seen....but, that....that particular region, the one Ken and I had been working and had left the previous afternoon was by far the densest, and heaviest vegetation that we had ever come across. There was something strange about it. His mentioning that fact gave someone else at the table and idea.
"That sounds a bit fishy to me. The jungle growth doesn't change that abruptly in those mountains, the vegetation and foliage is rather homogeneous. There may be a false canopy in the area of the jungle to hide something. What do you others think?"
"You might have something there Bob," said Dave. "Ken, you and Rollason get back there right after first light. Smitty and Jack will join you guys. Hit that area hard. You say you couldn't see through or into the canopy at all, eh?"
"That's right Cap. Thicker than hair on a dog's back." I said.
"Yep, check it out. I think you may have found them."
We excitedly finished eating breakfast and nervously sloshed down more cups of coffee while waiting for daylight to draw near enough for take off. We were all anxious to see if our collective suspicions were correct. None of us really knew how the difference in foliage mattered that much, it certainly had be poor visibility. It was just a hunch, but a damn good one. We cranked up even before the first hint of daylight broke over the eastern horizon. The sun would have to be up and shining brightly, on that particular piece of jungle real estate, for us to see it properly. By the time we would finish our first light missions and rendezvous at LZ Pony the light would be perfect.
We took off from Pony, Ken and I in the lead, since it was our area we were all headed toward. We pushed it, balls to the wall and within a few minutes we were hovering over the jungle canopy. The weather had cooperated, the sun shown brightly above the eastern horizon. It was Smitty that first detected what the irregularity in the canopy was. After he mentioned it to us it became clear and recognizable. The devilish little yellow bastards had somehow climbed those huge trees and had actually woven a second canopy of leaves and limbs under the natural tops of the trees. It was crazy, crazy, but very effective, crazy like a fox.
We decided to drop a few grenades into the thick matted leaves and try to blow a hole in it to get a better look. We lined up and flew over the same area, each dropping a fragmentation grenade. We succeeded in making a small opening. Sure enough, far below there were NVA scurrying about. The next thing we knew we were being shot at blindly through the false canopy and tree tops. We continued to drop fragmentation and white phosphorus grenades, We hoped to blow more holes with the frags and with the white phosphorus, we were trying to catch some of the canopy on fire.
I backed away and called for Navy air strikes, which we could get relatively fast; there was a carrier not too far off the coast. We could do little damage ourselves, so it became our duty to direct the air strikes from tree top level and wreak as much havoc and damage as possible. We theorized that the NVA were not dug in. They were relying on the false canopy to keep their position undetected. Our hope was that we had caught them off guard and so doing could hurt them.
About twenty minutes after we called for them the Navy was coming in for their first bombing run. We had marked the area with smoke just prior to their arrival so that they could come straight in and make a drop quickly. Then before any additional runs we would hover in and reevaluate and remark if necessary. The bombs would at least open up some larger holes for us to look into.
The Navy pilots came across, strafing the jungle with 20 mm canons before dropping some HE type bombs (High Explosive), and some napalm. As we saw the napalm explode, in their huge fireball explosions, we knew that they would remove some of the thick foliage. After this second pass we hovered over and could see that we had indeed done some damage and had them wounded, confused, and on the run. We remarked some places with smoke and the Navy came back in quickly for their third run. One Navy pilot radioed that he was receiving heavy 20 millimeter canon fire (a large automatic weapon probably 21mm) and wondered how we managed to hover over the enemy at tree top level.
"You guys must have balls the size of coconuts," he stated as he headed out to load up with more bombs.
The Navy continued to bombard the mountain side under our direction. Smitty and Jack had gone to refuel and would be relieving us on station as forward observers; we would alternate for the remainder of the day. The area we were bombing was becoming larger as the NVA unit or units below continued to break up and disperse in all directions. It looked as if we had killed quite a few NVA, but we wouldn't know for sure until we could get some men in on the ground. In the mean time we kept hitting them with bomb after bomb, hoping to add hysteria and fear to the already confused enemy force and the devastation on the jungle covered mountain.
The NVA were going in so many different directions we would probably be chasing them for weeks as they would try to regroup. We had them totally disoriented. Their unit was breaking up completely. We finished out the morning calling in volley after volley of HE artillery rounds from Granite Rock, hitting some areas where the NVA seemed to be headed, cutting off their advance in that direction.
At about 1245 hours we set out for Bong Son, so that we could shut down and have some lunch. We sat our helicopters down alongside the PSP airstrip at Bong Son and broke out the "C" rations. We ate and then relaxed for a little while, discussing our strategy for the afternoon. The large NVA unit had been broken up. There was no way of telling how many had been killed that morning, but we could not relent. We all had to keep the pressure on and push them, striking when and where we could. It would be our job, as Scouts, to do the finding and pushing. To keep an eye on them if possible or to at least continue reconnaissance and by so doing apply pressure. The enemy, would know just by our presence, even if we could not see each other directly, that we were on their tails. We left Bong Son and kept up our recon until darkness began to overtake us.
HEAD 'EM UP, MOVE 'EM OUT
It appeared that we were forcing them to move in a westerly direction into the free fire zone, which had months before, been cleared of civilians. At the OPs meeting that night we learned that when the civilians were moved out that there had been one mistake made; there had been one little item forgotten. Cows! The United States had been shipping U.S. livestock into Vietnam, in a program to help improve the domestic breeds of the region. There was a fairly large herd that was, sort of, running wild in the free fire zone. Now that there was the potential for some real battles in the free fire zone, those in command had thought it best to quickly move the cattle eastward, to relative safety.
"Rollason, I hear tell you have some experience herding livestock with a helicopter and some experience with cows. Is that right?"
"Well, I guess you could say that Sir." Someone must have mentioned my deer chasing in flight school and dairy cow experience as a kid in Pennsylvania.
"Where are these cows located, Sir?"
"You’re the Scout. They shouldn't be too hard to find."
"Yes Sir, no problem."
The other Scouts would continue to hound the NVA as best they could. I would have some fun on the next day herding cattle….Eee Haaa!!
I was kidded all that evening in the Scout tent about the next day's assignment. I went along with it for a few hours. When I got ready to leave I stood up and walked, bow legged, to the doorway. I turned and gave them a "see you later pardner". Then I retreated to the privacy of my own hut to relax away the rest of the evening, or at least until Ops meeting.
Dana had moved out during the Christmas truce so there was, it seemed, plenty of room in our tiny hut. I had not really gotten to know Dana, but that's how it goes. Jack and I had been sharing quarters for months, and had gone through flight school together, although we had not known each other then, and still didn't know each other very well.
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