My War - Installment 27

"Good idea, Sir."

G.W. dropped the smoke grenade from his door. It landed right beside one of the bodies. Low and behold the bodies started to roll down the hill.

"Damn, George, one complication after another."

"Ganite Rock six-five, Apache one-six."

"Apache one-six, Granite Rock six-five, go."

"It appears that those bodies are not just bodies, their alive, or at least some of them are. The individuals whom we could see clearly looked like they were very old. Some of the bodies began to roll down the hill when we placed our marker."

"Roger, Apache one-six, we copy. A patrol is in route."

"Roger, Granite Rock, I copy. A patrol is e
in route, over. We need to return to refuel ASAP (As Soon As Possible), it'll be your baby, over."

"Roger Apache one- six."

I knew that it was a free fire zone, but I just didn't have the heart to blow away those old folks. If Granite Rock wanted to, then it was there problem not mine. I was glad to leave the decision up to them on that one. I did a hovering circle over the area and saw that a patrol was actually insight to investigate. We turned and flew back to LZ Pony to start refueling.

"Granite Rock six-five, Apache one-six leaving position, over and out."

After refueling we again teamed up with Dave and started back for LZ Hammond and home for another day. This Scout stuff was a lot more interesting than flying Lift. I wondered if every Scout had made as much contact as we did that day. For that matter I wondered how Jack's first day had gone for him.

We went straight to LZ Hammond without doing a last light mission that evening. I was a little worried, after I thought about it for awhile, about the snappy, kind of smart assed way I had talked to Granite Rock six-five. Granite Rock six-five was, more than likely a major or higher; I was just a lowly warrant officer. There was no point or sense in worrying about it then, it was over. Maybe nothing would come of it, I at least hoped nothing would come of it. We landed at our camp after topping off and immediately went to the mess tent.

I hated to admit it, but it felt awfully good to stand up and move around on foot a bit. After mess I went to the Scout day room. Some of the other Scout pilots were already relaxing with their pipes. A few had received early Christmas packages from home including me. Hank a guy from Louisiana had gotten a whole box full of food stuffs, Cajun style, gar balls (little balls made from alligator gar fish and rum and spices and things, at least that's what he told us, rum cake, and other specialties.
My package was from two girls that I had gone to high school with. I had gone from the Paxtang Elementary School to the big time at Swatara Junior High School and seventh grade, where I had met them. The girls were Sandy and Sharon. Sandy was my first love. I could visualize her clearly in my mind's eye as I read her name on the card. I could see her warm brown eyes and hair falling loosely around her superb neck. I could see her cute nose, her lovely lips, all of which I never knew. I remembered how she looked the first time I saw her in seventh grade home room. I remembered her stabbing me in the right forearm just down from my elbow with a freshly sharpened pencil; the mark was still as fresh looking as in seventh grade. I had always wanted to date her, had fallen in love the first time I saw her and I still felt the same way about her; precious memories from a time gone by.

I opened the box and found fifteen small individual gifts, each wrapped in Christmas paper. My heart was touched. I opened one and saw that it was a gag gift. I thought I'd like to save the others for later in the privacy of my own hootch. There was no telling what these girls might have sent.

"Well, anybody for cards?"

Cal spoke up with his slow south southwestern draw.

"Yea, ya'll, let's us roll them paste boards and get in ta sum heavy gin. Nickel a point, OK?"

36 STRIKES AND YOUR OUT

Morning came before I knew it. I must have played gin too long and too late. We were supposed to go to the air strip at Bong Son and wait there until the B-52 strike was over. The weather was marginal at best. I was to be one of the first Scout ships into the area of the strike to look around that is if we could get into the An Lao Valley, the weather was crappy so it was up in the air as to whether we could get in at all.

We had plenty of time for goofing off that morning after our first light missions. Most of us came back after refueling and sat around drinking a little extra java.

As daylight turned the vague forms of the camp into sharper focus, we all noted that the clouds were dropping lower. We lifted off and to proceed to Bong Son, the Lift ships, along with the recon platoon would follow behind us, thirty minutes later.

As we drew closer to the air strip at Bong Son we gained as much altitude as possible then took a peek northward toward the An Lao Valley; if the weather remained as bad as it was at the moment, we would never be able to slip over the mountains, we would never be able to do a reconnaissance on the strike area. If we couldn't get in, the Lift ships and gun ships would never be able to get in. We landed beside the air strip, a familiar area to me by then, and shut down. Our wait began.

I sat in Birth Control while Beau Simoneaux, my new observer, jumped out to tie down the rotor. I thought about the thirty-six B-52’s that were somewhere in route; about the detachment of their crews, to what they were doing....about the tons and tons of bombs that would soon be raining down on the southern end of the An Lao Valley. The 52's crews rarely saw the destruction that they left behind. How many unsuspecting people would be killed? Oh, well, this was war, wasn't it? Maybe I was thinking that because I would be one of the first to view the destruction. I just didn't know. In my minds eye I pictured old films of World War II bombings. There would be explosion after explosion on, or around the target area, devastating everything in sight. There might be people dead and dying or in bits and pieces, a leg here an arm there. Visions of the hospital at Qui Nhon flashed through my mind.

"Drop it, this is stupid," I said to myself. "This isn't Europe; there are no heavily populated areas for mass destruction here in these highlands. This strike is on a suspected division base; strictly a military target, the enemy."

I extracted myself from my mental gibberish by getting my lazy butt out of Birth Control and joining my flight leader in conversation with another Scout team. We all stood around gazing northward toward the horizon closest to the strike area. I'm not sure of what we all expected to see. The only things visible were parts of the mountains, occasionally a mountain peak would emerge from the cloud cover. We stood around like a bunch of dummies, staring, not even knowing the time that the strike was to take place. We would definitely know when it started though, because we would be able to hear and feel the explosions from the 5,000 pound bombs.

The Lift ships, with their load of recon grunts, landed and we were soon joined, in our vigil, by the Lift pilots. The grunts, seemingly disinterested, lounged about shooting the bull and puffing away on cigarette after cigarette, which we got free from the tobacco companies in the states.

During our chit chat we were interrupted by a rumbling in the distant north northwest and knew the melee had begun. We could see nothing through the damp, misty, cloud strewn, morning air. We waited patiently, only a few fidgeters moved nervously about. Dave and I were a bit anxious, not in a worried sense, but eager to have the air strike over with. We wanted the bugger over so we could get in there and check things out.

The silence that had taken the place of the lively discussion of the morning was rudely broken by the crackle of a radio from Dave's H-13; we knew our wait was over. Now, if we could just find a way in and out we'd be OK. We waited until the tumult of the air raid had ended and then climbed in and started our ships. Dave and I lifted off to the west into a light breeze and then banked, taking up a north northwest heading for the An Lao Valley. The clouds hung calm and quiet over the rugged mountains hiding in their silence the destruction which must be lying ahead and below us in the valley. If we could only find a way in we would soon see for our selves.

We flew quickly to the cloud covered ridges which enclosed the An Lao Valley. The clouds seemed to have lifted slightly, to the east of us, as we were approaching the area. Turning we moved along the ridge and found a saddle where the clouds were not as thick. Ever so very slowly, in the reduced visibility, we inched our way into the scuddy clouds and went through into the valley itself.
Once in the valley the visibility was surprisingly good, although the ceiling of clouds remained extremely low. Our reconnaissance began by diligently and meticulously working the area of the air strike. Everywhere I looked there were craters of varying sizes, the largest perhaps thirty to forty feet across and extending several meters deep into the soft, black, jungle, soil. Trees had been uprooted or pulverized by the blasts, it was really weird.

"Gee willickers, if this was a division base where in Lucifer's name was the enemy." There was absolutely diddle dee squat, nothing here. There wasn't even a sign of habitation in any of the areas we had flown over, but then the North Vietnamese were some wily buggers. In spite of finding nothing we continued our recon. Finally after some considerable time on station we came upon one man that was dead. He had obviously been a herder of water buffalo. He sat, still upright in death, in a little lean-to facing down hill toward his equally dead water buffalo; all of which had been killed, as he had been, by the concussion from some five-thousand pounders, whose craters lay near by.

Finishing our recon we looked for another place to slip out of the valley, return to Bong Son and join our friends. A short time after we shut down we were approached and told that the day before this attack a United States Air Force aircraft had been sent over the An Lao Valley to drop pamphlets telling the inhabitants, if there were any, of the holocaust to come. We didn't know the original source of this information, but the guy that told us was considered to be an impeccably good source. He didn't have the habit of making unfounded and/or rash statements. There had unmistakably been an extravagant waste of money in this ill fated operation. The information must have been true or intelligence was totally coo-coo on the location of the base. Why had they warned the enemy that they were going to bomb him? If we would have known, would we have risked going in during the marginal weather, using a magnetic compass as an artificial horizon. A pretty stupid and expensive operation, no doubt!

17 DECEMBER 1966

The mid-December morning broke clear and clean in the central highlands for a change. Our "first lights" were over. 1st Lieutenant Ken Paulsen and I were working our way along the mountains west of the 506 Valley. We were to relieve a Brigade White team that was working the western side of the 506 valley, near the area where we had pulled out the cache of enemy weapons and so forth. As we were flying along both George Watson and I saw someone jump into a big thick stand of brushy hedge row.

"Ah, haaa,... GW let's get 'em."

"Apache one-one, Apache one-six, we have a VCS here in the bush. We'll drop a CS grenade and try to flush him out."

"Roger one-six, one-one copies, we'll stand by, over."

I hovered over and put the bush right under G.W's door. GW glanced at me, smiled a toothy smile and dropped the CS canister straight into the spot which we believed contained our VCS. I quickly hovered away keeping us facing the bush to watch for any movement. The grenade had popped and the heavy white smoke of the CS began to permeate the bush and its surrounding vegetation. Nothing happened. There was no movement at all and the CS was now beginning to dissipate in the breeze. I moved in for a closer look thinking all the CS had been blown away by the combination of the wind and my rotor wash. Whoa-boy was I wrong! The rotor wash pushed what was left down and then around and up through the open doors of the cockpit. G.W's and my eyes began to tear and started to close on us. "Wonderful!! What a way to go!" I quickly tightened the friction knob on the collective pitch and then removed my left hand and used it to pry my eyes open enough to fly away to some clean air.

I called Ken and asked if he had seen the VCS high-tail it from his vantage point. He replied that he hadn't. He suggested that the bush may well be covering the entrance to a tunnel, which would explain the VCS's disappearance.

"Apache one-six, Apache one-one, we better move on so we can be on station to relieve the Brigade White team as scheduled."

"Roger, one-one, let's head for Pony and top 'er off before we relieve them."

"Roger, one-six, I copy."

I would have to leave that one VCS for another day. We increased our air speed and zipped along at tree top level, quickly moving up on LZ Pony. I had marked my map to indicate the spot where I had lost the VCS in the bush; maybe some other day we could check that spot again.

After refueling we moved back down the west side of the valley toward the region in which the Brigade team was working. They were intently working the upper ridges and were not, at that time, ready to be relieved. They never did seem to be able to find anything anyway. We decided to work the valley for a while between Highway number one and the mountains, until the brigade team was ready for us to take over.

From the southern end of the 506 Valley we started a casual reconnaissance, casual because this was not our designated AO (Area of Operation) for this day. Ken and I were not working too closely. He was tooling around in one area and I in another. We were within one half to three quarters of a kilometer from LZ Pony when G.W spotted some NVA, confirmed by uniform, along a hedge row.