My War - Installment 30

Some of the men, I truthfully can take no credit, planned on having a Santa Claus visit our unit. One fat enlisted man...I should say he was actually chubby, volunteered to dress up in a Santa suit. I don't know where these guys came up with all the stuff that they had. I volunteered to fly Santa into our unit. I took some red and green smoke grenades along with us and we headed for the POL point so that Santa could get dressed, out of sight from everyone else in the troop. We landed at the POL and I shut down. Spec four, Wilson pulled out a big sack and removed the red and white uniform of the day. While Wilson started to dress I mounted the red grenades on one skid of Birth Control and the green on the other side. Then I partially pulled the pins and connected the rings of the grenades to cords, which I planned to pull as we flew down the runway and into our compound.

Wilson in the mean time had dressed and stood resplendent in his red suit sans beard. We looked into his bag and found heaps of cotton wool from which we were to fashion a beard.

"OK, Wilson, you've got a lot of cotton. Right?"

"Right!"

"Well, what are we to use to attach it to your face?"

He began to rummage through his sack.

"Here, how about this?"

In his sack he found two large rolls of scotch tape.

"I think you better look a little harder. We can use that if we have to, but let's hope there is something better to fasten the cotton on with."

Another search revealed no additional adhesives, so we started with the scotch tape. We made a zillion little donuts with the tape and stuck them all over Wilson's face. Then with great care, not really, I pushed the cotton onto the donuts of tape. I pressed the cotton firmly onto the tape tearing pieces off here and there to try and give some realistic shape to the master piece of a beard. When we were finally satisfied we put the remaining gear back into his sack. We climbed back into “Birth Control” and got ready to crank up. My plan was to take off, fly to the south end of the base and come up the full length of the runway, which ran from one end of the installation to the other, trailing plumes of red and green smoke all along the way and into our unit, where Santa would leap out to distribute what ever was in his bundle. All was ready.

I started the engine, rolled in throttle and brought up the RPM. I looked over at Wilson, I could see that he was smiling beneath the wads of cotton, I nodded and we lifted off slowly and headed for the south end of the field. We gained airspeed and altitude so that the smoke would billow out behind us and not enter the cockpit. As we reached the far end of the base I banked to come over the end of the runway for our Santa flight. Low and behold when I banked air rushed through the cockpit and Wilson's beard blew out the door, all that remained was the myriad of tape with little fuzzies of cotton wool attached. There was not one thing that we could do, save continue. I lined up on the runway and pulled my cord popping the smoke canisters. Clouds of colored smoke filled the air behind us as we moved north over the camp and turned to make the approach into our compound. Wilson and I chuckled to ourselves, proud of the little show we were putting on.

As luck would have it and according to Murphy's Law, "if there is anything that can go wrong it will", I miscalculated the time that it would take for the canisters to finish smoking. We landed, the smoke continued pouring out, billowing all around us. The smoke was being caught in the rotor wash and being driven out in all directions. I shut down, in the blind. At least we had attracted a lot of attention. When the smoke cleared we were surrounded by men laughing hysterically and pointing at us. I wished I had a picture of the event, but alas. We were or rather Wilson's Santa was a total success even without the beard.

With the mess tent still off limits all the different segments of the troop were gathering in small enclaves. The grunts were gathering in small groups and the pilots and administrative officers were doing the same. Everyone seemed to be of a jovial disposition. The Scouts were, as the others, gathered in their day room, smoking pipes and playing cards. The atmosphere seemed more relaxed than it usually was, even for this bunch of devil may care reprobates.

"Quite a show you put on this morning, Rollason."

"Colorful for sure…!"

"OK. Lay off. I had fun, that's what counts. Anybody know what ole Buzz is up to? He has the mess tent off limits and I was dying for a cup of coffee."

"Just relax, fill up your pipe and we'll find out soon enough. Wan'a play some gin?"

"Sure. Move over Smith, give a body some room to sit down, eh?"

Time for Christmas dinner arrived when....Buzz was ready to open the side panels of the mess tent. Unbelievably, Buzz had out done his Thanksgiving feast. It just amazed me how he could come up with all the things that he did. There was a decorated tree, not a pine, and other Christmas decorations brightening up the olive drab canvas of the tent's interior. Streamers hung in swooping lines from the wooden center poles to the outer wall poles. There was turkey, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and an array of vegetables. Coffee, wine, cakes and pies covered the top of one rude wooden table. Buzz stood at the head of the serving line with a broad smile drawn across his reddish face. I felt he had ample reason to be proud.

One problem I had was finding razor blades and constantly wrote home for my folks to send me some. But there Ole' Buzz was able to come up with hard to find items enough to satisfy our entire troop. He must have had plenty of practice as a scavenger, I wondered if his experience and expertise was from World War II or the Korean War. It didn't really matter. We were all overwhelmed and appreciative of his abilities to find and to cook, and his undying devotion to feed us all to the best of his ability!

Christmas afternoon was spent much like the morning had been. There was talk of some bowl games, the results of which we had been picked up on Armed Services Radio, but other than that there was little outward talk of home. I guess we all just tried not to think much about it, that's the way it was with me and besides this was a new adventure, a new experience, fond memories to log away in the recesses of my mind something to look back on in the future with wonder, if I survived. To top it off, it was my first Christmas away from home.

OPs meeting was early that evening, so that we would have some additional time to goof off before starting back to work the next morning. The truce would be over at midnight and the next day would be recon as usual, trying to relocate the NVA regiment. I wondered what the NVA and Viet Cong had done during the truce. They had no holiday to celebrate that I was aware of. They probably were sitting about licking their wounds from the previous week’s encounters with us.

We rounded out the evening in the Scout tent singing Christmas Carols, while Jack and I played guitar. We sipped some of Buzz's eggnog, which we had requisitioned without his knowledge. The day had been great, it was a total contrast to what we had become accustomed to. We were alive and happy and had many, many things to be thankful to God for. Although I certainly did not or could not see how, I thought that perhaps my being there, fighting, would somehow help keep the United States and therefore, in the future, my children if I had any, from having to fight at some other place and time. It was a heartening thought to end such a wonderful day, even if it was a bunch of crap.

BYE BYE BIRDIE


The morning started out as usual, I was up at 0330 hours and did my "mornings”, performed a preflight my ship, ate, and checked in at the OPs tent to see if there had been any changes in the plans for the day's missions. My being a junior member of the Scouts got me that extra job each morning.

Even though the sky was dark and moonless as I walked to the OPs tent again, I could somehow sense that it was going to be a cloudy day. The Christmas truce had only been over a few minutes and things were already returning to normal. I entered the OPs tent and said hello to the officer on duty, Captain Stevens. We started chatting, in the dimly lit tent, for a few minutes when the radio abruptly sprang to life. A garbled message crackled over the radio. There were a few seconds of silence and then the message was repeated, still broken and garbled, but I thought that I could make it out.

"It sounded to me as if they were saying that LZ Bird had been over run," said Captain Stevens.

From what I was hearing I had to agree. What was going on? LZ Bird surely...LZ Bird was a small artillery base populated by one hundred to one hundred and twenty men; surely they weren't being over run, not just after the Christmas truce.

"Surely, I pray, they must be trying to pull a joke on us. Let me call around to other units and see what they know," said the duty officer.

"Unlikely! Why anyone would joke about something like that boggles my mind, “I said.

He called every unit he could raise, but was unable to gather any further information, what so ever, about LZ Bird. I ran out to find the CO. He was in the middle of his morning shave, as I approached him in the darkness of early morning. I requested that he accompany me back to the OPs tent.

"Something's happened at LZ Bird, Sir. It appears that they might have been overrun or they are in the process of being over run. No one has been able to raise them since right after the Christmas truce ended." The two of us entered the OPs tent and asked the duty officer if there had been any further radio messages from LZ Bird. There had not. The CO got on the horn and called around, to satisfy his own mind about what was going on. He found out nothing more than we already knew. He called a number of other command posts and finally the division base. It was decided that we would go in and see for ourselves what had happened. The CO decide that we would head for LZ Bird before first light and find out for ourselves what was or did happen.

Ken and I took off into the continuing envelope of darkness that engulfed the dreary morning sky. We flew light secure, that is with no navigation lights, east toward the 506 Valley. All was dark, appearing lifeless below us. The heavy, early morning, clouds made it difficult at times to know exactly where we were. By the time we reached the 506 the morning was turning a dark gray, things were beginning to take shape in the quiet of the country side. Day light was coming on more quickly as we turned up the 506 and headed toward and then over LZ Pony. It would only take another five to ten minutes of flying time until we would be on station over LZ Bird. As we flew over LZ Pony in route to Bird we could see some morning activity there. A few of the men threw friendly waves at us as we hurried by faster than normal.

As we approached LZ Bird, from a distance, in the morning light, everything looked calm and normal. When we drew closer we could see that the calm was a calm of something wrong, very wrong. When we were close enough to see clearly, we could see that everything was quiet, quiet with death. Bird had been over run!! Decimated, in fact!! The surrounding fields were strewn with dead NVA. It looked like hundreds of bodies. Inside the perimeter of the LZ the ground was covered with the dead bodies of both our men and scores of NVA. There did not seem to be too many of our men to be counted in the dead, but then I didn’t know the strength of the units located at Bird. The sight was unbelievable. It had been a total massacre. There was absolutely no one moving, no sign of life what so ever. Nothing, absolutely nothing moved except for the movement of the grasses in the light morning breeze. The big guns, M-1, 155mm howitzer artillery pieces, were blown apart, strange that they should all have been blown up. They really must have been caught with their pants down.

We hovered over LZ Bird checking and rechecking, repeatedly looking for any sign of life. To our dismay we saw nothing immediately that would indicate that anyone had survived the onslaught. We were speechless. What could either of us say? This was totally bizarre and incomprehensible. There were ;at least 30 of our men, by my count; none moved; all were riddled with bullet holes and bloodied beyond reason. They were not just shot and killed, at least in my mind. They were shot and killed and then shot repeatedly, for heaven know what reason. Revenge or Hate? War alone was not a valid enough reason.

It took us some time to collect ourselves. We began to see signs of life as some of our men came out of the artillery bunkers, bedraggled and battle worn. After checking things out we called in our report and told the gruesome tale of LZ Bird and of the devastation which had occurred soon after midnight that morning. Apparently it had all happened within a few short minutes after the end of the truce. Division base, at An Khe, was sending in a couple of Chinooks to carry out the dead. A team of investigators would be brought in to try and determine exactly what had happened during that grisly night encounter with the NVA.

Having finished our report we began a reconnaissance of the area surrounding LZ Bird. We wanted to make sure that the NVA were gone from the area. We required it to be secure before more of our men were brought in to carry out the dead. There was no evidence of the presence of any NVA in the immediate area.

Our men must have fought gallantly, even though they had been surprised; we could surmise that from the number of enemy dead. There just must have been an overwhelming number of enemy soldiers. We continued our recon with a vengeance. Those bastards had to be the same NVA group that had been dug in along the 506 Valley just south of LZ Pony. We had to find them somehow continue to wreak some havoc on them, we had to retaliate. I thought in terms of vengeance; but I knew, deep inside that vengeance was a foolish emotion and a terrible motivator in battle. It too often tends to be action without sufficient thought.

When we returned from refueling at Pony the Chinooks had already landed. We had assured Division that the area was clear of enemy. The teams from the Chinooks had already started the gruesomely unpleasant task of identifying, tagging, bagging and loading the dead aboard the large helicopters. We noticed some other men moving about inspecting the artillery pieces, others were moving out around the perimeter, obviously checking the area over very closely. We would hear of their findings later in the day. Ken and I flew north, away from Bird, and started a recon trying to pick out any indication what-so-ever, that the enemy had passed that way. Other Scout teams were out working in different areas around Bird, by that time, also trying to get an idea where these buggers had gone. We spent hour after hour meticulously working over the jungle. The teams were all close in rotation for fuel. That is, we would all be heading for Pony to refuel at or about the same time. Then we would return to the places we had been working, to continue the search.