THURSDAY NIGHT FOLLIES
by
Rick Galer
"Wolf Pack 30"  68-69

We were in Nha Trang. Nha Trang was cold beer and ice in your in drinks. Nha Trang was cement sidewalks and air conditioning. Nha Trang was clean clothes and hooch maids who shined your boots and made your bed. Nha Trang was table clothes and silver ware in the dining room at the officers club. Nha Trang was floor shows and movies. Nha Trang was hot showers twenty-four and seven, and clean white sheets. Nha Trang was electric lights, a refrigerator and air conditioning in your B.O.Q. Nha Trang was running water and flush toilets. Nha Trang was a soft ice cream cone, just like at the Dairy Queen in the states. Nha Trang was Heaven compared to the field. 

The field was warm beer and cold chow. The field was wooden picnic tables and stainless steel trays. The field was tents, cots and mosquito netting. The field was cold showers, if you were lucky and didn’t fly a late afternoon mission. If you were unlucky the field was no shower. The field was outhouses and slit trenches. The field was sandbags and mud or dust or both.  The field was electricity from a five kilowatt generator some of the time.  The field was Project Delta and danger or maybe death.

We all preferred the field. What the Hell was that about?

Nha Trang was routine missions that could suddenly become terrifying. Nha Trang was routine missions with C-rations eaten in the cockpit while flying eight and ten hour missions. C-rations if your enlisted crew were good traders or good thieves, nothing if they weren’t. Fortunately all of our enlisted crewmembers were good traders, none were thieves. Well okay, most of them were consummate thieves, but they only stole from the Americans. Nha Trang was routine missions flying ten or twelve hours of convoy cover for the guns or ass and trash for the slicks. Nha Trang was routine missions with bladders and bowels that seemed likely to burst. Nha Trang was routine missions flying VIP’s or doughnut dollies. Nha Trang was routine re-supply missions or combat assaults for the Korean White Horse Division that provided security for the province. The NVA and Viet Cong knew when the Koreans were coming and stayed out of the way, that made it routine.

We all hated routine missions. Go figure.

It was very rare that anything happened in Nha Trang. We usually had to go somewhere to get in a fight. Nha Trang was nothing like Hue Phu Bai or An Hoa or other F.O.B.’s (Forward Operations Bases) we called home when we were in the field. Places where everyone slept at least partially clothed and with one foot on the pallets that served as the floor. Nha Trang was quiet. When you were off duty, you were off duty.

Off duty meant a nice dinner at the 5th Special Forces Group Officers Club. They flew in fresh milk from the Philippines. The chef was a French trained Vietnamese. Off duty meant time on your hands. Time for a few drinks after dinner. Time for slot machines and poker games. Time to flirt with the barmaids, especially Ngyuen Thi Bich Mao who spoke good English and had a keen sense of humor. After the war she probably married a high ranking Communist, or perhaps the Special Forces Major that no one knew she was dating. Or maybe, when the Communists took over the bastards sent her to a re-education camp for five or ten years or just murdered her. We’ll probably never know. Time to tell stories of daring-do to the new guys. Stories of how things were in the “old days” even though the “old days” were just six months ago. Time flies when you’re having fun. We lived in a time warp. A year, a month, a week or even a day could be a lifetime. 

Nha Trang was so quiet we didn’t even have official alert gun ship crews until just a few months earlier. I think this was brought about by the gun ship pilots arguing over which of us was going after the sons of a bitches that were mortaring us one night. Even after we had an official alert crew roster, the gun ship pilots didn’t take alert duty all that seriously. We didn’t sleep with our clothes on like we did when we were in the field. It was Nha Trang after all. Nothing ever happened in Nha Trang. The V.C. who lived on Mt. Nui Cau Hin might mortar us two or three times a year, but that was it. We rarely launched gun ships for mortar attacks. There were four105 millimeter howitzers near the end of our runway to fire counter battery artillery in the event of incoming mortars or rockets. In any case the bad guy’s rounds usually fell short. I remember one time when Bob Heh and I watched as mortar rounds landed in the flats just to the South of the base,….but that’s another story. 

Due West of Nha Trang was the Headquarters for A-502, camp Trung Dung at Dien Khanh. A-502 was not the typical Special Forces A-Team camp even though it carried the “A” designation. There were three types of Special Forces camps, “A” camps,  “B” camps and “C “ camps. The “A” camps were usually small fire bases with two to twelve Americans and some Montagnard irregulars whose number varied from ten to a hundred or so depending on the number who were AWOL, missing, disappeared or on official leave. They were all volunteers and there was no real punishment for being gone other than loss of pay.

A-502 was six small camps manned by a combination of ten to twenty C.I.D.G. (Civilian Irregular Defense Group) and L.L.B.D. (Vietnamese Special Forces) some with an American advisor. These camps were Trung Dung (the Headquarters), Suoi Dau, Binh Tan, My Loc (or Nui Ti) Da Hang, Dong Ba Thin and observation post Ngoc also known as the rock pile. These bases were located near small strategic villages surrounding Nha Trang and Cam Ranh Bay. Their purpose was to serve as bases from which to stage ambushes, provide safe haven for the local populace in the event of attack by the N.V.A. or V.C., change the local’s political affiliation from “Other” or “Viet Cong” to “loyal to South Vietnam” or win their hearts and minds. 

Viet Cong, Victor Charlie, V.C., and Charlie were all names for the South Vietnamese Communists or the N.V.A. (North Vietnamese Army). They were the opposition party. They were outlawed of course, since their political platform included the overthrow of the government of South Vietnam and the reunification of North and South Vietnam under a Communist regime. The Viet Cong had only one campaign slogan. “Support me or I’ll kill you and your family.” Kind of like the Mafia in America with one major difference.

The difference was the government of South Vietnam. The government of South Vietnam was corrupt, was often infiltrated by the Communists, did not serve the people and was pretty much despised by everyone not actually in it. On the upside, they did have the same campaign slogan as the V.C.

The Viet Cong took two basic forms, part time and full time guerrillas. The full time Viet Cong lived in the jungle and were responsible for most of the combat conducted by the local V.C. units.

The part time Viet Cong lived in the villages and towns; they were the eyes and ears of the main force units. The corrupt or corruptible members of the South Vietnamese government were identified as well as those who were honest and served the people. The former were recruited or ignored, the latter were killed. Bad government is easier to overthrow than good government. Part time V.C. collected taxes from the willing locals or extorted taxes from the unwilling. They served as recruiters for the full time Viet Cong. They provided supplies and other material support to the full time Viet Cong and N.V.A. Sometimes the part time Viet Cong joined the full timers in attacks on A-502 camps.

One of the major activities for A-502 was the setting of ambushes. If you didn’t set ambushes, you were ambushed. If you were not the hunter, you were the prey. You had to maintain an offensive posture or you were doomed. Doomed to getting your butt kicked by the V.C. so many times that you were afraid to go out of your compound after dark. Doomed to waiting for the Viet Cong to initiate the action on their terms, on their timetable. This was the French model. This was the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (A.R.V.N.) model. This was Dien Bien Phu. This was how to lose a guerrilla war. This was how you got killed.

Every night, A-502 set at least one ambush on the trails leading from the villages in the low lands surrounding Nha Trang to Mt. Nui Cau Hin and the lessor Mt. Nui Hon Xuan.  These mountains stood like two unequal cones and overlooked Nha Trang from the South.  Many of the full time Viet Cong lived on these two mountains. From the heights the V.C. could launch mortars and rockets on Nha Trang and the A-502 camps. Both mountains were “free fire zones” for the 281^st. We could at anytime, shoot anything that moved on the two peaks. I remember one time we were testing our guns…but that’s another story.

The part time Viet Cong would carry either on their backs; or on bicycles, fifty pound sacks of rice, or dried fish and pork, or perhaps live chickens with their beaks tied shut, or fresh vegetables over the trails leading to the two mountains. Thousands of pounds of food, weapons, ammunition, rockets, mortars and medical supplies all carried by hand were moved along these trials. Sometimes members of the local Montagnard population were captured, enslaved and used as porters. Mostly it was just Viet Cong.

The A-502 ambushes were set to interdict the supply trains going to the mountains or the Viet Cong raiders coming down from their hiding places. Sometimes the ambushes ran by A-502 personnel got the opportunity to engage full time and part time V.C. in a brief, but hellish firefight. The fight could be so close that on either side the killer could smell the killed in their death throes. Death came by the claymore, the gun, the knife, the bayonet or the grenade that exploded in the enemy’s face. On the ground, guerrilla war is a horrible, up close and personal kind of war.

The next day a local Vietnamese or two would be gone from the village population. The bodies had to be collected by the ambushers very early in the morning. If not, their relatives and friends would come out of the villages and bring the dead Viet Cong in for secret burial. The bodies were sometimes watched from hides to see who might be interested in their recovery. Then the friends and relatives were watched to see if they were active Viet Cong or just unfortunately related. On the ground, guerrilla war is a war of intelligence.

Many of the C.I.D.G. and L.L.B.D. had relatives or business partners who were Viet Cong. In fact, some of the C.I.D.G and L.L.B.D. were Viet Cong. It was up to the American Special Forces to figure out who was who. If the Viet Cong were going to attack a camp, some of the C.I.D.G and L.L.B.D. who were assigned there might call in sick or go home early that day. Or, perhaps they would just look the other way when V.C. sappers were going to try and blow up the American bunker at the camp. Maybe they would leave the gate open or even open it for the infiltrators.

As a history of this type of activity developed, the Americans grew to know whom they could trust and whom they could not. Known V.C. or V.C. sympathizers were not automatically expelled or killed, they were turned into assets. Disinformation could be fed to the local V.C. by telling the right people. Mentioning that an ambush was planned at a certain location then setting it at another often resulted in a nasty surprise for the V.C. supply train. Seeing certain behavior by known V.C. told the Americans far more than looking at a dead V.C. could. 

I was in Nha Trang and I awoke that morning to my alarm at 05:00 or “Oh dark hundred.” I lit a cigarette and while I smoked I relaxed for a few minutes in my cool air-conditioned room. Then I grabbed a clean pair of underwear, a towel, and my toilet kit, slipped into my flip flops and headed for the shower room a few feet from my room.

As I was shaving and showering I glanced around and noted Glen Williams who was my co-pilot that day was just finishing his shower, we were joined by my wingman and his co-pilot.

Glen was leaving and I was almost finished with my shave when we exchanged greetings.

“Morning, Rick.”

“Morning Sir, see you at the club for breakfast?” Glen was a Lieutenant, and since I was a Warrant Officer he outranked me until we got in the cockpit. I was the aircraft commander and the fire team leader so as if by magic we underwent a role reversal when we were in the aircraft.

“Yeah, see you there.”

 “Okay.”

As I walked back to the B.O.Q., I had already begun to sweat in the early morning heat. I was nauseous. I stopped for a moment and threw up on the lawn beside the sidewalk. I thought I had gotten away without doing that this morning but my nervous, churning stomach proved me wrong. Even though this was a routine mission I was anxious. I was worried that somehow I would make that fatal error that would get someone killed. I wasn’t so much worried about losing my life; I was worried about tarnishing my reputation.

“Shit.” I said out loud as I finished.

“Easy Rick, you okay?” One of the pilots asked as he walked by.

“Yeah, I’m fine just a little upset stomach.”

I turned around and went back to the shower room to brush my teeth again. When I left the second time I walked by the little mess I had left on the grass and noticed the insects were already swarming over it. Protein and calories, no matter how disgusting; never went to waste in the tropics.

I walked down the hall to my room, passing other pilots who were getting mission ready. I opened my door, tossed my shaving kit on the little chest of drawers and dropped the towel on the floor. The air in my room refreshed me as I put on clean socks, my Nomex flight suit and my boots. When we flew out of Nha Trang we wore fire retardant Nomex, when we were in the field we wore cotton tiger stripe fatigues like the Project Delta guys.     

Now dressed and fresh as a daisy I walked over to the officer’s club just as the mess opened at 5:30. I joined Glen and the other two pilots I would be flying with this morning. The waitress came and I ordered two poached eggs on whole-wheat toast with ham. The eggs arrived under-cooked as usual. I ate the toast and ham, finished my coffee and with the rest of my little entourage left for the briefing room in operations.

About twenty miles West of Nha Trang, at camp Nui Ti located just outside of the little village of My Loc, Staff Sergeant Jan Egan awoke that morning and took his “shower” from a bucket of water outside his door. He shaved in a hand mirror emptied and refilled the water bucket then brushed his teeth.  Toweling off he returned to his bunker and dressed. Jan was the only American at Camp Nui Ti. 

After dressing he joined his “little people” for breakfast. “Little people” was the affectionate name for the Montagnards. They were even smaller in stature than the Vietnamese, but pound for pound they were as tough as anyone was. They made up the MIKE force that comprised the remainder of the personnel at the camp. Jan ate his breakfast of scrambled eggs, rice, and pork cooked over an open fire. Kind of a hearty fried rice. Breakfast was complimented by baguettes from a little bakery in My Loc, the town near the camp. He ate from a metal plate and washed his breakfast down with instant coffee.

Jan Egan was well known to the local Vietnamese. He had a good enough relationship with the local population at My Loc that he rarely carried a weapon unless he was going out on an ambush or had some other requirement to be armed. He had won the villagers over by first being kind to the children. He helped with building their school and bringing medical aid and other help to their village. He followed these activities with arranging improvements to the water supply. Egan was winning the hearts and minds of the local populace. The Viet Cong viewed Jan Egan as a dangerous man. 

The U.S. Army pretty much shared the V.C.’s view of Jan Egan. Egan was a rebel. He despised the discipline of the army. He resented the regimentation. He was not just suspicious of authority; he was almost completely distrustful of the command structure beyond the enlisted ranks. On another level, he needed the structured life the army brought to him. Perhaps it was to replace some missing link in his childhood, perhaps just to add maturity to his perpetually adolescent personality. In any case it was his insanity, his recklessness, indeed his flaws that made him a success. He was a living contradiction. Like so many that walked on the fringes, lived life on the edge, he had the ability to make others want to please him, to admire and even love him. Egan was a very dangerous man. If you didn’t know what you were doing, running with Egan could get you killed. He might even spare the bad guys the trouble of killing you.

Egan’s attitude toward the army was a marked improvement over his attitude toward the navy where he had served nearly four years prior to enlisting in the army. His tour in the navy was spent on board a ship where he longed for the brief periods on shore. He spent shore liberty pursuing his two favorite pastimes, drinking and chasing women. The former often landed him in the brig or on some other form of restriction. The latter, usually landed him in the desired place. Near the end of his four-year enlistment he learned of a program that allowed for an early discharge if the service member was going to attend college. Egan signed up for the early out but unfortunately there was an army recruiting station between the navy base and the college.

Egan had always wanted to be a skydiver, so he stopped off at the local army recruiter and enlisted for the airborne.  When the navy found out he had not enrolled in college there was some talk of a court marshal, but since Egan had just traded one uniform for another they could hardly say he was avoiding his duty. After infantry training it was only a hop, skip and a few jumps to the airborne, the Rangers and then to Special Forces.

When he was finally sent to Vietnam, Egan discovered that A-502 was exactly the type of unit in which he could thrive. The game was played just a little outside the rules, he was pretty much on his own and he could train and lead his own little group of maniacs. Nui Ti was probably as close as Jan Egan would ever be to home, no matter where he was.

Egan loved ambushes. He loved stealthy character of the setting of a proper ambush, the selection of the site. Never the same place twice, except when he thought the enemy had figured out that he never set one in the same place twice. Always where and when they would least expect it. Find a staging area or a rest stop and set one just outside it. The V.C. would have begun to feel relaxed as they neared their destination. They might let their guard down just a little. Find their routine and exploit it. Egan found tremendous satisfaction in outsmarting the bad guys.

Then there was the waiting, the watching, and the anticipation. No smoking, no water, no mosquito repellent, no peeing, no talking, no sleeping, no farting, no moving. Anything that could be smelled, heard or seen by the enemy was forbidden. A cigarette could be smelled for a hundred meters. The jungle canopy held smells down near the ground. If a bug bit you, you let it bite. A slap could be heard for fifty meters. If sweat stung your eyes, you let it sting. If you got thirsty it was too bad. If the enemy saw, smelled or heard you before you did them, you died. It was not cat and mouse; it was way more than that. It was cat and cat. The smart, fast cat always won. The slow dumb one died. The waiting was the pain before the pleasure.   

The pleasure, almost exquisite to Egan was the springing of the trap. The detonation of the claymore mines with their interlocking blast fields. Hundreds of steel pellets hurled out by a plastic explosive charge in a fan shaped pattern. When fired from fifty meters away the blast was two meters high and fifty meters wide. Three of them placed twenty meters apart and twenty meters back from the trail would result in absolute lethality for anything in the middle forty meters and about eighty percent in the two twenty-five meter areas on either end. The initial claymore blast was followed by twenty rounds of M-16 fire from the members of the ambush team fired in three bursts. Then grenades were thrown as empty magazines were removed and replaced with full ones. Then more automatic weapons fire.  After a few repetitions, Egan would blow three blasts on a police whistle signaling a cease-fire. The ambushers would cautiously approach the carnage they had reaped on the trail to see if anyone had survived. The bodies were searched and anything of military value was seized or destroyed on the spot.

Egan finished his breakfast and called A-502 headquarters on the radio to give them his morning report. All quiet nothing to report. The voice on the radio at A-502 HQ reminded Jan he was scheduled to be there that afternoon to go over the province intelligence reports. Jan knew what this meant, compare the “official reports” to what he was getting from his own network. Then the headquarters types would pretty much ignore what he told them. Headquarters did not necessarily like to hear better information than they had gleaned from their sources. Unfortunately their sources were often V.C. double agents that told headquarters what they wanted to hear or what the agents wanted them to know. 

The net result would be some form of disaster either from commission or omission due to faulty intelligence. Faulty intelligence that placed ambushes that ambushed nothing or were themselves ambushed. Intelligence that placed listening posts that heard nothing; or  observation posts that observed nothing. In the mean time, the local V.C. would mortar a different site, assassinate a village leader down the road who was loyal to the South, or send sappers into another A-502 locale. Jan Egan lived among spies.

Jan Egan was a spymaster, not an undercover agent, because everyone knew who and what he was. He was simply a spymaster. He trusted his people and they rewarded that trust with information on the local communist activities. Information did not always come in a direct way. Sometimes it came in the form of a game of connect the dots. Egan knew the three rules for survival as a Special Forces trooper imbedded in the local populace. Those three rules were intelligence, intelligence, and intelligence. Intelligence was gained through observation.

Observation is a science of looking without staring. The sideward glance without turning the head. Never making eye contact. Always giving the impression of being oblivious to the events transpiring around you while carefully noting details about people, bicycles, motor bikes and foot traffic. Storing this information away and returning the next day to watch for a pattern or for variations in a pattern previously established. Always trying to appear that you knew and saw nothing. Making the observed feel comfortable with your presence. Hiding in plain sight.

Egan was a master observer. Anything out of the ordinary was made note of and checked out. He observed that a certain individual bought a fifty-kilo bag of rice every week although his household was comprised of just he and his wife. He observed that on the night following the rice purchase two extra bicycles were always parked in front of this person’s little house. The bicycles were always gone before sunrise. 

Egan observed that occasionally one of the locals was seen walking toward the edge of My Loc at sunset and returning early the next morning.

When Egan asked one of his trusted people if the rice buyer had a large family in a near-by village, he was told no. The rice buyer did not have any relatives near My Loc, nor did his wife. Egan asked if the nocturnal walker had a mistress or some other reason to take late night walks and he was told no. Jan put this sort of information together to form a Christmas list of his very own. In order to stay alive, he had to know who was naughty and who was nice. These two names were added to the naughty list. Sometimes he got the opportunity to kill the naughty ones in an ambush, but until then he watched and tried to learn about others in the network.

During the weeks previous, Egan had spent a lot of time seated a table on the sidewalk in front of a local restaurant nursing a few beers. Egan placed his range finder Nikon on the table in front of him; sighted and focused in on a point across the street so he could take a picture without picking up the camera. The range finder type camera was used because the “click-clack” sound a single lens reflex camera’s mirror made as it retracted announced that a picture had just been taken.

Jan saw the rice buyer walking from his left to the right toward the little bakery. He reached up and scratched his head and when his hand fell casually back to the tabletop he pressed the shutter release as the rice buyer walked down the street. Unless someone was carefully watching Egan, and the motion had been expected, it would have escaped notice. Jan had added another picture to his personal collection of wanted posters. He would wait a long time before he picked up the camera and cocked the shutter, then carefully replaced the camera in the exact location as before. 

A week later he was nursing his beer, nodding, smiling, and returning polite hellos to the locales as they passed by his table, Egan was watching for the nightwalker. Egan saw him coming up the street. He turned away and looked at the point across the street where the camera was focused. The casual motion was repeated and the nightwalker’s picture was added to Egan’s file.

The film was sent by courier to the 5th group headquarters to be developed. The pictures would be copied and distributed to the other Special Forces personnel from the seven A-502 camps at the province intelligence meeting that afternoon. The combination of the pictures and the names these people used in My Loc would make it possible for others to be on the look out for them. Others would be attentive to rice buying habits and evening walks. Mere descriptions would be useless; all Vietnamese were five feet eight inches tall with black hair.

Ed Brown was to Binh Tan what Jan Egan was to Nui Ti. However, Ed was a completely different personality. Where Egan was wild, Brown was quiet. His mid-west upbringing had engendered him with a shy, yet forceful demeanor. His mind was a library of corny jokes. Ed had false teeth, which he hated, and he took them out whenever he could. 

Egan and Brown shared their military specialty. Small weapons. They could identify any small arms weapon manufactured since the turn of the century, by any country, take it apart and put it back together in under two minutes. They could do this blindfolded.    

At Binh Tan, Ed Brown had been exercising his own observation skills on the woman to whom he had given the name Dragon Lady. It was not that she was unattractive, to the contrary she was beautiful. For a Vietnamese, she was tall and had an ample bosom, both unusual characteristics. Her eyes were brown and her cheekbones high, but her skin was paler than the normal light tan. Ed had concluded she was part French or American.

She seemed far more self-assured and in control of events around her than a typical young Vietnamese female. The villagers treated her with respect and deference. Often making way for her when she walked down the street. She did not move with the typical grace, the almost liquid walk of a high class Vietnamese. Nor did she walk with the stooped shuffle of a peasant woman who had worked in the fields. No, Dragon Lady marched; her head held high, her shoulders back, the world was her parade field.

Dragon lady lived alone in a modest little home. This too was unusual. It was unusual that she had no visible means of support, which in a village of the size of Binh Tan would have meant a husband. Ed had made casual inquiries, very discreetly to his Montagnard soldiers and Vietnamese Special Forces. No, she was not the Mayor’s daughter or mistress. No one knew who her father was. She was not married. She had no family in the area. He had guessed she was in her early twenties, kind of old to still be single.

Ed smiled and thought, “If she isn’t a V.C. I’ll marry her. If she is V.C. maybe we could just go steady.” Ed Brown’s intuition told him that Dragon Lady was a Communist.

Dragon Lady or Loan Ti Tran was part French. She hated that part of herself. When her mother was eighteen she had fallen in love with a French soldier and had allowed herself to become pregnant. Loan’s mother’s family had lost face and been scandalized. Loan was born in 1947. Loan was just eight years old when the French were leaving Vietnam after Dien Bien Phu. She had cried for days after her beloved father left. Loan's mother hoped the young Legionnaire would marry her or at least arrange for her to immigrate to France.

At first the money had come every month and the weekly letters had spoken of progress in the Byzantine bureaucracy that was French immigration. But the paper work was lost or incomplete or didn’t have the proper stamp or had been filed too late. The young soldier began to realize that the name of the immigrant was the major problem. Then the letters slowed and a month passed by without any money. Loan’s mother had a little saved and everything was all right. Then the money was no longer regular. Then the letters stopped and the money no longer came.

Because of her affair with the handsome legionnaire, her family had disowned Loan’s mother. No Vietnamese man would marry her because she had a half-caste daughter. She could have given up her daughter to one of the orphanages, but she couldn’t bear to part with the beautiful child she had borne. Thus she turned to the only profession available to her and became a prostitute. While her mother was still young enough to find a Western newsman or construction manager she avoided the one night stands. Instead she was a kept woman during her lover’s time in Southeast Asia. Saying good-bye to one lover and hello to another sometimes in the same day. 

As she grew to understand what was happening Loan learned to hate the Westerners that shared her mother’s bed at night. She saw the way some of her mother’s customers looked at her as she developed into a young woman. She vowed that she would kill all of them one day.

Part of the earnings from prostitution were used to send Loan to a Catholic School where the sisters treated her like the bastard child she was. The sisters knew the source of the tuition money but they accepted it. They did not accept Loan. The sins of the father and the mother were visited on the daughter. Loan was a quick study and learned to speak English and French fluently. Math and science, geography and religion all came easily to her. This only intensified the sister’s disdain for her. Loan learned to hate the sisters.

Loan grew to be a beautiful young woman. She was wise to the ways of the world and street smart because of her mother’s profession. She had learned from the sisters that her mother was the lowest of the low, a woman who sold her body and lived in sin. A woman condemned for eternity to the fires of Hell. A woman now in her late thirties who while still attractive was no longer able to compete with sixteen to twenty something year olds that the Americans preferred. She was now cruising Saigon hotels late at night to pick up the drunk and horny. The concierges at some of the hotels were beginning to chase her out of the lobby. She was unable to make enough to pay the bribes necessary to ply her trade in hotels. Loan learned to hate her mother.

Being an outcast and filled with hatred for all the authority figures in her life meant that Loan had few friends. That is until the Viet Cong recruited her shortly after she graduated from the Catholic school. She found a new meaning in life as a Communist. She shared their view that all outside influences must be removed from Vietnam. All of the corrupting influences of the West must be stamped out. 

After her basic indoctrination, she had been trained to fight as a guerrilla. Her intellect and education served her well and she began to rise quickly through the ranks. Ed Brown did not know he was observing Lieutenant Loan Tran of the 23rd Military Intelligence Brigade. He thought he was watching Dragon Lady. 

Ed was sitting at an outside table at the little bar in the village. He was sipping a beer and watching the villagers go about their daily routine. He saw Dragon Lady walking across the street. She was wearing a conical hat; white nylon pants and light blue ao dai.

The ao dai are a kind of a dress with the side slit up the side to the waistline. Under the ao dai baggy pants are worn. This is the traditional Vietnamese costume. Ed looked casually away to a point just ahead of her so as to allow her to walk through his field of vision. He waited for her to appear, but Dragon Lady did not cross the aiming point. Ed looked toward the place he had last seen her but she was gone. 

He felt a presence behind him.

In the standard broken English of a Vietnamese a voice said, “Why you ask question bout me?”

He turned his head and there she was looming above him. Looking down, her eyes concealed by dark glasses her face passive without any expression. Ed was shocked, almost struck dumb. His mind raced for an answer.

She repeated the question, “I said, why are you asking questions about me?” this time in good English.

“I, uhh, I wasn’t asking questions. I was just sitting here.” Ed was still trying to regain control of the situation but not doing a very good job.

Her voice was cold and authoritative “I not your business.” Dragon Lady turned and marched briskly away. As she strode away from him, Ed followed her with his eyes until other pedestrians came between them and blocked his line of sight.

Ed Brown was not easily cowed or intimidated. Dragon Lady had caught him so off guard and had behaved so out of character that she had managed to get the better of the exchange.

“Well kiss my cheek and call me Lucy, man what a ball buster!” He thought to himself and took a long pull from his Bau Mui Bau beer.

He reviewed the exchange in his mind. How had she known he had asked his people about her? Someone in the camp had to have told her, he had said nothing to any of the villagers. He had reason for concern. The observer had become the observed. As he continued to watch the activity in the village he pondered Dragon Lady’s change from broken, to proper, then back to broken English. Why was she trying to appear less educated than she actually was? People don’t normally hide their education.

Her knowing that he had an interest in her meant his cover was blown. Her willingness to blow her own cover ran contrary to the Vietnamese tradition of saving face. She had openly challenged him.

Ed stayed in town a little longer than usual that day. He ate his dinner in the bar and drank a few more beers. It was getting dark when he started his solitary walk back to the camp.

The beers he had drunk filled his bladder and he stepped off the road into some trees to relieve himself. As he finished, he let out a small sigh of satisfaction and relief and buttoned his fly. As he was leaving his shelter and returning to the road he heard a Honda motor cycle approaching from the village.  Instinctively, he stepped back into the tree line and watched the Honda pass by. He could see clearly that the passenger was Dragon Lady still wearing her sunglasses but without the conical hat. He thought he recognized the driver as Ngyuen Dat Truong, the Vietnamese Warrant Officer in command of the camp at Suoi Dau.

“Well shave my butt cheeks and call me smoothie, what the Hell is he doing with her?”  His mind ran down the list of possibilities. She was his mistress. Truong was married and he didn’t make enough to keep a mistress. She was his sister. Except Truong didn’t have a sister. She was in business with him. That was possible. What kind of business?

Ed hurried back to the camp. He wanted to talk to Egan about this but it would have to wait until the intelligence meeting tomorrow. Then they would decide how best to handle this, who to tell, who they could trust with this piece of knowledge. If this were just an innocent ride on a Honda, an accusation would cause a lot of damage to the accuser. If Truong were a switch hitter then he would be the highest-ranking South Vietnamese they had ever exposed as a V.C. Egan and Brown had long shared the belief that the failures of the ambushes set by the forces at Suoi Dau were more than just a result of Truong’s ineptness or cowardice. 

When he got back to Binh Tan, Brown went to bed without saying anything to anyone. As he waited for sleep to come he heard the voices again. Brown always heard two voices. One was voice of reason that prevented suspicion from becoming paranoia. That voice said, “They can’t ALL be V.C. Brown.”  The other voice was the voice of survival that prevented confidence from becoming complacency, that voice said. “Sure they can Ed.” The next morning he arose early and prepared for the trip to A-502 headquarters. 

At Nha Trang, we were scheduled for a 6:30 take off to fly convoy cover for fifty or so trucks driving from Cam Ranh Bay, just South of Nha Trang to Ban Me Thout in the central highlands. Included in the convoy were forty fuel tankers each carrying 10,000 gallons of JP4, high-octane aviation fuel, diesel, or regular gasoline. One brave V.C. or N.V.A. with an RPG could cause a lot of damage. Oddly enough, I never saw or heard of a convoy being ambushed on this route.

We arrived in the briefing room and took our seats on the folding chairs facing a map of II Corps which included the route from Cam Ranh to Ban Me Thout.

The briefing officer looked at us and consulted his clipboard. He would be briefing several missions that morning. We were the first. Our mission had been posted last night and we all knew what we were doing. We still needed weather, call signs and frequency information in order to fly the mission.  

“Good morning Gentlemen. You are flying mission number one-thirteen alpha, (The briefing officer confirmed he had the right group before him.) convoy escort, you’re scheduled for take off at zero-six-three-zero. The time now is zero-six zero–five. Local weather is good; ceiling is broken at three thousand five hundred. You can expect a very low ceiling at Duc My pass. Scattered rain with possible thundershowers is expected this afternoon, shouldn’t be a problem. Visibility is five miles. Density altitude is three thousand five hundred feet at sea level. You will meet Wagon Train Six on four-seven-point five-zero fox mike. Enemy activity in the area is quiet. There were a few mortar rounds at B.M.T. last night, but no major activity has been reported. You will refuel at Blue Star until you have passed the village of Kahn Duong, which he pointed out on the map. After that you will refuel at B.M.T. Questions?”

We took notes recording the call sign and frequency of the convoy commander. Enemy activity, we could not have cared less about. If there were any enemy activity today we would find out about it in the worst possible way. The density altitude was a concern, but we would know if we could fly when we first pulled pitch after engine start. I glanced around; the others were gathering up their gear and preparing to walk out to the flight line and the helicopters waiting in the revetments. I shook my head, “No questions, Sir.”

The briefing officer nodded and said, “Okay, good luck.”

“Thank-you Sir.” I replied.

I picked up my helmet, canteen, M-2 carbine, and spare clips of ammunition, survival kit and my camera and headed for the door. We walked the two hundred yards out to the aircraft in a little mob exchanging jokes and pre-mission talk. Our eyes were on the clouds in the mountains to the West.   

The crew was waiting for us when we arrived. After they ate in the enlisted mess, they had skipped the briefing and gone directly to the aircraft. The gun covers were removed and the blades were cocked when we arrived. Glen did a quick pre-flight while I started the run up. The sun was just over the horizon as we started the mission. The temperature was already approaching ninety; the humidity made us sticky with sweat. The clean feeling from the shower taken only an hour ago was already a memory.

I completed the radio check with my wingman and called the tower for take off instructions.

“Nha Trang tower, Wolf Pack Three-Zero.”

“Wolf Pack Three-Zero, Nha Trang tower, go ahead.”

“Wolf Pack Three-Zero is a flight of two UH1-C gun ships in the Mardi Gras area for taxi take off.”

“Roger Wolf Pack Three-Zero, taxi for take off runway two-three. Altimeter two-niner-five-five, winds calm, call when ready for take off.

Nha Trang was a busy airport. The main runway was used by fixed wing traffic and we used a smaller cross wind runway. The crosswind runway would only be employed as the main runway in the event of severe cross winds or damage to the main runway. The two runways were laid out in the loose form of an “X”.

“Three-Zero roger.”

“Okay coming up.” I announced to the crew over the intercom.

“Clear right, clear left.” Replied my crew chief and door gunner

I pulled up on the collective applying more pitch to the rotor blades. The turbine engine’s automatic governor pumped more fuel into the ignition chamber. As we reached maximum power I felt the aircraft get light on the skids, but the RPM started to bleed off before we picked up to a hover.

“Damn it.” I said to myself. It was a hot humid morning and this was not going to be easy. Although we were at sea level, the atmospheric conditions created air with the lift characteristics of an airfield at 3,500 feet. The fact that we were almost a ton over our maximum gross take off weight was a contributing factor. We would not be able to hover. We would have to maneuver like a fixed wing aircraft except we didn’t have wheels; so we would drag the aircraft on their skids. An irregularity in the tarmac or a slight mistake on my part and the aircraft could tip and bend a skid, or spill crew or ammunition from one of the open cargo doors, or even catch a blade and make a large mess on the runway. The air force hated messy runways.

I downed the collective, waited for the RPM to come back to 6600; then pulled the collective up again quickly. We lifted up sluggishly, I applied right cyclic and we flew sideways until we were clear of the front of the revetment. The RPM started to bleed off, slowing the rotor blades and I centered the cyclic, stopping our sideways motion. We stabilized and I lowered the collective. We crashed gently on the tarmac.

I again eased the collective upward simultaneously applying left pedal until the RPM started to bleed off. This time I kept full power in and eased the cyclic forward, the helicopter started sliding. I applied right pedal and executed a right turn. I corrected with left pedal and we slowly skidded out to the runway. I looked to my left and saw my wingman completing the same maneuver. I approached the runway centerline and when it was ninety degrees off my right shoulder, I applied right pedal and centered the aircraft on the runway. I breathed an involuntary sigh of relief and downed the collective.

“Wolf Pack, take off check.” I called to my wingman.

“Three-Four ready for take off.” Came the reply.

“Nha Trang tower, Wolf Pack Three-Zero is ready for take off runway two-three-zero.”

“Wolf Pack Three-Zero you are clear for take off runway two-three-zero.”

“Three-Zero is on the go.”

“Coming up.” I hopefully announced to the crew.

“Clear left, clear right.”

I pulled up on the collective again, wondering if we had burned enough fuel to hover. The answer was apparent as the RPM bled off. I pushed down on the collective until the engine RPM returned to the optimum 6600, then eased the cyclic forward and we began to slide down the runway. As we gathered speed the rotor-blades generated more lift which made the helicopter lighter on the skids which in turn allowed the aircraft to go faster. The skids dragging on the asphalt made a noise like a freight train stopping as we gathered speed. I felt the aircraft approach translational lift and confirmed it with a quick glance at the airspeed indicator. I eased slightly back on the cyclic and felt the aircraft lift off the runway.  I rode the bubble of down draft for an instant then eased the cyclic forward again and we were airborne.      

I flew straight for about a quarter mile, climbing slowly to an altitude of two hundred feet or so. No sense in tempting fate with a turn at this altitude and this near our operational limit.

“Three-Four is off.” I heard from my wingman on VHF.

I reached down to the radio console between the seats and switched to VHF.

“Roger Three-Four.”

I switched back to UHF and called the tower. “Nha Trang tower Wolf Pack Three-Zero is off, request right turn out and permission to cross the active West of the field.”

“Roger Wolf Pack, you are cleared to cross the active, we are landing runway one-three, cross under 500 feet and one mile West, use caution for aircraft on final approach, maintain tower frequency until clear of the centerline.”

“Three-Zero roger.”

I leveled off at three hundred feet and initiated a right turn.

“Coming right.” I said over the intercom.

“Clear right.” confirmed my crew chief.

I took up a heading parallel to the main runway. We would be crossing the active on the approach end. Normally we would just clear the active by crossing at tree top level if we were heading North. This morning we needed to find a convoy on Highway One and I needed to make radio contact with them as they traveled the winding road to the mountains surrounding Nha Trang.

I glanced at the clock on the instrument panel it read 6:35.

“Glen would you grab the green book and log us off at oh-six-thirty and change the…. Ahh…fox mike freq to ahhh.” I had forgotten the frequency for wagon train six and I reached into my pocket for my note pad.

“Four-seven point five-zero?” Glen asked looking at his note pad.

“Right”      

I again reached for the radio selector switch with my left hand and changed to VHF from UHF that I had used to speak to the tower. “Wolf Pack Three-Four let’s go TAC fox mike.”

“Three-Four” came the reply.

“Three-Four, Three-Zero check fox mike.” I checked with my wingman to insure we were on the same frequency.

“Three-Four roger.”  I heard his reply on the FM radio confirming we were both on Wagon Train Six’s frequency.

I flew parallel to the active until I saw the road connecting Nha Trang to Highway One. I turned slightly to the left and followed the road to the highway. Mixed in with the civilian traffic I could see a jeep traveling along the road from Nha Trang toward Highway One. I glanced down as we flew over and saw that an American was driving the jeep.

In the jeep Ed Brown looked up to see the first gun ship fly over, the second one didn’t merit even a glance. There were more helicopters in Vietnam than in any other country in the world.

As we crossed the main highway I turned right and set up an orbit. Our flight path passed over the A-502 headquarters at Trung Dung and the little camp at My Loc a few miles Southwest.

“Wagon Train Six, Wolf Pack Three-Zero.” I initiated contact with our convoy.

“Wolf Pack Three-Zero, this is Wagon Train Six go ahead.”

“Three-Zero is off and over the trail about one-five miles North of your departure point. Are you North or South from there? Over.” We didn’t have the code words for their checkpoints so we had to talk about locations in terms that only we would be sure of understanding.

“We are North of that point.”

“Roger, I’m en route.” I turned North over My Loc and started up Highway One toward Ninh Hoa and the Duc My Pass.

At My Loc, Egan went out to the Nui Ti compound to find the Montagnard commander, as he heard a chopper fly over head he gave it a quick glance. Helicopters were so common a quick glance was more than it deserved but he couldn’t help but look up.

“Huh, a gun ship.” he thought. “I wonder what he’s doing out here.” He then noticed the big red hand with the middle finger extended painted on the belly of one of the helicopters. “Crazy fuckers.” He said out loud, smiling and shaking his head as he watched the helicopters fly off to the North.

Egan joined the Montagnard commander for tea and told him he would be gone until tomorrow morning. Egan hated to drive so he asked if one of his people could transport him the seven kilometers to camp Trung Dung at Dien Khan. His transportation arranged, Jan returned to his bunker and radioed confirmation to headquarters.

The Vietnamese drove like NASCAR racers over dosed with testosterone. Fearless and with complete faith in the other drivers doing something predictable. They drove at a furious pace within inches of one another, playing an insane combination of chicken and road warrior. Animals scattered, women and children scurried out of the way, horns sounded and dust was raised on the short trip to the old French fortress that served as A-502 headquarters.

When he arrived at Dien Khan, Jan felt like he had just been on the amusement park ride from Hell. He got out of the jeep and did the logical thing; he headed to the club for a drink. It was only 7:00am, but the bar was always open and it was now pretty much a day off for Jan Egan.

When Jan arrived at the club, Ed Brown was already having his second beer.

“Morning Ed.”

“Well pat my head and call me Rover, morning Egan, what’s new?”

“Same old shit, different day. How about you?”

“About like that.”  Brown started immediately into a joke. “So this guy walks into a bar and orders a beer.”

Egan groaned, “Oh Christ Brown, not another fucking joke.”

Brown ignored Egan and went on, “The bartender serves it up to him but before he can even take a sip a little door opens at the end of the bar and this monkey runs out, pees in the guy’s beer and then runs back through the door. The guy calls the bartender over and says, ‘That little monkey just peed in my beer.’ The bartender says ‘Okay I’ll get you another.’ So the bartender sets another  beer down in front of the guy and all of a sudden the little door opens and out comes the monkey. He runs up, pees in the guy’s beer and then bang, goes back through the little door. The guy calls the bartender and says ‘The damn monkey peed in my beer again!’ The bartender says ‘Okay, I’ll get you another but you got to protect your beer, I can’t keep doing this.’ So the bartender gives the guy another beer and the guy wraps his arms around it then picks it up and takes a sip. The monkey comes out, looks at the guy and goes back through the little door. The guy looks at the bartender and says, ‘So what’s up with the monkey?’ The bartender replies, ‘I really don’t know, I just started here yesterday, but the piano player has been here for years, he probably knows.’ The guy picks up his beer walks over to the piano player and says; 'Do you know that little monkey that pees in your beer?' The piano play player looks at him and says; ‘No, but if you hum a few bars I can probably fake it.’

Egan forced himself to suppress a laugh and said, “Shit Ed, that was the absolute worst.”       

Ed Brown looked around in a conspiratorial fashion. “Hey, you’ll like this, last night I saw Truong riding on a motor with a ball busting V.C. bitch.”

Egan walked behind the bar as he peeled a one dollar MPC (Military Pay Certificate which were issued to the Americans instead of real money) from the wad in his pocket and placed it in the cigar box that served as the honor bar cash register for the club. Beer was fifteen cents, hard drinks were a quarter. He opened the refrigerator door, reached in and pulled out two beers. “You saw what?” He offered one of the beers to Brown.

Brown reached for the beer and replied, “I saw Truong, you know, the wily Warrant of Suoi Dau, with a V.C. woman on back of his fucking Honda heading out of Binh Tan toward Nha Trang.”

Although they were alone in the bar, Egan involuntarily looked around as if to see if they were being overheard. “You’ve got to be shitting me! How do you know she is V.C.?”

“I’ve been watching her for a while. Man she is really beautiful. But there is something wrong, you know? Too old, too beautiful, too cool, just too fucking too, to be just a regular, you know what I mean? She said she heard that I had been asking about her and she confronted me!”

Egan was taken aback, “She what?”  He said as he put the beer to his mouth and took a drink.    

“Yeah that’s what I thought. Totally out of character. After our little chat I hung around the vill and had supper there. I was on my way back to camp when I saw them. I was in the bushes taking a pee. They were riding down the road just bigger than life”  

“So how did she know you had been checking on her?”

“Beats the Hell out if me, I only asked my own people. Either one of them is playing for the other team or maybe they asked someone in the village, either way I don’t like it one damn bit.”  

“Who else have you told about Truong?”

“No one but you. I was afraid it would leak.” Brown finished his second beer and took a long pull from the one Egan had given him.

“Good thinking Ed. I don’t know who to trust around here any more. So what do you plan to do?”

“I hadn’t really thought it through except to tell you and maybe the S-2.” (S-2 was the organizational name for the intelligence officer.

Egan nodded his head, “Well if you tell the S-2, do it in private, not at the briefing.”

“Oh you got that. I’m saying nothing about this at the briefing. Major Tran is going to be there for sure and maybe even Truong.”

While Egan and Brown hatched their strategy on how best to use the information regarding the Vietnamese commander of the camp at Suoi Dau, I was leading my fire team up Highway One in search of the convoy.

“Wagon Train Six, Wolf Pack Three-Zero.”

“Go ahead Wolf Pack.”

“Three-Zero is on the trail, we should be at your location in about one zero.”

“Roger Wolf Pack.”

I started a gradual climb at five hundred feet per minute and sixty knots to an altitude of one thousand five hundred feet AGL (Above Ground Level). We began to follow Highway One North. We were flying at maximum power. I could feel the aircraft becoming more responsive as our fuel burned off.  I leveled off at fifteen hundred feet and increased our airspeed to eighty knots. 

I checked in with Cam Ranh Air Traffic Control Center.

“Cam Ranh Center, Wolf Pack Three-Zero.”

“Wolf Pack Three-Zero, this is Cam Ranh Center go ahead.”

“Wolf Pack Three-Zero is a flight of two UH-1-C’s with a total of eight S.O.B.s en route from Nha Trang to Ban Me Thout. ETA is sixteen-hundred hours.” S.O.B. was a short way of saying “Souls On Board” but of course the double meaning was a running joke for all concerned.

“Roger, Wolf Pack Three-Zero, contact Ban Me Thout Center on arrival.”

“Three-Zero, roger.”

As we rounded Hon Son Mountain flying over Dam Nam Phu Bay I saw the convoy ahead of us. The convoy was making about forty miles an hour on the level coastal terrain. As we over took them I dropped the collective and eased the cyclic forward. Our airspeed increased to one hundred knots, then to one hundred ten in the shallow dive. Soon we were approaching the last vehicle in the convoy and I increased the rate of descent and our airspeed so we were fifty feet off the ground and doing one hundred and twenty knots as we over took the last truck in the convoy.

“Wagon Train Six, Wolf Pack Three-Zero is over your position.”

We buzzed the trucks; there was no doubt in their minds about where the gun ship cover for their convoy was.  We flew the length of the convoy and I initiated a cyclic climb burning off airspeed for altitude and terminating our climb at one thousand feet and forty knots. I made a right turn and eased the cyclic forward again to initiate another shallow dive aimed at the lead vehicle in the convoy.

“Roger Wolf Pack, we ahh have you in sight.” The convoy commander understated.

We turned and buzzed the trucks again this time from the front. The soldiers in the trucks waved at us as we over flew them. I did this as much for their enjoyment as my own. Well, okay I did it mostly for my enjoyment. The fact remains that it was a boost for the trucker’s morale to be buzzed by the gun ships that would help provide their security for the next ten hours on the road to Ban Me Thout.

As we approached Duc My pass we called the 48^th A.H.C. operations. They were based at the foot of the pass and ran kind of an informal air traffic control for helicopters flying West from the coast.

“Wolf Pack Three-Four go Blue Star Ops fox-mike.”

“Three-Four.”

“Blue Star Operations, Wolf Pack Three-Zero.”

“Wolf Pack Three-Zero Blue Star Operations go ahead.”

“Wolf Pack Three-Zero is a flight of two UH-1-C’s one-zero out westbound.” This told Blue Star operations that we were ten minutes away and headed west following the highway through the pass.

“Roger Three-Zero, weather in Duc My is reported at zero ceiling and one hundred feet visibility. Monitor guard and use caution for east bound aircraft”

“Three-Zero, roger. We are clear of your air space and off your frequency ”

“Three-Four go Wagon Train fox mike.” I called to my wingman.

“Three-Four.”  Came the reply.

The weather report meant we would fly I.F.R. (not Instrument Flight Rules, but I Follow Roads) though the pass, staying to the right just like we were driving a car.  I turned on the landing light and deployed the searchlight so we could more easily be seen by aircraft flying toward the coast.

As we followed the road climbing toward the summit, the gray clouds began to surround us. We slowed to forty knots, then thirty, then twenty keeping the trucks below us. We would fly in this envelope for the next four and one half hours as the trucks wound their way through the switch-backs on the way to the summit. Glen and I starred into the fog searching for helicopters flying east. The crew chief and door gunner watched the trees and villages below, searching for suspicious activity.

The weather prevented us from flying more than fifty feet above the road or we would loose visual contact with the ground and go inadvertent IFR. This would mean we had no choice but to turn due East and fly on instruments until we either broke out of the clouds or we could contact Nha Trang tower and be guided back down by Nha Trang Approach Control. It also meant that we were nearly useless from a tactical standpoint. The clouds were so low that we couldn’t set up a gun run. We couldn’t get far enough from any potential target for the rockets to arm themselves before impact. The beaten path (area of impact) of the miniguns would only be about a ten foot circle, way too small to be effective. That left the door gunners to provide protection for us and the convoy.  We did give any potential ambushers something else to shoot at besides the fuel trucks. Maybe they would use up their ammunition on us.    

Since we had to make left had turns to stay on the right hand side of the road, Glen got a lot of flying time. Normally we made right hand turns when we were orbiting so the aircraft commander had the best view of what was ahead.

“Three-Zero is coming left.” Glen announced.

“Three-Four.” Came the acknowledgment. 

 We called our turns so the wingman would have a chance to tell us if he had lost visual contact with us. We couldn’t turn unless he could see us. The thick fog made a midair collision very possible if not probable.    

We began to run low on fuel and I checked with my wingman prior to making the turn back to Blue Star to hot refuel. I would remain in the aircraft with the engine running while Glen watched the crew chief and door gunner refuel. We would refuel twice at Blue Star before the trucks cleared the mountains and hit level ground and began to highball it for Ban Me Thout. 

B.M.T. Every war has a place where you can stand in mud up to your knees and have dust blow in your face. In Vietnam that place was Ban Me Thout. The soil of the central highlands was red clay. In the dry season the red clay was turned to a fine red dust that literally got into everything. It coated sweaty skin giving the illusion of a reddish suntan. It was in your food, in your water, down your neck, in your ears, in your crotch. The first time you blew your nose in Ban Me Thout you thought you were bleeding. The afternoon brought thunderstorms that supplied the mud to stand in.

The wet season was like the dry season but with deeper mud. 

Ban Me Thout was the home of the 155th AHC. As fine a group of helicopter pilots as you could find outside of Nha Trang. The officer’s club at the 155th had a seat from a Huey rigged up as a barstool, complete with a cyclic and collective. If you started telling war stories, you were ushered to the “seat” and strapped in. It was all in fun of course and only the thoroughly inebriated with the best stories were actually strapped in.

They also had the only swimming pool outside of Saigon. Unfortunately it had never held a drop of water. Before they could fill it an NVA 122mm rocket had scored a direct hit in the bottom of the pool. This event was rightly considered a miracle. The 122mm rocket had been fired from about a mile away and had no guidance system. It was the equivalent of Babe Ruth calling his famous home run and adding “I’ll put it Section Seventeen, Row twenty-three, Seat five.” The pool was never repaired. When you consider the effect of several pounds of red dust blowing into the water every day, it was probably a blessing in disguise.

Once the convoy was on the plains of the Central Highlands we would vary our flight pattern. Sixty knots at fifty feet over the convoy; then climbing to fifteen hundred feet and flying ahead of the trucks for a few miles. Then turning back and descending to fifty feet. The routine became almost mind numbing, boring holes in the sky and turning JP4 into noise. We all had to struggle to maintain our concentration, not to get complacent, to remember that there was actual potential for an ambush. Except it never happened. So it would go for just over six hours until the convoy was safely in Ban Me Thout.

No one wanted to overnight at B.M.T., especially if it was not a planned stay. The 155th was very hospitable; in fact they would give you whatever they had. The problem was they had almost nothing to give.

At Dien Khan, Egan and Brown left the bar to attend the intelligence meeting. Egan presented his pictures of the rice buyer and the nightwalker along with their names, at least as they were known in My Loc. The other Special Forces NCOs picked up and studied their copies of the black and white eight by tens Egan distributed. A couple of them thought they recognized the faces in pictures. 

Truong was not there but Major Tran was. During the briefing he cast a baleful glare at Egan. Their troubles went back several weeks to the day when Egan had accused Major Tran and his forces of ineptitude or cowardice for their inability to find and engage the enemy. Egan had been involved in a firefight at an ambush and called for help. The L.L.D.B. under Major Tran had been unable to find their way out of camp until the fight was over. Egan had lost several of his people and blamed Tran for their deaths.

A few days later during a party at A-502 headquarters Egan had consumed too much Calvert whiskey washed down with too much Schlitz beer. He had confronted Major Tran and accused him of being a coward. “Chicken shit son of a bitch.” Was the exact descriptive phrase. Major Tran was humiliated by the public accusation and he told Egan to shut up. Egan had punched Tran in the mouth before cooler heads could intervene. Egan was immediately sent back to My Loc.

A few days later Egan was summoned back to A-502 headquarters and given an Article 15. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Article 15 was considered “non-judicial punishment”. Egan was fined fifty dollars and told to take R & R as soon as possible. The administration of the Article 15 made it impossible for Egan to receive more serious punishment for the assault on Major Tran. Double jeopardy applies to military as well as civilian justice. The R & R would get him out of town until things cooled down a little.

Of course Major Tran was not happy with Egan’s punishment. Had a member of the ARVN punched Tran he would have had the perpetrator shot. Seeing Egan get off with minor punishment had made Tran very angry. He had lost considerable face with his men.

Once the convoy commander released us we refueled and launched for Nha Trang. The afternoon had brought thunderstorms along the coastal mountain range. I decided to go VFR on top. That is to say we would maintain visual flight rules by flying above clouds and between the  thunderheads. This had the double advantages of keeping us cool and avoiding the pass. It would probably be raining and the visibility would be even worse than it had been that morning. One nerve-racking trip through Duc My pass per day was enough. Besides VFR on top could be beautiful, bright sun, blue sky and white clouds. I tuned in the Armed Forces Radio station at Nha Trang on the A.D.F. and followed the needle back home. Once we crossed the coastal mountains we had no trouble finding a hole in the broken ceiling to descend through and land at Nha Trang.    

Over ten hours in the cockpit had left Glen and me pretty much drained. When we landed I checked in with operations to see if tomorrow’s missions were posted. Nothing was on the board yet, so I walked back to the BOQ and dropped my gear off. Then it was off to the club for dinner and a few drinks to relax.

After the briefing Egan and Brown returned to the A-502 bar and more beer.

Egan took a long pull from a can of beer and asked, “So Ed, you on ambush tonight?’

“Not me, you?”

“Nope, but if that chicken shit, FNG (fucking new guy) Cook, comes in and asks we are both signed up, okay?” 

Ed grinned, “You think he might have lost his glasses?”

“Oh you’ve heard about him huh? The son of a bitch must have five hundred pair of glasses. I came in for an overnighter two weeks ago and he asked me if I was staying in. I said yes and he asks me if I would take his place because he broke his glasses. I figure what the Hell? You know me, I might have changed my mind and gone out anyway. So I say, sure, I’ll take your place. So last Wednesday; I’m here again. I’m not on the ambush roster, but I volunteer to go out. Except nobody changed the roster. Cook sees me and asks if I’m going to go out. I tell him no. So there he is with that other front gate wonder, Jameson discussing whether to set up their ambush fifty or seventy-five meters from the gate when I walk up and change the ambush leader’s name to me. Cook looks at me and says, I thought you weren’t going out! I says, I changed my mind and we are going to set up on a trail out by O.P. Rock Pile. He says good, you always make contact. So we head out to the truck to saddle up. I’m sitting in the back on the right and he’s across from me. He doesn’t know I’m watching and just after he gets into the truck he starts cleaning his glasses and pretends to drop them on the ground. Then he jumps down and lands right on top of them. He looks up at me and says, damn I broke my glasses, I can’t go out. Then he reaches up, grabs his web gear and heads back to the barracks. He’ll probably go home with three silver stars.

They were into their third beer when the S-2 walked in.

“Egan, Brown, I got some news for you.” Said the S-2 as he walked around the bar and pulled three beers out of the refrigerator and dropped a one-dollar MPC into the cigar box.

Egan and Brown gave a quick quizzical look at one another then looked at the S-2. “What’s that sir?” said Brown.

“Yeah, what’s up?” said Egan.

“You two are going to Suoi Dau tonight to check on camp security and see what the Hell the problem is with their ambushes.”

“Why us?” asked Brown.

“Special request from Major Tran.” Replied the S-2.

“What the Hell?” asked Egan, “Why the fuck would he ask for me?  The son of a bitch hates my guts!”

The S-2 sat the beers on the bar and replied, “That may be, but the old man wants you two to go there tonight. Apparently Major Tran asked for you guys specifically. Politics and all that, got to make sure Major Tran thinks he calls some of the shots”

Egan looked at Brown and asked, “What about Truong?”

The S-2 looked at them and said, “Truong? You mean Warrant Officer Truong? What about him?”

Ed looked at Jan in a way that said, “Not now Jan.” as he replied, “Oh nothing Sir, we just thought he was going to be here today.”

“Well, he’d damn well better be at Suoi Dau if we are sending you two there at his request.” The S-2 took another pull from his beer and walked out of the bar. “See you guys later.”

“Yes sir.” Egan and Brown replied as they lifted their beers.

Ed looked at Egan, “Well slap my ass and call me Fannie.”

“Okay Ed, so what’s the deal? What the Hell is going on? Do you think Tran is trying to get me out of here so he can mess with Nui Ti?”

“Beats the Hell out of me. But what could he do, steal your little people? They’d all just run away and come back to you.”

 “And why didn’t we tell him about Truong?”

“I don’t know, I just don’t think now is the time. I want to get the goods on this little son of a bitch, then we can hang him by the short hairs.”

Egan shook his head. “Okay, it’s your show man, but I got a real bad feeling about this whole program. So when I tell you I told you so, don’t forget that I actually told you so. Next beer is on you.”

The two friends shared a good laugh. Both were wondering independently if he was laughing at the joke or in reaction to the vague feeling of foreboding that now hung over them like an invisible but palpable black cloud. 

While Ed Brown’s mind ran over the events that had transpired the night before in Binh Tan with Dragon lady and Truong, Jan Egan tried to reconcile Major Tran’s special request for him to go to Suoi Dau. Neither made much headway. 

“Come on, Egan we’d better get some web gear and get started if we are going to make Suoi Dau before night fall. I don’t want to be on the road at night.”

“You got that Ed, let’s go.” Egan drained the last of his beer and joined Brown for the short walk to the armory so they could check out enough gear to overnight at Soui Dau. After checking out web gear, canteens, and spare ammunition clips, they signed a jeep out of the motor pool and started down Highway One for the twelve-mile drive to Suoi Dau.  

No Americans lived at Suoi Dau on a permanent basis. Every month or so someone would be assigned the task of overnighting there just to keep up an American presence at the camp. The Americans would conduct a routine inspection and make suggestions for improving defenses when they returned to A-502 headquarters. There was nothing special about Egan and Brown going to Suoi Dau, except of course the request from Major Tran.

It was a quiet day. The thunderclouds over the mountains shielded them from the direct afternoon sun so it was quite comfortable in the open jeep. Ed was at the wheel and Jan was in the passenger seat relaxing, smoking a cigarette, his right hand comfortably holding the pistol grip of the CAR-15 resting in his lap. He was relaxed but still alert, his eyes searching the roadside on his right for any sign of trouble.

Jan took a drag from his cigarette as his thoughts drifted back to his recent forced trip to Sydney for R&R (for Rest and Recuperation, also known as I & I for Intoxication and Intercourse). Sydney was great; the Australians seemed to love Americans and especially American Special Forces. This was particularly true of the women. When he sat down in a bar, the conversation naturally turned to who he was, where he was from and what he did. The mention that he was Special Forces pretty much ended his need to reach for his wallet for the rest of the night except to retrieve the condom that he kept there.

Egan scanned the neat little farms; the small houses with stucco like walls and thatched roofs. These houses were interspersed with squatter’s shacks made of flattened out beer cans. Children were laughing and playing in front of the houses and some of them waved to the Americans as they drove by. Egan returned their greetings with a polite smile and a nod. The adults studiously ignored Egan and Brown. They had no desire to be mistaken or identified as sympathetic to the Americans and South Vietnamese. The children provided ambush radar for Egan; it was unlikely there would be trouble with them present.   

Brown interrupted Egan’s revere. “Hey Egan, want to stop at the little place up ahead and get a beer and maybe something to eat?”

Egan tossed the remains of his cigarette in the roadside ditch and replied, “Sure, why not.”

Ed pulled into the parking strip by the bar and paid a small bribe to the teen-age extortionist that acted as a security guard for Americans visiting the restaurant. What this really meant was that the guy they paid to watch the jeep wouldn’t himself flatten the tires, break the headlights or pour sand in the gas tank. Hopefully he would not allow anyone else to do so either. Ed and Jan shared a couple of more beers and each ate almost a pound of the delicious grilled mystery meat on skewers. Jan was an early believer in the “don’t ask don’t tell” philosophy, especially when it came to the local cuisine. Their stomachs full, they returned to the jeep and finished the drive to Suoi Dau.

When they arrived at the camp Ed guided the jeep off the tarmac and drove up the short dusty access road to the gate. The gate was open and the guard casually waived them inside the camp.     

“Hey Brown, look at the wire.”

“Yeah, grass all grown up in it. They haven’t been taking very good care the place lately. Maybe we can get it sprayed with orange.”

Jan was annoyed by the open gate, even in daylight hours the gate was to be closed. “I like the new open gate policy.”

“Yeah, I wonder when that started.” Ed surveyed the C.I.D.G. and L.L.B.D. who comprised the personnel at the camp. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He parked the jeep near the “American bunker” to the left of the gate. They got out of the vehicle and continued to look around, a L.L.B.D. sergeant approached them smiling his hand extended in a greeting. 

As they shook hands Egan asked where Warrant Officer Truong was. “Chuan uy Truong Dau?”

The reply astounded both of the Americans. “Anh Ve Dong Ba Thin. Me Anh Bi Bet Nang.” “He went to Dong Ba Thin, his mother is very sick.”

Ed and Jan exchanged shocked looks. Truong went to D.B.T.? What the Hell? They continued their walk around the camp; the real inspection would take place tomorrow. Brown opined that Truong would be back then. They both noted that the camp was in disrepair compared to their last visit. First off, there was the grass in the wire; also the area needed a general policing for trash. This to a military professional was a red flag. If wire was not kept clear of grass, the trash was not picked up, then you could count on the other basics being neglected. Maybe that explained the request for Ed and Jan’s visit.

The fortress at Suoi Dau was seven bunkers arranged in an oval including the normally vacant “American” bunker south of the access road. Directly to the North and across the access road was the normally occupied Warrant Officer’s bunker. This would be vacant tonight. The Warrant Officer’s personal guard bunker was West of the Warrant Officer’s bunker and manned by Vietnamese Special Forces.  Due West of the American bunker was a C.I.D.G. bunker with three more C.I.D.G. bunkers on the Southern parameter.

As they walked through the camp, they pointed out several areas needing immediate attention. As a result the cadre immediately began cleaning weapons and putting flares and ammunition within reach of the firing positions in the bunkers. The sun was setting and the game was called because of darkness.    

Egan and Brown retired to the American bunker. Brown turned on the radio, checked in with A-502 headquarters and informed them of the absence of Warrant Officer Truong. 

The radio operator didn’t seem too concerned and Ed asked him to take the information directly to the S-2.

Brown lit a cigarette and looked at Egan. “Is it my imagination or is there something wrong here?”

“Something is wrong. Something is very wrong but I can’t say what it is. This whole situation is really giving me the creeps.”

MAP DRAWN BY JAN EGAN

“Yeah I feel the same way, Truong not being here really bugs me. Why didn’t he radio base and tell us he was leaving?”

“Good question. I wish I had beer.” 

 “Damn! That’s it Brown.”

“What’s it, a beer?”

“No, I know what’s been bothering me. They all have new uniforms.”

“Well kiss my butt and call me Bertha. You’re right they do. Plus I don’t recognize anyone here.”

“Neither do I.”

Egan and Brown got up in unison and walked back out to the compound and into the L.L.B.D. bunker. They found the Vietnamese Special Forces sergeant they had spoken with earlier.

Brown asked, “Anh Toi’ Suoi Dau Bao Lau Rui`?” “How long have you been in Suoi Dau?”

“Hai Tuan`” “Two weeks.”  The sergeant replied in Vietnamese.  

“Con Nhung Nguoi`Kia?” “How about the others?” Egan asked.

“Khoang Hai Tuan, Co’ Nguoi it Ho’n.”  “About two weeks, some a little less.” The sergeant replied.

“Okay, Cam on Trung Si.” “Okay, thank you sergeant.”

“Okay!” Came the enthusiastic reply.

Brown and Egan exchanged looks of understanding. The personnel at Suoi Dau were all new. From the looks of them, they were all green as well.

Brown and Egan walked back to the American bunker. “Okay Egan, what do you make of all this?”

“I don’t know Ed. It all seems so damn weird, Truong not here, everyone new, the camp a mess. It’s just not right.”

“We’ll get some pee down on this place tomorrow, that’s for damn sure. That’s all I have to say. I’m going to personally have Truong’s ass on a platter. I want to see if we can hang around here tomorrow night and take these guys out on a real ambush.”

“Sounds good Ed.”

In Nha Trang it was spaghetti night at the officers club. Lee Brewer, Jeff Murray, Glen Williams, and myself shared a bottle of Matues Rose’ with our dinner. The chef made a wonderful sauce with big chunks of Italian sausage, lots of ground beef, chicken legs and thighs and whole pork chops. This was Italian gravy with meat and pasta. It was all you could eat and serve yourself. We stuffed ourselves on the pasta, meat sauce and garlic bread.

Afterwards, Lee Brewer went to operations while the rest of us repaired ourselves upstairs to the already crowded bar. We would secure a table and Lee would check the board to see if the missions were posted.

Shortly after our first round of drinks arrived Lee returned.

“Missions are up.” He announced as he sat down.

I looked at his grinning face and said, “Just tell me I’m not flying convoy cover again. I am so fucking sick of convoy cover I could puke.”

Jeff, seeing an opportunity he couldn’t pass up said, “You do that every morning anyway so what’s the difference?” The table joined his laughter at my expense.

“Oh very funny Murray.”

Then I saw her. “Oh my God, I just fell in love.”

She was beautiful. She was blond. She had blue eyes. She was a nurse. She was an American. She had eaten pizza. She could speak English that I could understand. She was the kind of girl I had always wished lived next door. She was still fifty feet away and I was already in love. By some miracle our eyes met and she flashed me a hundred thousand-watt smile, which I returned with somewhat lesser luminance. She navigated between the packed tables in the bar heading directly toward us.

The other guys turned their heads.

“Daaauumn what a fox.”  Someone whispered.

“Good eye Galer.” Said another.

As she got closer I stood and grabbed an empty chair from another table.    

“Hi, won’t you join us?” I asked hopefully.

The hundred thousand-watt smile flashed again. “My God she can do that anytime she wants!”

 “Sure will, we need another chair though, my friend is coming up in a minute.”

“Oh please let that friend be a woman.” Somehow I maintained enough cool not to ask the sex of her friend.

Glen leapt to his feet and hustled another chair. We spaced ourselves out around the table as the beautiful Lieutenant sat down beside me. “Can I get you a drink, uh sir?” I gave her my best ah shucks look.

“Hmmmm, that sounds good. Maybe a coke? And you don’t have to call me sir.” Again the smile, she could melt icebergs with that thing, she should be in the freaking Navy.

I briefly debated whether it was better to try to con one of the others into going for her drink and lose the implied debt of bringing her one or risk losing contact with her by getting it myself. I searched the other gunship pilot’s faces for an offer of help, no sympathy there. I rose and headed for the bar. “One coke coming up.” I hoped no one would ask her to get married before I could when I got back. 

I caught Mao’s eye and asked her for a coke. “Let me have a glass with ice too please and another gin and tonic.” I was going back completely rearmed so I wouldn’t have to leave the table or wait for a waitress for a refill.

When I returned to the table I found that another nurse had joined us, she was seated across the table between Williams and Brewer.  She was very attractive in her own right. As I sat the coke in front of “my” nurse I saw the looks on Brewer’s and Williams’ faces. They were visually begging me to get a drink for the nurse seated between them. I returned their look with one that let them know they were on their own.

Murray had handled introductions in my absence. “Jeannie, this is Rick Galer, that’s Sandy over there Rick.” Jeff nodded to the other nurse.

“Nice to meet you ladies. What brings you across the runway.” I alluded to the fact that the hospital was on the other side of the base. We rarely got over there and it was very unusual for anyone to come over to our side of the field.

“We came over for a “new in country orientation” with the Special Forces medics and thought we’d stay for dinner. You guys should come over and see us, we just love helicopter pilots.”

“We just love helicopter pilots.” Oh this was going SO well, I knew I could do no wrong. “So you are both nurses?” 

“That’s us, Florence Nightingales in the flesh.” Jeannie said with slight giggle looking to Sandy as if for approval.

I noticed the cross hanging from the silver chain around Jeannie’s neck, and thought about converting from atheist to Jeannie. Okay, that could work, I didn’t much care what I had to do on Sunday mornings as long as it would involve her.

“So where is home?” I asked just knowing she would say California.

“San Diego and you?”

The Beach Boys song “I wish they all could be California girls” immediately came to mind.

“Well I guess Portland, Oregon, although I most recently lived in San Francisco.”

“Really? I just love San Francisco. So what do you fly? MEDEVAC?”

“Gun ships. We’re all gun ship pilots.” I replied. Gun ship pilots were considered the elite among helicopter pilots, especially by other gun ship pilots.  When we flew, it was normally with the express purpose of trading bullets with the bad guys, convoy cover not withstanding. Macho was our middle name. Steely eyed killers and great lovers. Women’s blouses opened and breasts leapt from bras at the mere mention of the words “gun ship pilot.”

Except for Jeannie’s.

“Gun ships? Why would anyone want to fly gun ships?”  She looked at each of us individually as she formed the question. . 

Her words hit me in the chest like a gunshot. “Excuse me? Why would anyone want to fly gun ships? Why would anyone want to fly anything but gun ships?” Over sexed and under loved. Under powered and over max gross. Over tasked and under gunned. What more could you ask a natural born hero to be? The iceberg her smile could melt had just ripped a hole in the side of my Titanic. My boat was sinking; Hell my boat was sunk. I had played my trump card and it had been rejected. “Hey, gun ship pilots Jeannie! We are THE COOLEST!”

My mind raced for the appropriate response, how about “Yeah, but I really don’t like it.”

That would go over real good with the other three gun ship pilots at the table. All volunteers just like me. I’d get laughed out of the bar if not the gun platoon. Then there was, “But I’m trying to transfer to MEDEVAC.” Same problem as the “don’t like it” gambit, they knew me. So I settled on the truth.  

“Because sometimes you feel like God.”

Maybe she liked the bad boy type. A silence fell over the group. Glances were exchanged. I could have tossed a three week old dead cat on the table with a more positive effect on the mood.

The smile was no more. “I don’t know how you could say that. Well, we have to get back.  Come on Sandy.” She stood up and Sandy joined her in a quick exit. The air seemed to have been sucked from the room.  Apparently she didn’t like the bad boy type. 

I gave a weak smile, “Oops.”

I surveyed the faces attached to the three shaking heads looking at me. Brewer and the others looked at me in a state of shock. The pretty nurses were leaving. I had blown up the friendlies. I had strafed the hospital. I had crapped in the swimming pool. I had chased the round eyes away.  

“Dauuuumn Rick you sure have a way with words.”

“Oh, go to Hell, what was I supposed to say? We are all volunteering for freaking MEDEVAC?”

“That would have been an improvement.”

“Yup, you are one smooooooth talking sumbitch there Wolf Pack Three-Zero, emphasis on the zero.” That comment brought hoots of laughter from the others at the table. The nurse’s retreat had not gone unnoticed in the rest of the bar. Heads turned, whispered comments were made.

Even the waitress got into it. “What happen to your friend Mr. Galer?” She was barely able to suppress her grin.

“She DEROSed, get me another gin and tonic please.” DEROS. Date Estimated Return from Overseas, it meant you had left for the states. To the Vietnamese the phrase was as final as “he died.” A DEROSed G.I. was never coming back. The nurses were never going to cross the runway again.

The frowns were gradually replaced by grins as we all realized that the two nurses were not interested in Wolf Pack types. “Sometimes you feel like God. That blew their little minds Galer.” More drinks were ordered and we got down to the serious task of getting just drunk enough to be what we were, without getting so drunk that we couldn’t be what we had to be tomorrow.

“So Rick, when are you going to transfer to MEDEVAC?”

“Right after I get fragged for convoy cover again.”   

Lee Brewer took his turn. “That would be tomorrow.” Again the table was convulsed with laughter at my expense. I was flying convoy cover again tomorrow. This was spoiling my day.

I changed the subject. “Say, I met God once. It was at Fort Ord.”

“Okay, Rick tell us about meeting God, I suppose you were sober?”

“I was on hold-over status waiting for my orders for flight school. If you are on hold-over status they will only send you one place that isn’t flight school. Here. So I’m doing the post Sergeant Major’s orderly thing. Which meant every morning the post Sergeant Major sent his car to the hold-over barracks to get me and take me to the post headquarters. My job was to watch two prisoners wash the post commander and post Sergeant Major’s cars and clean the cannon they fired for reveille. I got to eat same lunch at the same mess hall as the post Sergeant Major and the C.O., but not at the same table. I had it very nice. Then I came down on orders to be a company clerk at some artillery company outside Saigon. I went on sick call when I was supposed to receive my Vietnam orientation. Man, the hold over company top kick was pissed when he found out about it. But since my M.O.S. (Military Occupational Specialty) was clerk I knew what I had to do. I went to Head and Head Company and found God. There he was a gay E-6. I explained my problem to him, how I didn’t want to mess up my trip to flight school by going to Nam, then going to flight school then back to Nam. I guess he liked the way my fatigues were tailored because he picked up a red pencil and a ruler and drew a line through my name. ‘There,’ he says, ‘that should be good for about four months. If you come down on orders again just come and see me.’ I’m thinking man this guy could be rich.”

“My God!” someone said.

“Yeah, mine too! A couple of days later I got my ass booted out of the hold-over company and my cushy job at post headquarters. I was sent to a basic training company where they made me an assistant D.I. which basically meant I was the D.I. for the company any time they had to double time anywhere. But that was how I met God.”      

“The guy just drew a line through your name?’

“That’s about it.” 

About midnight we left the club, Glen and I stopped by operations to see if I really was scheduled to fly convoy cover again. I was, with Glen. We headed for our BOQs where I went to bed and slept the sleep of the innocent. Well okay, I slept the sleep of the pilot who had drunk half a bottle of gin after dinner. I don’t want to imply that a lot of us spent a good deal of time drunk if we weren’t flying. But the truth is we did. Of course, no one ever drank if they had any expectation they would have to fly before they had enough time to sleep it off. We weren’t stupid, just crazy.

The NVA regiment was ordered to seize Mt. Nui Cau Hin and the high ground overlooking the base at Nha Trang. All that stood in their way was the camp at Suoi Dau. The Special Forces and C.I.D.G. at Suoi Dau would be in a position to interdict their supplies and communications unless they were eliminated or at least reduced to a purely defensive posture. One of the regiment’s three battalions was to over-run the camp at Suoi Dau while the other two infiltrated along the high speed trials leading up the mountain.

The N.V.A. battalion assigned to attack Suoi Dau was re-enforced by a V.C. main force sapper company. It would be their job to penetrate the wire that surrounded camp and neutralize the defenses. They would utilize stealth not speed. They would camouflage themselves by tying grass and small saplings to their ponchos and crawl across the hundred meter wide cleared zone that surrounded the camp.

Two local V.C., a man and a woman conducted the briefing. They told the attackers that there would probably not be a sentry at the camp, that the troops manning the compound were all new and inexperienced. The Vietnamese defenders spoke almost no English and would be commanded by two Americans that spoke limited Vietnamese. Their first target was the bunker to the left of the gate. A sapper team was to drop a satchel charge into the bunker and kill the two Americans inside. Other sappers were assigned to the other bunkers but the American’s bunker was the most important. If the Americans were killed the defenders not killed in their bunkers would not fight. To insure the American’s death an R.P.G. would be fired into the bunker if the sappers were detected.

The battalion massed on the Western side of the camp at Suoi Dau. The second and third companies would follow the sappers as the assault force. The forth company would be held in reserve. The attacking force would number just under four hundred. The camp would be defended by twenty-six men, including the two Americans. The sappers donned their camouflage and began crawling across the clearing that surround the camp. The second and third companies followed behind. 

The sentry at Suoi Dau was sitting on a bunker smoking a cigarette; his M16 leaned between his legs, his boots were comfortably unlaced to the ankle. He resented the Americans for having made them mount a guard. Warrant Officer Troung had said it was not necessary. Nothing ever happened here. It was one of the safest camps in the Second Corps. If the Americans thought it was important to mount a guard why were they sleeping? He heard a snapping sound. He rose and walked to the front of the bunker, his eyes searching for the source of the noise. He heard it again. Then he saw something move in the grass growing in the trip wire. It was as though the ground itself had moved. He thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. He stared at the overgrown trip wire. He could see that part of the wire had rolled up to one of the anchors. He realized that the sound he had heard was the trip wire being cut. Should he give the alarm? As he turned to run back to the safety of the bunker and his weapon he tripped on his loose boots and fell full on his face landing with a grunt. As he scrambled back to his feet a single round from an AK47 found its mark between his shoulder blades. A muffled scream escaped his mouth in a spray of blood as he again fell face forward on the ground. His breath rattled through his shattered windpipe and blood filled his lungs as he reached forward vainly trying to keep moving. He was dead in a matter of seconds.

The sapper whose presence had been detected and had shot the lone sentry was concerned that he had exposed his comrades. This was not going as planned, there wasn’t supposed to be a sentry. He froze waiting to see if there were others awake in the camp.  

One hundred meters away, an N.V.A. artilleryman saw the muzzle flash from the AK47 and fired the R.P.G. before he heard the gunshot itself. He had been training the R.P.G. on the American’s bunker, his finger tight on the trigger. The whoosh and back blast from the R.P.G. covered the sound of the rifle shot that killed the sentry. The reserve company hiding in the tree line began firing over the sapper’s heads at the bunkers in the camp. The bunkers were located above the wire on a berm so there was no danger of hitting their comrades. It was important that they draw fire and attention away from the exposed men making their way to the camp.  

Jan and Ed were sleeping soundly when there was a deafening explosion as the R.P.G. impacted against the side of their bunker. R.P.G.’s, or rocket-propelled grenades, are antitank weapons; they are still in use by many former Soviet client states and are among the favorite weapons of third world terrorist organizations. When the R.P.G. impacted against the bunker’s wall part of the wall and roof caved in around Egan and Brown. It was pitch black inside the bunker. They awoke confused and dazed by the concussion, choking on the dust and cordite smoke that filled the bunker. The night was filled with the sound of small arms fire.

Brown tried to stand up but fell to his knees. His ears were ringing.  He was disoriented. At first he thought he was in his hooch back at Bin Tanh and tried to find his way around the bunker using that frame of reference. When it didn’t work, he tried the paradigm for Suoi Dau and discovered it worked.

“Eban! Eban, you ophay?” Brown found his false teeth and replaced them in his mouth. “Egan! You okay?” 

Egan was struggling to get up from under the partially collapsed roof of the bunker. “Oh Hell yes, I am absolutely swell. I am just fucking wonderful, I am. I always feel better when the DAMN ROOF CAVES IN!”

“See if you can find out what the Hell is going on out there.”

Ed’s head was clearing as he reached for the microphone hanging from the radio. The dull throbbing in his head and the ringing in his ears couldn’t mask the sound of sound of automatic weapons fire coming from the tree line one hundred meters away.

“Bunk House, this is Bunk House One-Five over.”

Jan peered out the firing slit in the side of the bunker and saw the muzzle flashes in the tree line. “Holly shit Brown, there must be hundreds of them out there!” He saw the flash of another RPG as it was fired from the tree line. “Incoming!” He shouted and ducked away from the firing slit.  

“One-Five this is Bunk House go ahead.”

The RPG passed by, slammed into the L.L.B.D. bunker and exploded.

“Bunk House we are under attack, we need illum, artillery, air, whatever you got over.”

 “Roger One-Five how many are there over?”

“How the fuck do I know? I haven’t had a chance to hold roll call yet, but if you don’t get us some help soon, you can probably ask them yourself. I think we are going to be overrun.”

“Roger One-Five, wait one.”

Back at A-502 headquarters the radio operator alerted the officer of the day who in turn called Fifth Special Forces Group Headquarters via the secure landline.

“Suoi Dau is under attack, they are asking for illumination, air, artillery, anything.”

“Any idea how many bad guys?”

Egan found his CAR-15 and began returning fire at the tree line. He could hear the beginnings of sporadic return fire from the C.I.D.G. bunkers.  Brown found his CAR-15 and stretched the microphone cord across the bunker and joined Egan at the firing slit, microphone in his left hand and weapon in his right. Together they began firing three shot bursts at the muzzle flashes at the base of the trees a hundred meters away. 

“Not yet, but they sound pretty excited. There must be quite a few.”

“Americans or Vietnamese reporting?”

“Americans.”

“Okay, tell them help is on the way.”

“Roger.”

The duty officer at Fifth Group Headquarters hung up and dialed the operations office for the AC-47 gun ships also known as Spooky. 

“Seventh Air Commando Operations.”

“This is Captain Miller at Fifth Group Headquarters, we have a prairie fire at Suoi Dau.”

Prairie fire. In the lexicon of the Vietnam War, prairie fire was the most feared two-word combination in the English language. Simply put, it meant an American unit was being over run. It meant that any air asset with ordnance and enough fuel to get there was being begged for help. Air Force high speeds, Army gun ships, Navy and Marine air would cancel any mission and divert to a prairie fire.

“Roger understand prairie fire at Suoi Dau. We’ll have Spooky Five-Seven-One en route ASAP.  I’ll call you with an ETA.”

“Thank-you.”

Captain Miller then dialed the 281st Operations office.

“281st Ops.”

“This is Captain Miller at Fifth Group Headquarters we have a prairie fire at Suoi Dau.”       

“Roger that, understand prairie fire at Suoi Dau, we’ll have gun ships up ASAP.”

“Okay, call me back with an ETA.”

“Roger.”

The 281st duty officer turned to his orderly. “Get the alert crew, Suoi Dau is being over run.”     

Back at Suoi Dau, the increasing volume of fire coming from the C.I.D.G. bunkers was lifting the American’s spirits. The Vietnamese weren’t running, at least not yet.

“Jan want to try to get to the .50 tower?”

The .50 tower was thirty feet high with a small bunker at the top. The wooden walls were reinforced with sandbags and topped by a tin roof. The tower functioned as an observation post and a firing point for the camp’s .50 caliber machine gun, the intimidator. The .50 cal is a fearsome weapon. It can hurl 400 one half inch diameter rounds per minute well over a mile. Variations of the weapon are still in use today.   

Egan looked at Brown, “Right!” and stumbled over to the short hallway leading to the outside. His eyes were watering from the dust, his ears were ringing, and his mouth was caked with dirt. Jan found his way out of the bunker, into the blue gray moonlit night and headed for the tower and the .50 caliber.

Zing, pting, pting, pting, zing, pting, zing, zing. He became aware of the sounds of the ricochets and near misses as the incoming small arms fire whizzed by him. He didn’t think they had identified him as a specific target but were firing into the camp in general. Still the shear volume of fire caused him to observe, “The sons of bitches aren’t fooling around tonight.”  This was no local V.C. hit and run harassment attack.

He began running toward the tower and briefly pondered the fact that he hadn’t yet been shot. He was about half way between the bunker and tower when he felt like someone had punched him very hard in the left calf muscle. His leg was flung out at a crazy angle. A ludicrous thought crossed his mind; he thought he must look like a drunken cowboy trying to do the cotton eyed Joe. The force of the impact spun him completely around and he fell on his face in the dust. Egan expelled an involuntary “Umph!” as he landed. An N.V.A. bullet had finally found him. The pain from the wound was instant, not hot but like the feeling you get when you hold a piece of ice too long. That frost bite feeling. “Shit, I’ve been fucking shot! Oh God damn that hurts!”

Brown got off the radio. He left the American bunker and ducking below the sandbagged berm, ran to the next bunker. He rallied the C.I.D.G. defenders and directed their fire to the tree line. Then he ran to the next bunker and directed their fire. When he completed his circuit of the camp all the bunkers were firing at the enemy.

Egan knew he had to get back on his feet, get the Hell back to cover, get to the tower and give these bastards a dose of .50 caliber. He reached down and felt his calf muscle; he could feel the wetness of the blood.

“Shit!” he shouted from the pain and the anger with the knowledge that he could not now be one hundred percent effective. “Son of a Bitch!” Jan knew that if ever in his life he needed be at his best it was going to be tonight. Somehow the curses made his leg feel better. The wound now felt like someone had poured molten metal on him. He tested his leg as he rose, no bone broken, just a flesh wound as John Wayne would say. He looked around the camp and out to the tree line. He could see hundreds of what looked like little Christmas tree lights winking at him.

Egan stumbled forward to the base of the tower keeping up a steady stream of curses as he struggled along. He reached the ladder and began climbing to the relative safety of the sandbagged bunker and the machine gun and that sat atop the tower. The zinging sounds of the enemy fire was now accompanied by solid whack, whack, whack, whacks as the incoming rounds impacted on the wood legs of the tower. There was no room in Jan’s mind for fear. He was too furious to be afraid. They were trying to kill him!

After a painful climb, Egan finally reached the top of the tower. His leg was throbbing. He took a moment to examine the wound again. His right pant leg was soaked in blood. He put his hands up in front of his face to visually confirm what he had felt. “Christ, I’m bleeding like a stuck pig!” Staying low and using the sandbags for cover, Egan removed the canvas cover from the .50 caliber.  He reached forward and grasped the barrel. He twisted it so as to be fully tight, then backed it off three clicks. This would allow the gun to expand without jamming as it got hot due to the sustained fire he was planning to unleash. He opened the cover on the ammunition feeder, then opened a can of ammunition. He pulled out the linked ammunition belt and carefully placed the first round in the breach, then closed the cover and pulled back on the arming lever.

He noticed that his hands were shaking. Mentally he went down a checklist of possibilities. “Shock? No, not yet, I haven’t lost that much blood.. Fear? I’m afraid but not that afraid.. Anger? Yes, that was it, these people have ruined my whole fucking day. I am pissed. I am ready to kill somebody.”

Egan rose up just enough to see over the sandbags. He swung the gun around so he could aim at the tree line to the West of the camp. He pressed the trigger. The huge weapon seemed to come alive in his hands. Four hundred-fifty rounds per minute but only in four shoot bursts. He felt satisfaction as he saw the nearly four ounce rounds hit the tree line with the Christmas tree lights.

BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. 

“Yeee Haa! You sons of bitches, how about some of that Shit!” This was good, this was great. Egan loved the recoil of the big machine gun in his hands. It was almost like holding a jackhammer.

The N.V.A. in the tree line saw the muzzle flash from the .50 cal. It was like a beacon. They directed their fire at the top of the tower. Egan heard rather than saw the result of his efforts. He realized he had succeeded in stirring up a hornet’s nest. The N.V.A. now had a target. A great big target with a huge muzzle flash to identify it. The N.V.A. had Egan to shoot at. Zing, Pting, Wack. The sounds were repeated hundreds of times a minute. Egan ducked back down below the sandbags.  

Wooosh! Jan looked up as an RPG sailed by the tower. Damn, this was a bad idea! I’ve got to get the Hell off this tower or I’m dead.”  He hunkered down behind the sandbags. “Just play possum for a while, they’ll forget about you if they think you are dead.” Whooosh! Another RPG missed the mark. “They’ll really forget about you if you are dead. Time to get out of Dodge!”   He crawled over to the gap in the sandbags that formed the entry to the cupola and noticed that the floor of the tower was slick with his blood.

Egan turned and started down the ladder but his blood slick hand lost the grip and he fell half way landing hard on his butt.  “OOF!” He put his hand down and felt his CAR-15. “Must have dropped it on the way up.” He rose and favoring his wounded leg started back to the bunker using kind of a skipping lope.

When he arrived back at the American bunker, Ed Brown greeted him. “Shit, man when the .50 stopped, I thought you were dead!”

Egan replied, “The night ain’t over, and I’m shot in the leg.”         

Brown turned and looked at Egan who was indicating his left leg was wounded. “Well put a patch on it man! I don’t want you bleeding all over the bunker.”

Egan surveyed the mess that was the bunker, “Yeah, I kind of expected that you would have tidied up while I was out there in the shooting gallery.”

Egan began searching through the rubble of the partially collapsed bunker for the first aid kit. He found it and opened the bottle of hydrogen peroxide. He ripped his pant leg open and poured some of the liquid directly on the wound. Then he tore open a field dressing pack and wrapped it around his leg. “There that feels better.”   

There a loud blast as a claymore mine was detonated from the adjoining bunker. It was followed immediately by the sound of the steel balls impacting against the wall of their bunker.

“What the fuck is that Egan?”

“Somebody turned the claymores around!” Egan knew immediately what had happened. On his last visit he had checked the claymores himself to make sure the wires were properly attached. He knew they had been facing outward. Someone had turned them inward so they would fire at the defenders. “I’ll go see if I can get them turned around.”

Egan again left the safety of the bunker. This time he ducked behind the sandbagged wall between the bunkers until he reached a claymore site. When there was no flare lit he crawled over the wall and slid down to the mine. He flipped the mine over so its lethal spray of steel pellets would be directed at the enemy. Then he crawled back up the side of the berm and slipped over the sandbags. Sometimes a flare lit before he finished his climb. Egan couldn’t understand why they never seemed to fire at him when he was outside the berm. Then he realized that the N.V.A. must think he was one of them.

When Egan finished his circuit around the camp he returned to the American bunker. Brown  was relieved and more than a little surprised to see his friend was still alive. At the same time he was angry that he would do something so completely insane as going outside.

“What the fuck are you trying to do?”

“Had to turn the claymores Ed. Egan laughed nervously and said, “I think they thought I was one of them. Safest place to be is outside the berm!”   

Brown kept firing at the tree line. Pausing occasionally to shoot one of the small hand held flares. In the dim light of the flare a shape loomed up just a few feet from the bunker. It was a man. It was an N.V.A. soldier with a tan poncho draped over him. He was holding a package that looked like a small suitcase. Ed pulled the trigger on his CAR-15 and held it. The man in the poncho took eight rounds in the chest, fell backwards down the berm and collapsed in a bloody heap clutching the package against his chest. The suitcase exploded in a blinding flash leaving a pair of legs and a smoking hole as the only evidence of the sapper’s existence.

“They’re in the wire Egan!”

“Oh, shit.” Egan was putting the finishing touches on binding his wound. He grabbed his weapon and joined Ed at the firing slit. From a neighboring bunker, a flare arced up and opened its miniature parachute with a little “POP”. Egan frantically searched the wire for the enemy. He thought he saw something move, then decided that it must be his imagination. Then he saw it again but when he looked directly at where he saw the movement there was nothing there. “What the fuck?” He looked just to the left then the right of the spot. Night vision improves if you don’t look directly at the target. The ground seemed to move a couple of feet then stop.  He fired two quick three shot bursts into the ground that had moved and an N.V.A. soldier rolled out of his tan poncho in his death throes.

“Ed, sappers in tan ponchos.”

“Yeah, I just blew one away.”

The ground shook as the N.V.A. fired more rockets into the camp. Egan and Brown could tell that the C.I.D.G. bunkers were getting hit hard. After an RPG hit, green tracer fire would be directed at the bunker where the rocket had impacted.  

The flare went out and the valley was plunged into darkness again. The two men knew what that meant. The brown ponchos would be advancing quickly until they got the next flare in the air. Egan grabbed a flare and stretched his arms through the firing slit. He pointed the flare at the sky and pulled the lanyard firing the little rocket motor that sent the flare upwards. “POP.” There was a little light over the camp. Egan and Brown searched clearing around the camp for movement. They couldn’t see any.

The firing of the flare’s little rocket motor had provided the N.V.A. with the warning they needed to drop back to the ground from their hands and knees. They waited, sweating under the ponchos for the flare to burn out so they could rise and begin crawling forward again. Their comrades were firing over their heads from the tree line. The defenders in the bunkers had not yet detected them. But something was wrong. The fire coming from the camp was much more intense than expected. The defenders had not deserted. The American bunker was still firing.   

Brown was back on the radio asking where the support was that he had asked for some thirty minutes ago. He got his answer in the form of a flare that lit up the valley in a yellow toned twilight.

“Jesus, now that’s what I call a flare.”

 “Bunk House One-Five this is Spooky Five-One-Seven over.”

“This is Bunk House One-Five, go ahead Spooky.”

“Bunk House we have illum and minigun, you just tell where you want it over.”

“Spooky, we are receiving fire from the tree line and have sappers in the wire.”

“Roger, we’ll hit the tree line.”

“Spooky, can you put some in the wire?”

“That’s awfully small camp down there but we’ll give it a try.”  

I was hard asleep when Lee Brewer left the club at 1:00am and stopped by operations to confirm his mission for tomorrow. What he heard as he walked into operations caused his stomach to tighten up. A Special Forces camp was being over run. Lee was a former Special Forces NCO. Actually “former” is not accurate. Once Special Forces, always Special Forces. Lee knew what the guys at Suoi Dau were going through, he had been through it himself. 

The American at the camp was calling for help. They had a Spooky up flying over them. Spooky was the call sign and aircraft designation for a C-47 fixed wing aircraft. They were armed with three mini-guns pointing out the left side. The pilot orbited the target; the crew dropped flares and kept the mini-guns armed. The pilot looked out the side window and sighted the target. The platform was so stable that once the pilot saw the impact area through the sight he was really pretty accurate. Spooky was doing their usual good work but was running low on ammunition.

Lee stayed on in operations listening to the events on the ground unfold. The officer of the day dispatched his orderly to wake up the operations officer and the gun ship alert crew.

The orderly ran the few yards to the BOQ. He found the alert fire team leader's door locked and there was no answer when he knocked. He continued to the next pilot on his list and again found no one home, he continued to the operations officer's room.

When he woke the operations officer he related there was no alert fire team leader and another pilot was missing. "Just get any gun pilot, wake up Galer and Williams I know they're here I saw them go to bed." Then the operations officer quickly got dressed and headed for the briefing room. When he arrived he sent Brewer back to get his flying gear.

Moments later there was a loud knock on my door. A voice said. "Sir? Mr. Galer? Wake up Sir. You have to fly."

Confused, I tried to make sense of the words. No, it wasn’t time yet; it was only 1:00.

“Not time yet.”

“You have to fly alert sir!” My door opened and a hand reached in and turned on the light.

I wasn't alert fire team leader; it was Murphy. Why would the officer of the day's orderly be waking me up? No problem I would straighten this out.

"I'm not on alert tonight, it’s Murphy." There that should do it. Now back to sleep. I had to get up at 5:00 and fly convoy damn cover tomorrow.

"Sorry sir, we can't find the alert fire team leader."

I thought, "Well of course you can't find the alert fire team leader you damn idiot, you're in the wrong room." My mind was struggling to get out of the black hole it was in, trying to think of a dose aircraft commander, fire team leader sarcasm that would make this interloper go away.

"The Special Forces camp at Suoi Dau is being overrun." Said the interloper.

 "What?" The magic words, "being overrun" had been spoken.

"You'll have to fly sir, we can't find anyone but you and Lieutenant Williams. Mr. Brewer is in Ops and they told me to get any gun pilot that was here. He said you would fly lead. I'm going find another gun pilot." With that he left my room.

The orderly disappeared, I spoke to the now empty door way, "Okay, Okay, Oh shit." I got out of bed. I staggered a little as I reached for my clothes. I weighed the possibilities. If I refused to fly because I was drunk, I would get at least an Article 15. The missing alert fire team leader would get worse, maybe even a court marshal. Then of course there was the minor matter of the guys in the camp. They would probably get killed if I didn't go. I decided I was going to fly. After all, I had the pilot's prayer to fall back on.

I quickly dressed and grabbed my already assembled gear, my personal weapon, spare clips of ammunition, survival kit, my gloves, and helmet and I headed for operations. I ran at a dogtrot. I could see someone else ahead of me. When we arrived, the other impromptu alert pilots were there. One of us was actually an alert pilot for that night and therefore sober. Brewer, Williams and I were the improv act. We sat down and got our briefing. I looked for a cup for some of the coffee in the operations room. The O.D. (officer of the day) saw me and gave a shrug as if to say, "It ain't a restaurant Rick." I lit a cigarette, hoping the nicotine would help clear my head.

"Good morning Gentlemen." the operations officer said. His face was stone. He could tell we weren't exactly ready to be a lean green flying machine. He also knew we were what he had to work with.

"The ‘A’ team at Suoi Dau is under attack by a unit estimated to be an NVA battalion. The attack began at 24:00 hours. You can expect moderate to heavy 12.5mm, and 7.62mm anti-aircraft fire. There is a very real possibility of 37mm anti-aircraft artillery.

There is a Spooky on station call sign Spooky Five-Seven-One monitoring UHF two-six-zero point five-zero.

Weather is partly cloudy. You will have a broken ceiling at about five thousand feet,

cloud tops are approximately eight thousand. There is a quarter moon. Visibility is five miles. You will meet the "A" team on fox mike four-eight point seven-zero, call sign Bunk House One-Five. "Questions?"

I looked up and asked, "Do we have a FAC?" We liked working with FACs (Forward Air Controllers) it took a lot of the pressure off the fire team leader because we got directed to the target instead of having to find our own way. They coordinated the air assets in an attack. FACs were kind of like the host at a party.

"Hey, Wolf Pack Three-Zero and Three-One! How you guys doing? Here let me take your coats. Whaddya drinking? (Nothing for me thanks.) Here, let me introduce you around. This is Spooky Five-Seven-One. He just flew up here from Phan Rang.. And this…well this is my old buddy Bunk House One-Five. Him and his pals in the "A" team at Suoi Dau have had a NVA battalion their laps since midnight. NVA guys are trying to kill them. Imagine! Why don't you guys set up an orbit and I'll tell you where you can do the most good."

Reality said hello. "No FAC, any other questions?" The operations officer looked around. The briefing had been very simple and very short. If it wasn't all we needed, it was going to be all we got. "The bad guys are in the back yard, go kill 'em." We collectively glanced around; there were no questions. We rose as one, no command was necessary. It was time to go.

We walked briskly out to the waiting three-quarter ton truck. I wondered if my crew could tell how drunk I was. The orderly was driving. I grabbed the shotgun seat, being the fire team leader had a few benefits. "Okay, let's go." someone said from the back.

We drove through the slick revetments and across "our" runway. I had nothing to say, I was lost in thought about what was to come. I was feeling better, the night air and slight rush of adrenaline seemed to be clearing my head.

We arrived at our aircraft. Doors were opened, tie downs were removed. While Glen climbed on top of the airplane to do a quick preflight check, I finished getting dressed. Chicken plate, survival kit, and gloves on, I climbed on board. The aircraft were not combat cocked so we had to do a full run up. I strapped in and began by reaching up and turning the battery switch on. I turned on the map light then the navigation lights and set them to flash indicating we had untied the blade but were not running as yet. The purpose for flashing the navigation lights was to keep other helicopters from hovering too close and causing the blades to flex or bang the mast.

I grabbed the plastic covered pre-takeoff checklist and started the routine. AC circuit breakers, in. Avionics, off. Turn and slip indicator, race full of fluid. Airspeed indicator, zero. Vertical speed indicator, zero.

Glen climbed into his seat and strapped in. I continued the run up.

Gov-switch, auto. De-ice switch off. Fuel switches, off. Hydraulic control switch, on. Force trim switch, on. Chip detector switch, both. Armament circuit breakers, pulled. I continued the checklist. I used the checklist even though it had been memorized months ago. It was routine. Routine and being committed to routine kept helicopter pilots alive, especially if they were drunk.

Fire warning indicator light, press to test. Master caution and other caution lights, press to test. Main fuel switch, on. Fuel boost caution lights, out. Start fuel switch, on. Governor RPM increase/decrease switch, decrease for ten seconds.

Throttle, set for start. The throttle control is a twist grip on the collective. I rolled the throttle full on then back to flight idle detent. Flight idle detent was a stop that you could roll the throttle to on the ground (or in the air for instructional purposes) and safely idle. There was a switch that when depressed allowed one to roll the throttle past flight idle detent to completely off. I pushed the button in and set the throttle right on the stop. If we had a hot start or a fire either Glen I could roll the throttle off without having to worry about pushing the button. The co-pilot's collective didn't have the button.

I glanced at Glen, he nodded he was ready. My crew chief was in front of the airplane with the pitot tube cover and the main rotor tie down in hand. We were ready.

"Clear!" I shouted.

"Clear right." "Clear left." Came the confirmations.

"Getting hot." I pulled the trigger. The engine started with its customary low growl. I ran it up and switched on the avionics, turned on the rotating beacon, set the artificial horizon, and turned the instrument lights on to a dull red glow.

As the crew chief ran by my door and jumped through the open cargo door to his jump seat behind me I heard the door gunner slam Glen’s door closed.

The RPM was at 6600 and I checked in with my wingman.

"Wolf Pack radio check, Victor.  Uniform.  Fox-trot."

The door gunner came around the front of the aircraft and replaced the fire extinguisher in the bracket. Then he slid my armor plate forward and closed my door. Then he ran back around the aircraft to take his position in his jump seat behind Glen.

"Three-One, Victor.  Uniform.  Fox-trot."

Glen took care of the intercom check. “Intercom check.” We all replied by briefly keying our intercoms which made a “shhh” sound.

"Wolf Pack Three-One pre-take off check"

"Three-One check." Came the confirmation that my wingman was ready.

"Let's go tower uniform." We switched to Nha Trang Tower's UHF frequency.

I heard the "Pssst pssst" as three-one keyed his mike twice. It was called a zipper and was the equivalent of "Roger."

“Nha Trang Tower, Wolf Pack Three-Zero.”

" Wolf Pack Three-Zero go ahead."

“Wolf Pack Three-Zero is a flight of two gun ships in the Mardi Gras area for taxi take off. I am Tac E, troops in contact.”

“Roger Wolf Pack Three-Zero you are clear to taxi runway two-three-zero, winds calm, altimeter two-nine-nine five.”

“Three-Zero.” I turned on the landing light and rotated it forward to forty-five degrees. I pulled the collective up, feeling the aircraft get light on the skids, and then I eased more power in. We lifted off. I moved the cyclic gently to the right and pushed the right pedal slightly. We turned and hovered out to the runway.

The air temperature was only eighty degrees. The gun ships hovered fairly easily.  I could see Three-One off to my right. He was maneuvering so as to end up behind me facing South. He would have to cross behind me to do this. I sat the aircraft down on the white line that described the center of the asphalt runway and lowered the collective to flat pitch. I switched back to VHF and checked in with my wingman.

"Wolf Pack check."

"Three-One."

Then back to UHF and the tower, "Nha Trang tower Wolf Pack Three-Zero ready for take off."

" Wolf Pack Three-Zero you are number one run way two-three-zero and clear for take off. Good luck sir." The air traffic controllers knew where we were going. They could see the glow of Spooky's flares from the other side of Nui Cau Hin Mountain.

"Roger Three-Zero is on the go." I turned on the searchlight and rotated it forward to forty-five degrees. Then I pulled the collective upward. The helicopter lifted up to a six-inch hover, I eased the cyclic forward and we started our take off run. As we lifted into the night air I switched off the lights and rotated them back to their stowed positions. I turned right and headed toward the valley and the "A" team at Suoi Dau.

Flying a gun ship mission at night was kind of like having sex with a beautiful woman on the narrow handrail of a very high bridge. You need to concentrate very hard on doing something really exciting and really dangerous. The view is fantastic, you're out there for everyone to see, and one slip and you're dead.

First off there is just flying at night. Flying anything at night is less than desirable. Flying a helicopter at night is infinitely worse. Flying a helicopter gun ship on a strike mission in a valley under partial cloud cover surrounded by three thousand-foot high mountain ridges is mostly terrifying. You see shadows; you see vague shapes not real ground features. This created the problem. The problem was depth perception; you simply didn't have it at night.

Then there was "them" shooting at you. From the pilot's perspective, the helicopter was this huge dark green target, silhouetted against a blinding moon and a sky full of stars. We made a lot of noise and moved very slowly. We presented an ideal target.

From the enemy's perspective, we were probably a vague shape, moving in a somewhat indiscernible manner, whose sounds came from everywhere and nowhere.

Finally, there was the "us shooting at them." We could see the muzzle flashes very clearly, but there was that depth perception thing. Just how far away was the guy with the muzzle flash? How close were we to the ground?

Of course none of that mattered to me, I was having sex with a beautiful woman on a bridge rail and I was drunk. The view was fantastic as we took off. Nha Trang's lights spread out like a carpet below and off to our right as we began our climb out. Shortly we would be out there for everyone to see.

"Three-One is off.” Announced my wingman.

“Pssst, Psst." I gave him a zipper in response.

The air was smooth and clean. The under powered Charlie models were able to lift us at eighty knots and five hundred feet per minute. Much faster than we could if we were flying in the heat of the day. As we climbed up to our cruising altitude for the short flight to A-502 I called the tower.

“Nha Trang tower Wolf Pack Three-Zero is clear of your airspace and changing to tactical frequencies.”

“Roger Wolf Pack Three-Zero, you are clear to change frequency monitor guard channel.”

“Three-Zero roger.”

I switched back to VHF, “Three-One let’s go TAC uniform and fox-trot.”

“Three-One roger.”

“Three-One go guns hot.”

“Three-One.”

Glen pushed the circuit breakers in that armed our weapons systems. I heard the "Beeeep." That indicated my rockets were armed. Glen pulled the mini-gun sight down from the mount and checked the hydraulic slaving of the guns.

I leveled off at one thousand five hundred feet. This was generally high enough to keep us out of range of small arms fire. I flew out to the camp. We could see the glow of Spooky's flares ahead of us. I decided to check in with him.

“Wolf Pack go TAC uniform.”

“Pssst. Pssst.” Came the acknowledgment. 

“Wolf Pack, check TAC uniform.”

“Three-One.” came the reply confirming we were both on the same UHF frequency.

“Spooky Five-Seven-One this is Wolf Pack Three-Zero.”

“Roger Wolf Pack this is Spooky Five-Seven One.”

“Wolf Pack Three-Zero is a flight of two UH1-C gun ships about zero five from your location.”

“Roger Wolf Pack I have you in sight. The bad guys are West of the camp and in the wire. We took antiaircraft fire from the trees to the West and the valley floor to the East. We suppressed the fire and haven’t received any in the last few minutes.”

“Okay Spooky, we have the camp in sight. I'm going to contact Bunk House One-Five.”

“Roger.”

As we entered the valley Spooky let go a burst of mini-gun fire as he orbited above the battlefield. I noted he had put it into the wire that surrounded the camp.

On the ground Jan Egan looked out of the narrow horizontal slit in the bunker. The air was close with the smell of cordite, sweat, and adrenaline. His eyes burned from the smoke inside the bunker. They had been under attack for almost an hour. Jan and Ed had kept up a withering fire against the attackers. Their CAR15s on full automatic, firing three shot bursts at fleeting glimpses of the NVA sappers. They were inside the wire now, trying to get close to the bunkers so they could throw a satchel charge inside. Some of the attacking force was inside the camp, hiding in the shadows of the bunkers.

The bodies of the attackers littered the wire and the rest of the camp. They had asked Spooky to fire into the wire, but the N.V.A. had kept coming. Spooky had warned them that he was running low on ammunition but still had enough flares to last for another couple of hours; plenty of time to get another Spooky on location or maybe to last until first light.     

The radio behind Brown and Egan was broadcasting static when it was interrupted with the sound of the gun ships they had asked for an hour ago.

“Wolf Pack check fox mike.”

“Talk to them Egan!” Brown shouted as he fired another burst from his CAR15.

Egan turned, looked at the radio and reached for the microphone.

“Three-One.” We made sure we were both on the "A" team's FM frequency.

“Bunk House One-Five, Wolf Pack Three-Zero”

"This is Bunk House over." Egan replied, still firing three shot bursts from his CAR-15.

" Wolf Pack Three-Zero is a flight of two gun ships. We are over your position with 24,000 rounds of mini-gun and twenty-eight rockets, ready for a fire mission."

Spooky dropped a flare about every five minutes. He carried a couple of hundred of the twenty-four pound magnesium flares. It was like twilight when he dropped one. The flares destroyed what was left of our night vision. But they made it possible for us to be there in the first place. This was in the era before night vision goggles and infrared sights. If the lights went out, you were on your own until the next flare ignited. The flares drifted to the ground on their own little parachutes. The next day the locals would be out picking up the expended canisters to sell for scrap or give to the local V.C. for shrapnel. The parachutes themselves were particularly prized as they made great umbrellas for the patio. People who live in third world countries have a knack for making the most out of a bad situation.

I began a gentle climb and set up a circular orbit around the camp. Eight pairs of eyes searched the ground for targets in the twilight created by Spooky's flares. We climbed up to 2,500 feet.

"Wolf Pack this Bunk House One-Five, the bad guys came from the tree line about 100 meters due west of the camp, We have them in the wire and in the camp. You are cleared to fire mini-guns on the camp, all the good guys are either dead or in bunkers over."

"Ah roger one-five, ah understand we are to hit the camp?”

"Roger wolf pack, hit the camp, repeat hit the camp! Let me know when you are ready."

“Three-One you copy? Hit the camp. Mini-guns and door guns only.”

“Three-One, roger hit the camp. No rockets.”

Even after the instructions had been repeated Glen still looked at me for confirmation. The prohibition against friendly fire was so deeply ingrained in us that he could not bring himself to fire into the camp without one last confirmation from me. I nodded my head and he seemed to steel himself to do the unthinkable.

The flares drifted down and their parachutes created an additional problem, we now had three to five other things in the air that we had to keep track of. The parachutes with their burned out canisters hanging below floated in the air like little flowers. I didn’t know what would happen if we ran into one with our rotor blades, but I knew I had no intention of finding out. I doubted that it would be good.

We had enough time to get a feel for the area during this conversation; no one had shot at us yet so I was feeling pretty good, all things considered. I extended the orbit to the south so we could set up our pattern to break right just South of the camp and the friendlies.

"Wolf Pack Three-One, let's make the inbound on three-three-zero, right hand breaks, guns at three thousand."

"Three-One."

Normally we fired only 1,500 rounds per minute to conserve ammunition and increase our time over target. Time over target was important when we were escorting slicks in and out of a landing zone. Running out of ammunition with a slick needing covering fire was unacceptable.

This was not an escort mission; this was a strike mission. Put the ordnance on the ground, go home, get more ordnance, bring it back and put it on the ground. Gun ship pilots liked strike missions.

I turned back to the target area, lowered the collective pushed the right peddle forward to maintain trim and eased the cyclic forward to begin our first run to the target. As we came within range of the camp, Glen pulled the trigger on the handle of the minigun site. He had set both guns to fire. The guns roared as a combined one hundred rounds a second were expelled from their six rotating barrels. After three seconds the guns stopped to prevent the barrels from warping. Glen released then immediately pulled trigger again. The muzzle flash from the weapons extended for almost eight feet. The rush of the air from our forward motion on the flame caused it to flow back on itself almost like a giant red mushroom. In the day we didn’t see this. At night the sight was really spectacular. “Damn, all that from little old us?” The tracers flew out in front of us like angry bees.

On the ground Egan and brown felt the impact of the fire. It was like being in the hailstorm from Hell. Three hundred rounds landed on the camp in three seconds, there was a short pause, then another three hundred rounds impacted. They could hear the roar of the guns as the gun ships flying above them plastered the camp.

We had made three passes when I decided to change our attack pattern from the oval orbit that put the camp in front of us, to a circular pattern flying around it.

“Three-One, let’s go wagon wheel right.” I notified my wingman that we would be changing our pattern.

“Roger.”

On this run I didn’t break right but turned slightly to the left then banked to the right so Glen could bring his right gun to bear on the camp. My wingman set up his orbit so he was directly across from me in our circular orbit. We fired on the camp from opposite sides at the same time. Unless you were in a bunker there was no where to hide in the camp below.

Then I saw green tracers coming from the tree line to the West of the camp. They were aimed at one of the bunkers.

Egan and Brown could see the rounds coming at their bunker from the tree line. They could feel the thuds of the heavy rounds as they impacted the sandbags that surrounded the firing slit. They ducked down as the fire began to find its way through the firing slit and in into the bunker.  

“Three-Zero is breaking left.” I again alerted my wingman that I was changing our pattern.

“Rocket.” I said on the intercom so Glen would know I was about to fire. He stopped firing the gun and I launched a 2.75-inch rocket at the source of the green tracer fire. The first rocket was a white phosphorous target marker. If anyone was within forty meters of the impact it would burn them terribly as seventeen pounds of white hot chemical was thrown out from the rocket. I had gone unibrow; I was Cro-Magnon copter pilot. I had a target in my sights. It was rare that we actually saw something we were shooting at. I kept squeezing my trigger every three or four seconds launching rocket after rocket at the tracer fire coming from the tree line below. I usually had two or three in the air at the same time.

I had fired ten rockets when the lights went out. A flare from the C-47 orbiting above us had been a dud. In the Spooky the flare kicker was scrambling to get another flare out the door and get the lights back on.  I was completely night blind, but no matter I could still see my target. The rockets exploding on the target were creating my own Fourth of July fireworks display. I felt a backward pressure on the cyclic and I struggled against it but something was pulling the nose of the aircraft up and to the right.

“You okay Rick?”

The words connected the battle for the control of the helicopter with reality. The lights came back on and I maneuvered the helicopter into a climbing turn about fifty feet above the ground.

“Yeah, I got target fixation. Thanks.”   

“No problem man, I thought you got shot or something.”

Glen had prevented me from flying the aircraft into the ground, rockets firing, lips snarling and the thrill of the kill in my mind. The green tracers had stopped. I don’t know if I killed him or he had just run away from the fear of the five tons of gun ship that had been bearing down on him.

Three-One covered my break, with minigun and rockets into the trees. We made a couple passes on the tree line expending our rockets. Then we resumed firing on the camp alternating the wagon wheel and oval attack patterns until we had expended our ordnance.  I pulled in power and we climbed up to two thousand feet and set up an orbit above the camp. 

“Bunk House One-Five this is Wolf Pack Three-Zero.”

“Go ahead Wolf Pack.” Egan responded.

“We are expended over, we have to return to base and rearm.”

“Roger, Wolf Pack. Thanks for the support.”

“Sure thing we should be back in about six zero unless they launch another mission sooner.”

“Roger that Three-Zero, things seem pretty quiet down here now, over.”

“Okay, Bunk House. Break. Spooky Five-Seven-One you copy Three-Zero is R.T.B.?” I had broken our circular orbit above the camp and was flying north, up the valley, Mt. Nui Cau Hin on our right. I lowered the collective to establish a gradual descent.

“Roger Wolf Pack, that was quite a show.”

“Thanks for the illum, Spooky, good job.”

“Roger Three-zero.”

“Wolf Pack Three-Zero is clear of your airspace and off your frequency. Break, Three-One lets go tower uniform and company fox. Guns cold.” Glen reached up and pulled the circuit breakers to the weapons systems.

“Three-One, roger, guns cold.”

As we cleared the mountain and made sight of Nha Trang, Glen dialed in the appropriate frequencies.

“Intruder control Wolf Pack Three-Zero.”

“Three-Zero this is control over.”

“Three-Zero is R.T.B. in one zero over.”

“Roger Three-Zero we’ll have P.O.L. and ordnance standing by.”

“Three-Zero.”

I reached down and switched to UHF and called the tower.

“Nha Trang tower Wolf Pack Three-Zero.”

“Go ahead Wolf Pack.”

“Wolf Pack Three-Zero is a flight of two helicopters five miles Southwest for landing.”  

“Roger Three-Zero, land runway zero-five. Winds are calm altimeter two-nine-nine zero. Call on final approach.” 

“Three-Zero.”

We flew in silence. Each reflecting on what had happened in the preceding hour and a half.  It was three o’clock. I could just make out the horizon to the East over the South China Sea. The sun would be rising in an hour and a half.

I deployed the landing and searchlights as we neared the runway.  We had descended to two hundred and fifty feet.  I turned left to line up for final and called the tower as I turned the deployed lights on.

“Nha Trang tower Wolf Pack Three-Zero turning final.”

Roger Wolf Pack Three-Zero, you are cleared to land in the Madi Gras area, and hover taxi to the revetments. Use caution for fuel trucks crossing the runway.”

“Three-Zero.”

As we landed the fuel and armor trucks were waiting near the revetments. I hovered into “L” shaped bunker and sat the aircraft down in one motion. I downed the collective and rolled the throttle to flight idle detent watching the exhaust gas temperature drop to the safe level for engine shut down. Finally I turned the force trim on the cyclic. The E.G.T. reached 450 degrees and I opened the throttle gate and rolled the throttle to the off position. The engine gave a sigh and aircraft lurched slightly as the torque was removed from the rotor system. The rotor blades began to spin down and we removed our helmets.

“Jesus Christ, what a night.” I said to no one in particular. I looked at the fuel truck waiting just outside the arc of our tip path for the blades to stop spinning. The armor truck approached us and parked under the slowing blades. The driver pulled up as close to the helicopter as possible and they began to unload the ordnance and rearm the weapons systems.

Glen looked at me. “No shit man, what a freaking night. Are you as tired as I am?”

“Probably, not to mention the hang over, I feel like I’ve been rode hard and put away wet.”               

“I’m with you on that.”

“Glen, good work out there and thanks for saving my ass.” I extended my hand for a slap. 

Glen reached out and slapped my hand. “Hey, no charge man it was my ass too.”

“Never had target fixation before, I just heard stories.”

“I hear it mostly it happens to the high speed guys.” Glen said referring to fighter pilots and their tendency to occasionally to augur their aircraft into the ground on a bombing or strafing run.

“Not something I care for.”

The rotor blades stopped and it was safe for the fuel truck to pull along side of the helicopter. Glen and I dismounted and took off our chicken plates while we watched the rearming crew carefully lay the linked 7.62 ammunition in the minigun stores. Others were inserting rockets in their individual tubes. The crew chief was checking fluid levels. The door gunner was laying  fifteen hundred rounds of M-60 machine gun ammunition in the crew chief’s ammunition box. The fuel truck driver attached the ground wire from the truck to the helicopter and began fueling.

I walked to a safe distance away and lit a cigarette. I needed a little time to myself as I always did after this kind of mission. I could still feel the adrenaline rush that was left over from the flight. My whole body was kind of tingling. I never felt so alive as I did immediately after a mission. I wondered how the others felt. Of course I hadn’t felt like that while we were in the air. It always happened after the shooting. During the mission we had all been too busy to think about much except what we were doing. There was always a kind of a strange calm while we were actually in the fight.

My mind drifted back to my target fixation. If Glen had not pulled us out of the dive we would all still be out there, charred corpses in a burning pile of aluminum. Well enough of that. I took a final drag from my cigarette and flicked the burning ember off of the end with my fingernail. Then I tore the paper off of the butt letting the tobacco drift away. I put the filter in my pocket. 

At Suoi Dau there had been no fire from the tree line since the choppers left. The steady drone of the AC-47 that still orbited above them had replaced the sounds of the fierce three-hour battle. The flares they were dropping still provided a dull yellow twilight. Egan and Brown had been quietly searching the tableau before them for movement for twenty minutes. They were smoking cigarettes, their silence interrupted only by an occasionally muttered profanity. They were both still too much in shock to talk about the attack.

Egan spoke the first complete sentence since the choppers had fired on the camp. “I gotta piss like a racehorse.”  

“Well saddle me up and call me Seabiscuit, I gotta take a leak too. You want to go outside? Are you able?”

“Jesus Brown, do you ever stop with the jokes? I think I can walk and we need to see how the little people are doing.”

“Okay lets go for a walk.”

Egan and Brown crept warily out of their bunker. They found the 175mm-shell canister that was stuck in the ground as a “pee tube” and took turns relieving themselves. As Brown relieved himself Egan surveyed the camp. In the twilight he could see dozens of bodies littering the camp.  

When Brown finished Egan ran limping to the next bunker, pausing to turn an N.V.A. soldier over on to his back. Egan noted that the dead N.V.A. soldier had been shot multiple times. He continued on to the bunker stopping outside the entrance. He turned and nodded to Brown who started his run across the open ground to the join Egan beside the bunker.

Egan shouted, “Hey, anybody in there?” Egan figured if he asked in English he wouldn’t be mistaken for an N.V.A., he might not be understood but he wouldn’t be shot.

There was a low groan from inside the bunker. Egan and Brown looked at one another, their eyes asking, then answering an unspoken question. Egan shrugged and they entered the bunker. They found one wounded and four dead C.I.D.G. They had been victims of a hand grenade. The two Americans busied themselves tending to the wounded man as best they could.      

“We’d better get us a MEDEVAC in here ASAP.” Egan said as he wrapped a field dressing around young soldier’s bleeding stomach wound.

“I’ll go back to the bunker and call headquarters.”

 “Right, I’m going to the next bunker.”

“Okay I’ll catch up with you in a few minutes.”

When Brown called for the MEDEVAC he also canceled the request for our return. Plans were being made for the insertion of a large MIKE force that was based at 5th Group Headquarters in Nha Trang. For the next two hours Egan and Brown went from bunker to bunker tending the wounded and counting the dead. When they were done they found that only four C.I.D.G had survived the attack. Twenty were dead.

The refueling and rearming of our gun ships was complete. We were putting on our chicken plates and getting ready to go back to Suoi Dau when I saw a jeep approaching us across the runway. It was the operations officer.

“Hold up guys, you won’t be taking off for a while. The camp seems secure now. Fifth Group says that they don’t need any air support. Looks like we may launch a combat assault with the MIKE force a little later. You can just hang loose.”

With this news we did what all soldiers everywhere are trained to do. We went into our “hurry up and wait” mode. The door gunner and crew chief found a place in the aircraft to relax. The pilots found a place other than the cockpit to sit down. Then we began to wait.

The sun was coming up when another flight crew arrived. Among them was Murphy, the fire team leader for the alert fire team. I asked him what happened and he told me that he had been downtown having dinner and got trapped by the curfew. He couldn’t get back to base until the curfew was lifted at sunrise. We enjoyed a laugh over the fact that three of the four pilots who wound up flying the mission were drunk. My damn near killing myself and my crew wasn’t mentioned.

We were relieved by the fresh flight crews and excused from duty for the day. I was going to have a day off! No convoy cover after all. Glen and I went to the officer’s club and ate breakfast. 

Later that morning the MIKE force was loaded onto slicks and they took off for the combat assault. It turned out that there was some problem with the local province chief who refused to allow the MIKE force to land They just took off and flew around for an hour or so then returned to the base.

Just after sunrise the headquarters guys from 5th Group arrived at Suoi Dau and posed for pictures with some of the dead N.V.A. A bomb damage assessment platoon was inserted and counted the dead in and around the camp. There were over two hundred enemy killed.

Egan was MEDEVACed to the field hospital across the runway from the 281st and his wound was stitched up. Afterward he hitched a ride back to A-502 headquarters and was debriefed. Brown was given a ride on a helicopter back to A-502, was debriefed and drove back to Nui Ti.

That night Glen Williams and I were in the bar at the club when a Lieutenant Colonel approached us. Of course my first thought was “Oh shit, what did I do now.”

“Are you two of the gun ship pilots that flew at Suoi Dau last night?”

“Yes sir, I was the fire team leader.” I nodded to Glen “He was my copilot. ”

“I just wanted you to know that you did one Hell of job. They found over two hundred dead and blood trails leading away from a rendezvous point with abandoned packs and weapons. Hell of a job.” With that he turned and left.

Glen and I looked at one another, huge grins on our faces. People who spend a lot of time together under a lot of stress develop a kind of ESP. Glen and I both had the same thought and we both knew it.

“Hell sir, if you think that was something, you should see us when we’re sober.” I said to the Colonel who was now just out of earshot.

“Exactly!” Glen and I erupted in laughter.   

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When I started writing this I did not know the names of the guys on the ground. I wrote the part about comparing life in Nha Trang and the field, convoy cover and about the launch that night. But when I came to the part of the story about the shooting, I had to stop. I didn’t know what had happened on the ground that night and could not continue until I found out. I realized that we were not the main players. I am a little ashamed to say that for almost thirty years I had thought we were the story. But when I started to put it on paper, I came to the realization that it was the guys on the ground. 

I began a search on the Internet. Checking Special Forces websites I found Tom Ross. He told me that Harlow Short might know something about Suoi Dau. It was Harlow Short that told me The guys on the ground were Jan Egan and Ed Brown and gave me Jan’s E-mail address. When I sent Jan an E-mail his wife responded. Jan was in the hospital, near death. I asked the guys in the 281st to send him E-mail get well wishes and they responded like they always did when there was a Special Forces guy in trouble.      

 I didn’t hear from Jan for a long time. I put the story on hold, still unable to get past my initial radio call to the camp. Then, I got this E-mail:

“This is a little hard to believe!! After all these years. I don't get a chance to just sit down and look around the web for old buddies....but I ran across this one and damn near fell off the chair!
That was ME down there!! THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU. My name is Jan Egan and the other American who was on the ground in the camp with me is/was Ed Brown. We were the only two Americans in the camp that night! We were in a bunker that night and all of a sudden all hell broke loose. We were getting over-run. People running all over the place - claymores turn in and Ed screaming at me to hit the .50 tower. I honestly thought I was dreaming - I could not believe that in a span of seconds there could be so many NVA/VC just coming at us out of no where. I guess the reality hit when Ed grabbed the radio and screamed for Spooky and I got hit on the way to the tower. I realized when I got there it was not the safest place in the world - every son-of-a-bitch down there was firing at me! Balls! I wonder why! Back down to ground level where it was safe. I hear Ed SCREAMING the coordinates, hands me the radio and for some oddball reason he just picked up his rifle and began firing! I guess he was pissed! I remember you guys asking if you should get in the wire. I said start at the base and walk it in. Your response was something like "That's a damn small camp - don't know if we can do much good. Hell, you were stacking up bodies in the wire like wood. By the way, it wasn't over 100 - it was way over 200. Half was yours, half ours. How's that for sharing? Always wanted to meet you guys, or at least one of you. The next morning choppers were coming in from all directions. Mostly, if not all, from Nha Trang. I remember us being told great job, now get on the chopper and they'll take you guys back. Every one of them had cameras and were posing and striping bodies before Ed and I got on the Chopper. The only thing we did was render our after action report, but I never forgot you guys. By the way - that was not my last trip (3 total). Got captured on third tour. Only in country 3 wks when that happened. Held 7 months.
Write.
Egan”

After a few E-mails Jan and I finally made phone contact. His first words were:

“Rick this is the second time you’ve saved my life.” He was alluding to the get-well messages and how they, along with his wife had given him the will to recover from his illness. His words hit me like a hammer blow.

Later Jan sent a thank you to the guys in the 281st who had sent him the get well E-mails:

Brothers: (a term I do not use lightly)

First of all I want to thank each and every one of you. But, before I go further, I am Egan, the one who tried to die a year ago after one of our more nefarious (foreign) trained (Dr's) ? Tried his best to put me down with the wrong Rx.. You (all) stood by my wife during this time, encouraged her with your letters and kind words. She saw fit to make copies of all your letters, kept them in a file for me...and when she thought I was able, read each and every one of them. At the time I was released from the hospital (3 months and 3 hospitals) later I barely knew who or where I was. There seems to be an inherent feeling that we all have that we are someplace safe - and nothing else! That was the case for me, and for months to come! I feel somewhat ashamed that I did not get back sooner and thank each and every one of you, but as I had indicated, it was a long recovery...it started to come back when my wife (Janice) aka The Kid, once again, brought out one of the E-Mail's. It was from Rick Galer and things hit me like a flash flood. More like a flood of emotion, and believe me Brothers, as I began to read (with a clear mind), all of your letters, it triggered something in me I have not felt in a long time. I am not ashamed to admit - I cried! You people will live in my heart and mind for the rest of my life. Words like yours are the ones ordinarily read as a Eulogy! But I'm back! It took a while, but I'm better for it. The old brain is firing on all 3 cylinders. I knew you guys wouldn't leave me on the ground. The 281st AHC didn't leave me alone on the ground 35 years ago - no reason to think they'd change now! That night they appeared as CHARIOTS OF FIRE. Be safe in the year to come my friends. I love all you guys.

G'day to you to Paul (SOA), and Ron O. (CCN).

Jan Egan

SPECIAL NOTE;

Rick - will you please forward this to your 281st, e.g. roster for me. Some of the list I have is not valid and will not send to multiple "E"'s unless they are ALL correct.

Thanks

Jan

After a few more phone calls I got enough background to finish the story. I never found Ed Brown, but I still look for him every now and then.

Neither Ed Brown nor Jan Egan received a decoration for their heroic defense of the camp against overwhelming odds.

Part of the story is fictionalized. The character’s of the female V.C. agent, the rice buyer and the nightwalker I made up. They are based on information Jan supplied and personal knowledge. Jan and Ed’s activities in the villages near their camps while not an exact accounting, are typical of what they did. The suspicion that the Vietnamese commander at Suoi Dau was a switch hitter is based on Jan’s input. He also felt that Major Tran was a V.C. I changed their names for the story. The story of Cook and Jameson is based on real people Jan described to me. I changed their names in the story. The story about the nurse in the officer’s club actually took place in Da Nang, but it did happen. The gay E-6 was an actual person and he did help me avoid going to Vietnam as a clerk. And I did hate flying convoy cover.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I would like to thank Jan Egan, Lee Brewer and Glen Williams for refreshing my memory and adding detail to the story.  Steve Matthews for his encouragement and editorial assistance.  Phong Mac for translating.  Bert Cho for some help in scanning. George Briggs for help in editing.  Brent Gourley for sending me the start routine for the Huey.  And most of all the 50,000 guys who never made it back.