An Assault Helicopter Unit in Vietnam (Undaunted Valor 1)

“Alpha Six, I have Mellow Yellow smoke.”

“Roger, Chicken-man, we’re ready for you. Empty water cans and two pax.”

“Roger, Alpha Six.”

I was really wondering where we were going to land this thing when, passing over the smoke directly, I saw a hole in the jungle with a soldier standing in the middle of it. It wasn’t really a hole in the ground but a circular area devoid of any trees or vegetation and a few stumps indicating that at one time it had looked like the rest of the jungle. It wasn’t much bigger than the rotor width of the aircraft, however.

“I have the PZ, and from the looks of the smoke, the wind is coming from the east, so we’ll circle around and make final to the east,” Mike said as he took the aircraft around twice, each time coming lower and lower but never cutting back on speed until he made his final turn to the east and heading to the PZ. He came to a deceleration and hovered over the hole at three hundred feet and maybe ten feet above the trees.

I looked down through the chin bubble, and this grunt was standing right below us with his arms out to his sides and waving us to come down. At this point, the crew started clearing our tail rotor, and we started down. I was watching the main rotor on my side to see that we didn’t hit a tree limb.

“Hold,” came the crew chief. “Tail right. Hold. Clear down. Clear left.” This conversation continued as we slowly lowered the aircraft three hundred feet to the bottom. Whoever had the controls concentrated on maintaining his position and following the commands of the other three crew members, who were attempting to watch the tail rotor and main rotor, preventing a tree strike. We were all hoping that the grunts were watching to make sure we didn’t take any fire, because at this point, we were sitting ducks! As we touched down, the ammo was kicked off and exchanged for thirty empty water cans and two soldiers that had all their equipment and huge smiles. They were going home, it appeared, as they were waving to those left behind.

When ready, the crew gave us the all clear to ascend, and the entire process was repeated in reverse. As we broke over the top of the trees, Mike lowered the nose and pulled in maximum power to accelerate as quickly as possible while staying at treetop level in a contour flight mode. Contour flight was flying as fast as you could while flying just above and following the folds of the terrain. We would be doing a lot of that in the future, especially on single-ship missions. Not so much on formations, I would come to find out. Once we had our speed, Mike turned the aircraft over to me and called Alpha Six.

“Alpha Six, Chicken-man One-Seven.”

“Roger, Chicken-man, that’s all we got for you today.”

“Roger, Chicken-man’s back to higher. Have a good day. Out.”

When we arrived back at the log pad, the next load was waiting to go out, and it was about the same except it had a major and a staff sergeant who did not look happy. The major told the staff sergeant to pick up his gear and get on the aircraft, which he was reluctant to do, finally throwing his rucksack on the aircraft.

“Hey, Mr. Roberts, this staff sergeant isn’t real happy about getting on this aircraft. He’s giving the major a raft of shit,” the crew chief indicated.

“Is his weapon loaded?” Roberts asked, turning around to see what was going on.

“No magazine in it, no, sir,” came the response.

“Okay, just keep an eye on him and let me know if he’s starting something,” Mike said.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Don’t worry about it. You just fly the aircraft. Let’s go as soon as that NCO is on,” Mike directed me.

“He’s on, Mr. Cory,” said the crew chief.

I pulled up to a hover. The NCO started to move to the door, but the major grabbed him by the back of his load-bearing equipment harness and put his ass on the floor. I pulled in the rest of the power and we headed out to Bravo Company’s location. Mike made the calls, and soon we saw a puff of yellow smoke slowly and gently drifting from the trees. But this time, there was no neatly cut hole in the jungle canopy but an honest-to-goodness bomb crater. As we passed over it, another soldier was standing in the middle with his arms raised. I started assessing the conditions. With the light wind, almost none, really, I was thinking of making my approach to the east and told Mike that.

“Look at the trees around that hole. Note how the ones on the north side are lower than the ones on the west side. There’s probably a ridge that they’re on, making the north side lower than the western side. We have almost no wind, so that won’t be a factor. Make your approach north to south over the lower trees, and when you come to a hover, pedal turn to the east. We have plenty of power with this light of a load,” he instructed me, and I obeyed.

As I came in over the northern edge of the PZ, I had decelerated all forward motion to a slow walk and came to a stop as I executed a slow pedal turn to the east. All the while, I was watching my power and the tip of the rotor blade in front. I wasn’t looking down, nor was I looking sideways. My eyes were glued to the front of that rotor tip and I couldn’t really tell how close I was to the tips of tree limbs. We were at two hundred and forty feet, and I had a death grip on the controls.

“Clear to come down right.”

“Clear left.”

“Clear front.”

“Stop. Bring the tail right. Stop,” I was instructed.

“Clear down right.”

“Clear down left.”

“Clear front.”

I started easing off the power again.