(EDITOR'S NOTE: After being out in the “brush” with troops of the 1st Cavalry Division, Enquirer military writer Charles Black continues his reports of action in Viet Nam. The article was written Oct. 18.)
By CHARLES BLACK
Enquirer Military Writer
HOI SON, Viet Nam - Flying
with Lt. Col. John B. Stockton, who commands the 1st Squadron, 9th
Cavalry, is
like being on an aerial steeple chase.
Even the more determined
advocates of flying low in a helicopter can have queasy moments with
these
cavalry pilots up front.
The raid on this village was
a picture-book operation. Two platoons
of Civilian Irregular Defense Group riflemen trained by the Special
Forces
joined with the 9th Cavalry’s rifle teams.
Marines had landed across a river and blocked the exits.
Troops of the 101st Airborne
Division had blocked off the area to the land side of the village, and
the
raiding forces had knifed directly into the village.
Object of Raid
The object of the raid was a
single hootch believed harboring a communications-jamming device which
had been
a pest to 1st Cavalry signal circles.
The pinpoint target was
reached without more than sporadic resistance and, after a thorough
search,
produced a Viet Cong flag and documents.
Then the offending hootch was burned by the CIDG troops.
The raiders also searched
out caches of rice, several tons of it, and the cavalrymen carried two
Chinook
loads of it out to refugees at the Binh The sector headquarters. The radio equipment had been moved, however.
The most memorable moment of
the raid, aside from the clockwork precision with which the affair was
handled,
came when Stockton announced that we didn’t have a way home. A sniper had pinked the ship we were using in
its fuel tank. The craft was flown out
without passengers because the fuel had drained to a minimum.
Hooks Rides
I hooked a ride in a chopper
occupied by a squad of the Vietnamese troopers and went into Binh The
on a
three-quarter-ton truck driven by a brown-beret-wearing Vietnamese
ranger from
where the chopper dropped us in a field.
The advisers here were Maj.
Allan C. Sterling, subsector adviser; Capt. Thomas J. Canavan, his
assistant;
P-Sgt. Robert E. Winters; Sp5 Jack C. Jaynes, and Sp4 James T. Boyd.
Roberts is the operations
sergeant, Jaynes is the medic (he came here from Santo Domingo) and
Boyd is an
old Fort Benning friend of mine who had served with the Student Brigade
and was
handling communications duties at Binh The.
The camp is a big one,
well-organized and defended, and it is astride Route 19 at a critical
bridge,
which makes it double important.
Brigade Headquarters
I was able to bum another
truck ride up to 3rd Brigade Headquarters at the foot of An Khe Pass,
arriving
there about 3 p.m. The sniper who managed
to hit Stockton’s chopper had done more damage to my schedule than he
had to
the ship.
Capt. Gordon P. Rozansk of
headquarters company, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, was organizing a
Chinook
supply run for the battalion, which is commanded by Lt. Col. Hal Moorer. He introduced me to CWO Oscar A. Duhovnik of
headquarters troop, 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry, who was
going up to forward brigade headquarters on
a liaison mission.
That was where I wanted to
go in order to find Maj. Joseph Billochi, executive officer of 1st
Battalion,
12th Cavalry, and get a helicopter ride back up to that outfit’s area
at the
Hoi Son hamlets.
It had started raining again
with the monotony of the on-coming monsoon season here.
As the big Chinook took off up the Soui La
Tinh River to the valley where the operation - called “Concord” I found
out at
Col. Thomas Brown’s 3rd Brigade Headquarters - was taking place, I
pointed to
the boxes and made a questioning motion to Capt. Rozansk.
Writes Note
He wrote me the following
note:
“You can tell our friends
and families back in Columbus and wherever they are reading about us
that our
troops are thankful to the American people that they are not forgotten
while on
the front line. I am delivering free
cigarettes, cigars, candy and some toilet articles sent over here to us
as
presents from the companies involved.”
I remembered then that the
same distribution had been made at the 1st Battalion, 12th Infantry,
camp the
night before it went into the fight at the north end of this valley. Things like that bring home a lot closer.
The Chinook dropped into a
hedge-compartmented hillside where the forward elements of the brigade
headquarters were located, along with the howitzers of the 2nd
Battalion, 19th
Artillery, and I started walking toward the battalion’s headquarters
tent.
Motor Scooter
Capt. George McMillan of the
battalion staff almost ran over me as he came bumping over the path on
a small
motor scooter, then I saw men running toward a helicopter landed in
front of
the headquarters area.
Some 60mm mortar shells
landed on the hill near here the previous night. Three
had banged in around Lt. Col. Robert Shoemaker’s forward
command post up at Hoi Son about the same time, and I thought something
of the
same nature was happening again.
I ran with a group and then
stopped dead in my tracks as I saw the stretchers being taken from the
helicopter.
I walked over to the tent
area and saw 14 men on litters there.
Maj. Billochi turned from watching the doctor and medics working
and
shook his head.
Fight in Progress
“Charlie, B Company went
into that rice paddy and got into a whale of a fight,” he said. “We’re not sure what’s going on, but the
fight is still in progress. The Old Man
went up and got some tactical air support in, I know that.”
“Mr. Merkle and Mr. Chapman
got these 14 wounded out of there in the Tactical Operations Command
Huey,” he
continued. “They made a fantastic run in there. The
weather is awful and the fire is heavy. They
got 14 on board with all of that heavy
radio gear already on it . . . twice
the load the thing ought to carry.”
I saw Sp5 James Lowden, CWO
Robert Chapman and CWO Robert Merkle then and asked if I could ride
back in
there with them.
“If this ship will get
there, we’re going there,” Merkle said.
“Climb aboard.”
Sergeant Comments
I walked over to the wounded
men first and spoke to some of them. A
sergeant I knew from Alpha Company - a platoon from that company had
been with
Company B when the fight came - grinned and said:
“Somebody up there told me I
ought to have more sense than to get shot.
I’ll tell you what I told him, Charlie. I shall return.”
He had a very bad-looking
arm wound, but was smoking a cigarette with his good hand and his face
was
composed. I didn’t like standing there
helplessly watching my friends on those litters while the medics worked.
I walked over to the
helicopter and climbed in beside Lowden.
There was a big hole smashed into the door frame where I climbed
in. It went on out the top of the ship.
“A little thing we picked up
on the last trip,” the crew chief told me.
Choppers Hit
The medical evacuation
choppers already had been hard hit in the initial landings, having lost
a pilot
and a helicopter, and the weather and violence of fire at the loading
zone
apparently kept them from coming in after the wounded.
The TOC shop pilots familiar
with the terrain (and, probably more important, deeply attached to the
men
involved, knowing them and being close to them), had performed their
impossible
flight under the kind of conditions which simply aren’t to be asked of
pilots.
The kind of effort which
finally took all of the wounded and the two men killed from that fight
back to
friends and assistance has to be volunteered by brave men.
The evacuation of the
wounded from Hoi Son 1, where the fight was going on, became even more
fantastic during the night when Maj. Billochi and CWO Ronald Ehmann
began
making the hair-raising flight in the tiny little OH13s.
Helicopter Loaded
It sounds impossible, and it
probably is impossible under normal circumstances, but Billochi made
three
trips carrying two wounded each time and one trip carrying three. The little ship is designed for a pilot and
one passenger under ideal conditions, not for flying in the dark, in
fog, rain
and under fire.
The last trip made by
Billochi was probably the most fantastic of all. About
11:30 p.m. , during a momentary break in the fog and rain,
he and Lowndes, with Ehmann flying the other ship, whipped up the
valley for the
fifth time.
Ehmann picked up Shoemaker,
who had been with the company until the fighting broke off and the
night
settled down to sniping and flares.
Billochi picked up a wounded
hard-core Viet Cong the Bravo Company paratroopers had captured during
their
fight and Lowndes held a .45 on the prisoner, who sat on the floor of
the
little helicopter all the way back to headquarters.
Sixth Trip
When Ehmann came back with
Shoemaker at 1:30 a.m., he made a sixth trip up into the battle area to
take
ammunition, 300 pounds of it.
All of the seriously wounded
were taken back, the men in the fight were resupplied, and even the men
with
minor wounds were brought back to the battalion command post at Hoi Son
3 and
were able to spend the night on litters in a dry shelter rigged by the
battalion combat medics.
A regular excavation
helicopter came in about 9 a.m. the next day and evacuated them from
the
command post area. The night before,
the only men who flew in the Hoi Son section of the valley were the men
from
the 1st Brigade Aviation Co. in the TOC shop and the OH13 and Billochi.
The Huey in which I flew up
the valley was bloodstained inside and everyone aboard it was stained
as
well. It was dark and the weather was
very bad. Lowndes told me we probably
would set down at Battalion CP at Hoi Son 3 to pick up supplies to run
on up to
the fighting. When we were almost there
the chopper began shaking very heavily.
“We picked up a round!”
Lowndes shouted in my ear.
“Something is broken and this chopper isn’t
going to fly very far.”
Lands in Paddy
It flew to the rice paddy in
front of the CP, however, and settled down in a jerky, bouncy fashion. We landed near an eerily lit square where
somebody had poured gasoline in cans and lighted them to mark a landing
zone.
Men were standing along the
paddy wall, ready to form up into working parties or to go on up into
the
valley on foot, as one officer kept arguing for. Sniping
was forgotten and it would probably have been ignored even
if it had been noticed.
I waded over the paddy to
the wall and helped hand up some boxes out of the TOC ship which had
been sent
forward.
“You guys are lucky you got
in here in that bird,” Sgt. Ronald Anderson of C Company said. “They can’t see too well but the
transmission seems to be shot on it, a bearing or something.”
It was not my day for
choppers, this being the second one I had ridden which had wound up
hit, but I
decided it was my day for luck. Neither
of the birds had decided to quit before landing safely.
Sits in Tent
I left the landing zone and
went back into the little spit of wooded land where the CP tent was
located and
sat inside on my bedroll. The tent was
filled with people who kept ducking in out of the rain and talking,
then
leaving.
The men at Hoi Son were in
good shape, and had formed up a perimeter defense ready to kick the
Viet Cong
on out of the area in the morning, somebody said. It
was frustrating to look at the 2,000 yards of darkness, fog
and rain which separated us from the flares and firing on up the valley.
About 9 p.m. Billochi and
Ehmann came in from their final trip to evacuate the wounded. They said things were quiet except for the
usual sniping at their helicopters - which both had escaped hits
despite the
continued flights at slow speeds and low levels.
The two had to be tired,
although you can’t tell from Billochi’s voice or mannerisms whether he
is
fatigued. He is always a humorous and
composed individual with a tremendous buoyance.
We moved around in the
little tent so the pilots could stretch out on two air mattresses. The rain drained under the tent wall and the
floor was a mud wallow, but the people packed in under it were
conscious of the
luxury of not being rained on.
Darkness Settles
The gasoline flares burned
down and darkness settled. Distant
gunshots sounded, and occasionally a few from our own area came. Up on the hill a platoon of Charlie Company
was crouched in an ambush on the trail we had found and we kept
listening for
firing up there, but none came.
About 2 a.m., people began
drifting out to their poncho homes when word came that Shoemaker would
be
coming in to reclaim his home.
I strung up my poncho and
borrowed another from somebody who said he had a thatched roof and a
cardboard-and-straw floor to his shelter.
Using the second poncho for a ground cloth, I lay down. Water filled the poncho on the ground,
simple oozing over the sides of it, and I finally just wadded my wet
poncho
liner and sat on it.
The OH13 flown by Ehmann
came in and I saw Shoemaker picking his way up the paddy wall with a
shielded
flashlight. The ammunition was being
loaded on the helicopter. Shoemaker,
who had been in the middle of a small unit fight for some hours, peered
under
the poncho near his tent and recognized me.
Praises Soldiers
“Charlie, you would have
been proud of those boys,” he said.
“Those lads are magnificent.
Everything they did up there was more than you could ask of them. Their spirit is fantastically high - they
are cracking jokes and ready to fight again in the morning.
“This American boy we have
is wonderful! Our country is just
blessed with them is all I can say,” he continued out of the darkness,
talking
from the door of his tent on the muddy air mattress laid down there.
He told me about the fight,
then
“They came from that village
across the rice paddy when automatic weapons opened up on them from a
range of
40 yards,” he said. “They had 15 men
down almost at once, but they put fire right back at the Viet Cong and
the
squads evacuated every man, bringing them back to the cover of that
creek
between the village and the fortified area across the paddy.
Air Commitments
“I went up there in the
chopper and got to the creek where they were,” he continued. “They were actually getting ready to assault
those prepared positions then. I got
some air commitments, high performance aircraft, the F104s. They came in and were very spectacular, but
they simply didn’t have time to get on top of the target, and when they
did
they didn’t have the fuel to stay there.
“I worked the company down
the creek,” he related. “The channel
keeps getting deeper and the bank is several feet high.
We tried to move out on a flank assault
after the F104s hit, but automatic weapons, heavy machine guns, opened
up from
the right and just grazed the top of
the bank.
“I called for more air, and
B52s came and dropped those fragmentation bombs,” he said.
“They didn’t do any good either. We
had worked further down the creek and the
banks were 10 to 15 feet high. The
machine guns kept raking them and we were getting grenades from those
people
crawling along the paddy wall and possibly from grenade launchers. It was impossible to assault from that bank.
“At dark, I decided to break
contact and to pull into a perimeter about 200 meters back,” Shoemaker
said. “It looks quiet now.
If we get the go-ahead, we will move up
there with Charlie Company in the morning.”
“I would like to really work
this out here, spend some time with the brigade and work this thing out
and
chase them right on up that trail,” Shoemaker concluded.
The night’s misery content
remained high until daybreak, when a break came in the clouds. At 5:30, brigade had called and told the
battalion commander to go ahead and take the paddy site.
Shoemaker had called for the
wonderful old A1E Skyraiders to come up and use napalm, and the
propeller
driven aircraft were scheduled to work over the area shortly.
There was a tight timetable
for all of this, however. The brigade
had to leave here the next day because of another operation the 1st
Cavalry was
committed to - opening the Mang Yang pass for a 500-truck convoy from
Qui Nhon
to Pleiku - and I saw Charlie Company already filing up the wooded side
of the
paddy to the rear of the CP area.
I rolled up my gear and got
out there just in time to fall in with 1st Sgt. William Staten for the
walk up
to Hoi Son 1.