Soldier of Fortune Magazine The Journal of Professional Adventurers
by Hooligan
My logbook called it a routine troop lift. My gut told me otherwise.
I was still green – a “Peter Pilot” in Army slang – flying right seat in a Huey. The Aircraft Commander sat to my left, cool and unshakable, though his name has long been lost to history. We were one slick in a mixed package: five troop birds, a couple of gunships, our “C” model counterparts, and a Command & Control ship overhead to keep the choreography moving.
Our Area of Operations that day was Moc Hoa on the Cambodian border in the Mekong Delta, deep in the Plain of Reeds. In the map room it looked harmless – just a pale patch of wetland. In reality it was the Badlands, a place where the Viet Cong could cut you down and melt away before you hit the ground. We didn’t know it yet, but this time, they had extra firepower. We soon would learn what that meant.
The Morning Drop
We lifted at dawn, rotors chewing the mist. We inserted a stick of ARVN troops into what looked like a sleepy, trouble-free LZ. These were soldiers from the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the ARVN – the ground forces of the South Vietnamese military. The drop was clean. No fire, no contact. We banked away and headed back to Moc Hoa, where the day dissolved into the long, slow drag of waiting for the pickup call.
An ARVN Huey in Vietnam.
By mid-afternoon, the radio came alive. The ARVN had found something. They said it was a weapons cache.
Two of our ships, mine included, were sent out to recover the haul.
The Pile
I was chalk two in staggered left formation, sliding in behind the lead ship. As we approached the LZ, lead swung left to his target. That left me the right-hand approach, straight toward the pile the ARVN were waving me in on.
READ MORE from Hooligan: Our Helicopter Was Broken Down in a Field – and the Viet Cong Opened Fire On Us
From 200 feet, I thought it was ordnance – maybe boxes of ammo, maybe captured AK’s. At 50 feet, my stomach turned.
It wasn’t weapons.
It was men.
Thirteen dead ARVN soldiers, stripped of dignity and dumped like trash on the mud. They weren’t in body bags. Some were face-up, some were face-down. All were frozen in the cruel geometry of rigor mortis. Their wounds looked different from others I had seen in their ranks. Something had torn them apart, shredding their limbs and leaving their bodies riddled with ragged holes.
The smell hit me before my skids touched dirt. Rot. Blood. The thick, sweet-sick stench of tropical death. I’ve smelled Agent Orange before. This was worse. It was indescribable, and made me want to retch.
The ARVN loaded the bodies onto our deck like stacking wood, limbs bending in ways no living body should. I saw my gunner, cringing in the hell hole, face to face with a corpse. The body was in a gnarly position, staring right at him. The dead man’s eyes were locked wide open, mouth twisted mid-scream.
Blood in the Wind
The wind in the cockpit blows from rear to front. As we lifted off, the blood, guts, and juice of the bodies blew to the front into the cockpit, all over the front seats and their occupants. It spattered our flight suits, our faces, our boots. It ran in streaks down the instrument panel, pooled in the creases of my seat.
We flew like that – steeped in it – back to Moc Hoa.
Huey on a landing pad in Vietnam.
On the ground, a U.S. commander gave us news: the VC had captured a Minigun. A multi barreled machine gun capable of firing 6000 rounds a minute, but usually slowed to 2000 RPM. That’s what had hit the dead ARVN. And it could cut a Huey in half before you blinked. We took this info and passed it onto the rest of the flight upon our return.
Did I mention, this wasnʼt turning out to be a good day. And we still had to complete the original mission, to collect the ARVN from the morning drop.
The Ambush
Dusk bled into the swamp when we lifted again to recover our ARVN. The air felt heavier now, every shadow suspect. I was still chalk two, this time in staggered right formation.
We started our approach, and the next thing I knew the windshield and my peripheral vision out my side windows was full of tracers. They were all around my ship, one on top of the other, a curtain of hate. If only one came through the windshield, we’d be just like those dead ARVN. Shredded. By our own Minigun.
The flight lead yanked up hard. I followed, pulling pitch – but the altimeter didn’t agree. We weren’t climbing. We were sinking. Fast.
The AC took the controls as the flight kept climbing and we kept descending.
The Swamp
We went in hard enough to call it a crash, soft enough to call it controlled. Either way, the Huey was dead. We were neck deep in a soup that smelled like raw sewage, rotting vegetation, and death itself.
We hustled around as much as we could in the neck-deep swamp to get the radios, guns, and ammo off the ship. We had small comfort from not hearing any more bursts from the Minigun. One of our gunships had silenced it.
One of our Slicks dropped in to get us. I scrambled aboard, and sat on the cargo floor. I had my .38 out, and fired at the enemy tree line, where the tracers had come from. I shot my six shots, and got my satisfaction of having returned fire on the enemy.
I doubt I hit anything. That wasn’t the point.
It was about sending a message.
The End of the Bird
We landed at the end of Moc Hoa’s runway. We had to wait there while the other ships went back to work with the ARVN. It was cool out, and we were coated to the bone in gore and shit. The night air turned the stink into a living thing, clinging to us like a second skin.
The flight soon lost sight of our downed helicopter. Out in the dark, the VC found our Huey. A dull thump rolled across the plain, followed by a blossom of light. They’d blown her up.
By the time we got home that night, there was no water left in the shower. We had to sleep in the stench of the previous day.
Aftermath
The notes went into the ledger. One Huey lost. Thirteen brave ARVN dead. No American names for the Wall that hadn’t been built.
In truth, it was the day I learned something we knew deep down: On some missions, you don’t “win.” You survive. And sometimes, that’s all the victory you’re going to get.
Hooligan was a Huey helicopter pilot in Vietnam.
