Through the Valley. William Reeder
Prologue
I played army as a kid and loved it. It was shortly after World War II when we played in the vacant lots and fields in the rapidly expanding San Fernando Valley, outside Los Angeles. We used stuff from our veteran fathers or gear from the war surplus stores that had popped up after the war. My dad had been in the Navy, so I used a clunky army helmet my grandmother picked up for a dollar at the new surplus store on Victory Boulevard.
We played with gusto. Sometimes we’d get wounded. Other times we’d die dramatically, only to come back to life again when we got bored being dead.
One day we were playing with a group of older boys, five- and six-year-olds against eight- to ten-year-olds. One of my friends, wearing his dad’s leather flying helmet, climbed a tree. He waved me up and we scooted out onto a low branch. He made airplane noises, held both hands up as if gripping a machine gun, and went, “Rata-tat-tat, rata-tat-tat.”
As the bigger boys got closer, I joined in, “Rata-tat-tat, rata-tat-tat.”
We shouted, “You guys are dead! We’re in an airplane and we shot you all.”
A couple of the older boys came under us, snatched our legs, and pulled us to the ground with a thud. “We shot you down,” they said. “Now you’re our prisoners.” They dragged us off to a deep depression near the middle of the field. In the bottom were several large cardboard boxes.
The older boys said, “This is our prison. Into your cells!”
I crawled into a big cardboard box. They shut me in. I panicked. Closed in the dark, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I shouted, “Let me out of here!”
Nothing.
“Please let me out of here! Let me out! Please get me out!” I shouted. Then cried, “Let me out of here. I don’t like this! It’s scary! Let me go!” I began sobbing and screaming.
I heard my mom coming from the direction of our house. She yelled at the boys. How could they do such a thing? She tore the box open and pulled me out, holding me close as I cried and cried.
I played war lots of times after that. No kids ever again tried to take me captive. But the terror of those moments in that closed-in darkness never left me.
My flying gear was stacked on the ground beside me on the flight line at Camp Holloway, an Army airfield outside of Pleiku in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. I was waiting for an instructor pilot to give me my in-country check ride (flight evaluation) in the AH-1G Cobra attack helicopter. I’d gotten to my new unit some days earlier and was anxious to get into the fight, afraid I’d missed whatever was left of the war. At the end of 1971, we thought the Vietnam War was about over. We’d won. We’d beaten the Viet Cong and were passing everything over to the South Vietnamese Army so we could leave. President Nixon called it Vietnamization.
With my check ride, I would be cleared to fly operational missions as a Pink Panther, a member of the 361st Aerial Weapons Company. We provided gunship support for highly classified special operations missions like the insertion and extraction of elite Special Forces teams, sometimes far behind enemy lines. The cover name was MACV-SOG, Military Assistance Command Vietnam–Studies and Observation Group. SOG teams did deep reconnaissance, raids, prisoner snatches, and downed pilot rescues
I had already completed a tour of duty in Vietnam flying armed fixed-wing OV-1 Mohawks on secret missions deep into enemy territory along the North Vietnamese coast, all over Laos, and into parts of Cambodia. I was back in Vietnam for a second tour, a senior captain at the ripe old age of twenty-five. I was full of myself, ready for anything the war had to throw my way. I had lots of combat exposure but wanted to experience a whole new perspective as a Cobra pilot.
I stood there shifting my weight and crossing and uncrossing my arms. Where the hell’s my IP? Let’s get this show on the road. My instructor pilot was out on a mission with most of the unit. Time passed slowly. My impatience turned to concern. Wonder what’s up?
A young lieutenant ran from the operations shack. He saw me standing there.
“Hey, new guy! Want to get a medal?”
Even though he’d been around for a while and I was brand new to the unit, he left it at “new guy” instead of the more common FNG (fucking new guy). I figured that was respect.
“Sure. What’s up?”
“Pick up your shit and follow me. You’ll be flying my front seat.”
“But . . .” I wanted to explain that I hadn’t yet had my required check ride, but the guy was gone. I chased after him, climbed into the front seat, and strapped in. Before I had my seat belt and shoulder harness fastened, he had the engine started. The rotor blades were turning.
As I tried to run through the aircraft checklist, the helicopter was dragging sideways out of its protective parking revetment. My first lesson in tactical operations in Vietnam: a fully armed and fueled Cobra was sometimes too heavy to hover on a hot day in the Central Highlands. The pilot had to use what power was available to drag the helicopter from the revetment and slide down the ramp to the runway. We skidded down the airstrip until we reached translational lift, the speed at which the rotors begin to function most efficiently at about twenty knots of airspeed. We were off the ground, climbing to altitude.
As we left the traffic pattern and headed north, the pilot, Mike Sheuerman, made a couple of radio calls. Then he came up on the intercom.
“All set up there?”
“Yeah.”
“Smoke ’em if you got ’em. This is going to be a hell of a mission.”
“OK.” I lit a cigarette with my Zippo, a gift from my brother. In the small mirror mounted on the side of my canopy, I saw Mike seated behind me. His helmet was painted black. His nickname “Hunter” was lettered on the front. He was one of the most experienced pilots in the unit.
“A recon team is trapped. Tries at getting them out have been fucked. We’re gonna join in and get this thing done.”
“Roger.” I shifted in my seat to get my chicken plate, a curved armored shield that covered my front from waist to neck, more comfortable. It sat heavily on my lap, held in place by the shoulder straps. The bottom edge dug into the top of my thighs. Most experienced gunship pilots put the plate on the floor and held it in place under their knees until they got close to their battle area. Some never used them. I endured mine for my entire first combat mission.
“We going over the border?” I asked.
“Yeah, we are. Laos. The team is out of NKP, Nakhon Phanom, Thailand. A couple of guys are still alive—maybe. The guy calling is not speaking English very well. Could be everyone’s dead and the NVA got the radio. Could be a trap.”
“Roger. Just let me know what to do.”
“Keep your eyes open. Go hot when I tell you. Look for enemy fire. Shoot when you see it. Shoot any bad guys you see. We’ll get more info when we get closer.”
“Roger.”
We flew north through a mountain pass. A broad green valley opened before us, dotted with tribal villages, each with a high-roofed communal house in its center. A river flowed north to south. After several miles, we flew over a city and big airfield.
“That’s Kontum, capital of Kontum Province, the next province north of Pleiku.”