Through the Valley. William Reeder
flew up Highway 14 another twenty miles to a town sitting at the intersection of two big roads. We banked left and headed west toward the triborder area, twenty-five miles distant, where the borders of South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia came together. A large military compound lay under our wing after we turned. It sat on rising terrain, overlooking the town below.
Mike announced, “Tan Canh, home of the ARVN 22nd Infantry Division. ARVN, that’s Army of the Republic of Vietnam. Got about a dozen American advisors down there, too.”
“What’s the town?”
“Tan Canh. Same name.”
A few miles further, off the south side of the highway, was Dak To. Two Cobras and two UH-1 Huey helicopters were parked to one side of the airstrip.
Mike landed and hovered to a refueling point beside the runway. I held the controls. He got out and refueled the Cobra, the engine and blades still running. A big, badly shot-up CH-53 helicopter was sitting off the western end of the runway. Several crewmembers scurried around it. I gawked.
Mike finished fueling and climbed back in. I asked, “What happened to him?”
“Jolly Green. Air Force helicopter. The first attempt to get the team. Looks like he got the shit shot out of him.”
“Roger that.”
I had a mix of emotions. Helicopter warfare was going to be a much closer fight than what I’d known. A rush of nausea and light-headedness was countered by a sense of exhilaration. I was getting back into the fight in a Cobra attack helicopter! Get ahold of yourself. Focus! I told myself. Concentrate on the tasks at hand.
Mike hovered over and parked the Cobra by the other helicopters. He shut the Cobra down and we got out and joined the other crews in a short briefing. The Hueys were from the 57th Aviation Company, call sign Gladiator, also out of Camp Holloway. The Cobras were from our own Pink Panthers. Captain Dennis Trigg, the Cobra flight lead and overall mission commander, gave the briefing.
“Radio freqs. We’ll be up 123.50, Victor. Understand the team is on 44.25 Fox Mike, but we’ll also try emergency push. Monitor that. Covey is up 233.00. Fly at altitude en route. Drop low level on arrival. Lots of triple-A out there. Be careful.” Triple-A was antiaircraft artillery. He had my attention.
We cranked the aircraft and took off as a flight of five headed into Laos.
As we approached the border, Mike pointed out the old Special Forces camp of Ben Het. A few hundred Vietnamese rangers occupied it with a couple of American advisors. Two Cobras were shut down on the airstrip. Mike flew over low and slow. I looked. They’d been shot full of holes. Good-sized chunks of airframe and rotors were missing from one. How had it had been able to fly at all, let alone get back across the border? Lucky crew!
“That’s Smitty’s bird. All the aircraft took hits. These two are out. You saw the Jolly Green.” Mike paused as if to let that register, and then continued. “Third time’s a charm. We’ve got to make this one work.”
We sure as shit do. I was wondering why I’d ever believed becoming an Army aviator was such a great idea. Why in hell had I pushed so hard to get back in the fight on my second tour of duty?
As we crossed the border, the chatter on the radios died down. Each transmission was all business. No more bullshit. This was big-time serious stuff. Our lives were on the line.
The Cobras dove to the jungle canopy. Yellow smoke rose from the trees part way up a hillside, marking the location of the survivors. The three gunships set up an oval racetrack right on the tops of the trees, covering each other, placing the bulk of our fire all around the billowing yellow smoke. After the run in, we broke in a tight left turn to come back around the racetrack again for another attack. Tense calls snapped over the radios. Covey, the Air Force forward air controller, was overhead directing a flight of A-1 Skyraiders, propeller attack planes. They dropped 250-pound bombs, napalm, and lethal cluster bombs on both sides of our pattern and all along the upper slopes of the hillside where the most intense fire was. Mike maneuvered our Cobra through a canyon walled with exploding bombs.
Bullets came at us from all directions. With the nose turret, I aimed the minigun and grenade launcher at the source of the tracers. A few NVA soldiers were visible through breaks in the trees. Mike was unleashing pairs of rockets from the Cobra’s stubby wings. We were taking hits. The sound of bullets cutting through the thin metal skin of our aircraft was like popcorn hitting the lid of a pan. I didn’t have time to think or pray. I had to do what I’d been trained to do: identify targets and fire.
The racetrack was established. The A-1s bombed everything around it. One of the Hueys entered the pattern, flew toward the yellow smoke, and then rocked back steeply into a rapid deceleration unlike anything I’d seen before. He came to a stop, hovering over the treetops while his crew threw ropes out both sides. Enemy fire erupted all around it.
I worked the Cobra’s weapons to cover the Huey and the other gunships. For a moment, I felt as if I were seeing it all in slow motion, a well-choreographed ballet. The performers moved with graceful precision, each perfectly executing his part. A close explosion wrenched me back to reality.
We shot as close to the Huey as we dared. After an eternity of taking enemy hits, the helicopter finally pulled up, with one guy hanging from the end of a rope. The other rope flailed in the rotor wash as the crew hauled it back in. The Huey turned and climbed for altitude, flying back out through the racetrack, while the Cobras continued to suppress the enemy fire. Then we all turned and followed the Huey, climbing as the A-1s dropped their remaining bombs on the jungle.
The guy dangled from the end of the rope all the way back across the border, and the Huey set down briefly at Ben Het. They got the survivor off the rope into the helicopter and took him to the 67th Evac Hospital at Pleiku. One survivor, one indigenous soldier, out of a special operations team was saved. The others were dead, their bodies claimed by the enemy.
We flew into FOB II (Forward Operating Base II), the SOG compound outside Kontum, for the mission debrief. A postflight walk-around showed a number of bullet holes in our helicopter. I looked at Mike, shook my head, and said, “I thought the war was supposed to be over.”
“It is pretty well over inside South Vietnam,” Mike said, “but not across the border. They’re all over the place out there and up to no good.” Mike finished the inspection, noting the results in the aircraft’s logbook before we went into the operations hut. After dissecting the mission with the aircrews and special ops staff, we cranked up the three Cobras and flew back to Camp Holloway in tight formation. During the flight, I thought about how I came to be back in Vietnam.
At the concluding ceremony of Cobra school, with our families watching, the director had said, “After you receive your graduation certificates and pick up your flight records, stop by admin and get your amended orders. Most of you who thought you were going to Vietnam have had your orders changed.”
Out of our class of twenty-four, only five of us went on to Vietnam. President Nixon’s policy of pacification, Vietnamization, and withdrawal was under way. It seemed to be working well. More than 400,000 U.S. personnel had already gone home. Only American advisors, support personnel, and a number of Army aviation outfits remained. They, too, were ending operations and heading home.
I spent a thirty-day leave with my family driving across the country visiting relatives. We stopped at every national park, monument, and historic site along the way, the routine we had established in our frequent moves. Separation was part of the job. Everyone kept up a brave façade, but I knew the sadness it created. I’d have to deal with the demands of combat. My wife, Amy, had to run the household as a single parent while worrying about me. Our marriage had been troubled for some time, which added to the tension. My four-year-old son, Spencer, tried hard to be brave and help his mom and his sister. Only baby Vicki escaped the emotional pain, but even she sensed the stress around her.
From Utah, where I left the family, I flew to the San