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(EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the third in a series of articles explaining the encounter which lasted from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m.)
LONG BINH, Vietnam - The rotor blades took on a flapping snap of a noise as the little vista of paddy trails and village canted and slid by the plexiglass front of the chopper and wheeled around to the left door.
Maj. John D. Jenks made precise, fast, tight circles over the hut, Off by itself from the rest of the hooches, the finger of paddy running up on one side, brush edging in close to the bank.
"OK Gangbusters, that's the area right there, go down and do your stuff. Look it over good, there's supposed to be 12 of them" he said.
The "Gangbusters", two little egg-shaped LOH 6 choppers with a youthful warrant officer driving each one with an observer beside him, were suddenly bobbing and wheeling in a kind of crazy aerial dance, poking along hedgerows, cantering over to actually look inside of huts.
Sp4 John Russell, the left doorgunner, was suddenly yelling into the intercom system.
''VC...running...he's got a weapon, right up the trail..."
"Well, now.. yep...there he is, and he's got a weapon. Kill him," Jenks said.
Russell was shooting, gun thrust forward almost against the chopper's side as the ship wheeled.
I saw the man running. Tracers stormed into the dust around him. He had black trousers and a blue shirt and a web belt. He had a AK 47 automatic rifle angled across his chest. He was close to the chopper, so close I could see his eyes rolling. The tracers were tearing into the ground all around him. He dived for the brush, fell short, then rolled to a squat. I could see the muzzle flashes on his rifle and hear them close by the chopper, on the left, near Russell, who was walking a red stream of tracers carefully into the VC.
"Hey...he's shooting back, how about that?" Jenks voice came.
The man was flung over the bank held up by hedge brush, beaten down out of the brush, a leg still visible, then it was lighted by the red tracers and slid over the bank.
Russell sat back in the chopper, checking his ammunition belt. Brass and links were littering the floor, getting caught in the cleats of my jungle boots. I pried them out with an empty cartridge.
"That's the way to shoot, Russell," Jenks said. "He was right at you too."
Russell grinned. "Those AK 47's don't mean anything," he said. "They aren't much against my M-60."
He turned back, not appearing to look more than casually at the ground a few yards below or at the brush going by. The M-60 rested comfortably on the strap he had it hung from, one hand just holding it loosely, not alert looking at all.
Best Eyes I've Seen
"Russell's got the best eyes I've ever seen. I don't know how he does it. I'm a good scout, there's good scouts all over this troop, but I've never seen one like him," Jenks said, talking to me but audible to Russell and making him grin again.
He didn't quit grinning, but he grabbed the microphone button.
"Right there, right under the brush, weapon and man," he shouted.
"It's the one you shot," someone said.
"No, there's two of them...another guy..."
"Well shoot...shoot him..."
There was firing down below even as Russell's tracers streamed into the paddy water. An LOH bobbed more erratically, taking hits from the man
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Russell was shooting at. We were 50 feet high, it was 15 yards to the place the tracers were hitting.
I could see the dead man under the water, his face up out of it, blood seeping up through the paddy water, tangle of arms and legs. Then I saw a shiny, wet, black trousered leg and a bare foot. They kicked convulsively and a man slid down, a blue shirt again, another AK 47 sliding down into the water by him. He fell onto the corpse in the water.
The bullets kept hitting him, he kept jerking and rolling, the other body came up and was shot under again, Russell kept shooting and leaning back to put more rounds into the bodies until the chopper was in his way.
"All right, that's two of them. We picked up one, that's nine left. Russell, you did it again. That LOACH (vernacular for LOH) got hit, I don't think anybody's hurt. Got another one sitting on station, he's going in," Jenks said.
He had been on the radio, I hadn't noted what he said, but I remember he was talking to the pilots and his operations officer even as he piloted the helicopter and the shooting was going on.
"I think we're in business, Charlie," he said to me.
Caught In The Open
"They're caught in the open," I said. "They're in a bad way."
"While the shooting was going on, the scout over there spotted one running for the hooch. The Cobras got him. Caught the hooch on fire, see it? He's right in front," Jenks said.
As I looked, we were rocked suddenly by an explosion. A big, black, mushroom of smoke went into the air and the hut disintegrated, burning straw and coals flying. A big, crumpled mud bunker which had practically filled it was exposed, wrecked by whatever had exploded inside of the hut.
"Silver Spur Six... Cobra three... you see that secondary?"
"Silver Spur Six, Cobra... that's a rog! It must have been loaded with something big. That took care of the magazine, let's get after those people, they're down there, let's hunt 'em out," Jenks said.
The injured scout bobbed up into the air, then zipped for home. Another scout came on the air and introduced himself, then commenced buzzing along the brush on the trail.
He was shooting quickly, not waiting for Jenks, his bullets marking a bush just under the new scout seemed to explode. The second scout was caught by a line of tracers just as Russell's bullets hit the man shooting.
Does Half Spin
The VC stood up and did a slow half spin. I could see his weapon, it was a AK 47 but it had no stock that I could see, strangely bobtailed looking (it turned out to be a new type, with a folding stock which interested intelligence quite a bit). Then the weapon was not in his hands, it was in the air, spinning away from him as he made his turn. The tracers were all turning in on his chest and then he was gone, beaten down into the paddy, back under the ripped bush in the water.
"That LOACH got hit. (It was Lt. Gary Hibb's ship). That's two for them. Nobody got hurt, though. How many times I have to tell you you're great, Russell?" Jenks went on the radio then. "Calm down there, Gangbusters, if my doorgunner can see them from way up there at 50 feet, you ought to see them. You're right on top of them. Let's start finding these people, now!"
"Roger... roger... this is one eight... we got one under us..." That was from Warrant Officer Russell Scudder flying a LOH.
"Kill him, damn it..."
There was a rip of mini-gun fire, the LOACH circled and it's mini-gun burped again. (Scudder's LOH, had been hit several times but he was still flying as if nothing had happened at all.)
"Silver Spur Six... one eight... he's dead. Another VC down here."
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