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(EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the fourth in a series of articles explaining the encounter which lasted from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m.)
LONG BINH, Vietnam - The inside of the helicopter was bedlam now, noise in the earphones from radio talk, yelling on the intercom, noise from the doorguns, from the men on the ground firing back at the helicopters, from the little LOH scout ships shooting just six feet off the ground, from the roar of rockets and as the shark-nosed Cobra gunships rolled in... a constant storm of noise.
Maj. John Jenks made an impossibly violent turn and the hundreds of empty M-60 machinegun cartridges and the black belt links rolled and clattered. People were yelling without using the intercom now.
Jenks' turn had spun us around and SP/5 James Reese, the crewchief, was shouting something about "...two guys, carrying a weapon, it took two of them to carry it, big machinegun, pointed right at us when they went in that hooch. . ."
"Which hooch, damn it. . . yeah. . . that one. . . hell, look at that bunker in there..." came over the intercom as Jenks rolled us into another skidding turn. He was on the radio. A Cobra came on in replying, ". . . rolling in . . . rolling in!. . ."
The offending hut blew up in a thunderous and spectacular fashion as the red rocket bursts blossomed into the innocent straw thatch. Another big mud bunker was revealed, then black smoke billowed with another explosion, more ammunition was blowing up down there.
Man Running Hard
I looked out the left door, we were very low now, almost on the rice tops, and I saw a pair of men in blue shirts running parallel with us on the trail, both with weapons, running hard. "Get 'em Russell... shoot those..."
Jenks was drowned out by the sound of SP/4 John Russell's M-60 almost as he spoke.
One man dropped a weapon, it splashed into the paddy, he went to one knee grabbed his left arm, blood was showing. The tracers arched away from him at the other men, 10 feet in front of him and racing death now as the red tracers came up.
A scout LOH, WO Russell Scudder with SP/5 Michael Binder in the observer's seat sped into view, its red streak of tracers pouring from the mini-gun mounted on the left side. Bullets danced and bounced all around the running men. He turned right, slipping and falling, then rolling. He shot one burst, aiming at nothing, being torn apart by both streams of tracers as he fired.
That Got Him
"That got him... let's see... two down in that bunker, one trying for that other bunker in the other hooch, two back by the dike, tow there, one there, one in the bush, on the Loach (the LOH scout ship) got over in the paddy... one we captured this morning... that's nine out of the 12. Three more down there," Jenks was saying.
Russell was watching the dike, he pressed his microphone button.
"That one I winged is coming in. He's finished in this war," he said.
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Sometime in this uproar Jenks had called his Rifle platoon and the UH-1H Lift ships had set them down in the paddy. There were in a line now, running toward the dike with the trail on it. I could pick out SSG. Roy Wooten and SSG Mike O'Reilly's squads. Lt. Doug Daly and PSG William J. Barber were maneuvering men down there. The infantrymen were grabbing up weapons, searching for documents.
The man holding his arm, the left sleeve of his blue shirt glossy with blood from Russell's bullet was walking very quickly down the dike toward Wooten, who watched him. Somebody with an M-79 moved over toward the hurt man. He put one hand up and waved it, then held his wrist again. The two G-I's motioned him down behind the dike with them. I saw a medic move over to work on him.
"Hell, the grunts have them running," Lt. Ralph Barber, the co-pilot yelled. This man was just breaking from some brush on the opposite side of the dike, further down from where the prisoner had come in, running diagonally along the front of the Rifle platoon, firing his AK 47 in bursts, trying to make it in some scrubby nipa palm 20 yards away.
The platoon seemed to fire all at once. An M-79 made a flash and crack just as all of those bullets hit. It was sudden and very thorough. The man was torn almost in two by the fire. He lay on his stomach and the paddy water turned red around him.
"That ten... wait a minute, that VC said he had 12 more men down there. That still leaves three if I don't count him. I can't keep the count straight, it's too hectic," Jenks was saying.
I'd been hearing the battalion commander of the 2nd Battalion 60th Infantry, 9th Infantry Division, on the radio talking to "Silver Spur Six" as Jenks' radio alias goes.
I saw more helicopters, a company lift. "Ten Pin Six" as the battalion commander identified himself, had been scolding his operation staff about their radios being weak and hurrying them to get "Alpha Six on the way" and occasionally talking to Jenks.
"Silver Spur Six, Ten Pin Six, over..." "Silver Spur Six, go ahead, over..."
"Silver Spur Six, my Alpha element is on the ground, I'll have them sweep the village very thoroughly. I'm worried about those two hooches burning. My Charlie-Alpha-Oscar (Civil Affairs Officer) will come out and see about making some reparations. I understand about the fire from them and that there were secondary explosions and VC killed in them, but sometimes the people don't have any choice. We'll try to check it out and maybe get some reparations for them if it's that way. Good shooting, a real good action, over..."
There was some arguing about the progress of the infantry company then. Then there was the sound of shooting over the other side of the village, a lot of shooting.
The infantry company had killed three Viet Cong who tired to spread out of a little patch of hedge, the radio said when the shooting stopped.
Jenks nodded.
"That's the squad he said he had. That VC we got told the truth, he had 12 men in that village all right," Jenks said.
It made his mathematics come out neatly. Eleven men dead, two captured, all of the weapons accounted for.
We headed back to Tan An. It was about 10 a.m.
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