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(EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the sixth [and last we have obtained] in a series of articles explaining the encounter which lasted from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m.)
LONG BINH, Vietnam - We flew out into a world of muck, water, nipa palm and the marks of some old fierce battles scarred even that, and made it uglier.
"We had a big fight here, all around this area. We had a good contact right along in here," Maj. John D. Jenks said.
There was a very shocking sight then, just under the left of the helicopter. SP/4 John Russell, the door gunner, and I saw it at the same time.
There were bodies littering the area. Bodies swollen and grotesque, one lay on its back, arms and legs stretched, lifted, like no body should look. Some were in mud and water, some under the browned brush ripped aside by the fighting.
"They didn't come back for their dead even, " Jenks said. "They never used to leave their dead like that. They always tried to get their dead and bury them, hide them from us. They're not what they were before!"
The corpses disappeared, they were impossible not to stare at but the sight of them being relegated to the limbo world behind the helicopter was something to be thankful for. Russell and I looked at each other and then the new problem came up and blotted out whatever it was we might have thought to say at the moment.
There were dead men behind us someplace, lost in the swamp out there, but we thought of live men in front of us, waiting in the swamp to fight for their lives. Now they were hiding and they had to be found.
The problems of the living wiped out the feeling those dead had brought back there.
Too Apt Reminder
They were too apt a reminder of what some small mischance could deal to any man to dwell on, just then. They were easy to forget, until later reflection, when the day was over and the next one coming.
WO Russell Scudder and his observer SP/5 Mike Binder were already working. There isn't any adequate way to describe what a scout in an LOH does. He taunts, dares, harasses, in a kind of sneering little aerial dance within feet of suspected enemy positions. He flies in buzzing little swoops and goes off, then rushes back like some yapping dog deviling a bear.
Scudder had been given the Distinguished Flying Cross the day before for some piece of unbelievable bravery, which included landing his little scout right under enemy guns, picking up a wounded and trapped soldier, and moving him back out of the fire, then going back into it to find the men shooting.
I'd watched him then, slight, young, a kind of hair-trigger tension showing in his face, very quiet but half-contemptuous of all the people and things around him, visibly unimpressed at the medal. He flew like that now, looking for men, his rotor blades snapping at low brush, very contemptuous of any risk involved, with no respect at all for any threat aimed at him.
He was showing Jenks where he had spotted the six men, hovering over the spot, circling and using his little helicopter as a pencil to trace it all out.
Infantrymen Landing
Infantry from the 2nd Battalion 60th Infantry, 9th Infantry Division, were landing out beyond this patch of palm. There were scrubby trees. A broad creek cut the grove. Ditches and channels cut the terrain up, feeding into the creek, a row of nipa palm and hedge bushes cloaking them. The wooden piles of an old bridge were in the creek, the bridge long gone as a war casualty.
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The scout kept calling up bunkers, locating them, then the Cobra gunship flown by CW2 John Knox with CW2 Thomas Wie as pilot-gunner would dive in and knock holes in them with 17-pound rockets, the equivalent of a 105mm howitzer shell and valuable for flattening brush and "opening up" this kind of area.
Suddenly something caught Scudder's eye and he hopped over the creek and went into a circle.
He radioed Jenks that "I've got a new bunker here and there's a RPG rocket launcher and two rounds laying just five feet in front of it. I'm not going to let them come out to get it, either."
Then he commenced his circling and buzzing, holding the RPG captive. He tired of that. He had Binder drop hand grenades on to the bunker, he would zip out of range and as soon as the explosion came, he would rush back. He did that for a long time. Another scout had shown up, CWO Stephan Leon with WO Barry Tronstad as his observer, had taken over the other side of the stream, flirting with whatever the enemy was there as Scudder had been doing.
Somebody leaned over to me, SP/4 John Russell, the door gunner, I think, and yelled at me.
"You notice that fancy the Cobras were doing all day? That's the best man in Vietnam, he's a legend here, that is Spur 36, Capt. Jerry Thiels and WO Walter Koslosky. That other gun there is Spur 38 and he can make them talk too. That's Capt. John Malowney and WO Thomas Hennessy. They're the reason we can do this stuff, those Cobras," Russell yelled.
Great Respect
He had great respect in his voice as he told me the names and individual reputations and specialties of the men in the Cobras. From a man with phenomenal shooting ability - I'd seen Russell kill four men and wound another by simply catching a flashing glimpse and shooting with tremendous skill with his M-60 machinegun - it was the highest praise the men in the Cobras could get.
Russell already had two medal he'd earned while walking with the Rifle platoon of A Troop. He'd been pulled over to be Jenks' door gunner when tales of his hey and M-60 skill commenced being joined with speculation over how long he would live with his complete conviction that a man with an AK-47 was harmless when faced by a man with an M-60.
"He just didn't give them credit for being able to hurt him. He didn't have any respect for them at all. That can get you killed in the Rifle platoon, even when you're as good at it as old Russell. We couldn't believe he'd make it on the ground, he was too damned brave," one of the Rifle platoon's NCO's had told me. "We were glad when the Old Man got him for door gunner. Now, seeing how Six flies that bird of his right down with the scouts, we'd all rather be in the Rifle platoon, though, so maybe Russell ain't no better off, either."
Scudder came on then, his voice angry over the delay of the infantry in getting through the brush and mud and get the weapon and men he was holding captive.
"Hey, now I've got two guys in another bunker. We looked inside and they're in there with a big machinegun of some kind. We'll shoot a little and keep them occupied," he said.
The Cobras got into it then, Scudder would dance in and shoot or throw a grenade then dash out, a Cobra would shoot, then Scudder would go back.
The problem under us 50 feet or so wasn't as neat as the teamwork of the scout and gunship, though.
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