Run Run Cricket Run, page 14
Roberta felt the earth moving in her hand.
The white phosphorus rockets made the earth move too. The white plumes were clearly visible in the waning light and the gunners below reacted with fury, spitting out another string of red tracers. From Brown’s altitude 4,500 feet above the ground, there was ample time to avoid the gunfire with minimum maneuvering. As with other experienced Nails, he knew a miss was as good as a mile; as long as the tracers appeared to be moving in any direction on his windscreen, they were not on a collision course with his O-2. If they were stationary, they were, and breaking in an appropriate direction was the correct course of action.
The white plumes of the last Willy Petes were now large and easily visible, even in the dark. “Hit my smoke,” Roger told the A-1s. “I’ll be east over the trail. Break to the karst coming out.” Brown favored the A-1s on the pull off from the target. If they got hit, they would be in the safest bailout area.
“Roger that. It is Sandy lead is in hot.”
No marriage was perfect, but damn I tried. He’d bought her a Golden Retriever puppy for her birthday. She treated it like a child, cuddling it every morning for 15 minutes, talking baby talk to it, dressing it up for Halloween as a witch. I wish she could have treated me like the dog.
“Nice drop, lead. Sandy Two, extend that line.”
She used to pin earrings in the tufts of hair behind the dog’s ears or put Easter Bunny ears on the dog and then laugh for hours.
Even more explosions followed the initial blast of the bombs, leading Brown to conclude there was indeed a very large staging area. The initial explosions were near the edge of the tree line. He guessed, correctly the supplies or trucks, or both, extended into the trees toward the base of a large karst formation riddled with caves. No surprise there. It was uncommon to find guns anywhere near an open space.
He watched the drop of the second A-1 with continued satisfaction, as the secondary explosions continued.
Why did you bother coming to Hawaii for my R and R? What a hell of a place to ask for a divorce. Why not just write me a Dear John like most unhappy women? I went to Hawaii to get screwed, and I sure did.
He jinked hard to the right to avoid yet another spray of red balls from a 23mm gun. Along with other Nails, he hated 23s more than any other gun in the NVA arsenal even though they were the oldest guns of the large caliber anti-aircraft artillery. Their barrels long ago lost their rifling from years of use, first against the French and now the Americans. As a result, they sprayed the shells. Larger guns sent the clips up in a straight line. Miss the first one and the rest would follow in the same path. Not 23s, which were more like shotguns. If that were not enough, they fired 20 or more shells at one burst as high as 10,000 feet.
What I’ll miss the most about you is the Bobbi who was so innocent she couldn’t tell a joke without destroying the punch line. You would get so tongue tied the group you were telling the joke to would laugh until they were in spasms.
It was dark now. Roberta was saying the moon and stars were the gifts you gave to the dark and endless skies as the air was filled with strings of tracers. The hornet’s nest awakened earlier was approaching the furious stage.
“Assholes,” Roger muttered under his breath. “Sandys, I have another 23. Let’s try some Funny Bombs on him.”
“Roger that, Nail.”
Brown repositioned his rocket switches to all four pods, and as he rolled the O-2 over to the left and down, he began to salvo all the rockets remaining since he was low on fuel and wouldn’t need them anymore for marking. They lit up the trail and even after the blast from the impact died down, the huge plume of white phosphorous smoke was still visible under the quarter moon. The gun he picked out was slightly to one side of the smoke, and it made the tragic mistake of marking its position in relation to the smoke by opening up one last time. For the A-1s, it was like shooting fish in a barrel.
Roberta sang, “I knew our joy would fill the earth, and last till the end of time, my love.”
The muzzle flashes were clearly visible to the Sandys and they dropped one Funny Bomb each. The gun stopped firing. As the magnesium of the Funny Bombs was ignited by thermite initiators, they began to boil like a scene from hell. The white-hot inferno grew and grew, too bright to look at, melting everything it touched. Ammunition began cooking off, sending Roman candles into the night air.
“And last till the end of time,” sang Roberta.
The Sandys’ blue-tinged exhaust flames were visible as they pulled up hard and headed for home, tracers from other guns following them all the way.
Reminds me of your incredible temper, mused Brown. I will have to say one thing, though my darling. If I had missed the hell, I would have missed the heaven too. It was worth it. I hope you find happiness.
“Enjoyed it Sandys. Stop by the Nail Hole and I’ll buy you a beer.”
“You’re on, Nail. Good work.”
Roberta sang, “The last time ever I saw your face, your face, your face, your face, your face.”
After landing, Brown joined the nightly party at the Nail Hole that always began around suppertime and continued until nearly morning. The daytime FACs began grilling steaks on the barbecue pit starting around sunset and wouldn’t stop until last of the night flights checked in. Poker and bridge tables were fully staffed, and war stories filled the air. A war novel could have been written with nothing but a few nights there with a tape recorder. Brown was the last daytime FAC to land, and his description of the Funny Bomb attack was greeted with back-slapping and a few free beers. Brown joined a table of Nails who were still eating. Later, the Hobo pilots, flight suits still drenched with sweat, entered to a burst of cheers from the Nails and the party shifted into overdrive. Brown, true to his word, bought them all drinks for the rest of the night. At ten cents a drink, his total outlay was $3.20 at night’s end.
“What’s been your experience with the trail traffic?” asked one of the newer Nails, Capt. Howard “Howie” Zeller, as he sidled up to Roger. “Are we making a difference?” Like most New Beans, Howie was not just asking to be polite; he was trying to ascertain just what the odds of dying were.
“Well, we’re killing more, but it’s just an indication there are more trucks to kill. And anyone who’s been here almost a year, like I have, will tell you this is a screwed-up war. I don’t know how many trucks I’ve killed, but I suspect you could fire a Willy Pete at any clump of trees bordering the trail and hit something.”
Zeller pressed the point. “Is there any hope of winning this war or are we fooling ourselves?”
“Howie, your definition of victory needs to be surviving for a year. This war was lost before it started. In a few months, we’ll be begging the North Vietnamese for terms. And, if I don’t miss my guess, they aren’t going to give us crap. What I don’t understand is how in the hell we got here to begin with. What exactly did Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and McNamara have in mind? Why don’t we ask Thatcher? He’s the expert.”
Ted Thatcher was playing the piano and suggested they ask Don Jefferson to pull out his guitar. The song, which was the answer to the question, was sung to the tune of “Both Sides Now.” It was an especially appropriate song for the sweat-stained night crews:
Layered decks of strata cue
A nine-eighths cover hides the view.
It’s overcast above them too.
We’ve looked at clouds that way.
They’re Popeye now at seven five
Climbing, turning in a dive,
It’s vertigo we must surmise.
We’ve been in those clouds too.
Hey Moonbeam, this is Nail 83,
This turbulence is killing me.
There’re no trucks here that we can see.
Request we RTB . . . right now.
Nail 83 please standby one,
Request you check out 601
That Boomer flight is almost done.
He must get bombs away.
Moonbeam, Moonbeam Nails 83
I don’t believe you’re hearing me
My TACAN’s out, I have to pee,
I guess you don’t know clouds . . . at all.
The question of winning the war was answered with this song, lots of alcohol, and another four hours of war stories as the Nail crews continued to arrive from the night missions.
14
The Old Man and the Trail
Lt. Col. Melendez took off at 0600, his OV-10 thriving on the cool air of a Thailand morning. The new Squadron Commander had never been in combat until this tour, and this was his first solo mission. His predecessor, Lt. Col. Everen, completed his tour with the respect of his squadron through fair management and a respectable number of combat missions. Melendez was a handsome man with a ready smile and sturdy build. He might have been a football player, but no one asked him if he was, and he never mentioned it.
Lt. Col. Melendez’s few checkout missions were with seasoned veteran pilots in the 23rd, but there were no particularly exciting air strikes. Today, he was hoping to achieve the Nail equivalent of a birdie on a golf course: Finding his own targets and coming back with some confirmed BDA, or Bomb Damage Assessment. One thing every Squadron Commander faced in combat was the inevitable suspicion by the junior officers that the Old Man had picked a milk run. Col. Melendez was determined to put their suspicions to rest on his first solo mission. There were Squadron Commanders who became famous for being combat leaders, Air Force commanders such as Jimmy Doolittle and Actor Jimmy Stewart. Col. Melendez was not so naïve as to think he would become famous, but he sincerely wanted to earn the respect of his squadron, so he knew he would have to work hard to achieve respectable results.
There was no one benchmark to surpass. The fluid nature of combat over the trail offered numerous opportunities for respectability. A large number of truck kills, for example, perhaps ten or more on one mission. Destruction of an anti-aircraft gun complex was a particularly admirable achievement. Guns were often grouped in clusters to take advantage of a single aiming radar, and killing several guns at once, especially if they were all firing, was right at the top of the testosterone scale.
This was the setting which Squadron Commander Lt. Col. Melendez found himself in 1970, on a June morning. As he reached his cruising altitude of 6,500 feet, he pulled out his binoculars and began scanning the terrain below him in Sector II. That’s when he lucked out. He was flying almost straight and level, using his binoculars to scan the terrain below. Flying straight and level over the Ho Chi Minh Trail was not dissimilar to walking across the middle of Fifth Avenue in New York City reading the newspaper at noon. He was taught never to stop jinking by his checkout pilots, but in his desire to show his worthiness, he violated the rule. Sure enough, a five-gun complex, one 57mm radar guided gun with four smaller 37mm guns, reacted with gusto to the opportunity.
If there was a Vietnamese word for ‘plum,’ this was one. They all opened up on cue and Lt. Col. Melendez found himself in the situation he had been looking for—a chance to impress the troops back home. With the noisy turboprop whine of the engines of the OV-10, the Squadron Commander couldn’t hear what O-2 pilots heard on a regular basis through their open window on the right side: a characteristic sound like sheets ripping. But he did feel a dull thud in his belly tank. He broke hard to the right, before the guns could reload. He headed to safety over the mountain range on the NKP side of the trail, checked his instruments and flight controls, and found nothing awry. Still uncertain, he called the FAC in Sector III, Tex Robertson, and arranged a rendezvous over the mountains to the west, toward NKP.
Anyone getting hit over the Ho Chi Minh Trail faced a number of potential outcomes. The trail, by nature, was a life or death environment, and death was a very real possibility. Death wore many faces. The pilot/crew could be killed immediately. AAA could be instantaneously lethal because most of the projectiles were not just large lead bullets. They were little bombs. If they hit something, they exploded. If they didn’t hit anything, they exploded at or near the peak of their trajectories and the shrapnel might hit something if close enough, such as a cockpit window, an engine, a wing, or a flight control surface.
Lt. Col. Melendez didn’t know what damage had occurred, but he did know bailing out over the Ho Chi Minh Trail was a form of Russian Roulette. Some of the most dramatic stories from the Laotian war were the survival accounts of downed airmen. Baker 22 Bravo was such a man, as was Bat 21. But the most heartbreaking stories were of pilots who ejected over Laos, were captured, and taken to the inhumane prisons in North Viet Nam, such as the Hanoi Hilton. Many of them were given up for dead by their families and friends since no one knew where they were. Often, pilots shot down over Hanoi or Haiphong, were paraded in front of cameras for propaganda purposes so their families at least knew they were alive. Not so the Laotian captives. So, understandably, Lt. Col. Melendez breathed a sigh of relief as he made it safely over the mountains.
After some very anxious minutes, Capt. Robertson arrived at his Squadron Commander’s location and flew all around the OV-10.
“Colonel, you have a hole the size of a golf ball in your belly tank and fuel is streaming out. Punch it off.”
The Squadron Commander punched off the tank, watched it drop away, and headed back to NKP, his reputation established, and legacy assured. He had faced death and prevailed.
Later that evening, the ‘Old Man’, as military commanders the world over are often called, couldn’t buy a drink at the Nail Hole. Ted Thatcher bought him the first one.
“Colonel, from what Tex told us, you’ve found one hell of a way to locate a gun complex. My hat is off to you, sir!” He was smiling, of course.
The squadron commander laughed. “Ted, everyone needs a lesson in humility from time to time. I got mine early, and if nothing else, maybe the New Beans after me will hear my story and pay attention to you old heads. And by the way, didn’t you and Major Khampat come back with a hole in your wing last week? Was that your lesson?”
Thatcher laughed. “Touché, colonel, touché.”
Colonel Melendez would never know why the tank didn’t explode, but when the lights went out at night, he would never forget the beast he faced. Before his tour was over, he would compile a respectable resumé, but he would live the rest of his life hearing a dull thud in quiet moments, especially late at night when there were no distractions. And the airmen he commanded would experience their own quiet moments the rest of their lives, some hearing a dull thud, others enveloped in a spray of red tracers, and still others seeing human beings swallowed up in an orange splash of napalm. General Sherman was right. War was, and always would be, hell.
15
The Second Kick of a Mule
Mark Tinga came back from Bangkok after a one-week pass after the MiG incident, pissed off and ready to kill something. The first morning after his return, he met the TUOC Trolley and 30 minutes later, briefed and fully suited for combat, he pushed the OV-10 engines up to takeoff power. The morning air was crisp, a blessing in the otherwise tropical climate of Thailand, but Mark knew it would be hot and humid on his return. He headed to the mountains near Ban Karai pass, the southern-most pass on the border between North Viet Nam and Laos. It was a favorite hunting area of his. His specialty was anti-aircraft guns. For some reason, killing guns gave him a special thrill. Perhaps the adrenalin rush knowing guns, unlike trucks, offered a visceral challenge. Killing a truck was like stepping on a worm. Killing a truck was like stomping a snake.
This morning he surveyed the jungle below him, asking himself, “Where would I put an anti-aircraft gun to get maximum exposure to the aircraft trying to kill me and at the same time not making me too visible?”
In the triple canopy jungle of Laos, it was an easy question to ask, but a hard question to answer. Leaving the mandated safe altitude of 5,000 feet above the ground, Mark once again applied his solution to the problem of finding guns by dropping down to tree top level on the mountains abutting the trail and then skimming down over the trees toward the flood plain below. He pulled the power back, keeping the engine noise to a minimum, hoping the surprise element would assure his safety.
This was completely against all the rules, but normally the tactic worked because of the element of surprise. He often got a peek at a gun under camouflage netting invisible from a few thousand feet higher. Usually, the gunners were caught by surprise and were either unable to get off a quick shot or incapable of aiming accurately. This morning his system did not work. As he completed his first pass, he applied full power and headed back up the slope of the mountain to reach a safe altitude. Of course, nothing was ever safe over the trail, and a very well camouflaged 23mm gun hidden near the base of the mountain proved the point. Mark’s OV-10 became an airborne scrap yard. It was hard to tell where he got hit because both engines quit and none of the controls worked. Both stick and rudder were useless. His ejection occurred so fast that later he could not even remember it. So much for the bad news. The good news was he was close to the trees. Within less than a minute he was perched in the top of one.
Nail 76, Jim Russell, was flying Sector II the same morning and was surprised to hear Mark’s voice on guard channel.
“Where in the hell are you?” he asked. “I saw you less than an hour ago in briefing.”
“East of the Chokes. You’ll see the chute in the trees. But be careful. There’s a 23 almost on top of me.”
Mark’s voice was amazingly calm. Even he thought so. He did feel somewhat protected because he couldn’t even see the ground as high as he was in the tree.
“Roger that,” replied Russell. “Let me get on the horn and get the Jollys airborne. Call me when you hear my engines.”
“Roger that.” Mark took off his flight helmet and, in an attempt, to secure it to a branch, he dropped it. He was amazed he never heard it hit the ground. Camouflaged as it was, he didn’t worry about it giving his position away.
