Flying ash and trash was a welcome change from the day to day grind of Combat Assaults for the 187th Assault Helicopter Company flight crews. We would start early and finish late and haul supplies wherever the powers that be would determine. Sometimes it would be a single ship mission and sometimes it would be the whole company hauling supplies from the base camps at Cu Chi or Tay Ninh to the troops in the field. My favorite was hauling for the Special Forces at Tay Ninh East on the old airfield near the city.

     The American troops would receive their food in thermite containers and boxes of C rations. The Vietnamese would get sacks of rice, tied up pot bellied pigs, and crates of live chickens to go along with the large jugs of that most disgusting black liquid called Nuc Malm that they liberally doused all their food with. Fermented herring sauce sounds very unappetizing and smells like rotting fish.

     Daytime belongs to the Americans in Viet Nam, the gunships and fast movers were very effective when they could see the target to adjust fire and assess the battle damage. So flying in and out of a Special Forces camp in the morning was a cakewalk for us. We would call inbound to the camp right on the river to the West of Tay Ninh and receive the all quiet, clear to land while still several miles out. I could tell something was going on to the North of us.

     The radio traffic to Paris Radar was the first tip off that the Viet Cong were conducting a day time assault on the 25th Infantry under triple canopy jungle near the border with Cambodia. When I called the tower at Tay Ninh for landing at POL (refuel), I was advised to call operations immediately. So while sitting at an idle, hot refueling the UH-1D, the XO canceled the ash and trash mission and sent us up to medivac 25th Infantry troops. My heart started pumping a little harder and faster as my brain realized that the new mission was going to be a hot one. I called inbound on the frequency I had been given for the Grunts, and heard Vietnamese voices on the radio jabbering unintelligible nonsense. I could see gunships below me and called on Guard to find out "what's up" and was given the ground frequency and the C&C; push.

     The Grunts were taking sporadic fire and considered the Landing Zone hot. They also had a pile of wounded that were in desperate need of medical attention. The C&C; (Command and Control) had us hold to the south while they brought in more fast movers, and as the last of the concussion rings flashed over the top of the jungle, the Rat Pack dove in shooting through the new holes in the trees. The Grunts called "no fire in the LZ" and I started my approach with gun ship escort. Hovering down in a small landing zone filled with smoke surrounded with 300-foot trees is an adrenaline producing experience if there ever was one. Hovering straight down is not much fun anywhere, but not being able to see the ground made it even more challenging. The Grunt radio operator could hear us coming in and sent a guide-on for us to find the wounded.

     I was picking someplace to set the old girl down when I saw a Grunt run out of the tree line with his rifle over his head. I hovered up to him and set down on the uneven ground. Out of the tree line came the men carrying the wounded. Medics furiously were working on the battered bodies leaking blood everywhere. We were loaded in seconds and back to Tay Ninh with our precious load as fast as the helicopter would go. Almost before they had pushed the gurneys away we were airborne, streaking towards the rest of the men we had to leave behind. Oh shit, a mayday on guard, there is a helicopter down in the tiny Landing Zone. It was not a Blackhawk down, but any helicopter down brought an overwhelming response from Army Aviation. I held south again while the fast movers tried to get their ordnance through the trees to the enemy below them. I could see the LZ but it was so smoky that I could see nothing on the ground as I started down the hole in the trees. About half way down the outline of a D model started to come into focus and he was sitting on the only place to set down in the landing zone. Huge trees had been blown to make the Landing Zone/hover hole and the only place for me to hover was over the logs with branches sticking up trying to grab my tail rotor. I came to a hover while my crew watched the tail rotor inches over the log nearest the downed helicopter. The downed crew was pressed up against the log along with about ten wounded Grunts. The flight crew started handing up wounded until we had a load and then waved us off. I knew how terrified the downed crew must be, but they had their priorities, after all they had come to haul the wounded themselves and knew the new enemy for the wounded was time. To see flight crews in helmets with flack jackets on, muscling up the limp bodies of the badly wounded with no regard for their own safety still brings a lump to my throat. I would be back as fast as I could to retrieve them. I made the turnaround at the 45th MUST in record time but upon arriving back at the Landing Zone found my self in traffic trying to get in and help.