SHOT IN THE BELLY

 Entering the valley, IT reaches out and demands that I acknowledge its commanding presence.  To another, it may blend in with all its brothers and sisters on the west side of the Valley.  IT is only another pile of house sized rocks and fifty foot trees thrusting up through them.  It is only a “foot hill” to the mountains that fill the western skyline.  However, to me, it offers an offending and challenging slap upon the face.  In my little bird, I feel its insolent and malevolent offense.

 This is the An Lo Valley and Flurry hill is always the first thing that I see upon entering the valley.  My first mission while flying for the Cav had me orbiting that pile of rocks.  Jim (Fearless Freddie) Flurry and his observer were shot down over that pile of giant sized rubble.  With the call “Red Bird Down,” an all out effort was started to save Jim and his Observer.  As a useless newbe, I ended up flying as the sandbag in the second C&C ship.  In time, the Blues recovered Jim and his observer’s bodies.  The night before, Jim, a First Lieutenant, gentle soul, and senior scout, had spent a couple of hours talking to the newbe Wobblie One.  In kindness Jim, as I knew him, listening to my ever growing excitement in becoming an Aero Scout.

 I continue loath that hill beyond the words I can muster.  Time has not changed my loathing.  Thirty years have passed and but a handful of us continue to call it Flurry hill.  Undoubtedly, less could find it on a map by that name.  I am sure that those who flew in that valley a year later did not know that pile of rocks by its proper name.  However, IT shall taunt me forever with its insolence.

 The valley, itself, was part of a strange world.  At that time, a tragic and sad balance had been reached.  In a strange way, it resembled the trench warfare of the Western Front of the First World War.  We were not strong enough to push the little people out of the surrounding mountains because it was their home turf and they out numbered us.  In turn, they were not strong enough to overcome our superior firepower.  We probed, the Cav and the LRRPs.  And they probed, the sappers and rocket attacks.  To what end, only the death of more young men.  I suppose it mattered little, to the people who moved the pieces on the board, if they little people or big people.  The drafted sons of two countries were pawns of something bigger than ourselves.  Nevertheless, I loath that hill and the little people who inhabited it.

Over the months, I had rounded the corner, into the valley, and looked, eye ball to eye ball, at that insult countless times.  Further defining Jim’s hill, during my tour, the only time that any friendlies had been on the hill had been to recover Jim and his observer’s body.  That obscene pile of rocks and trees, apparently, was one of the Bad guy’s Hiltons.  Upon occasion, I had even heard diesel generators running from somewhere deep within the hill.

That day, it was my job to probe at the little people.  Clearly, I must have made mistake on my second pass.  Possibly, I had become predictable over the months.  Then again, maybe what happened was dumb luck of the bad variety.  Suddenly – I looked down and saw dozens of little people.  Dressed in their tan uniforms, they were laying on their backs and shooting straight up as I flew over them. It would have been impossible for them to miss me!.  With my panic stricken voice pitched to the level that caused glass shattered for miles around, I cried out. “Taking Fire!”  My personal war with the despicable pile of rocks and trees continued as it continued till I was forcibly carried out of Vietnam on a litter.

THUMP – THUMP – THUMP Three solid hits lifted the little helicopter.  It was like the keel beam had taken three heavy blows from a sledge hammer. Both terrified of getting shot and angry at the insult to my Scouting skills, my voice had climbed to a pitch which would have shattered crystal.  “Ohhhhhhhhh Shit!  I just took three hits in the belly.”

 The radio net went silent.  It was a deadly and dread-filled silence.  C&C said nothing.  The Snake drivers kept their peace and didn’t even call rolling in.   Though, I knew that they were.  I could count on them taking on anything the little people could throw at them.  Such was their unbelievable dedication to protecting me.  Little Captain Tommy Burke was my wing man and he was never know for being quiet when the bad guys came out to play.  Sweating, shaking, and mad because my personal nemesis had throw a fast ball that hit me and hurt me, I could hear that he was pouring mini-gun fire on the bad guys as I was making my break down the hill.  Yet, surprising me, he also made no comment.

 As it always did just after I had taken fire and had also taken what felt like bad hits, the sweep second hand of the clock slowed to a crawl. After what subjectively felt like hours, very hesitantly, C&C came on line and spoke very softly.  The soft gentleness of the Major’s voice, caused me to make a mental double take because it was so heavy with concern.  “How you doing, One-Four?”

 “Hmm,” I thought to myself.  For an instant, as I pondered the Major’s tone, I forgot my private little war with Flurry hill.  “Being that I am usually and not unreasonably called “Magnet Ass, I’m bewildered.  Further, my taking hits while on a recon is not a newsworthy affair.  I ask myself, what in the heck is this, new-found concern for ole One-Four all about?”  Slowly dawns the light of understanding.  The gallows humor of the situation becomes clear to me.  It was my little bird which had taken the hits and not ole Bruce.  However, with a scream of terror mixed with rage and shock, I had said that I had taken hits in the belly.  I keyed the mike in relief with a delight filled laugh in my little head, as well as a bashful smile on my face. For a moment, I was a little boy on an adventure and not locked in a struggle to cheat my malevolent foe of his prize.  “I’m doing fine, Sir.  However, I fear that my little bird is badly hurt.”

As soon as I stopped transmitting, my wingman excitedly came up on line.  Like everyone who had ever flown my wing, he lived to keep me alive. While some had suggested that I was slightly excitable while under fire – Tommy had me beat in the category excitableness.  “He started screaming.  Shut down!  Shut her Down!  You got fuel pouring out all into you exhaust.! YOU’RE GOING TO BLOW UP!”  Momentarily caught between my personal feud with Flurry hill, and the little boy on an adventure, I thought to myself.  “Damn-it Tommy, I just soiled my britches, made a dang fool of myself, and am in the process of recovering from a near heart attack.  And now, you are hurting my ears.”

 Glancing down at the fuel gage, I saw the needle was falling like a rock.  This caused my happy spirits at finding myself alive to also nose dive!  “Gawd, I must have a heck of a hole in my tank.  Scotty, being true blue and the greatest observer God ever put on earth, while hanging on the skid and looking underneath the little bird keyed his mike.  (By the way.  I resort with extreme and excessive physical violence to any who would suggest that God gave any Scout a better observer than my dear friend Scotty!) “Shit, Boss.  There must be a hole the size of my fist in the fuel bladder and its flowing right up into the exhaust.”

 Unwilling to accept defeat by that black-spirited piece of real estate, I attempt to rationally analyze my situation.  Taking a split second for reflection, I am surprised how half of me is in a panic filled rage and the other half is cooly rational.  “The engine is still running.  I just started the recon and this bird is very heavy!  Autorotation?”  Deep within, I know if I shut her down and attempt an autorotation, the hill will have somehow won. Somewhere, I had read about a WW II pilot who said of his wounded bird.  “As long as she will remain in the air, I ain’t about to jump out of her!”  It made aviation sense to me.  Further, it nicely fit my need to deny Flurry hill another victim!  With power, if I didn’t loose all my fuel first, I could make the sand bar in the middle of the An Lo river.  Without power, and as heavy as she was, I’d go into the rocks of Flurry hill.  Were that to happen, it would have won and probably killed us all.

 My decision was easy.

 Keeping her nose down and the power pulled in, I headed for the sandbar.  It was a great race between the fuel running out of the bottom and into the white-hot exhaust and reaching the sandbar.  I was grimly determined to make the sandbar.  I had the bit firmly gripped in my teeth.  This conflict was going to end on my terms!  Even if I had to carry ole 624 on my back, I was not going to surrender to my dark nemesis.  Through it all, my calm, cool, and collected wingman Tommy kept screaming something about blowing up as an incentive to land quickly.  Everyone else on the net was quietly watching the race and keeping their thoughts to themselves.  Never having watched a bird going down, I had no idea what their thought might have been.  However, I am sure that they were troubling.

 God bless, Tommy.  Wiser today, then I was then, I now know that he was truly good people.  Sometimes, and for reasons I still don’t understand, I resented that this little Captain who was shaped like his Loach.  The little beer keg could drink me under the table, get up and walk a straight line.  (Of course, I never tried to keep up with him.  Mrs. Carlson’s little boy wouldn’t do something like that!)  However, and more important than my stupid resentments, Little Tommy Burke was a caring and compassionate man who didn’t want to see us blow up.  Maybe he thought I was a better pilot that I thought I was.  Therefore, he wasn’t worried about my autorotating an over-grossed Loach into the bolders.  Of course, Tommy, nor anyone else, knew about my personal war with Flurry hill.  He did not know my motivation.

 Looking back through the wisdom of time,  I’ll always remember him best for one very special thing.  Several months later, when I heard that Scotty had died of his wounds, it was Tommy who told me.  I don’t know why it was him.  But, somehow, as I reflect upon him, I think he asked the Major if he might.  Only at the time, I didn’t recognize that quality about him.  Struggling to control myself having been told that my best friend had died, I began to loose control of my stoic trooperness.  Seeing I was breaking down, he reached out, and held my clenched fist as I cried like a baby in front of every pilot at the O Club at Lane.  When I was done, he offered to take me out for an aimless walk.

 I WON!  My reader might think such emotion was silly and immature.  However, for me winning was everything.  Just as the battle was for keeps, in my mind, it was winner – TAKE ALL!  Ole 624 and I made it to the sand bar.  Shut down was easy!  Ten seconds after my skids touched the sand, the rotor started windmilling to a stop.  Thankfully, Tommy’s concern about blowing up and the fire danger was no longer an issue.  The fuel tank was bone dry.  Scotty and the front seater were already out of the aircraft and had set up their sixties and firing on that forever-be-damned hill hoping to smoke out the sniper(s).  Keying the mike, I told C&C that we were down safe, but receiving some sniper fire.

 “Red One-Four, I’m going to keep the Snakes firing on the hill with their minis while I come down and drop you the sling rig.  I have the second team on the way.”  “SLING RIG!  What in the bloody blue blazes was that?  The Major continued, like he assumed I knew what I was doing when it came to sling loading a broken Loach.  “All you have to do is pull the main rotor blades off and bolt on the connector.  If you can’t do it, we’ll have to wait for maintenance to recover 624.”   “GREAT!”  I thought to myself.  Like I knew how to take the rotor blades off a Loach without using a tree to knock the dang things off.  Though the Old Man didn’t know about my personal battle, he was blackmailing me because he knew that I loved ole 624.  What he did not know that I wasn’t about to let that black menace, towering two to three hundred meters to my west, win.  Being the dutiful trooper I was, I said.  “Roger that, Sir.”

 Zing, I heard another round pass close by.  “One Four, before you turn off the batteries, here is what is going to happen.  I got two empty slicks on the way.  The first that comes in will pick up the blades and your observers.  Then, when you have her all rigged up for slinging, I’ll come in and you hook up the sling to my C&C bird.  Then the third Slick will pick you up.”

 True to his word, the Major came by at a high hover and dropped of the Sling and the connecter that bolted to the rotor head.  His right door gunner was having the time of his life.  It was one of the few times that the kid got a chance to work out with his 60.  Therefore, he was doing his best to melt the whole gun down!  As long as he was shooting at Flurry hill, he had my full support.  Scottie and the crew chief keep shooting random burst into bolder strewn hill.  At higher altitude, the Snakes were making lazy passes.  Little Tommy was probably still screaming for me to shut the engine off.  Nevertheless, he had set himself between me and the hill and was cruising back and forth like a worried sheep dog.

 Zing.  Running in a bit of a zig zag pattern, I knelt down beside the crew chief and asked him how to remove the rotor blades.  He gently laughed at my ignorance and offered to do it.  Well ------- I considered it for a moment.  However, the Major had “asked/blackmailed” me into doing it.  Deep inside, and almost unknown to me, I didn’t want the hill to get him.  This battle was between me and the hill. Zing.

 This Zing stuff was getting tiresome.  However, I was too angry to be properly afraid of the potential behind each little zing.  “Sir, just climb on the rotor head, pull open the three snap clips on each blade and pull them straight up.  Then wiggle the blades out and throw them on the ground.  We can easily re-track the blades later.”  Zing.

 Running the fifteen to twenty feet back to 624, I debated about wearing my Chicken plate while trying to get on the rotor head.  I chickened out and kept it on!  While, my war might have been personal, I wasn’t without some thoughts for my own safety.  I climbed up onto the rotor head from the side away from Flurry hill and sat my shaking butt on the rotor head.  I was starting to come down from my overload of epinephrin.  The pins were not easy to pull out.  However, the occasional zing going past my ear helped to motivate me.  I found the strength to pull the stuck pins and man handle each blade all alone.  Eighteen pins were pulled and safely tucked into a zipper pocket of my flight suit.  When we left, I decided that I was only leaving spent shell casings for the hill to claim. The four rotor blades were thrown on the ground.

With the heavy thump of its big rotor the first slick was on short final and I yelled to Scottie and the crew chief to grab their boxes of bullets, bombs, and grenades which filled 624 and mount up with the slick.  “Hey — don’t forget the rotor blades.”  The little boy on an adventure was proud of himself.  He had put a wounded bird down without destroying the blades.  I didn’t want to loose them now. Zing.  With a cloud of dust and the sad noise of the departing Huey, it got VERY VERY VERY lonely sitting on that rotorhead. Zing.

Well — I wasn’t done yet.  Scottie had given me the sling and rigging connector.  Sensing victory, the nifty little rigging connector went on slicker than whale poop.  All I had to do was put it on the proper place and finger tighten four bolts.  Even a dumb Wobbly One like me could do that without a crew chief looking over my work.  Our TI might have even signed it off.  Zing.

C&C was inbound and flaring.  For a moment, I forgot about my war with Flurry hill.  The hill had become the problem of four Snakes and three Loaches.  Goooooooolllllleeeeeeee!  A Huey flaring to a hover directly over your head, while you are trying to balance yourself, as you stand on top of a Loach, gets your TOTAL attention.  The driving wind, blowing and biting sand, and pounding rotor noise was overwhelming.  Zing.  I heard it, but didn’t hear it.  Under my breath, I muttered something about “the dumb SOB not being able to shoot straight. ‘  I felt like I was the better man and was winning despite getting hit with the fastball