“Your marking grenade landed in some dead elephant grass down there. The bird’s backwash blew us up a bit of a fire, which is now burning in a clump of bamboo. Mates, that’s bloody bamboo you hear exploding.”
He paused momentarily, allowing us time to regain our composure and to laugh at ourselves as we did so —although on the whole there was really very little to laugh about.
“Skip, called base and gave ’em a sitrep,” he continued. “Sanford [the team’s communications sergeant] just called back and said Danang’s gonna have a Huey out here in thirty minutes or so. Same time, I told him to pass on that the crew’s okay.”
While waiting for the Huey, Kipler pulled me aside and suggested I accompany the others back to Danang to have my foot taken care of.
“May not be bothering you much right now, sir, but I promise you it’ll be hurting like hell later on.”
“No way, Kip! You’d be left as the only round eye on the op, and Nungs or no Nungs, we don’t do things like that. ‘Sides, it’s a very minor cut. Once we get these people out of here, I’ll take a couple no-sweat pills, slap a battle dressing on it, and be as good as new.”
He smiled as if he knew better but said, “Okay, Skipper. You’re the boss.”
The sun had set and darkness was rapidly approaching when we heard the Huey overhead. Although I suppose one could argue as to which of us had proven ourselves least qualified to land a helicopter on our downward-sloping LZ, I decided to ask our visiting Marine captain, the pilot of the downed H-34, to bring the Huey in. He at least spoke the Huey pilot’s language. Besides, if the government should find me liable for the loss of its H-34, one helicopter was all I could afford on lieutenant’s pay.
After talking to the airborne Huey a couple of minutes, the captain turned to us and said, “Okay, he’s gonna land in basically the same attitude I did.”
Oh, that’s just great!
“Only difference, he’s gonna touch down with only his uphill skid and then hover, so he wants us to load quick. Got an ACL eight; there’s four of us. How many you gotta get out, Lieutenant?”
“Just one, Sergeant Luden. No, make that two. Forgot about our wounded striker.”
“Super, that makes it six and no problem. Now listen up, since the Huey’s gonna hover at a level keel.” He paused, smiled, then said,
“Which, in passing, is the best way to land a rotary-wing aircraft. Landing or lifting off a helicopter at a cant can be disastrous! ‘Course, we all know that now, don’t we?”
His crew chuckled at this, and so did we.
“But seriously,” he continued, “with the bird hovering like that while we board from the uphill side, those blades, which ain’t that far off the ground to begin with, are gonna be low and dangerous. So keep your heads down and move under them in a low crouch.”
Unfortunately, the Huey’s onboard medic didn’t hear the captain’s warning. The helicopter came in with its left skid uphill and began hovering. As soon as the skid touched ground, the medic, who I thought was the helicopter’s crew chief, jumped from the Huey and ran toward us, in a crouch to assist with the wounded. He had barely gotten himself from underneath the periphery of the Huey’s main blades—which, since the helicopter was maintaining a hover, were rotating at full pitchbefore our boarding party, moving toward the helicopter, passed him.
Pivoting in midstride, he fell in behind Ken Luden and our wounded striker and started back toward the Huey. I fell in behind him, wanting to give the pilot a thumbs up in appreciation for flying this mission.
Approaching the medic in a low crouch from the rear, I heard a soft, swift zippp. Suddenly, my face and the front of my jacket were covered with blood! The medic had been hit squarely atop his head by one of the whirling main blades of the Huey. If he had been a fraction of an inch taller, or if he had stood a fraction of an inch higher in his crouch, the top of his skull would have been instantly crushed. As it was, the helicopter’s blade merely skimmed the top of his head, separating his scalp from his skull and throwing it back on his neck like a toupee caught in a sudden gust of wind.
The medic looked up from the ground, perplexed, and said, “My hat! I lost my hat.” The blood seeped down his forehead, forming little droplets on his eyebrows.
I yelled, “Medic!”
“Sir, I am a medic,” he said, looking up at me, smiling. For a fleeting second all I could think was, will this day never end?
As the Huey’s pilot looked at us in shock from behind his Plexiglas windshield, I kneeled; took the young man’s scalp, which was still attached to his skull by a shred of flesh; and placed it atop his head as neatly as possible. Then I put one of his hands on top of his scalp, telling him to hold it there until he arrived safely in Danang.
Once we had the medic on board, I gave a thumbs up to the pilot and in a low, a very low, crouch, ran out from underneath the Huey’s “kill zone” as the helicopter lifted off.
An hour or so later, my foot began to really hurt.
After the Huey’s departure, Kipler had dressed the wound, noting in doing so that my foot had begun to swell. I was able to get my boot back on only with some difficulty. Can’t take it off again; I’d be going barefoot the rest of the op!
The Kipper, old bush hand that he was, knew I would be in pain by this time, so he suggested a shot of the big M. (On extended operations of this nature, one or two of the team members carried syringes of morphine.)
“No way, Kip,” I said between gritted teeth as I lay wrapped in a poncho liner, unexplainably cold. “Don’t believe in it. Don’t want some mind-boggling drug messing up my thinking.”
Yeah, as if a clear head had done anything for us thus far. Hell, things might take a turn for the better if I did start doing my thinking from cloud nine.
“Okay, Skip, you’re the boss.” Then, chuckling, he said, “Say, mate, what do you make of our op so far?”
“Great start, Kip,” I said, with a straight face. “I don’t see how our first day could have conceivably gone any better.”
He laughed.
“Shit, Kip, after this is over, Peterson probably won’t even let me set foot on ARO. Probably just have me flown directly to Danang to issue toilet paper for the rest of my tour as the C detachment’s new assistant to the assistant deputy logistics officer.”
“Hey, Skipper, never setting foot again on ARO ain’t punishment! Sides, you’d eat better in Danang.”
He paused for a moment, then said, “But seriously, sir, I was just thinking. ‘Fore we came over here all them experts in jungle warfare told us not to worry much ‘bout pungi stakes. You know, at worst they’re nothing more than a nuisance, a minor annoyance. But today, one fucking pungi stake compromised an entire operation, destroyed a seventy-five-thousand-dollar helicopter, and wounded four soldiers, three of ’em Yanks. Now I’d say that’s a pretty good payback for a couple minutes’ carving time on a sliver of bamboo!”
I nodded in agreement. The pain in my foot had progressed from a dull constant ache to throbbing torture. I couldn’t understand it. The wound was so small. How the hell could it hurt so?
“Oh, yeah, forgot to mention it, Skip,” Kipler said after a moment’s silence. “Thought you might be sleeping and didn’t want to wake you, cause you won’t be getting much sleep tonight. You can bet on it. Anyway, Sanford called in and said your Marines are gonna have a crew out here at first light or as soon after as they can get a bird in. Gonna pull the radios from their H-34 here, then torch it. Want us to stay with the helicopter till they finish up and leave.”
He paused and felt my forehead.
“Running a fever, mate, and it’s gonna get worse, ‘cause the gooks put all manner of shit on those two- minute pungis. Now let me tell you something, Lieutenant,” he said forcefully. “Your foot’s infected, and you can’t walk, and you’re gonna be out of here on that bird in the morning! And I think you bloody well know it.”
Then in a softer voice, he said, “Come on, Skip. Let me give you a shot of morphine. Make the night go quicker, and you’ll be in Danang with some little nurse in the morning.”
“Like I said, Kip, no fucking way. I’m not leaving this op, and I’m sure as hell not taking any morphine. I can take the pain; it’s part and parcel of the trade. Ain’t taking no morphine, period!”
“Okay, Skipper, you’re the boss,” he said, getting up to leave.
