Letter Home after Tet (Early February, 1968), transcript
notes: "--" indicates unintelligible words in a sentence.
"-" indicates a short pause.
statements inside [] indicates editor's note. [?] indicates a guess on my part.
statements inside () refer to what's happening on the audio.
=====================================
Hello, everyone, it's your old war correspondent again. It's been a little while since I wrote, uh, the last letter to ya, I have quite a bit to say, well, not really too much but -- too, uh, more than I'd like to put in a letter so I figure I'd put it -- chance to put it on a tape.
Now, Mom, I hope, uh, you don't start getting worried or anything, but, uh, true to form, Charlie has been acting up again. When, uh, he quit bothering us the last time, last November, we figured, or at least our intelligence figured that, uh, it'd be about two months before he was able to regroup and come hit us again. And, it has been just about two months, so true to form he's back here and, uh, trying to see what he can do about it.
Uh, let me see, day before yesterday was Tet, you know that's the big Vietnamese holiday we have here, and we had a truce for it just like we did for, uh, Christmas. I think it was supposed to be, uh, at least a one-day truce or something like that. That means that nobody fires, our side or their side, you know, we had it all figured out with them. Well anyway, seems Charlie didn't think too much of it because the first night of the truce, he managed to hit Pleiku and Kontum and Quang Ngai and about three or four other places throughout the, the country, so we just called it off. To heck with it. If he gonna fire at us, we'll fire right back at 'im. And, we got hit that night too. Early in the morning we got some mortars comin' in, and every day since then well I, yesterday and today we've been hit pretty heavily by him. He's been sitting right off the edge of the, uh, northwest of us and lobbin' shells, and he's only about a mile and a half or so out.
And yesterday he was able to put in quite a barrage and for once, you know, before they were all hittin' in the southeast corner by the ASP and all that stuff. Well for once they're all startin' to kinda collect around the tower. We had in the last couple days, oh, something like, uh, 50 to 100 mortars comin' in. I'd say most of 'em have hit within a hundred yards of the tower, which is kinda nice for a change, you know, it gives us some reason to run to the bunker. In fact we've a couple of 'em land inside our perimeter, and our perimeter isn't really too big, I think you've seen a couple of pictures of it already. We've had a couple land inside the perimeter, put holes in our water cans and our hooches and stuff.
One guy picked up a piece of shrapnel. Of course it was only about the size of a pinhead, but it's good enough for a purple heart.
Eh, I'm gonna have a tail fin to send home to ya, you know, the mortar explode, I pulled this one right out of our compound here, it landed right between the tower and where we wash up in the morning, put all kinds of holes in, in our water cans so we're gonna have to go get some water, maybe tomorrow if they don't hit us anymore.
Anyway, today's been kind of exciting because ever since this morning, he, he hit us first time this morning about eight o'clock, threw a couple rounds in, landed pretty close to the tower and we all ran for the bunkers, and ever since then, just about all day long he's been hittin' us. This afternoon he's been doing it on an average of just about every hour on the hour. That's been good for a couple of times, and I think, I think he's, uh, a little late this hour.
Other than that, not much, uh, to talk about. Kontum is about 32 miles to the, south of us, has been hit every day and hit pretty hard. Pleiku is under seige, and all this stuff. Quag Nai is, you know, attack, that's off to the, uh, southeast, southwest of us.
Anyway, all of a sudden things are getting pretty hectic around here. Uh, helicopters in the area are gettin' kinda scarce because they're all gettin' shot up, you know our gunships and stuff. The first night that we got hit we didn't have any to come up here and help out, we had a Dustoff going into one of our fire support bases to, uh, pull out some injured and he couldn't get in because of the heavy fire from Charlie comin' in there and he asked for some assistance from gunships and we didn't have any we could get him, they were all busy in Pleiku, fightin' over there.
Anyway, it's slowed down a little bit, now it's just, sit close to the bunker, read, and stuff like that, you know and it's nothing really bad, nobody's really gotten hurt on the compound.
I saw a couple of, uh, real honest-to-goodness NVA today. They brought in a couple of 'em. One was a Choi Hoi, you know, he gave himself up, and the other one we captured, right over in, uh, Tan Canh just the other night, just last night we captured him down there, they tried to hit that place.
Oh, yeah, they hit Tan Canh. It's a little village, oh I can't tell you just how big it is, it's real small, village it's the only place we have around here to buy anything. Well anyway it's located, uh, just about two and a half miles to our southeast, right, right over this little hill, and about, uh, three nights ago, yeah, just three nights ago, two companies of NVA tried to take the town. And we had, uh, our ARVN troops there, you know, our Vietnamese troops, and they were able to beat them back. They didn't get much of anything, the NVA didn't. Beat 'em back into the hills. They had, uh, 14 NVA killed. There was a Special Forces sergeant up there with his Polaroid and he was taking pictures of the whole thing. So he was showin' 'em to us.
Uh, we managed to pick up all sorts of stuff, you know, uh, firearms and weapons and stuff. And they had, uh, all the dead guys lined up. They let, you know, all the, all the VC dead, the NVA, uh, casualties, they just lined them up on the side of the road, just goin' into town and left them there for a couple of days so everybody could see 'em, you know, along with all the, the loot they picked off of. The one guy got hit with an M79, that's, uh, a rocket, er, grenade launcher, you know, shoots grenades. He got hit right square in the chest, he was just half, half there and half wasn't there. That's pretty wicked stuff.
Well anyway, all goes to show that Charlie is gettin' kinda close again, and for once he's startin' to act up all over the country, which is kind of unusual for him. Usually he'll, you know, he'll strike in force, maybe here, one place, and, and lay off someplace else, and he keeps moving around, but for the last couple days he's been sittin' just about this one spot, just about one and a half, two miles off to our, uh, northwest. And we've been droppin' bombs and mortaring it and puttin' in artillery on the same place every day and yet he still fires from there. He's come pretty close to hittin' the tower a couple of times, but we've got an idea that he's just using the tower for an aiming stake because he's right on the other side of the tower from the ASP and it seems like he might be using the tower as a reference point trying to hit that ASP and just doesn't have the range.
Well other than the war, there's not too much going on around here. Uh, my room mate's come back from his emergency leave. Things are kinda normal, I suppose, you know, just drag on day to day. The, uh, room is slowly gettin' finished. I doubt if I'll ever get it really finished by the time I leave. I'm puttin' in a desk in the closet, we have a real nice closet, it's all of, uh, four feet by eight feet, half of it's our closet and half is gonna be a desk. The big problem right now is making nooks and crannies all over this thing to stick all of our little junk that we manage to pick up. By the time I get ready to go home in, what, 58, 59 days, something like that, I'll have all kinds of boxes I guess I better be shippin' home.
Well it's gettin' close to 8:30, 9 o'clock now, we're all standing outside. It's good and dark out here, dark enough so that we can see the stars and can't see very far ahead of us. Uh, we've all been sittin' out here, drinking beer and watchin' the war. A little earlier this evening, we had some, uh, twin 40s firing off into the hills just to the north of us, managed to start a nice little fire out there like we do most every night. I guess we use it for a reference point for firing and stuff like that, I don't know.
Well, anyway, twin 40s have been firing into the hills, uh, real close to us, oh, about a mile out, mile and a half. Uh, we've had flares goin' up, like we have every night and fire mortars out there and stuff. We don't have any Hueys in the area tonight like we did last night. Last night was pretty hectic as far as, uh, us shooting out there, but, I don't know, tonight it seems like a little more likely we might get a ground attack so we're gettin' kinda ready. There's a, if you can hear it that's, uh, that's another twin 40 right in front of us, right on the other side of the road. He's getting into position, uh, if I have some room on this tape I'll see if I can get, uh, twin 40s firing on it. Kinda nice and loud, you know the sound, I think you might like it.
Ton Son Nhut has been under attack today. It's, uh, still under 100 percent alert. We've been under 100 percent alert for the last three days, for what it's worth. For the last 3 or 4 days we've been expecting, uh, expecting a ground assault. I'm not too sure if we're gonna get one now or not, because Charlie has been firing his mortars in here and he hasn't bothered to use them for a cover for an attack. Startin' to lose faith in him.
Kontum's under attack I think again this evening, I'm not sure. But I don't know, everybodys getting kinda edgy, kinda looks like we just might get a chance to use our weapons. Oh, I'm carrying the M79 around today and have been for the last couple days.
(pause)
(loud artillery fire - twin 40s)
-- looks erratic, don't they
(loud artillery fire - twin 40s)
more wounded tonight?
(loud artillery fire - twin 40s)
That's the twin 40 workin' out. That's the one that's just sittin' right on the other side of the road.
Just found out listening on the high freq. that we aren't the only, uh, glory boys in the one twenty fifth. The men at, at the Pleiku got four guys wounded and the men up at Hue, that's Hue Citadel, that's up close to the DMZ, they're under attack too and I think they got some wounded.
-- getting pretty active these last few days, I think Charlie's gettin' desperate.
It's been about a day now since I, uh, gave you that bit on the twin 40s going on. I've been trying to rack my brain to, uh, think of something to tell ya, and afraid today turned out to be full of all kind of surprises, not very many of 'em, uh, pleasant at all.
Started out this morning, got a mortar attack this morning, uh, I was in bed I think at the time. We all got out of bed, went to the bunkers as usual. None of them hit around close to the tower like they usually do. These hit out there for the first time, they hit out in the southwest corner, that's where most of the people on the airfield, uh, live, you know, we've got tents and -- all over that area. Uh, one of them hit down by the water point and killed a man, first casualty, casualty that I know of, from these incoming mortars, aside from, uh, small wounds and stuff.
But that wasn't really too bad. Uh, I went on duty at 12 o'clock to relieve the, uh, people that were going to chow, and John Bartlett, my roommate, and I, we were both on duty, when all of a sudden this, uh, pilot in an OH23, that's one of these real light observation helicopters, came up on guard and, uh, called in for help, and we knew right off that he was in bad trouble because he could hardly even talk to us, you know, he was having a hard time breathing and, and -- he was just in bad shape. We could tell right off that he was shot. He was covering, uh, an artillery bombardment off to the northwest of us, right to the north of the LOC area, that one and a half miles out, we've been hittin' that, that general area for the past four or five days because that's the general location we've been mortared from every time.
Anyway, it appears that he got shot by Charlie, you know, some ground to air fire hit him, and he was just barely able to hold his own, to, uh, stay conscious, control his aircraft, a light helicopter, and he was trying to land it on the LOC, couldn't talk, uh, man, it was, it was pretty bad just listening to him on the radio, and we saw him out there and my A man, I was just sitting there as B man, wasn't really doing anything, so the A man got on the stick and tried to call, uh, the medevac. I tried to call the, uh, crash crew, our fire truck, to get out there, and we couldn't get ahold of anybody, there wasn't anything we could do, so all we could do was just sit there and stare at this guy and just pray that he put that thing down, you know, 'cause those are real flimsy aircraft, and he almost did put it down, he started comin' down nice and slow, I thought maybe he's got it, enough control that he'll be able to put it down and jump clear.
Well all of a sudden that, he was just gettin' ready to, oh, he's about 25 feet off the ground and I thought he was gonna come down a bit hard but he was gonna come down alright, when all of a sudden it seemed like he pulled the stick back -- straight up in the air and did a flip and started going all cockeyed. He'd, he'd stopped talking to us by then. He had it, he was continually, uh, keying it. He'd stopped talking by then, I thought for sure that he'd gone unconscious or something like that. And there wasn't a God-damned, there wasn't a darned thing we could do, just stand there and just watch him go down, and he, uh, he just went out of control, did a couple of crazy loops and then just crashed right there and burst into flames, so we knew there wasn't much chance that he could have gotten out of it. The fire truck did, uh, manage to see him, uh, swerving around in the sky, so they were on the scene before too much longer, and the guy and I in the tower, we were relieved by the people coming back from chow, and as soon as we left the tower, the, uh, fire truck needed some more foam, so we filled the, the, uh, truck, the three quarter, full of foam and we went racing out there, 'cause they were busy trying to put the fire out, of course it wasn't much use, there wasn't really much left of anything, the pilot or the plane, when we got there, kinda sickening, really.
It was even worse, seeing all these stupid people standing around, gawking at it. Trying to see what they could see just to satisfy their morbid sense of curiosity.
Well that, that whole thing, that whole little episode kinda got to me today, I guess. Well I'm kinda gettin' used to seeing bodies being brought in by the Dustoffs, unloading them over at the, uh, 4th med facility, and stuff like that is not so bad, it's just a body laid out on a stretcher. When it's somebody, you know, when you listen to him on the radio and you hear his very last words and his cry for help and all this stuff and you can't do a darned thing to help, and when you just see him burn, not too hot.
And then, uh, we went on duty, I went on duty this afternoon, worked from, uh, three to 6:30. And, our shift was just about half-way over when we came under attack again. This time the, uh, all these other times for the last five days or so we've been under attack from the northwest corner. And this, uh, all this kind of a broad plain, then it hits this low-lying hills off to the north of us, but right on the south side of the field, we've got the river coming down and right from the river nothing but great big steep hills and nothing but real dense jungle all the way up to the top of this 5,000 foot peak, or four thousand eight hundred foot peak about 3 or 4 miles to the south of us.
Well, anyway, off to the southwest corner we got hit, and this time Charlie thrown in, threw in, the biggest stuff that he's thrown at us so far. Usually he's been throwing in these 81 millimeter mortars, I have the tail fin off one that I'll be sending home. This time he was, uh, sending in, I don't know what they are, uh, one twenty millimeter rockets, and a rocket is so much deadlier than a regular mortar because it has much greater penetrating power and its got a shaped charge and everything else. In other words it does an awful lot more material damage than a mortar does.
Anyway, he started lobbing these things in and as of right now, I don't know how many casualties he's got. Just for an idea, one of the first ones that hit, oh about the first or the second one that hit, hit right in the middle of the runway, by the east taxiway. And, we had one of our men sitting in, on the sandbags in front of the hooch, ah this is a good 300 350 feet away from it, a good long ways away from it, and he got a chunk of rock or a chunk of shrapnel, or somethin' gave him a real nasty cut on the arm. So, he's over at the med, at the, uh, med station right now getting that taken care of.
After the whole thing was over we got a total of, uh, thirteen rounds and some of them landed right over there in the heavily, uh, populated -- area where we have tents and people and, um, after it was all over, I went and checked out the one that was on the runway and it was a hole, ten feet in diameter and about three and a half, four feet deep and it threw chunks as big as your head all over that runway. We got one right in the middle of the runway and one right in the south ramp. And I tell you, we've never had anything that big in here. No matter how big our bunker is, boy, it never be able to stop one of those things from comin' through.
Mom, I know I told you not to, uh, worry about me or at least try not to worry about me but of course it's no use, I know you're going to. But, uh, at least you know that I'm going to keep my head down, as much as I can. And, things aren't really too bad here. We had a small ground assault at the same time the mortars came in but we were able to beat it off successfully.
Uh, well you can be happy knowing that, uh, we're an awful lot safer off than most every other place in the, uh, in the country is right now. Things are getting kinda hot but I think we'll weather through it all right.
Give my love to everybody and I'll be sending another tape before long, OK?
(end of tape)
"-" indicates a short pause.
statements inside [] indicates editor's note. [?] indicates a guess on my part.
statements inside () refer to what's happening on the audio.
=====================================
Hello, everyone, it's your old war correspondent again. It's been a little while since I wrote, uh, the last letter to ya, I have quite a bit to say, well, not really too much but -- too, uh, more than I'd like to put in a letter so I figure I'd put it -- chance to put it on a tape.
Now, Mom, I hope, uh, you don't start getting worried or anything, but, uh, true to form, Charlie has been acting up again. When, uh, he quit bothering us the last time, last November, we figured, or at least our intelligence figured that, uh, it'd be about two months before he was able to regroup and come hit us again. And, it has been just about two months, so true to form he's back here and, uh, trying to see what he can do about it.
Uh, let me see, day before yesterday was Tet, you know that's the big Vietnamese holiday we have here, and we had a truce for it just like we did for, uh, Christmas. I think it was supposed to be, uh, at least a one-day truce or something like that. That means that nobody fires, our side or their side, you know, we had it all figured out with them. Well anyway, seems Charlie didn't think too much of it because the first night of the truce, he managed to hit Pleiku and Kontum and Quang Ngai and about three or four other places throughout the, the country, so we just called it off. To heck with it. If he gonna fire at us, we'll fire right back at 'im. And, we got hit that night too. Early in the morning we got some mortars comin' in, and every day since then well I, yesterday and today we've been hit pretty heavily by him. He's been sitting right off the edge of the, uh, northwest of us and lobbin' shells, and he's only about a mile and a half or so out.
And yesterday he was able to put in quite a barrage and for once, you know, before they were all hittin' in the southeast corner by the ASP and all that stuff. Well for once they're all startin' to kinda collect around the tower. We had in the last couple days, oh, something like, uh, 50 to 100 mortars comin' in. I'd say most of 'em have hit within a hundred yards of the tower, which is kinda nice for a change, you know, it gives us some reason to run to the bunker. In fact we've a couple of 'em land inside our perimeter, and our perimeter isn't really too big, I think you've seen a couple of pictures of it already. We've had a couple land inside the perimeter, put holes in our water cans and our hooches and stuff.
One guy picked up a piece of shrapnel. Of course it was only about the size of a pinhead, but it's good enough for a purple heart.
Eh, I'm gonna have a tail fin to send home to ya, you know, the mortar explode, I pulled this one right out of our compound here, it landed right between the tower and where we wash up in the morning, put all kinds of holes in, in our water cans so we're gonna have to go get some water, maybe tomorrow if they don't hit us anymore.
Anyway, today's been kind of exciting because ever since this morning, he, he hit us first time this morning about eight o'clock, threw a couple rounds in, landed pretty close to the tower and we all ran for the bunkers, and ever since then, just about all day long he's been hittin' us. This afternoon he's been doing it on an average of just about every hour on the hour. That's been good for a couple of times, and I think, I think he's, uh, a little late this hour.
Other than that, not much, uh, to talk about. Kontum is about 32 miles to the, south of us, has been hit every day and hit pretty hard. Pleiku is under seige, and all this stuff. Quag Nai is, you know, attack, that's off to the, uh, southeast, southwest of us.
Anyway, all of a sudden things are getting pretty hectic around here. Uh, helicopters in the area are gettin' kinda scarce because they're all gettin' shot up, you know our gunships and stuff. The first night that we got hit we didn't have any to come up here and help out, we had a Dustoff going into one of our fire support bases to, uh, pull out some injured and he couldn't get in because of the heavy fire from Charlie comin' in there and he asked for some assistance from gunships and we didn't have any we could get him, they were all busy in Pleiku, fightin' over there.
Anyway, it's slowed down a little bit, now it's just, sit close to the bunker, read, and stuff like that, you know and it's nothing really bad, nobody's really gotten hurt on the compound.
I saw a couple of, uh, real honest-to-goodness NVA today. They brought in a couple of 'em. One was a Choi Hoi, you know, he gave himself up, and the other one we captured, right over in, uh, Tan Canh just the other night, just last night we captured him down there, they tried to hit that place.
Oh, yeah, they hit Tan Canh. It's a little village, oh I can't tell you just how big it is, it's real small, village it's the only place we have around here to buy anything. Well anyway it's located, uh, just about two and a half miles to our southeast, right, right over this little hill, and about, uh, three nights ago, yeah, just three nights ago, two companies of NVA tried to take the town. And we had, uh, our ARVN troops there, you know, our Vietnamese troops, and they were able to beat them back. They didn't get much of anything, the NVA didn't. Beat 'em back into the hills. They had, uh, 14 NVA killed. There was a Special Forces sergeant up there with his Polaroid and he was taking pictures of the whole thing. So he was showin' 'em to us.
Uh, we managed to pick up all sorts of stuff, you know, uh, firearms and weapons and stuff. And they had, uh, all the dead guys lined up. They let, you know, all the, all the VC dead, the NVA, uh, casualties, they just lined them up on the side of the road, just goin' into town and left them there for a couple of days so everybody could see 'em, you know, along with all the, the loot they picked off of. The one guy got hit with an M79, that's, uh, a rocket, er, grenade launcher, you know, shoots grenades. He got hit right square in the chest, he was just half, half there and half wasn't there. That's pretty wicked stuff.
Well anyway, all goes to show that Charlie is gettin' kinda close again, and for once he's startin' to act up all over the country, which is kind of unusual for him. Usually he'll, you know, he'll strike in force, maybe here, one place, and, and lay off someplace else, and he keeps moving around, but for the last couple days he's been sittin' just about this one spot, just about one and a half, two miles off to our, uh, northwest. And we've been droppin' bombs and mortaring it and puttin' in artillery on the same place every day and yet he still fires from there. He's come pretty close to hittin' the tower a couple of times, but we've got an idea that he's just using the tower for an aiming stake because he's right on the other side of the tower from the ASP and it seems like he might be using the tower as a reference point trying to hit that ASP and just doesn't have the range.
Well other than the war, there's not too much going on around here. Uh, my room mate's come back from his emergency leave. Things are kinda normal, I suppose, you know, just drag on day to day. The, uh, room is slowly gettin' finished. I doubt if I'll ever get it really finished by the time I leave. I'm puttin' in a desk in the closet, we have a real nice closet, it's all of, uh, four feet by eight feet, half of it's our closet and half is gonna be a desk. The big problem right now is making nooks and crannies all over this thing to stick all of our little junk that we manage to pick up. By the time I get ready to go home in, what, 58, 59 days, something like that, I'll have all kinds of boxes I guess I better be shippin' home.
Well it's gettin' close to 8:30, 9 o'clock now, we're all standing outside. It's good and dark out here, dark enough so that we can see the stars and can't see very far ahead of us. Uh, we've all been sittin' out here, drinking beer and watchin' the war. A little earlier this evening, we had some, uh, twin 40s firing off into the hills just to the north of us, managed to start a nice little fire out there like we do most every night. I guess we use it for a reference point for firing and stuff like that, I don't know.
Well, anyway, twin 40s have been firing into the hills, uh, real close to us, oh, about a mile out, mile and a half. Uh, we've had flares goin' up, like we have every night and fire mortars out there and stuff. We don't have any Hueys in the area tonight like we did last night. Last night was pretty hectic as far as, uh, us shooting out there, but, I don't know, tonight it seems like a little more likely we might get a ground attack so we're gettin' kinda ready. There's a, if you can hear it that's, uh, that's another twin 40 right in front of us, right on the other side of the road. He's getting into position, uh, if I have some room on this tape I'll see if I can get, uh, twin 40s firing on it. Kinda nice and loud, you know the sound, I think you might like it.
Ton Son Nhut has been under attack today. It's, uh, still under 100 percent alert. We've been under 100 percent alert for the last three days, for what it's worth. For the last 3 or 4 days we've been expecting, uh, expecting a ground assault. I'm not too sure if we're gonna get one now or not, because Charlie has been firing his mortars in here and he hasn't bothered to use them for a cover for an attack. Startin' to lose faith in him.
Kontum's under attack I think again this evening, I'm not sure. But I don't know, everybodys getting kinda edgy, kinda looks like we just might get a chance to use our weapons. Oh, I'm carrying the M79 around today and have been for the last couple days.
(pause)
(loud artillery fire - twin 40s)
-- looks erratic, don't they
(loud artillery fire - twin 40s)
more wounded tonight?
(loud artillery fire - twin 40s)
That's the twin 40 workin' out. That's the one that's just sittin' right on the other side of the road.
Just found out listening on the high freq. that we aren't the only, uh, glory boys in the one twenty fifth. The men at, at the Pleiku got four guys wounded and the men up at Hue, that's Hue Citadel, that's up close to the DMZ, they're under attack too and I think they got some wounded.
-- getting pretty active these last few days, I think Charlie's gettin' desperate.
It's been about a day now since I, uh, gave you that bit on the twin 40s going on. I've been trying to rack my brain to, uh, think of something to tell ya, and afraid today turned out to be full of all kind of surprises, not very many of 'em, uh, pleasant at all.
Started out this morning, got a mortar attack this morning, uh, I was in bed I think at the time. We all got out of bed, went to the bunkers as usual. None of them hit around close to the tower like they usually do. These hit out there for the first time, they hit out in the southwest corner, that's where most of the people on the airfield, uh, live, you know, we've got tents and -- all over that area. Uh, one of them hit down by the water point and killed a man, first casualty, casualty that I know of, from these incoming mortars, aside from, uh, small wounds and stuff.
But that wasn't really too bad. Uh, I went on duty at 12 o'clock to relieve the, uh, people that were going to chow, and John Bartlett, my roommate, and I, we were both on duty, when all of a sudden this, uh, pilot in an OH23, that's one of these real light observation helicopters, came up on guard and, uh, called in for help, and we knew right off that he was in bad trouble because he could hardly even talk to us, you know, he was having a hard time breathing and, and -- he was just in bad shape. We could tell right off that he was shot. He was covering, uh, an artillery bombardment off to the northwest of us, right to the north of the LOC area, that one and a half miles out, we've been hittin' that, that general area for the past four or five days because that's the general location we've been mortared from every time.
Anyway, it appears that he got shot by Charlie, you know, some ground to air fire hit him, and he was just barely able to hold his own, to, uh, stay conscious, control his aircraft, a light helicopter, and he was trying to land it on the LOC, couldn't talk, uh, man, it was, it was pretty bad just listening to him on the radio, and we saw him out there and my A man, I was just sitting there as B man, wasn't really doing anything, so the A man got on the stick and tried to call, uh, the medevac. I tried to call the, uh, crash crew, our fire truck, to get out there, and we couldn't get ahold of anybody, there wasn't anything we could do, so all we could do was just sit there and stare at this guy and just pray that he put that thing down, you know, 'cause those are real flimsy aircraft, and he almost did put it down, he started comin' down nice and slow, I thought maybe he's got it, enough control that he'll be able to put it down and jump clear.
Well all of a sudden that, he was just gettin' ready to, oh, he's about 25 feet off the ground and I thought he was gonna come down a bit hard but he was gonna come down alright, when all of a sudden it seemed like he pulled the stick back -- straight up in the air and did a flip and started going all cockeyed. He'd, he'd stopped talking to us by then. He had it, he was continually, uh, keying it. He'd stopped talking by then, I thought for sure that he'd gone unconscious or something like that. And there wasn't a God-damned, there wasn't a darned thing we could do, just stand there and just watch him go down, and he, uh, he just went out of control, did a couple of crazy loops and then just crashed right there and burst into flames, so we knew there wasn't much chance that he could have gotten out of it. The fire truck did, uh, manage to see him, uh, swerving around in the sky, so they were on the scene before too much longer, and the guy and I in the tower, we were relieved by the people coming back from chow, and as soon as we left the tower, the, uh, fire truck needed some more foam, so we filled the, the, uh, truck, the three quarter, full of foam and we went racing out there, 'cause they were busy trying to put the fire out, of course it wasn't much use, there wasn't really much left of anything, the pilot or the plane, when we got there, kinda sickening, really.
It was even worse, seeing all these stupid people standing around, gawking at it. Trying to see what they could see just to satisfy their morbid sense of curiosity.
Well that, that whole thing, that whole little episode kinda got to me today, I guess. Well I'm kinda gettin' used to seeing bodies being brought in by the Dustoffs, unloading them over at the, uh, 4th med facility, and stuff like that is not so bad, it's just a body laid out on a stretcher. When it's somebody, you know, when you listen to him on the radio and you hear his very last words and his cry for help and all this stuff and you can't do a darned thing to help, and when you just see him burn, not too hot.
And then, uh, we went on duty, I went on duty this afternoon, worked from, uh, three to 6:30. And, our shift was just about half-way over when we came under attack again. This time the, uh, all these other times for the last five days or so we've been under attack from the northwest corner. And this, uh, all this kind of a broad plain, then it hits this low-lying hills off to the north of us, but right on the south side of the field, we've got the river coming down and right from the river nothing but great big steep hills and nothing but real dense jungle all the way up to the top of this 5,000 foot peak, or four thousand eight hundred foot peak about 3 or 4 miles to the south of us.
Well, anyway, off to the southwest corner we got hit, and this time Charlie thrown in, threw in, the biggest stuff that he's thrown at us so far. Usually he's been throwing in these 81 millimeter mortars, I have the tail fin off one that I'll be sending home. This time he was, uh, sending in, I don't know what they are, uh, one twenty millimeter rockets, and a rocket is so much deadlier than a regular mortar because it has much greater penetrating power and its got a shaped charge and everything else. In other words it does an awful lot more material damage than a mortar does.
Anyway, he started lobbing these things in and as of right now, I don't know how many casualties he's got. Just for an idea, one of the first ones that hit, oh about the first or the second one that hit, hit right in the middle of the runway, by the east taxiway. And, we had one of our men sitting in, on the sandbags in front of the hooch, ah this is a good 300 350 feet away from it, a good long ways away from it, and he got a chunk of rock or a chunk of shrapnel, or somethin' gave him a real nasty cut on the arm. So, he's over at the med, at the, uh, med station right now getting that taken care of.
After the whole thing was over we got a total of, uh, thirteen rounds and some of them landed right over there in the heavily, uh, populated -- area where we have tents and people and, um, after it was all over, I went and checked out the one that was on the runway and it was a hole, ten feet in diameter and about three and a half, four feet deep and it threw chunks as big as your head all over that runway. We got one right in the middle of the runway and one right in the south ramp. And I tell you, we've never had anything that big in here. No matter how big our bunker is, boy, it never be able to stop one of those things from comin' through.
Mom, I know I told you not to, uh, worry about me or at least try not to worry about me but of course it's no use, I know you're going to. But, uh, at least you know that I'm going to keep my head down, as much as I can. And, things aren't really too bad here. We had a small ground assault at the same time the mortars came in but we were able to beat it off successfully.
Uh, well you can be happy knowing that, uh, we're an awful lot safer off than most every other place in the, uh, in the country is right now. Things are getting kinda hot but I think we'll weather through it all right.
Give my love to everybody and I'll be sending another tape before long, OK?
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