by Stephen Gormley
Sometime just short of midnight December 9, 1971, there came a loud knock on the door of my hooch at Dian. “Yeah,” I said. “Are you sober?” came the reply. “Yeah” I said again and was promptly told to “get down to the ready shack.” I got dressed, grabbed by gear and headed down to Crusader Operations as quickly as I could.
Upon arriving, I discovered that a flight of six slicks was being thrown together to head up near the border with Cambodia, to deliver emergency supplies to an ARVN base camp that was under attack. The names of all those involved, and the exact location of the base camp have long since faded from memory. The Rat Pack would be coming along to provide cover. I was assigned to be co-pilot on the trail ship. We departed shortly afterward and headed for POL at Tay Ninh. After topping off we departed for Thien Ngon, a few clicks up the road where we were to take on the supplies.
Upon arriving there we each taxied up next to six stacks of ammo crates. While we got loaded, the CC ship (with Cpt Robert Greenfield on board I believe) took off to survey the situation and decide on a plan. I remember looking into the back of the aircraft and could barely see the top half of the crew chief’s helmet sticking above the ammo boxes. The instructions we received were that we were to go in two ships at a time. The second and third elements were to remain on the ground to wait our turns. Lead and Two got in and out OK. Three, with PIC Loren Green and co-pilot Bill Zook on board, and Four were immediately instructed to take off. Radio discipline was excellent. No chatter, just the facts mam! I’m not exactly sure what happened next, but Three apparently didn’t land at the intended drop area. They may have turned the landing light on momentarily to get a better idea of where they needed to be. They must have repositioned and unloaded. But that gave the bad guys more time to zero in on them. Upon their departure they started taking fire. As we waited our turn in the dark, we heard the words I will never forget. Green’s voice filled our helmets with “Three taking fire” and almost immediately thereafter came the words “Three going down on fire.”
The next thing we hear is the following report from Five: “Five’s got high oil pressure.” CC did a quick reassessment of the situation. It was decided that the four loads of ammo would have to suffice. CC was getting low on fuel. We were told to unload our ammo and head out to the AO to relieve CC and start to see what we might be able to do about getting some kind or search going. The ammo was dumped pronto and off we went.
Upon arrival we could see the base camp that was under heavy attack. The Rat Pack had a racetrack pattern going and we could see those guys conducting diving fire, rocket salvos and machine gun fire raining down and tracers coming right back up at them. We were blacked out and circling at about 1500 feet, just staying about a mile away. We located the burning UH-1. We saw some pen flares popping off a short distance away and reported the sighting to CC. We never attempted to land. It was pitch black and we were in unfamiliar, bad guy territory. Being an FNG with just a month in country, I deferred to the judgement of my PIC. The next thing that occurred was the arrival of an Air Force gun ship. We let them know we were out there, and they told us to stay out of the way. After those guys opened up things started to quiet down considerably. We stayed in the AO as long as we dared but our fuel was getting low, and it was really time to get out of there. We reported that we could still see an occasional pen flare. We landed as dawn was breaking at Tay Ninh after staring at the 20 Minute Caution Light for about fifteen minutes.
Once we had some daylight, search and rescue operations started in earnest. Somewhere around noon we got word that our guys had all been picked up. The scene upon our reunion with them is hard to describe. The best I can do is to suggest that you try to put yourself in the crowd of folks that got to watch Lazarus walk out of his tomb. I can attest to the fact that it is possible to cry and laugh at the same time. There is no shame in it. It was my best day as a Crusader.