NO MAN'S LAND

Another month gone, another thirty days marked off the old calendar. That leaves me with just 245 days to go. Not even close! yet!! but I'm getting there one day at a time and trying to stay positive.

At least our company is on a three day stand down to re-supply and to reload, getting ready for the next trip into the bush. There are some rumors going around that we are going back into the valley. That's the A Shaw Valley. But this time it would be by air. Air Mobile, with the 101st. Airborne Div. Our company commander verified it that same morning. One hundred and fifty UH-1 Huie helicopters, fully loaded. Their job was to fly us in and drop us off. Us being the 5th Infantry Div. They were calling this operation no man's land.

 Somewhere in the A Shaw Valley, was the 9th VC regiment. Dug in and hiding among the boulder and thick brush in some of the roughest terrain known to man. And we the men of the 5th div., were the ones chosen for the job. It was going to get hotter than any of us could have ever imagined.

I was in the third chopper, in a daisy chain of five each, about thirty seconds behind the other. I sit on my flight jacket surrounded by ten members of my platoon. All with m-16 bandoleers, strapped across both shoulders, locked and loaded, ready for Charlie, but we all had a vague hope that an enemy slug, coming up through the soft aluminum belly of the chopper, wouldn't make us a gelding.

I've been on a couple of air assaults and I always tried to get a door seat, so I could feel the wind blowing in my face and I liked the low thumping sound of the chopper blades. The view was just beautiful and the ride was great, but as you know, all good things must come to an end...

Also, if there was an ambush, I wanted to be the first one off. Not that I was real brave or anything, I just needed a head start, because I was slower than most guys, with an 80 pound ruck sack and ammo, and an m-16 rifle. The Viet Cong usually waited for a couple of choppers to land and deposit men on the ground before they sprung their attack. The first chopper dipped into the clearing that was to be our landing zone and the second chopper disappeared into a hole in the jungle. As we slowed to make our descent, a huge fireball erupted just ahead of us. The pilot cursed and pulled pitch, we flew through the top of the fireball. 

I was conscious mostly of the smell of burnt flesh and hair and the sudden drying out of my damp clothes. Then we were jinking left and right at low altitude as we struggled to get clear of the area. What happened in the space of the next few minutes, seemed to go on for an entire lifetime. We went around in a big circle with the others choppers close behind. The pilots were yelling back and forth that there were eight grunts down there from the first chopper and an unknown number from the second. They decided then and there the best way to get back to the landing zone so we could help save the guys already on the ground. I just wanted off that chopper! I figured we all had a better chance on the ground. 

I leapt out with the rest of my platoon. The chopper was 4 or 5 feet up and I hit the ground running, as it was about ten yards to the comparative cover of the tree line. It felt like the length of a football field. The bandoleers and other ammo seemed to weigh a ton. I don't know why I wasn't hit by enemy fire. I could hear the bullets as they flew past my head and around my feet. So close!! So close!!

The 9th VC regiment got there first and were dug in like an Alabama tick on a hound dog. We had one thing they didn't have- "Fire Power ". The choppers were equipped with rockets and machines guns. We also had the Air Force fighter jets that could level a mountain and that's just what they did.

The operation lasted five days with casualties on both sides, but the 9th VC regiment was pounded into submission. Only about 150 survived and were taken prisoner. 

David Billingsley