• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 701 0

as the chopper was hit by 12.7mm fire or an RPG. The Huey nosed towards the valley floor as the fuel tanks ignited, and it was a ball of fire and coming apart even before impact. Howard did not seem the kind of man who believed in premonitions, but something odd was remembered later by his battalion staff. A young ocelot had been caught on LZ Center; it was nicknamed Skates Two, which was Howard’s radio call sign. The night before the colonel’s death, the ocelot had escaped from its cage and been killed by the pet dogs of the headquarters company.

Colonel Tackaberry, flying back to LZ Baldy as dusk approached, had been monitoring the battalion net. Howard was talking, but he suddenly blurted, “Oh!” as though he’d been punched in the chest. An excited voice came through the static hiss, “Looks like they’ve been hit!” Tackaberry told his pilot to turn around and, in ten minutes, they were over the crash site. There was a smoky imprint on the vegetation, the tail section was still intact, parts were strewn about, the rest was melted magnesium. There were no signs of survivors. Until the bodies were recovered, the U.S. Army would carry those aboard as Missing In Action:

LtCol Eli P. Howard

WO1 Johns D. Plummer

WO1 Gerald L. Silverstein

SgtMaj Franklin D. Rowell

SP4 Richard A. Doria

PFC Stephen L. Martino

PFC Stewart J. Lavigne

Mr. Oliver E. Noonan

Lieutenant Shurtz did not see the crash. He had watched the Huey crest the hill, wondering why the colonel was going the wrong way. Then he walked over to his platoon leaders. 2dLt David Teeple, Alpha One, was new. 1stLt Dan Kirchgesler, Alpha Two, was the most experienced officer there. 2dLt Bob Tynan, Alpha Three, was also new but learning fast. They’d been monitoring the battalion net, and one of them commented to Shurtz, “The C&C is down.”

“Yeah, I know, he just dropped off four guys.”

“No, they’ve been shot down.”

“What!”

“The colonel apparently spotted a .51 on the ridge and went down to take a look.”

The 3d of the 21st Infantry had gone in expecting to clear up a spot of trouble, but had walked into a regiment. The confusion started there and was capped when the battalion commander was suddenly blasted out of the sky. That night in the Song Chang Valley was a mess, hard to piece together; but a picture—probably flawed in parts—emerged. Bravo Company had been ordered to secure the crash site. The order was issued either by Maj Richard Waite, BnXO, or Maj Richard Smith, BnS-3, but they should not be labelled incompetent. Their place was properly in the TOC bunker on LZ Center, but with the command ship gone so were their eyes. They could not gauge the true field picture, which was that the wreck was well inside enemy lines.

Captain Cooper gave the mission to 3d Platoon.

Lieutenant Turpin, Bravo Three, resisted the order. Turpin was no timid college draftee but an OCS mustang lifer considered a bit crazy by his grunts because he loved the bush. He’d previously been a sergeant first class in the special forces. He was aggressive but also realistic, and he argued that, with darkness falling, it was useless to risk ambush to recover a cabinful of corpses.

Cooper agreed and radioed LZ Center to respectfully decline the mission; to listen to another version, the order was pressed and Cooper snapped, “If you want it so bad, major, you walk point!”

Captain Cooper may have said that; he was a hard man to define. The captain he replaced was a stocky supply type who loved his creature comforts, hated to hump, and didn’t seem to be looking for a fight. When Cooper, who was tall and lean, took over after the June bunker fight, he kept resupply to a minimum and kept the company moving hard. He was looking for the enemy. He was respected throughout the Gimlets. Even Captain Carrier noted, “… He was the best thing to hit the battalion since me. He looked out for his men and showed a lot of command presence.” But he was no lifer. He was a young man who was easy to talk to, and who flashed the peace sign and seemed very plugged into the bitterness of his grunts. Sometimes at