JUST ANOTHER DAY OF FORGOTTEN HEROS

By Ron Titus 175^th Eng.

It was one of those days in late January; you know the winter season or though they said it was. You remember… when the days were hot and dry filled with dust. It was one of those winter days when you could slam your foot down on the ground and leave a crater the size of a basketball as the dust blew out in all directions, usually in your face. Try telling a Jersey boy that this was winter weather. Winters however in Vietnam in 1967 weren’t exactly like Jersey winters, were they?

I was coming up the road to the back gate at Tay Ninh’s base camp, in early afternoon caring on my dump truck, one of a zillion loads of Literate Clay from the pits at the river. We had been running 12-hour shifts hauling it in for the roads at the base camp. I had just finished up the night shifts. The night shifts traveled in convoys only. Hours of running behind the guy in front of you that of course you couldn’t see. We couldn’t see a thing for the dust, except for those dumb black out lights on the back of that truck in front of you, you know, the truck you eventually followed into the drainage ditch. We had shotguns [troops] from the Infantry riding with us. It was good duty for them as they could finally get some sleep…poor bastards; no one ever seemed to let them get any sleep. The Army, with all their wisdom, thought the Grunts were supposed to stand ambush all night and hump the boonies all day. Grunts didn’t need sleep… Well, now, it was the day shift and no convoys. We were free to travel individually. We could see where we were going and could take our time and look around. I pulled my truck to the side of the road to watch the slicks [transport choppers] loading up with Infantry off to the right of the road in a large field. That’s when it happened!

There seemed to be a fairly large operation going on this day. The air was full of choppers coming in to load up and leaving. There were about 20 or so, loading up with Infantry in full gear. They looked like, with all that gear, they were going to be out for a while on this one…. With in moments the Infantry had loaded and the choppers begun to lift off…gaining a little altitude… putting their noses down and heading for the blue sky as usual… only this time the column of choppers weren’t climbing out very well. As the choppers passed in front of me I could see that they were just missing the wire fence on the left side of the road. The last one didn’t make it over. Her skid hooked the wire, swung sharply upwards, rolled to her left side and fell. It was like watching a slow motion movie to me even though it only took a few seconds in reality. As the chopper fell to her side, troops were falling out of her. These were moments of chaos and shit in your pants time. I along with about 20 or so others ran to her side. By the time I got there several people had gathered around a guy who was pinned under the chopper’s skid. The area was a freshly drained rice patty and the muck, buffalo shit and those white crawly things the farmers liked to chuck into their mouths while they was still wiggling, had soften the weight of the chopper on the guy. One person, no shirt, knee deep in muck, had the guy’s head lifted so he wouldn’t sink into the mud and die. Everyone was hanging on the chopper lifting it as 3 or 4 guys were pulling on the kid to get him out. Within minutes the kid was standing there shaking, stinking, and yelling to a lieutenant that he wasn’t getting back into any F--king choppers today or ever. I heard the pilot say it was too hot and he couldn’t get lift. Scratch one Charley [chopper] on her side with everyone to live but for least one more day, this time, thanks to a bunch of “Forgotten Heroes” in a forgotten time in space. I have thought often of these men and wonder, “Are they still with us?”