In the one month since taking over its new area of operations along the Cambodian border about 50 miles north and west of Saigon, the 1st Air Cav had killed an estimated 1,100 enemy troops, most of them fully equipped and uniformed soldiers of the North Vietnamese army. For this the division had paid a heavy price: 75 Americans killed in an uninterrupted series of firefights, mortar attacks, and ambushes. Several of the division's landing zones have been subjected to almost nightly attacks. Until the 1st Air Cav began to move in, this had been Charlie's private preserve, full of base camps and training areas complete with classrooms and thousands of bunkers. Thru it run three well-established infiltration routes from Cambodia toward Saigon. Enemy strength here has been gauged at anywhere from 30,000 to 60,000 troops, mostly North Vietnamese but with some Viet Cong guerrillas, organized in at least four divisions. These people resent the intrusion of the 1st Air Cav and resist it bitterly. Ferocious combat occurs every day - and especially every night. When we reached the revetment where our helicopter was parked, a gang of 10 or 15 GIs, most of them wearing nothing but underwear and sandals, were piling in flares.

They worked with a sense of urgency, knowing that the bird had to get on station fast, that delay could bring about a minor disaster. We climbed into the Huey and took our places. In the left seat was the Aircraft Commander, Lt. Thomas C. Mowdy Jr., of Bossier City, La. On his right sat Lt. Jong Molstad, of Los Angeles, a strapping aviator with a mustache and a wide rectangular smile that displayed a battery of shining teeth. I perched on a jerry can behind the radio console between them, where I had sat most of the day. The flares were all aboard now, 20 of them on either side, stacked in the doors where they could be shoved out easily. They made a disconcerting cargo: a single tracer bullet could ignite the lot and burn us to a cinder. The gunner and the crew chief took their places behind their M-60 machine guns, and an extra man climbed in to wire up and drop flares. The flashlights had been extinguished. The only light came from the aircraft instruments, glowing dim and red on the panels in front of the pilots and overhead.

"Go ahead and crank her up," Mowdy said.

"Coming hot," Molstad replied.

His hand moved rapidly among the switches, the turbine engine whined, and slowly the rotor blades began to turn. As the RPMs built up, the noise increased and the chopper shook. At 8:37 Mowdy lifted her off the ground, backed her out of the revetment, and sent her hurtling down the strip into the darkness.

"Lights out," Mowdy said.

Molstad turned off the landing lights before we were halfway down the strip, and we climbed fast into the night sky. The moon, nearly full, appeared occasionally between the clouds to throw its light on the rubber trees below. Ribbons of mist were beginning to settle in the valleys. Mowdy managed to coax 75 knots out of the bird as he climbed it to 4,000 feet, heading always toward a set of map coordinates where an element of the 2nd Brigade, 4th Infantry, was surrounded and beset by enemy troops. A resupply helicopter - one of Bravo company's choppers - had flown four sorties to them that afternoon with weapons and ammunition, coming under heavy fire each time. Now it sat on the ground at the landing zone, awaiting our arrival to light its way out.

As practiced by the 1st Air Cav, the combat assault - more often called the Charlie Alpha or simply a CA - is a highly developed and finely orchestrated work of art. Stripped to its essentials, it calls for the movement of an element of troops from a pickup zone [a PZ or Papa Zulu] to a landing zone [LZ or Lima Zulu]. Because this part of Vietnam is all Indian country, the LZ usually will lie surrounded by the enemy who regards American helicopters with a particular loathing and will take fanatical, sometimes suicidal, pains to shoot them down. He prefers to open fire on them as they take off, before they have gained air speed and altitude.

To discourage him in this endeavor, we pave the way with artillery and rocket fire, which at best will kill him and at least will cause him to seek the sanctuary of his bunkers. Sometimes the B-52 bombers will work over the area the night before, followed by artillery shelling first thing in the morning. Because a shell might hit an aircraft that ventured too close, the artillery fire must be directed further away from the LZ before the helicopters come in. But there must be no delay between the end of the firing and the arrival of the choppers lest Charlie have time to emerge from his hole and man his guns. Coordination between artillery and helicopters must be perfect, the timing exquisite.

When the artillery has thoroughly prepped the area, it fires two Willie Pete - white phosphorus - shells into the landing zone which burst in clouds of white smoke. This signifies that the tubes are clear, that the guns will fire no more. At once the Cobras move in, rocket equipped helicopters that rake the LZ on all sides. They are followed by the gun ships with more rockets and machine guns. And in their wake come the slicks - the troop-carrying Hueys, each with seven infantry men ready to leap to the ground and grapple with the enemy.

Standard practice calls for an interval no greater than a minute between the end of the prep and the arrival of the choppers. When Mowdy leads a flight, he likes to cut that down to 30 seconds. That morning he brought in his first sorties just three seconds behind the prep.

That first one was expected to be exceedingly hazardous. The LZ lay in an area believed to be heavily infested with enemy troops. For the usual Charlie Alpha, Mowdy receives no more preparation than a mimeographed slip containing the map coordinates of the pickup and landing zones and a few pertinent facts about timing. But because this was considered a particularly important and dangerous operation, Mowdy received an advanced briefing, for which he flew the previous day to a place called Landing Zone Rita.

Rita looks like a rejected corner of hell. The trees have been cleared away to prevent Charlie from sneaking in with a surprise attack, leaving a barren plain, red dust on dry days and red mud on wet, littered with the wreckage of war: three burned-out armored personnel carriers, full of .50 caliber and shrapnel holes; mortar and artillery; its walled with sandbags; slit trenches and foxholes; bunkers with sandbagged roofs; ammo boxes, C ration cartons, empty cans, and barbed wire, all baking in the pitiless sun. A hundred meters out Charlie lurks in the tree line. The place is mortared almost nightly. An ugly, perilous outpost. [As we landed there that afternoon, the ground troops were engaged in a hot fire fight just off the end of the strip.]

Mowdy descended into the command post bunker to be briefed by Maj. Rod Grannemann, the operations officer.

"Once you take off out of the PZ," said Grannemann, "its all Indian country. There are no friendlies. If you get shot at, you have full authority to shoot back.

In this area," he said, pointing to the map, "we've been having heavy .50 caliber fire. We had a medevac shot down here with all 12 aboard killed. We have three MIAs" - missing in action - "in the area and we want you to pick them up." [Bring back their bodies, he meant.]

"Do we have any known enemy positions?" Mowdy asked.

"The whole thing is enemy positions," Granneman replied.

Mowdy flew back to his base at Quan Loi, and that night after supper he briefed the pilots of his flight. On the map he showed them where they would go the next morning and discussed the prep, which this time included B-52 bombing. The tone was informal and conversational.

"That's where we lost the medevac, isn't it?" someone asked.

"Roger that," Mowdy answered.

"Where's the quickest and best place to go if you get shot up?"

"Rita will be your best bet."

"In case none of you have seen it," another aviator said, "they've got a C-130 down off the end of the runway at LZ Jake."

"They may be using CS in the prep," Mowdy said. "I suggest gas masks for everybody."

"Yeah, that's affirm," they agreed.

"Another thing, I want everybody to go out and check his aircraft tonight. I figure we'll be taking off from here at 6:30. Don't go around getting these gunners shook up about this being a bad CA. It's just a normal old CA."

"Get the gunners shook up?" someone said. "I'm already pretty shook up myself."

"And remember," Mowdy said, joking now, "steep approaches are not recommended. Neither are steep climb-outs. Neither is low-level flying. For that matter, neither is coming to Viet Nam."

They called us early. "Lieutenant Mowdy," said the soldier with the flashlight, "it's 5:15, crank at 6:30." He moved on to another cot. "Lieutenant Molstad, it's 5:15, crank at 6:30."