Some of the grunts were already standing on the skids, and as soon as we touched down, they jumped off and ran for the edge of the clearing, crouched and ready to shoot, leaving behind them on the floor of the helicopter a plastic spoon and a small tin of C ration peanut butter. When all the birds were empty, Mowdy took off, rising almost vertically to clear the trees. "We've got beaucoup automatic weapons fire south of the LZ," said a voice on the radio. Mowdy broke sharp left to avoid it. For the first few hundred meters he stayed low, just above the trees, while he built up air speed. That's the killing zone, and to escape Charlie's fire speed counts more than altitude. And then he pulled the nose up and we climbed out of there. "Yellow 1, this is Yellow 5," said the radio. "Your flight is up." Because the LZ was so small, we could bring in only half our birds at one time. Now they were all out again, and the next five could try it.

Another bird reported, "We've got negative weapons on this aircraft." Both his M-60 machine guns had failed. Such breakdowns of weapons and communications are common-place. Despite good equipment and maintenance, the choppers run up hundreds of hours of hard flying, and things wear out.

It would require 33 sorties - 33 individual round trips - to move all the troops for this combat assault. That worked out to four turnarounds for Yellow 1. For 35 minutes we shuttled between pickup and landing zones, a distance of only two or three miles, although for the grunts it might as well have been 1,000 if they had to walk it through that jungle. With each sortie we built up strength at the LZ, but simultaneously we reduced the number of men remaining to defend the pickup zone. On the fourth trip, the last of the troops climbed aboard. The pickup zone stood defenseless, an open target for Charlie.

Mowdy turned in his seat and shouted to the grunts behind him, "Hey, is anybody left out here?"

No one had been left behind. As we took off, the gunners raked the trees with machine gun fire.

We dropped our passengers and took off from the LZ for the last time.

"Stone Mountain 6, this is Yellow 1," said Mowdy into the radio. "I believe that completes my mission for you."

"It sure does," said Stone Mountain 6, "and a real fine deal. Thanks for your cooperation and we look forward to working with you again."

Mowdy led his flight back toward Quan Loi, navigating by eyeball without reference to map or compass. After a month of flying in this area, Bravo company's pilots can usually spot their position by recognizing landmarks below. We had no margin for error; our fuel was running low.

"Yellow 1, this is Yellow 5. My 20-minute caution light just came on."

"We're trying to get you there as fast as we can," Mowdy said.

"Roger that. I just wanted to let you know, Babes."

And then we were home, pausing first at the POL dump to fill our tanks with 1,200 pounds of JP-4 fuel, then settling at last in our own revetments. It was 8:35. We would just have time for a cup of coffee before our next combat assault.

The next one was a nightmare. We picked up the grunts from a lovely gravel strip at Dong Xoai and flew toward the next LZ. Our passengers, as always, remained silent, locked in with their own private thoughts and fears, prevented from talking by the noise of the turbine engine and the whopping of the rotor blades. These were the black cats, the pathfinders, who would lead the way, clear the LZ, and guide the helicopters. Seated in the left door was their CO, Lt. Robert J. Copen, a young man with yellow hair in a brush cut and the mark of war on his face. He leaned close to me and shouted, "This is a two-ship LZ." We would be able to land only two ships there at a time, but we already had been briefed about that. The first men on the ground were supposed to clear away the trees and convert it into a five-ship LA. Copen held up his left hand so we could see the map of the LZ which he had drawn in ink on his palm.

And then we saw it, a saucer-shaped depression in the bamboo forest, probably blasted there by a 1,000-pound bomb from a B-52. Merciful God in heaven! We weren't going in there! The place didn't measure 100 feet in diameter, and despite the bomb damage, bamboo stumps remained standing all over it, some of them 10 feet high. But the place had been thoroughly prepped, and Mowdy brought his bird in on a steep approach, dropping it over the rim of the saucer while the gunners blazed away at the trees. The chopper stopped about 20 feet short of the far side and hovered there, eight feet above the ground. We could descend no further for fear the tail rotor would hit the stumps and we would crash.

Copen looked at me questioningly, and I motioned with my thumb: out. One by one, the men worked their way out onto the skids, appraised the distance to the ground, nerved themselves, and jumped.

It would have presented a formidable challenge in any event, but burdened as the men were with equipment and rifles, it took raw courage to leap like that. Pop Foster, in Yellow 2 on our right, had found better ground, and his passengers did not have so far to fall.

They never did manage to enlarge that LZ. The bamboo stumps were as big around as your thigh, and no ax or machete could fell them in the time available. They tried to blow them down with C4 explosive, but it didn't work. Bangalore torpedoes would have worked, but they had none.

And so we set up a daisy chain, the choppers flying sortie after sortie as fast as they could - 42 sorties in all. The grunts would pile in at the pickup zone, an anonymous procession of soldiers, most easily distinguished by the decorations on their helmets. One had a safety razor stuck in his helmet band, another a miniature red plush Christmas stocking, a third the ace and queen of spades. And on their helmet camouflage covers they had written names and jokes and obscenities. "Alice," read one. "Bertha & Dave love," said another. "Going short," read a third [not much time remaining to serve in Viet Nam]. On one helmet I spotted the names "Chicago" written on the left side and "Old Town" written on the right. Wordlessly we shook hands, there in the din of the aircraft.

"Put down name." I printed in my notebook and handed it to him with my pencil.

"SP/4 John H. Frechette," he wrote meticulously on the next line. Then we were back in that nightmare LZ, and he jumped from the skid and was gone.

I could not have guessed it then, but I would return to this position later, for this outfit, whose code name was Arizona, would be in deep trouble by nightfall.

We had trouble enough of our own with that LZ. We were taking only light enemy fire, but the bamboo stumps continued to plague us. Once our tail dipped too low, and the spiky top of a stump touched our left elevator, luckily only scraping the paint. Yellow 6 was less fortunate. His tail rotor struck.

"Yellow 1, this is Yellow 6. It feels like I'm losing my tail rotor. My tail is swinging back and forth, and I don't have much control over the pedals."

He coaxed it up out of the bamboo and headed toward the pickup zone at Don Xoai.

"Six, this is 2," said Pop Foster. "How you doing, baby?"

"It's not a complete failure. Occasionally I can get control of it." Yellow 6 limped back to the pickup zone and made a running landing, his skids digging twin furrows down the strip. He was down safely, but we had to complete the assault without him.