"Enjoying a Hot Cup"

 By Eric Raits
Written November 25, 2007

Forty years ago on November 23, Thanksgiving Day, 1967, I was the door gunner on Gator 522 when we were hit in the tail rotor linkage on Hill 875 and the pilot, Dave Mason, set us down without injury twice.

This is what happened the next day, the day after Thanksgiving, with another helicopter, Gator 374. I was called "Magnet Ass" by some of the less sensitive people in the 119th after this.

Dave Mason was again flying and Eddie Virgil (as he is mentioned in the Unit History of the 119th Assault Helicopter Company), or Eddie Vigil, as I remember him, was the crew chief. I don't remember the name of the peter pilot (copilot).

We flew north from Camp Holloway early in the morning to an artillery base on top of a small mountain range that I believe was not too far west of Dak To. We picked up a Colonel and his aide for some artillery spotting duty. The Colonel had a stainless steel thermos full of coffee that his aide used to keep the Colonel's coffee cup full at all times. When the coffee was about to run out, back to the artillery base we went for a refill. It was easy duty, circling lazily, safely out of range of any action, while the Colonel kept his binoculars trained on targets for the artillery and barked occasional instructions into his radio. Our third trip back to the base for coffee happened about 11:30 and we were hoping there might be an invitation for some hot lunch as we usually ate canned C's (C-rations), grabbed whenever there was a lull in the duty.

The whole day seemed a lull after the excitement with the 173rd on Hill 875 on the prior day. On this quiet day, we had landed at the artillery base several times that morning. It was broad daylight, and nothing seemed to be stirring anywhere. I made a huge mistake as we headed in to land at the artillery base. With the perimeter in view and us just 100 feet off the ground, I stowed my machine gun, putting it straight up and down with its barrel clipped into a bracket as we got close to the artillery base. I slipped a loop of wire around one of the bullets to keep the belted ammunition from working out of the ammo box. Just as I did that all hell broke loose. We had flown directly over a group of NVA that were sneaking single file up the hill to attack the artillery base. Their rifles were pointed straight up at us and the sound was like popcorn in a hot skillet. I grabbed the twin triggers and commenced shooting straight down; there was no need to even aim the M-60. Unfortunately, the ammo belt came unlinked where I had wired it and I got off a burst of maybe 30 or 40 rounds.

We could feel the ship being absolutely riddled with bullets and I heard either the pilot or the peter pilot say, "OMIGOD, look at the transmission oil pressure!" That was one of the gauges in the middle of the instrument panel that I could see from my door gunner seat and I turned my head in time to see the needle bounce off the zero stop.

We completely lost power and Dave auto rotated us in to a crash landing just outside the perimeter of the artillery base. The ground there was covered with large downed tree trunks like scattered pick-up sticks. Once again, none of us was hurt. We hustled our M-60s out of their mounts and set them up behind cover to repel the NVA that were just a short distance down the hill. We fired bursts into the foliage to let them know we were ready. Some of the artillery pieces on the perimeter were being cranked down and aimed over our heads and they began firing into the trees. Things were starting to look up a little. We even stopped firing ourselves to conserve ammo in case we really needed it.

In looking around behind us from time to time, I spotted someone crawling toward us. It was a grunt from the artillery base, laboriously dragging a large green object behind him, working himself and the object over and under and between all the fallen logs. As he got closer, we could see it was a thermal container that was used to bring hot food and liquids out to the field from kitchens back at base camps. He was also clutching a long thin cardboard box that was full of Styrofoam cups. I can't remember if he also had sugar and cream but when he got to us and started passing the cups around, I remember he said, "I thought you guys might enjoy a hot cup." We did--awash in the irony of artillery rounds whistling over our heads, General Giap's NVA pinned down a short distance away, and sipping hot coffee from Styrofoam cups.

We never saw the enemy again that day. We waited a couple of hours for another Chinook to come from Camp Holloway and helped the crew sling Gator 374 beneath the powerful Chinook and for the second day in a row, ready to ride back to Holloway in the belly of another helicopter. We counted over 100 bullet holes in Gator 374.

We were climbing into the Chinook when somebody noticed blood running out of Eddie Vigil's boot. Eddie had taken a round in the bottom of his foot that had lodged in his calf muscle but the flowing adrenaline had kept him from noticing anything. I heard the wound got infected and Eddie was sent to a hospital in Japan. I was never able to find out any more about him or his condition.

Dave Mason, the pilot who so ably saved our lives twice in two days, suffered serious back injuries in a helicopter crash stateside that kept him in pain for the rest of his life. He died a few years ago.

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