Page 40 - DFCS NEWS MAGAZINE 2018-2

“Coca Cola, 43, we need to know where you guys are at. Can you hear my rotor blades, over?” Mark responded. The Huey is notorious for the noise it makes as any Vietnam Vet can attest.
“No, we can’t hear you and we don’t know where we are, except that we are on top of a ridgeline in the clouds.”
“Okay,” Mark replied. “We are down in the valley below you. Just find a ravine or a creek bed and follow it downhill in a northerly direction and we’ll find you”.
I knew exactly what Mark was thinking, as if he had all the answers and it would be a piece of cake, but that’s exactly what the team needed to hear to give them hope! Mark’s advice would get them headed downhill and hopefully towards us, so we would have a better chance of finding them.
A few minutes later Coca Cola called
back; “We’ve found a stream bed and are following it downhill. Are you guys still there?”
“Yup, we’re still here,” Mark replied. “Give me a long count, one to ten, and I’ll home in on your signal,” Mark requested.
Army helicopters were equipped with a special electronic device in the cockpit, made for situations just like this one. As the LRRP team transmitted on their radio, Mark could turn his helicopter until the needle lined up on the homing instrument on his panel, to let him know the direction to the team. He got a good lock on the signal and his nose was pointing right at one of the ravines ahead of him.
“23, I’m heading up into this ravine with the creek bed to see if I can make contact with them,” Mark advised.
“Roger that,” was again about all I could say as he slowly disappeared up the ravine and into the clouds. I wouldn’t be there to cover him if he ran into trouble.
“Keep talking to me on VHF and I’ll also monitor fox mike,” I asked. The VHF was our “Company” radio to talk to each other. We had three different radios going at any one time; FM to talk to the ground guys like Coca Cola, UHF or ultra-high frequency to talk to the air guys like air traffic control, Air Force, or Navy, and VHF or very high frequency to talk to each other on a dedicated air-to-air frequency just for us.
“I’m heading up into the ravine. I can’t see forward at all because of the clouds, but I can see the tree tops through the chin bubble and will just keep hopping up the creek bed, tree top to tree top. If we find them, we’ll drop the strings and bring ‘em out, two or three at a time!”
Strings were those 60 to 120-foot ropes the Hueys carried on board to drop ammo and supplies into the jungle, rappel troops to the ground when there was not a prepared landing zone available, or rescue people when in tight spots; mostly our own aircrews when they got shot down or ground troops like the LRRPs of L Company, 75th Rangers in this case. They had McGuire Rigs attached to the ends.
Mark still had a half load of fuel on board and could only handle two or three people at a time dangling from those long lines, and still have enough power to hover. We had terrible memories of a recent accident when too many LRRP’s scrambled onto the lines during a combat rescue and literally dragged one of our Hueys out of the air with their own weight, causing the ship to crash, and killed one of the courageous guys we were trying to rescue. We wouldn’t let that happen today, if we could get to them before the enemy did or darkness that, combined with this lousy weather, would cause us to have to abort the mission completely.
“Assault 43, Assault 43”, the excited voice called over the radio. “We can hear you, we can hear you,” the Ranger said between gasps for air. “We’re running down the creek bed towards the noise looking for you!”
Mark’s hunch had paid off!
UH-1 Pilot CW2 Mark S. Stevens (“The Kid”), 1969.
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