I only intended to quickly refuel at Vinh Long and hurry on to the one hour flight to Long Binh.  When I came down  over the west end of the runway, I could see the sight that had greeted the gunships that Easter.  Captain Dale Sherrod stood out in his white tennis clothes that he had worn all day long directing the rearming and refueling effort.  He was resplendent in these togs, and you could see him all the way down the runway during your approach.  Everyone was in civvies and there were close to one hundred people milling around on the metal surface, down where the Mavericks usually parked, and took off.  That area of the Vinh Long runway had an old PSP surface covering it then; the rest of the strip was crushed rock.  They had been linking ammo all day and capping rockets for the fray over at that LZ.  All those pilots that were still down that day were working on the ground, taking care of their buddies who had been flying that battle on Easter Sunday.  Jack Payne and Terry McDowell had been among these, and so was Ray Novotney, newly in country with the second platoon.  They'd had a busy day of it on their end and had made the difference.

 I parked at the confluence of the runway and the maintenance wash ramp, where Outlaw 6 usually sat.  Many of the wounded ARVN were being taken off by their personnel, and in the chaos, Major Casper walked off the ship.  Savelli was pounding my chin bubble with congratulations, but I was desperately motioning towards Casper that he needed help.  Savelli looked at me first with those wide open Italian cow-eyes, then at Casper, then back at me for confirmation.  I shook my head, "Yes, he's hurt.  He's HURT!", gesturing with my gloved hand.  Savelli left my side of the ship and moved over.  Major Casper was totally covered with grayish mud, and the bandages were covering up his bullet holes somewhat, then he says to young Dr. Hillegas, "Hiya, Doc", as he teeters above him with his six foot four frame, "I'm havin' a little trouble breathin'."  They finally got him to sit down upon the stretcher, and they lugged him off like he was a mahout on an elephant hunting safari; he never did lie down.  His left lung was collapsed and he was in such shock, he remembered none of this until days and weeks later.  The reason he was remaining so upright was that it enabled him to breathe; he couldn't lying down.

 Doctor Jon Hillegas was our flight surgeon, and totally took upon himself to set up an emergency room in his medical quarters for the incoming wounded found in LZ Alpha.  Normally medical people at the Vinh Long dispensary didn't do much except check us out for VD when we came back from Vung Tau, and treat the enlisted personnel for the same when they contacted these diseases in downtown Vinh Long.  Ear funguses were another potent problem, contacted while showering in non-potable water supplies.  That was about it for medical problems with the aviation units here

 This day, lives would be saved due to Doc Hillegas' quick treatment as the rescued men came onto the runway with the serious wounds sustained earlier in the day.  Once they were patched up, they were sent via official med-evac helicopters to Long Binh, so I was relieved of my task of getting Casper all the way up there.  Without the Doc, Don Casper might have died enroute, despite my efforts to get him to adequate medical attention.  Before the Ninth Infantry Division moved in the following year at Dong Tam, we Americans had no real medical facilities in the Delta to take care of us in an event like this.

 I picked up the bird to a high hover, and moved over to the Outlaw ramp for refueling the aircraft, my first time that day.  At the time I never realized I had completed the heavy take-off with all those wounded aboard precisely because I was nearly out of fuel.  About 1400 pounds worth; that's what the difference was, fully fueled versus empty.  After shutting Outlaw 23 down, I wanted to talk to the guys waiting around the ramp for their version of things that morning.  The two platoons of the Outlaws had stayed on the alert out on the ramp throughout the day, awaiting further lift orders.  Harvey Persyn talked to me first.  "I saw what you did out there.  You're lucky to be still alive."  He had a queer look in his eyes as he gazed upon me.   "What do you mean, Harve?  I haven't seen you all day."  I was puzzled.   "I was right behind you when you went into that LZ to pick up those crews.  I thought you were a goner for sure.  The fire was so intense, that I turned back!"

 I pondered that reply for a minute.  I had a standing order within myself never to go back the exact way I had just come in; I saw no reason to get shot at by the same people twice.  Harvey apparently had followed in on my tail and received that fire.   "How come you were there?  I didn't hear you call anybody", I said.   "I was out there resupplying with Toomepuu.  I thought I might try this rescue thing, too.  Maybe help out with an extra ship, you know, but when I heard you volunteer, I said to myself, 'What a ham!  That's the last we see of old Eastman!'", Harvey told me.

 He was serious.  He had pulled off with all good judgment.  I had felt darn near suicidal; I hadn't seen how I was going to survive this attempt.  In fact, I thought I was going to die trying it, there seemed to be no way to live through it.  But, it was just unimaginable for me to let those guys shot down in the LZ suffer any longer, nor have us fail to rescue them.  I would want it done for me!  All along the approach in, I really didn't see how I was going to get through this traumatic event.  I just worked it out as I went along; my mind didn't have a plan.  My feelings all the way through the fast moving flight in was that my death was constantly about two minutes behind me; I really had no rational explanation why I was still alive.  It didn't make sense.  My mind was intensely speeded up, and I was making decisions faster than I could think.  Time had slowed down where five seconds had felt like five minutes.  A lot of high speed psychic phenomena was experienced for the first time in my life.  Most of the time in the LZ, I had been so scared while moving, that I was only conscious of "If I could think right now, that was a good decision!"  I still had not quite come down off it.

 We refueled and I headed back to the CP site.  There, I loaded up some people for Sa Dec, and it was early evening when we were headed back again.  Andy Keeney kept right on saying, "What a heck of a way to spend Easter!", along with his continuous quotes of "War is hell! just like they said!", and "You know what I mean, Dave?  War is hell!  Did I say that yet?  War IS HELL!"  Finally the day was done, we were released for home plate, and we shut down the bird on the Outlaw ramp.
 There is one thing I overlooked and truly shows that truth is stranger than fiction.  Once we had returned from Vinh Long to the CP after refueling, Johnson was up on the cabin roof checking out the hub.  He slipped on some oil that was always leaking from a particular seal, and fell off the cab of the Huey, onto the machine gun that Coleman was working on.  The gun went up to Coleman's armpit and discharged a single round there.  It burned a hole in his shirt with the muzzle flash, but the bullet exited well beyond his back and into a crowd of Vietnamese villagers mingling around the bridge.  Johnson fell to the ground alongside Coleman, shaken up but otherwise unhurt.  I had watched the whole thing and nearly had a cow.  "Jesus H. Christ!  Will you take it easy?!  You just did a magnificent thing out there and now don't louse it up by killing each other!", I shrieked.  "Hey, I'm still a little nervous, OK?  My legs are pretty rubbery after going out there after Casper like that, you know?!", Johnson implored.  I looked at him.  "Really?", I said.   "Yeah!", he goes.  "OK, well just take it easy and rest up a little then.  Stay off the rooftop of that Huey until you can walk straight again", I smiled at him.

 That's all I needed, my two crew killing off one another after the VC had failed to.  The most amazing part of this was that when I returned my gaze to the villagers at the bridge, none of them were writhing around the ground with an M-60 round in their guts.  Lucky all around; I don't know how that bullet fired at armpit level into that crowd didn't hit someone.  It was definitely time to take a breather.

 Hanging around the platoon hooch that night was different.  We didn't know how to dump the extreme emotions we had felt all day.  It was a new kind of nervous feeling, even though we knew the day was over and we had every right to relax.  There was, however, a new feeling that we had never had to encounter before, and that was that one of us had failed to come back.  Jon Myhre was still in that LZ; he had not been picked up by any of us when we finally got around to counting noses.  This was a truly bad feeling.  He was a favorite with all of us, and I was especially close to him, because we used to do a lot of folk music together.  He was good on the guitar and I always liked to join in vocally with someone with musical talent.  We had enjoyed there being an "us".  I could not comprehend his death, nor could I find the emotions to properly address the situation.  When the Armed Forces TV in Saigon signed off at the end of that long day, John Savelli looked at the flag waving on the tube while they played the national anthem, and said, "Jon Myhre died for that flag today."  "Gawd, I guess that's what that statement means", I said to myself.

 Apparently when the first lift went into the LZ, the VC had remained absolutely quiet until the Outlaws' touchdown, despite the Mavericks' initial reconnaissance by fire.  Hershey got hit first in the smoke ship, disabling him on his first pass, like already said.  Lou Paulin had a B-40 rocket explode just in front of his ship flying with newly arrived co-pilot, Carson Snow.  Tommy McCarthy in Outlaw 29 had another new pilot on board, Vance Shearer, who gets hit in the helmet with a ricocheting round, and collapses on his stick, knocked out cold.  Mac, attempting to right the ship, goes careening across the LZ directly at Harvey Persyn in Outlaw 27, who is really sure he is going to die this time.  Skinny little Tommy gets Shearer off the cyclic just enough, even though the co-pilot remains unconscious.  The round took a big white gouge out of the back of his flight helmet; the ship took almost as many hits as its call sign.  While Outlaw 29 was coming directly at 27 with Tommy battling the unconscious Shearer's body off the controls, Harvey had two VC appear just in front of his aircraft.  One man stood up with an AK-47 and aimed right at the windshield.  Then to Harvey's amazement, turned the weapon six feet away from the ship and fired a burst into thin air, like he was leading the aircraft in full flight.  The whole flight sustained withering fire from the worst Viet Cong battalion around to engage, the "Potato Battalion", however they got that name. They were reinforced by a heavy weapons company this day.  About 350 individuals were with this unit at this moment, and they opened fire on the Outlaws at point blank range when they had come to a hover.  ARVN soldiers tumbled dead out of the ships as they landed.  Jon Myhre's ship, Outlaw 17, was hit by a B-40 rocket and he couldn't get the damaged ship out of the LZ.  His rotor stopped, and he and Jim Martinson, his co-pilot, were hit along with the ship taking rounds.  Jon's thigh was smashed by automatic weapons fire and Jim's jaw was hit by a round.  They were dragged from the ship by their crew.

 From altitude, Major Eberwine in the med-evac ship immediately went into a high overhead circling descent to come to the aid of the downed first platoon crew.  They actually picked them up under heavy fire, but took a pounding themselves.  Jon said the sounds made while the aircraft fuselage was receiving the intense fire sounded like many aluminum beer cans being crunched, continuously and loudly, plinking all at the same time.  Viet Cong machine gun fire continued to rake the ship once loaded.  The Dustoff ship cartwheeled twice before it burst into a ball of flame after inching along for take-off with its injured men, and crashed.  This is when Colonel Dempsey went in.  Eyewitnesses to these burning ships told us that Jon Myhre had perished in the Dustoff ship because he was so crippled by his leg wounds, that he could not have climbed out.  The Huey was lying on its side when it burned.  Jim Martinson had to get out of three ruined helicopters in a matter of minutes, as they all got shot up and became non-flyable death traps rather quickly.  It became a bad day at "Black Rock" from then on for these downed flyers.  They underwent for the rest of that hot day what the rest of us dared not think about ever happening to us.

 Major Casper had tried to get Dempsey out of his right seat with another crewmember, but he wouldn't budge as the ship began to burn up.  Later Don would realize they had never undone his seat belt.  The colonel was slumped over, dead, killed by a burst of automatic weapons' fire from a machine gun nest fifty feet away in a dike line.  They finally had to quit pulling on him as the ship became increasingly on fire.  All the while, the VC poured bullets into the ship while they had worked; they only turned on the major when they had thoroughly hosed the ship.  After being hit, he had spent most of the day face down in the mud, hiding behind a rice paddy dike.

 We went to bed, mourning Jon and thinking over what a big loss he would be to all of us.  I slept fitfully, so was not surprised to have some crazy dreams that night.   One I had was that someone was standing outside the screen windows of my hooch, screaming over and over again, "He's alive!  He's alive.  He's alive."  The next morning I tentatively asked at my breakfast table in the club for any of the officers there not to laugh at me too much, but that I'd had the strangest dream of Jon Myhre actually being OK and rescued.  The two or three guys looked up at me, and said, "It's true.  They picked him up about 11:30 last night.  He's now up at Bien Hoa, and they've sent a second message to his wife that he's wounded in action, but no longer missing in action.  He's going to be all right."

 I felt relieved, and almost faint at the same time.  I stood there holding the back of my chair, waiting for my body to get itself together with all these draining emotions coursing through me.  This was getting a bit much.   "How did they get him, when he was supposed to burn up in the med-evac helicopter?", I softly asked.   "He apparently crawled away from the burning ship, busted leg and all, and hid in the mud, at a completely different angle away from everybody else.  An ARVN stepped on him late last night, and an American advisor was called over to assist them in finding who it was.  It was Jon Myhre.  A gunship jettisoned its pods and brought him in.  They threw him in the back with all the ammo."  That little red-haired Lieutenant, Rex Latham, once again had played a significant role as he had searched LZ Alpha for dead and wounded.  He had found Jon, and radioed to a medical officer circling overhead from Binh Thuy.  The doctor had diagnosed Jon's injuries accurately, and they had dropped morphine down into LZ Alpha for his pain.  A while later he had been picked up.

 The yelling I had heard outside my hooch in the middle of the night had been from Ray Leuty.  When Jon's mud and blood-caked body was placed on Doc Hillegas' operating table, he was nearly unrecognizable.  The young doctor asked for someone from Jon's unit to come up and thoroughly identify him, because there had been too many of the injured men who had reported him dead.  When asked for his name, which Jon excitedly gave in his doped up pain, those present in the medical facilities had actually told him that was not who he was, because people had seen Jon Myhre die, so he must be somebody else!  Ray Leuty was Jon's platoon leader, so he gladly went up to make the formal ID in the treatment room.  That is why I heard him gleefully screaming outside my windows at something like two in the morning.  Jon Myhre had indeed risen from the dead on Easter Sunday.

 Terry McDowell, Jon's close friend, had run up to the dispensary in just his skivvies when he heard the news.  He said Jon was very animated on the dose of morphine given to him and wanted to tell all of what he had been through.  He was mad about the ARVN who found him earlier in the afternoon looting him of his Seiko watch, so Terry gave him the one off his own wrist to make him feel better.  About a dozen other Outlaws, including Stets, were jammed into the hallway just outside Hillegas" treatment room, just awaiting word of Jon's outcome.  Jon said he had played dead when the first ARVN soldier had discovered him in the afternoon, who began to immediately loot his body.  He let him take everything until the little Vietnamese thug started to remove his wedding ring, then Jon figured "to hell with it" and slugged him. In the resulting fracas, a shot had rung out from the treeline from the VC, and the round found the little ARVN above Jon while the struggle was going on.  Jon felt guilty for the man's death, but had used the dead man's arm for a head rest the remainder of the day.  He used his helmet, too.  ARVN soliders later had alerted Lt. Latham over to the site where Jon lay, when they discovered him in the darkness.  There was also something about a strobe light being used to catch the attention of the Spooky 51 flare ship orbiting overhead, but Jon denies this device being present.  The C-47 dragon ship just happened to have the doctor along for the ride, and this Dr. Witta had radioed down the diagnosis for young Lt. Latham to help Jon.  They had overheard Latham radioing to Palenchar the report that he had found a wounded American in the LZ.

 His tale of surviving that long hot day is pretty grim.  After climbing somehow out of the burning wreck, he had slipped down in between the skids and the underbelly of the overturned helicopter lying on its side.  Somehow, even with his shattered leg, he had climbed up the vertical surface that had been the cabin floor, and then fallen down to the mud.  He said he might have been on fire himself, because all that was left of his flight glove on one hand was the leather ring around the wrist.  He crawled away in a different direction of the other crewmembers, but not really by choice.  He just had to get away from the burning aircraft; then he needed to hide from all the VC that were also in that landing zone.  First, he buried himself in the fetid rice paddy muck almost completely, so that only one eye on his head was exposed.  Unbelievably, the automatic weapons fire was so intense grazing the LZ that the VC's tracers were going just past his stomach.  He said if he'd had any more weight on him, he'd been hit by these bullets.  This went on all day.  He thought every second of every minute of that day would be his last.  The noise was intense from both the enemy fire and his own country's aviation's bombing and strafing.  He did not have a flight helmet on, so the volume was louder than any of us had ever yet realized.  He was able to tell us many months later after being in Walter Reed Hospital that the reason the airstrikes had not accomplished much that we hoped was that the VC had whistles and bugles they had alerted their troops with.  When those terrible jet strikes had been conducted that I'd observed, the VC had come out of their bunkers and laid down all around Jon in the grass.  Each time they did that, he feared they'd discover him.  He prayed they wouldn't and burrowed down deeper into the mud, trying to cushion his broken leg with its splayed bone fragments.  He was in excruciating pain and complete terror.  However, he never gave up hope on us rescuing him, but it must have been horrible when we all took off and left him behind.  All of us expected someone else had gotten him in their ship; we were crushed to learn that nobody had.  It seemed a terrible joke that only one man had not been picked up; it was like picking no one at all.  It was a crueler than if only half had been rescued.

 Jon later told me that I had nearly flown right over him on my departure out of the LZ, with all those wounded Vietnamese and Casper.  In the hospital he asked the major why he had not sighted him as Johnson and he made it to my bird.  (They  brought Casper in the next day, but the lanky major had never been close to where Jon lay in the LZ.)   Myhre recognized my ship when I flew nearly over him on take-off, because I had a yellow and black target painted on the bottom of the aircraft where the ADF antenna was supposed to be.  Johnson had ordered this Automatic Direction Finder apparatus some time ago, and it had never come in.  In the meantime, he had installed a piece of sheet metal over the space, and once down under there, had taken a can of black spray paint and made circles over the lemon-yellow anti-rust paint.  He thought it funny, and both of us had forgotten the joke on ourselves.  Other people felt it ballsey that we were flying around the country with a target painted on our belly, but we had just plainly forgotten about it.  Many of the ground troops frequently told me that they knew which ship was mine because of that target; it was well known by all those below Outlaw 23.  Oh well, absent-mindedness.

 I have thought over the years what I would have done if I had recognized Jon kneeling up desperately just as I passed over him, while trying to get that RPM up.  Would I have jettisoned many of the Vietnamese wounded to save him?  Could I have survived doing so once I left the cover of those burning ships?  One will never know, and Jon has insisted that I would have gotten killed if I had tried.  He was in an untenable position, scarcely 150 feet from the entrenched VC.  He makes me feel like a fool for even considering it.  Maybe I am taking too much for granted after having survived that day, but, after all the pain and trauma in his life right down to today, I sure wish I'd had the chance to try it.

Really I do.

God, give me back that moment to attempt it.