ODD MAN OUT & OUT OF LUCK
By Don Callison
Copyright 1997
My gunner Ralph “Rooster” Cogburn and I were doing a visual reconnaissance (VR) in an area with a lot of signs of Viet Cong. As we were working along a narrow canal, up from a bush jumps this guy packing an SKS assault rifle. He hauls ass for about fifty meters and heads for a bunker concealed by big bushes. Cogburn lets off about 4 shots from his M60 when it jams.
I called “jam” on the radio and my wingman, known as “trail”, slid into position for a try at the bunker. His gunner gets off about 5 rounds at the guy before his M60 jams. He calls “jam”!
By then Cogburn had cleared his gun and damned if that VC doesn’t pop out of the bunker, jogs 20 meters and tries to hide under a banana tree, but he’s in plain sight to us. We’re real curious why he bailed out of the bunker. While I hover at about 15 feet above the bad guy, Cogburn takes as careful aim as can be had with a machinegun hanging from a bungee cord. He squeezes the trigger and gets one “POP”! “Shit! Jam”!
Trail moves in. While we exchange positions, Charlie hops up and runs over to the canal and jumps in the water among some nipa palms and weeds. He pulls the shrubs down around himself, playing “you can’t see me”. Trail moves in for the kill. About 3 shots later he yells “Jam”!
As we move back over the target I line up for a minigun shot. I squeeze the trigger and all we hear is sickening clinking of barrels rotating, that gun’s broke too. “Shit”!
Even in the water, the guy’s still got his SKS, it probably ain’t a real good time to be screwing around with trying to drop a grenade on him. Especially with all our malfunctioning weapons. With the way our luck was running the frag would be a dud.
But we were getting tired of messing with the guy so Rooster gets out a frag anyway. We’re going to put it in the water right next to him. But Charlie has other ideas. While we were on our grenade run, he springs up out of the water, takes a couple of shots at us and boogies, actually zig-zagging back to the bunker. Cogburn dropped the frag and let off a “long stream” of fire at the running VC, about 10 whole shots this time, all miss.
We had been chasing the guy for nearly 10 minutes by the time he dove back through the opening into the bunker. I knew if I put the Cobras on the bunker the guy would bug out before they could hit the target so we stuck with him.
Well, he goes diving into the bunker and we’re right behind him with another frag and a jammed M60 but Rooster has our AK47 back-up gun now and lets off a couple of shots. We were getting desperate and he probably was too. As I we hovered up to the entrance ready to drop the frag, the guy actually comes flying backwards out through the doorway. He lands on his ass while staring up at us just 4 or 5 feet above while he’s groping the ground for his dropped weapon. At the same instant Rooster is dropping the grenade and squeezing off a useless burst of AK just as 2 other AK47 barrels were stuck out from inside the bunker and began hosing my trail bird. Trail yells, “Taking fire! Taking fire!” and we had to quickly fly out of the area because the Cobras that had been orbiting above rolled inbound with their rockets and other playthings.
They had been watching the show and were happy to beat up the bunker. After the rocket run we returned to the destroyed fortification. We counted 5 bodies or KBAs, (killed by airstrike) including the guy we had spent so much time chasing around. Cogburn and I figured he must have been the fifth man into a four-man bunker and you know how those Commies were. “Rules were rules”.
Or maybe he just knew that a bunker
wasn’t a very good place to hide from Aeroscouts.