Lonnie McKellips
War Wagon Gunner

I was wounded on February 14th, 1970.
I was flying lead Loach Crew Chief/Gunner/Observer (yeah, we were all those things. Other Cav units, like the 7th of the 1st at Vinh Long had ground crew chiefs and flying "observers").

The pilot was "Smitty", and I cannot recall his full name.  We had the first mission of the day, and we were going into a free fire zone along the coast (can't recall the name right now, but it was East of Vinh Long).  This mission, we were going to try something different.  Because of the rotor blade noise of our C&C and the two Crusader Cobras, our team went in low, fast, and well ahead of everyone to catch Charlie by surprise.

It worked, we caught a bunch of them scrambling to hide things from the approaching Huey and Cobras way off in the distance.  They were not
expecting us a all.  We opened up with mini guns and my M-60.  I cannot recall today if we got any kills, although I think so (had a lot of KBAs before this date).  I was preparing to throw either a grenade or one of our bombs when something hit our Loach.  I remembered when the Loach blew up and killed the pilot and crew chief from a dropped grenade, so I made sure I tossed it away.

I had shrapnel in my left leg and armpit, but we decided to try to continue until our second team could come on site - due to the many VC in the area.  We kept shooting and dropping grenades, and then the pain in the leg and arm got to be too much so we left.

We flew back to the staging area, near the Long Knives.  When I got out of the Loach, I walked a few steps, bent over and checked out my leg.
Unknown to me, Smitty also got out - with the engine and rotor still going.  When our trail Loach landed on the other side of our Loach, the rotor wash cause the blades to dip down at my head so I ducked an instinctively put up my right hand to shield by head.  My Loach rotor blades hit the ends of my fingers and knocked me to the ground (which saved my life - better that than losing my head).  The blades were close to my head, because I heard the wind noise through the bullet holes in
the blades.

I was put on one of our slicks, with Smitty, and flown to I think Tan Son Nhut (Saigon) hospital, but it could of been Can Tho hospital. Several wounded ARVNs were brought in also, so I watched many of them getting patched up.

I ended up getting transferred to Yokohama Hospital in Japan, then on to Fort Ord Army Hospital.  They ended up cutting my right ring finger off at the joint above where my ring went. The bones were in many pieces, so don't know why they operated on my twice before taking it off.  The tips of the other two fingers healed without problems.  At Ft. Lewis later, I had the remainder of the finger removed due to problems with it.

I got the purple heart, and later (four to six months) at Ft. Lewis I
got all my Air Medals.

Don't know if the Troop tried that “War Wagon in first” tactic again - but
it sure worked well that day.