"I’m not much of a story teller, so I’ll try to keep this short and to the point.
A CAP (Civic Action Program) and CAG (Civic Action Group) are small units assigned to Vietnamese villages to discourage the VC from terrorizing the populace. The VC would enter a village and intimidate or kill the village leader and his family to get the villages cooperation.
The military would routinely assign a half dozen to a dozen men to a village to “protect it” and assist with any village related projects like digging wells or other civil projects. A team might consist of a half dozen marines and/or navy personnel to include a corpsman. The highest ranking person involved might be a specialist or a sergeant. Some people might refer to them as peace corps with *****s, but peaceful it was not generally to be. They had a high rate of casualties.
On or about the 15th of February 1970 a small contingency of VC made a run on a small fishing village named Ninh Ma, with a population of less than 500 persons, and guarded by a 6 man CAP group. Ninh Ma is in the II Corps area just south of the Thuy Hoa mountains, and North of a Korean Firebase, and south of the Thuy Hoa Pass. There is a long stretch of open road in the area that was a favorite spot for ambushes involving supply convoys. During this action two men were injured by small arms fire, but not life threatening. The VC appeared to leave the area after the brief encounter.
On Monday, 19 February, a helicopter was dispatched from a base north of Thuy Hoa with replacement personnel, to deliver them to Ninh Ma, and to pick up the injured men. That morning there was light rain, very light, and did not impede the mission.
The helicopter landed just outside the village, alongside a semi paved road leading from the main highway to the village. As it touched down it was met with a hail of small arms fire, and the CAP group were in an open area.
The helicopter had to immediately withdraw, damaged and with two injured crew in addition to the two injured CAP persons. I was one of the replacements, and was on the ground. We were in a ditch alongside the road unable to move in any direction. The only communications that we had was the standard military backpack radio, that normally had a range of 5-6 miles, but because of the weather it seemed as if no one heard us. Then we lost the corpsman. The small arms fire continued for about 20 minutes. It seemed to slack off, but everytime someone moved it would start again.
And a shadow floated over head, no sound of an engine, and we thought the helicopter was trying to get back in. A silver, unmarked fixed wing aircraft floated down and literally stopped adjacent to our position, a door opened, and a Thai named “Jerry” helped us in, and we were gone in a matter of seconds.
The helicopter had made it to the Korean firebase and a armed convoy was sent, it arrived half an hour after we left.
We were delivered to a Special forces camp, and then the pilot left. We learned that he was nearby, heard the call, and disobeyed orders to get involved. The aircraft received multiple hits, and the pilot did not escape unscathed."
Chuck died a few years ago, the wounds he received in the above rescue caused such scaring that the required heart surgery couldn't be done. Additionally, his health was severely compromised by other "unauthorized body modifications", one of which turned him into an instant diabetic.
I miss him every day.
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