about to have some fun. Only we did not know it yet. As we neared the area, the gun ships went in, and reported nothing stirring on the ground. That set the flight commander off` in another rage about wasted time and assets. 

We had located a clearing, and as my ship flared and started to land, I stepped out on the skid and was ready to jump as soon as we got within a few feet of the ground. I was standing there when I saw the pilot's window shatter from a burst of fire. It missed me but wiped the pilot out completely. The co-pilot grabbed the stick as we bounced hard and I fell off in a heap. My strikers came tumbling out as the co-pilot was desperately trying to get some air, and some of them dropped at least 20 feet. I was hugging the dirt and could not help thinking "Some dry run, Major". The last look I got at the pilot, he was slumped over and his helmet was shot all to hell and there was blood all over the windshield of the helicopter. I would find out later that he died before they got back to base. 

At this time all sorts of hell was going on. The other choppers were taking hits. They pulled out and the cobras came hack and smoked the place with everything they had. That slowed things down long enough to get some more slicks in and more troops on the ground. Our fire built up enough to allow us to move forward and get some organization going. After we had pushed forward enough, we discovered that we were indeed in a hornet's nest and the bad guys were not too happy that we were there. Once we got into the place, sure as hell, there were two antenna wires stretched between some trees. There were several bunkers, all well camouflaged both from the air and ground level. In one, we found rice cooking on a fire. We took several casualties and inflicted a few, recovered three bodies and three AKs and packs and blankets. No radio was found, but we found where it had been. We went into a night defense perimeter and sat down to figure just what the hell we had stumbled into. Was the radio to listen in on our radio traffic or was it in use for the NVA boys ? We never did solve the puzzle, but the ASA wizard said it was a monitoring set up. How they knew that I had no idea. All I knew was that they were really pissed about us dropping in on them 

Next morning we started to move out, having decided to sweep the entire area to see what else we could stir up. The team leader had radioed back to bring out another platoon of strikers and two more Americans to give us more fire power. We had no idea at all what we were likely to find. We got the word back that it would be late in the day before our new troops would arrive. So we proceeded to search in a pattern, clearing one area before we would go to another area. Just afternoon our