The Ravens: The True Story of a Secret War (41 page)

Captured enemy anti-aircraft guns decorate the front of Gen. Vang Pao’s house in Long Tieng.
(Pic: Morrison collection)

Captured 12.7mm anti-aircraft guns that nailed many Ravens.
(Pic: Swedberg collection)

8. The War Turns

... I am in blood

Stepp’d in so far, that, should I wade no more,

Returning were as tedious as go o’er.

- William Shakespeare,
Macbeth

And then the enemy came smashing back. The new Communist offensive had been launched in December 1969, when the North Vietnamese Army moved in fresh troops and road construction teams, taking full advantage of a lull in air sorties over the Plain of Jars as the USAF switched its attention to the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
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The enemy snatched back the plain piecemeal, moving so fast they recaptured some of their own tanks and artillery pieces lost in About-Face. It was now the North Vietnamese’s turn to wonder why their adversaries had not spiked guns or sabotaged tanks. By the beginning of the new year, 1970, thousands of civilians in encircled positions immediately northwest of the plain were threatened, and a massive evacuation began.

In less than two weeks, Air America, reinforced by ten Air Force choppers, lifted out four thousand refugees together with their livestock and possessions and moved them to Muong Soui.
[154]
Intelligence reports stated that the North Vietnamese were pouring men and supplies through Laos and Cambodia and down the Trail into South Vietnam. Antiaircraft guns in Laos had tripled in number in little over a year.
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Fred Platt flew out to the east of Xieng Khouang on January 11, accompanied by a new Backseater. The weather was bad, so he decided to try working glory holes (isolated openings in an overcast sky where a Raven could rendezvous with fighters and lead them down through the cloud and onto a target). He spiraled up and down through the cloud breaks but had no luck finding targets.

He radioed Cricket and said he was going to try some armed recce along Route 7. The Backseater was new to the job, and Platt attempted to show him the ropes. Along the road he found a stock of oil drums that had been brought in during the night and were still uncamouflaged. Instead of calling in fighters, Platt rolled in on them himself and fired a Willy Pete rocket directly into the fuel cache.

As he made the pass he heard the unmistakable sound of a 12.7mm antiaircraft gun open up, then saw green tracers arcing toward him. One shell hit the elevator surface, which did no great damage, but a second went between the accessory case and the engine block. The plane began to spew oil and caught on fire.

‘Raven 47,’ Platt called in to Cricket, ‘I’ve just taken a hit on Route 7. I’m going to point it toward Alternate, but the engine’s running rough. Try to get a fix on me - get a location. I’m going to keep broadcasting until the radio goes dead.’

Oil from the burning engine left a trail of thick black smoke, and flames began to lick around the outside of the cockpit. ‘Heavy fire, black smoke - shutting down the engine now,’ Platt radioed Cricket. He punched off the rockets, which made the plane lighter and allowed him to gain altitude. He maintained a steady glide until a limestone ridgeline loomed up directly ahead of him. ‘If you’ve got a tracking beam on me,’ Platt said to Cricket, ‘I’m going to try for an Alaskan bush landing on the karst.’

This was an extremely tricky maneuver - the same, one that had killed Bing Ballou. The technique is to bring the plane in low until it is barely above the ground, and point it in the direction of an uphill slope; the pilot slows it down almost to a stall, and then at the last moment yanks up the nose, forcing it to stall. The idea is to make the plane slide back on its tail and hit the ground the instant before gravity takes over and the heavy nose plummets.

Platt dropped the flaps to a quarter and dived toward the vertical karst, tensing himself for the landing. An updraft suddenly picked the plane up, giving it enough airspeed to lift over the ridgeline. Behind the karat was a wide valley with rows of rice paddies, punctuated every two hundred yards by dikes, while at the far end stood an abandoned earth stronghold.

As he dropped to a height of three feet above the ground he saw that part of what he had taken to be a dike was in fact a two-lane highway. It was forty feet wide, sunk between two banks twenty feet deep, and overlain with camouflage. He lifted the plane to fifteen feet, pointed its nose toward the first bank, which lay directly across his path, and pulled on the stick. The tail dropped onto the highway; he hit the far bank with the underbelly of the airplane just beneath the engine cowling, and he felt the gear ripping from the fuselage.

As crash landings went, he was doing well, except that when the plane hit the ground his shoulder harness snapped. He flew forward and hit his face on the crossbar of the cockpit, and his knees smashed into the instrument panel. He had also lost his back pressure on the stick when the harness broke, so that the plane retained too much airspeed. As it bounced the propeller dug into the ground, making the plane flip over onto its back.

Platt and his Backseater hung upside down in the crashed aircraft. The cockpit roof was a bed of broken Plexiglas, but he had no choice but to reach down and release his seat belt. Platt fell heavily onto the splintered plastic, kicked open the door, and rolled out of the plane. The Backseater remained hanging, unharmed but dazed. Platt shook him. ‘Come on, come on - bye-bye.’

The man remained where he was. Platt reached for his seat buckle and released it. The Backseater fell on his head and was momentarily stunned. As he came around he began to moan, and then to pray. In the distance Platt heard noises, and saw enemy troops coming over the hill half a kilometer away.

He grabbed his map case, an M-79 grenade launcher and a bandolier of shells, and a Swedish-K submachine gun and a shoulder bag full of ammo. Looking toward the earth stronghold, he saw a high bank and decided that it would be the ideal place to make a stand while they waited for help. He began to run toward it, shouting to the Backseater to follow him, but the man stood rooted to the spot, too shocked to move. Platt went back, grabbed the Meo and threw him over his shoulder, and ran through the paddy fields.

He wondered, as he ran, whether the onetime defenders of the abandoned stronghold had ever mined its surroundings, and he dimly expected to be blown into the air at any moment, but he reached it without mishap. He stopped at the edge of the bank and propelled the Backseater over the side and then jumped over himself. Both men squatted in its shelter while Platt tried to get someone on the radio. Meanwhile, the enemy had reached the crashed plane and gathered around it. They had not seen Platt’s dash for cover, but now they spread out to find and capture the downed pilot.

Tom Harris was working glory holes out toward Site 46, about twenty miles from where Platt had been hit, when he heard the initial call for help. He followed the trail of black smoke left in the wake of the O-1 and flew into the valley searching for the wreck. The enemy troops dropped down at the sight of the plane, but as Harris pulled off they began to move up the road again. Platt fired M-79 grenades at them, using the long-range launcher on maximum elevation in order not to give away his position, and was careful to conserve ammunition.

The Jolly Greens had launched from Long Tieng, but had been ordered to stand by, hovering over the base, while a full-scale search-and-rescue operation was organized. In the meantime, Dave Anckerberg, the pilot of an Air America chopper, had heard the Mayday call over the company frequency. Together with his crew chief, he kicked off the cargo he had been loading and headed toward the crash site.

Platt had been on the ground only half an hour when he heard the rotors of the Air America chopper in the valley. It came in over the bank and settled down ten feet behind the stronghold. The two men ran toward it, and Platt grabbed his companion by the seat of the pants and gave him a one-armed boost into the chopper. He then threw all his gear in and reached up for something to grab to pull himself on board. Inadvertently, he grabbed the side door’s release latch. The door of the H-34 spun off and landed in the paddy. The crew chief signaled him to abandon it, and as enemy soldiers ran down the road toward them, he hauled Platt aboard. The chopper lifted off and they flew back toward Alternate.

The crew chief asked Platt if he was hurt. ‘No, I feel great.’

Grateful to be alive, he began to shower the pilot with profuse thanks and removed the kilo gold bar he kept strapped to the calf of his left leg (partially worn as a counterbalance for the large Bowie knife strapped to his right leg). He offered it to Anckerberg in appreciation for saving his life. The pilot shook his head and waved the gold ingot away. ‘No sweat, Raven.’

The Ravens were on the ramp to meet the chopper as it came in to land. Platt asked for a T-28 to be made ready and grabbed the Backseater. ‘Hey, we go back-we get gun.’ The Meo looked at him blankly and quietly walked away. (He resigned from the Backseater corps after this single experience, and returned to being a lieutenant of infantry.) ‘I want to go back and get that damn gun,’ Platt insisted.

‘Don’t you think I ought to fix that nose first?’ asked Clyde Elliott, who had also come down to the ramp to meet the chopper. Platt put his hand up to his nose. It had been badly broken and was skewed off to one side of his face. ‘I’m not going to let you go,’ the doctor said. ‘You’re in shock.’

Platt was helped back to the hootch. His knees were beginning to hurt, but the pain receded after a couple of stiff shots of whisky. He was aware that his neck had become stiff, and his back was stiffening too, but drinking seemed to help. The postmortem on his crash turned into a party, and Platt drank a bottle of Scotch before he staggered to bed. ‘Fuck it - I’ll go get the gun tomorrow.’

The following morning he awoke and felt nothing. His knees no longer hurt and his back and neck were not stiff. But when he tried to get out of bed he could not move. It was then that he first realized he was paralyzed from the neck down.

Fred Platt needed to be flown to the Air Force hospital at Udorn as a matter of the greatest urgency. He stubbornly refused to be taken on a Jolly Green, arguing that if they were reluctant to pick him up in combat he could manage without their services now. He was folded into the back of an O-1 and Mike Byers flew him across the border into Thailand.

By the time they arrived Platt could move his hands, although he was still unable to feel anything. He watched his toes wiggle and his fingers curl as if they belonged to someone else. At Udorn, Byers taxied the plane to a waiting ambulance on the Air America ramp. Platt was strapped to a board and taken to the hospital, where he was put in a neck brace and subjected to a series of X-rays. Both the hospital’s radiologist and the orthopedic surgeon were on weekend leave, so it was left to the staff doctor to inspect the X-rays and prescribe treatment. This involved strapping Platt to an angle board while an elaborate web of weights and pulleys stretched his limbs. Every two hours the weights were taken off, and he was strapped into a circular trundle bed and moved around. The treatment continued for two days, and although he was still able to move his fingers and toes, he felt nothing and remained paralyzed.

The orthopedic surgeon returned from Bangkok and examined the X-rays. They showed a spinal concussion and seven separate hairline fractures. ‘This man’s neck is broken and he has a fractured spine,’ the doctor announced. ‘You’re just pulling it apart with these weights.’