Buzzy, please believe when I say thatI am truly sensitive to the shit that happens in war, just like the short mortar round, and the buddy who raises up, in your line of fire and its too late, and all the other misfortunes of war, but I like most veterans tend to try to forget about the bad times and remember the good times, it does'nt mean that the bad times and the misfortunes of war are truly forgotten, it is part of the healing process, just like forgiving yourself for surviving, when so many of our brothers did'nt make it home to the shitty homecoming that we all received. I like many others have experienced some pretty shitty adversities. I dont know what you know about the 119th, but every time a crew went down, or a pilot got shot up, or a gunner took one the chest, or leg, or his face you must remember he was shot trying to help a grunt. The 119th had the reputation in ll corp. that if you were in trouble and you called, the 119th was on its way, good weather and bad.
T.A.N.B.
It was'nt to long after the 119th moved to Anh Khe, the Crocs were called out on a Tac-E, (thats a tactical emergency to you legs), it was me and Jerry Miller, I was flying the lead in a hog, the weather was 0/0, but we had heard from a bird dog that the weather was little better once you got about 20 mile south of Ahn Khe, so we cranked and headed south in search of a LRRP team that had stepped on their "delta" and was in serious contact with company size unit on a F------G mountain in the clouds. We homed in on them using the F/M homer and them trying to direct us by the sound of our blades. Jerry was holding off to the east so we both would'nt be hovering around in the clouds with a mountain,somewhere out there.
I finally broke through I was at about 1500 ft. and all of a sudden there they were behind some boulders, in contact with the bad guys, we could see! I punched off a pair of rockets, and two rockets came out of the same pod from adjacent tubes and kissed fins, one broke down on the boulder hiding the LRRPs and the other one fortunately took off in the direction of the bad guys I punched off 4 more pairs at the bad guys and broke off, and called Jerry, because I was already five minutes into my 20 minute fuel warning light, with about 20 minutes to fly back to base. Jerry dropped his pods and came in and all he could do was put the toes of his skids on the mountain, and the LLRPs could scramble in, Jerry called on the radio and said that three of the LRRPs were wounded by rock shrapnel from the rocket that curled down, I was devastated.... I landed at med e vac pad at Ahn Khe to wait for Jerry, and just as I rolled the throttle back to flight idle, the engine quit.Out of gas. Two minutes earlier and I would have been on short final!!!!!
Anyway Jerry landed shortly and all the LRRPs jumped out and everyone had a big hugging session right there on the med e vac pad. I was so thankful that I had not hurt those guys any worse than I had and they were just thankful we got there and got the gooks off their ass.

END OF T.A.N.B.
J.C.