Mark, I'm not sure now whether it was Thanksgiving or Christmas 1968, but I had only been flying a few days. Routine "ash & trash" mission, we had all kinds of supplies, mail etc, plus a complete holiday dinner for a 4th Div hilltop position on board, packed in metal insulated containers called Mermite Cans. I dunno if they were still around when you were in, but that's how they packed hot meals out to the line. Worked pretty good, too.

Anyway, we landed on their pad, exposed hilltop lz, and a couple of grunts started pulling stuff off the ship. I got out and was dragging stuff out when the first mortar round hit just outside of our rotor disk. The grunts went for cover, I dove for the ship and smashed my right knee on the gun mount as I scrambled into my well, and we got outta there.

Couple minutes later, we were safely away, breathing again, and cruising back to Kontum with some of the cargo still on board. My damn knee still hurt and I reached down to rub it, my hand came back wet. I looked down and it was red, my leg was red, there was a pool of red all over the floor of the ship, jesus I was hit. I grabbed my leg and went down on the deck, screaming into the intercom SHIT I'M HIT I'M BLEEDING HOLY HOMINA HOMINA ETC ETC.

I was writhing around on the deck and my gunner jumped across and cut my pants leg looking for the hole to try to stop the bleeding... looking for the hole... looking for the hole...

I sat up and started looking for the hole...

No hole.

Beets. Beet juice.

One of the damned Mermite cans that we hadn't unloaded yet had beets in one of the inside cans. Little piece of mortar shrapnel punched into the end of the can, it was draining all over the place, when we flew out it blew the juice up onto my right leg.

You wanna know about taking abuse?

Endless. To this day.

Sheesh.