In summer of '67 we were still crossing the border and HQ took some rings and stuff from the crews. Then one of our guys, Dube I think, said "I will go but only as a soldier" and refused to leave his personal stuff behind. So we went as soldiers. I remember several flights from Kham Duc. I went up there and took a replacement aircraft with a Tech Inspector for a co-pilot and no map from north of Dak Pek until just south of Kham Duc. It was not a problem really. Just follow the blown up route 14 and the dropped bridges until you found something on the new map sheet.
In my case it was an abandoned French airstrip on the south side of a mountain. I remember several things about Kham Duc. The top of the hills carved flat, The funny blue painted swedish burp guns of the SF teams, The mama-san and her daughter sleeping in the command bunker who, they said, was supposed to have been shot to prevent team discovery in Laos. The SF guys kidnapped them instead and were taking care of them so they could get them back to their people some day.
Once, the 48th AHC blue stars came to visit and one of their gunships (UH-1Cs) spread it's skids trying to get from POL to the runway because the AC overloaded it. They were not used to mountain flying. On one mission we followed with a chase ship for maint. and turned back when "Crown" the CC ship (A C-130) said we had " high performance headed our way' It was laotian T-28s. Some guys were pissed because we felt we could whip them. I remember going back up there once and finding a ship with a bunch of skin missing from the tail rotor and hydraulics shot out during an insertion in Laos. All in all, FOB2 was a bad mission. exciting but scary.
^5 and salute
Bob T