Shoo, March 1, 1969 was the first day of a son-of-a-bitch of a month.

Tonight, the night of March 3, was when A Company, 3rd Bn, 8th Infantry was butchered. They ran all night and we got the first lift of what was left of them out early on the afternoon of the 4th.

The rest of the month was nothing but CA's, stacks of bodies, diversions for Tactical Emergencies, piles of wounded, tons of ammo and C's and C-4 and barbed wire and water cans and cherry replacements...

Most of the pilots busted their max hour limits for the month. We flew almost every day whether our ship flew or not. 1st Flight, 2nd Flight, made no difference. Crew chiefs flew as gunners and anyone else who wanted to fly, flew. I survived Shakey and he survived me. I started wearing the back plate to my chicken plate and adding scrap steel plates on the floor around my seat. We all put in bigger ammo cans.

By the middle of the month, the maintenance guys at Holloway were waiting for us to return after dark to help us out with post-flights and heavy lifting. They kept food for us at the mess hall, and the pilots began taking over the officers' showers for us. Many times it was either that or fly tomorrow covered with today's blood.

It was a miracle that Shifty was our only man killed that month. We made our luck by doing what we knew how to do and by throwing ourselves between our friends and the bad guys. You guys get most of the credit for slick crews living through it. We're flight lead, skids almost in the trees on short final as first into the LZ on a CA, and a Croc would come by UNDERNEATH us pouring smoke and fire onto the LZ.

I vividly remember loading wounded at late dusk on my side in a meadow deep in the bottom of the Plei Trap as NVA arty out of Laos was impacting all around us. We landed with the ship between the grunts and the bad guys, the ground was on fire, and Eggy was shooting dinks out the right side of the ship. There were too many wounded for us to carry, and I was picking the worst looking ones to load. Triage. One poor grunt, crying, wanted us to take his dead buddy when we didn't have room for all the wounded. He moved his weapon around at me. I decided (hoping the chicken plate would stop a 5.56mm at 3 feet) to let him shoot me; I knew I couldn't shoot him.

We spent more time washing gore out of the ships in the dark at Camp Holloway than I can tell. Midnight Tac-E ammo resupply missions, single ship. And so many single-ship resupply and dustoff missions all over the Plei Trap Valley. Men dying on our ship between there and MaryLou in Kontum, and being amazed at some who were still breathing when we made MaryLou... one in a pile of wounded convulsed, coming out of the valley, and almost threw me out the door as I tried to help him, and I only remembered recently that he was dead by the time we got to the med pad.

Sometime this week, forty years ago, I think I decided I wasn't going to live through it, and just decided to do the best I could until they got me. Somehow, they missed. But it was still a son-of-a-bitch of a month.

Doc