Memories of wounded Marines abound
By ROBERT STOKES • SPECIAL TO THE PRESS • May 22, 2010

In my Vietnam War movie, there are good scenes and bad ones. Scenes I'd like to forget and those I want to remember. This is a story about one of the good ones — the incredible courage and unflappable calm in the face of enemy fire demonstrated by those warriors who flew medevac helicopters into hot LZs (landing zones) to evacuate the wounded and the dying.

I had my first taste of that bravery only three weeks in country in January 1967. I was a freelance reporter doing a story on the pilots of the 263d Marine Medical Helicopter Squadron who flew H-34 Choctaw choppers from their base at Marble Mountain, a few clicks (kilometers) west of Danang. The H-34s, for those who've forgotten, were not exactly the quickest choppers in the U.S. inventory; something like a Huey without vertical lift. A target-rich opportunity for Viet Cong gunners.

We had just finished flying two earlier missions that morning and I frankly had enough of hot LZs and wounded Marines when the buzzer rang three times in the ready room of the 263d. That was the signal to scramble for another pickup. Marine Maj. Bert McCauley of New Albany, Ind., the pilot of the H-34 I'd ridden with, nodded to me and asked, "Ready for one more joy ride?"

I nodded, wondering whether I was pushing my luck.

Within minutes, we were hovering over the pick-up area. McCauley buzzed the area one time to make sure "Charlie" wasn't hiding down there waiting to take down another U.S chopper with automatic weapons.

McCauley was an old pro at going in under fire, with two Silver Stars to prove it. But the commo Marine (radioman) on the ground assured him that the landing zone was "a piece of cake;" slang for an LZ free of enemy fire. Yeah, right!

With both door gunners at the ready, McCauley dipped the chopper into a sharp right bank and landed in a clearing. Four Marines of Lima Co., 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, had been chewed up by a claymore anti-personnel mine.

I jumped off the chopper and helped the chief Navy corpsman, John Goodwin of Minden, La., carry one of the wounded to the chopper and push him aboard in a mass of blood and bandages.

We were on the ground for less than three minutes when McCauley gave the bird full throttle and we started to take off for what seemed to last an eternity.

Both door gunners started blazing away with their M-60, 7.62-millimeter machine guns. The chopper started to shake, rattle and roll from the hammering of enemy automatic weapons fire that tattooed its underbelly.

I wondered how the pilot was able to keep the craft airborne. The Viet Cong were hidden in spider holes dotting the clearing we were using as a runway. I looked to my right and saw a young, bespectacled Marine clutching his stomach, grimacing in pain, and shaking his head.

I grabbed his hand for support when I suddenly felt like my right forearm and elbow were on fire and my sleeve was dripping wet. Rolling up my sleeve, I saw blood streaming from several holes below my elbow. The right door gunner shook his head and swore. He raised his hand to me as a signal to stay calm.

Within minutes, the chopper landed at the Navy field hospital. As I walked away from the chopper, a backward glance was enough to know that I was lucky to make it back in one piece.

Fuel was flowing out of a side fuel tank from a bullet hole the size of a silver dollar. Another round had shot out the right tire and there were several more bullet holes visible on the under body.

Inside the aid station, Navy doctors and corpsmen worked feverishly to save two of the Marines who came in with me. One man had caught shrapnel in the face, chest and groin. Another had lost part of his right leg at the knee. Although conscious, he made not a sound.

I wondered about the Marine with glasses. His body had no doubt shielded me from further injury. I learned later that he did not make it.

A doctor came over to me and asked what happened. I said, "I was doing a story on medevacs and . . . " He laughed. "Well, from the looks of it, you got a helluva story."

Thirty minutes later, they wheeled me into a Quonset hut operating room and dug five pieces of the chopper and a hunk of fatigue shirt out of my arm. I spent a week there recuperating.

The days spent at Marble Mountain with wounded Marines offered me a different kind of profile in courage, equally humbling and miraculous, but those memories are filled with a sadness I've tried to forget.