That June morning in Vietnam’s Central Highlands began normally enough. A quick check of the mission board told me we had a resupply mission to Ben Het.

This was to be my first encounter with the normal routine of a combat helicopter unit. For two weeks I had been training as a door gunner aboard the helicopter of the commanding general of II Corps. Could I make it as a combat gunner? The self-doubt was a glut in my windpipe that threatened to strangle me.

It was a relief to read "Ben Het" on the mission board. No sweat. Ben Het was "cold" – no enemy activity had been reported there in months, but the scars left by VC rockets were sufficient proof that it hadn’t always been that way.

I skipped breakfast and was the first one to reach the helicopter, a Bell "Huey". I checked my machine gun, repacked the ammo belt and went mechanically through the motions of preparing for the morning’s mission. The rest of the crew straggled in eventually and we prepared to take off.

The mist was still rising from the strip in Pleiku when we lifted off in formation with a dozen other birds and headed west past Artillery Hill, through the pass, then dog-legged north past Kontum and Dak To before heading up the west side of the northern mountain corridor to Firebase Ben Het.

That’s when I got the first indication that something wasn’t quite right. The mission board had clearly said, "Resupply – Ben Het", but we were only a few "clicks" (kilometers) away now and on final approach and we hadn’t stopped to pick up any supplies.

Stashed away near the Cambodian/Laotian border, Ben Het bulged some three hundred feet above the jungle floor. The knobby peak had been bulldozed clean of jungle undergrowth, turning it into a brown spot in a sea of green – like a pimple in need of pinching.

We landed on the strip near the outer perimeter – right next to a pile of ammo crates and C-rations that looked very much as if they were waiting to be taken somewhere. The pilots filed into a jeep which bounced them to the command bunker near the top of the hill.

I was busily inspecting a shrapnel fragment when the jeep bounced back down the hill again, about an hour later.

That’s when we got the truth. Ben Het was only the pick-up point. The real mission was to resupply Dak Seang, a few miles to the east. For the past month, Dak Seang had been under siege by two battalions of hard-core North Vietnamese regulars. Thirty-one helicopters had been shot down there in the past 30 days.

My knees went to rubber and my stomach felt as if it had a cannonball in it. I’d never been under fire before.

The next hour, sitting there waiting to go, was the longest hour I’ve ever lived. Dying couldn’t be nearly as hard as sitting there waiting to die. It’s not like anything you can imagine.

I nervously alternated between pacing up and down the landing pad and attempting to either lie or sit on the hot, stamped aluminum floor of the helicopter. I checked and repacked the ammo belts, then did it again, over and over. I had to be sure. I worked the action on my machine gun repeatedly, changed out the barrel, then changed it back again.

And I prayed.

When the pilot finally signaled the go-ahead, I was on an emotional roller-coaster – afraid to go but oh-so-thankful that the waiting, at least, was over.

The bird climbed slowly, almost lazily into the dense jungle air. It gets cold at altitude when the doors are open, but somehow I didn’t notice it that day.

The "LZ" (landing zone) at Dak Seang was only big enough for one bird at a time and I was in a frenzied state when they called out our number over the mission frequency.

"Chalk three!" It was like an electric shock. Two birds had been in and out again without taking fire, but that was a typical strategy of the enemy – to get you to relax and think he wasn’t there that day.

Down we spiraled toward the brown spot called Dak Seang.

That’s when something snapped in me. The overwhelming fear suddenly was replaced by an irrational and somehow pathetic rage.

I scoured the jungle floor for the tell-tale green tracer lines that would inevitably rise to greet us. Where were they? My thoughts were screaming louder than the whine of the Huey’s turbine engine.

I huddled there behind the twin triggers of my gun, watching the ground rise to greet us. And I remember praying for the opportunity to kill another human being.

"Oh please, God," I prayed. "Let one of those little slant-eyed bastards stick his head up just long enough for me to squeeze the trigger and watch his brains explode! It’s his fault I’m here! Please, God, let me kill him!"

Suddenly we were on the ground and hands were reaching in quickly to remove the load and we were off again and over the side of the mountain and gone.

The silence rushed in. I couldn’t hear the engine. I couldn’t hear the radios still crackling in my headphones. I couldn’t see either. I was just sitting there, staring blankly into a sort of grayness.

Slowly, the landscape came back into focus, the whine of the turbine broke through my shroud – and I realized we were safe. Not a shot had been fired.

Later that afternoon we would learn that the enemy had simply slipped away during the night.

And I felt cheated.

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