Dustoff 99 had a holed tail boom, loose AK-47 rounds were scattered across the engine compartment floor, and every red cross on the chopper had been punctured. She had been hit 37 times.

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Doc Burdo ended up in a one-piece body cast on one of the hospital ships off Hue. He was later shipped home to recover from his injuries. Wagoner and the injured pilot, Bill Tiffany, were flown to the 85th Evacuation Hospital and USS Repose, respectively. Wagoner got a tetanus shot, a big bandage on his rear, and more missions to fly that same day, once he thumbed a ride back to Camp Eagle.

Hamburger Hill, May 13, 1969

The 3rd Battalion, 187th Airborne Infantry (3/187), known as the ‘Rakassans,’ had been storming the NVA support base at Dong Ap Bia–dubbed ‘Hamburger Hill’ by the Americans–for three days. Delta Company of the Rakassans had tried to sneak down a side ravine and assault back up the hill. They never made it past a small river at the northern base of Hill 937.

NVA scouts and snipers tracked Delta Company down and unleashed a vicious ambush. Rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47s ripped into the Airborne troops, who were already exhausted from the murderous descent down the jungle precipice.

Aircraft commander 1st Lt. Gerald M. Torba (call sign ‘Dustoff 927′), co-pilot 1st Lt. Jerry T. Lee, crew chief James R. Walters and medic James A. Margro took off to rescue the beleaguered company. By now the 326th medevac crews were all aware that something out of the ordinary was taking place in the western A Shau, on a group of small mountains butted up against the Laotian border.

Captain Luther (Lee) Sanders, Delta Company commander, called in the medevac. As related in the book Hamburger Hill, by Samuel Zaffiri, Sanders then slogged uphill to try to secure the high ground for the chopper. When the flying ambulance found Delta Company, the story goes, Sanders warned Torba to hold off landing until the overlooking terrain was under American control. However–as in civilian aviation–the pilot in command makes all the final decisions and can ignore advice or deviate from rules and regulations for safety reasons in an emergency.

Lieutenant Torba had a heavy burden at that moment. He knew that NVA must be in the area. He also figured that most of an entire rifle company was fanning out under him; some of the company were already dead or dying below, sheltered near the logjams and rocks and under the trees along the river’s banks. What to do was Torba’s call–he faced a terrible choice between protecting the lives of his crew and saving the lives of the paratroopers.

Torba quickly made up his mind and took the chopper in. Walters and Torba worked together as they neared the pickup point, lowering a Stokes litter wire basket for a typically treacherous recovery in tall trees. The most seriously wounded soldier below them, Pfc George Pickel, was placed in the basket, and the Rakassan medics signaled Walters to lift off.

The basket swung free and Walters barked, ‘Breaking ground, sir!’ as he punched the winch into fast rewind. When the basket was approaching the halfway point, an NVA soldier aimed his rocket launcher at the chopper. He pulled the trigger and a miniature SAM struck the main rotor disk of the aircraft, robbing the chopper of lift and showering its crew with shrapnel–in addition to momentarily stunning them with a blinding white light.

The pranged bird picked up speed–headed straight down–and crashed directly on top of Pfc Pickel. As the rotor blades came off, the decking flew up, breaking the backs of many of the crew members. Torba’s left leg was ripped, burned and bleeding from a shrapnel wound, and his survival knife hit him in the teeth and mouth as he landed. A radio telephone operator and another grunt who had guided the ship in were mowed down by flying main rotor blades.

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