The surviving paratroopers rushed toward the twisted wreckage and pulled Torba from the cockpit. The rest of the crew was trapped in the bent aluminum and steel, and before they could be cut loose the wreck exploded in a horrific conflagration. The co-pilot and all the enlisted crewmen perished in the fire.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Vietnam Magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

With what seemed like half the NVA off the hill breaking through the surrounding brush and closing in on Delta Company, Captain Sanders mustered his exhausted and demoralized men and grabbed their seven remaining wounded, leaving seven dead men behind for later retrieval. He then attempted to retreat back up the ravine. In the course of what surely ranks as one of the most difficult retreats in 101st Airborne history, Lieutenant Torba was lugged up a muddy, sniper-infested, 45-degree forested slope. Then, after spending a miserably cold night, the pilot was placed on a pile of dead men toward the top of Hamburger Hill.

Seventeen hours after he was abandoned in the mud and rain on Hamburger Hill, another group of American troops found Torba there–still alive. He later lost his left leg below the knee, but he recovered from his wounds and retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1992.

Khe Sanh, 1971

Hell was on the march in early 1971. The old Marine firebase at Khe Sanh was again in danger. This time it seemed the entire NVA army was rolling down Route 9 toward the staging area for Lam Son 719, the ARVN incursion into Laos. The base was clobbered by 800 shells in the first two weeks of March.

Months before, a major portion of the military might of South Vietnam and its allies had saddled up for an invasion to sever the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Aircraft from across the Pacific were routed into Vietnam and toward the I Corps. South Vietnam fielded the infantry.

The 101st Airborne Division’s six-battalion air force did most of the flying into the boonies for the ARVN during the Lam Son operation. During a typical flight on February 8, pilots like Alan Fisher watched a lift bird get its rudder controls shot up by AAA, then saw another ship crash and burn with no survivors. And that was just on the way in to the pickup zone.

The South Vietnamese had made it to Tchepone, Laos, but–like the Germans on their World War II march to the Caucasus–had soon found themselves overextended. The NVA eventually realized that Laos was the target rather than North Vietnam. (To confuse the enemy, hundreds of parachutes had been shipped up from Saigon before the attack to foster the idea of a massive incursion into North Vietnam.) The NVA mobilized everything they had and wiped out half the ARVN troops who were milling around in the Laotian countryside or trying to retreat to South Vietnam. The North used armor, long-range artillery and SAMs against the panic-stricken ARVN troops. The newspapers called it the ‘Laos Pullout,’ but the men of Eagle Dustoff who were stuck in the middle called it ‘The Rout.’

Things were cooking. Surface-to-air rockets vaporized gunships and slicks (unarmed troop transports) alike with clouds of flak. On occasion, frantic ARVN troops who were trying to force their way aboard medevac choppers had to be shot so that the Hueys could take off to evacuate forward firebases. Four newsmen–British photographer Larry Burrows, Kent Potter of United Press International, Keizaburo Shimamoto of Newsweek and Henri Huet of the Associated Press–perished in one crash on February 10, 1971. Photographers and reporters, including French photographer Franques Tonnaire, had plenty to see. Tonnaire, who was wounded in the course of the operation, was evacuated by Eagle Dustoff’s Doug Wilson and his crew.

Between flights, Wilson, aircraft commander Daniel ‘Tommy’ Talbot, ‘Peter pilot’ (co-pilot in training) Richard L. Dipboye and medic Robert Fritz Speer parked their Huey alongside another 326th medevac chopper and waited for more calls. Khe Sanh was a sea of plastic, sandbags, makeshift shelters and tents, with bare hills in the background. It looked a bit like Tijuana, Mexico. Fog and rain made it necessary for the men to wear field jackets much of the time. When not supporting the outlying firebases or the invasion force, or dodging AAA fire and missiles, Wilson and his buddy Speer–two sandy-haired look-alike enlisted men–hung around their birds, surrounded by the infamous battleground of Khe Sanh.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to