A deadly struggle, just as fierce as the one at X-ray, began to take shape. McDade hastily organized a pe-rimeter and tried to sort out what kind of hornet's nest his battalion had stepped in. In short order he would discover that, as he remembered: 'We were getting fire from three sides. We were getting it from up in the trees, and from both sides. A guy got hit next to me, and I grabbed his machine gun. I braced myself against an anthill. Then we got hit by mortars. It was zeroed in right on us. I looked around and everybody was dead. The commo sergeant, Sgt. 1st Class Melvin Gunter, fell over hit in the face, dead. The same mortar round that killed Gunter put shrapnel in my back and shoulder. They were closing in for the final assault. I was shooting, trying to break a hole through them, but didn't know which way to go. I went the wrong way, right into the killing zone. I found stacks of GIs.'

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With McDade's battalion scattered and pinned down in the tall elephant grass, the battle eroded into several small skirmishes. Charlie and Alpha companies lost a combined 70 men in the first minutes. Although Bravo Company was hastily brought in by helicopter as reinforcements, the situation was grim. The battle raged all afternoon and into the night, with the 2nd Battalion largely outnumbered, outmaneuvered and barely hanging on. As night fell, the perimeter tightened and the enemy crept in close. Ammunition began to run low, and the wounded needed medical attention soon if they were going to survive.

Back in Pleiku, the operations officer knelt and shook Bennett's sleeping form, then quietly informed the Charlie Company commander about the calamity at LZ Albany. 'He summed up the situation by informing me that the guys at X-ray had walked out only to get totally ambushed near LZ Albany,' Bennett recalled. 'The fighting was hand to hand in places, and the guys were really sounding desperate for help over the radio. 'The wounded aren't going to make it,' he told me. 'And they're crying for ammunition."

'The medevac guys wouldn't go in,' Bennett added. 'It was too hot for them. That happened from time to time. I told him I'd fly it and asked him to get another crew to go with us. He went to wake up Jackie Murphy, my co-pilot.'

As was his custom, Bennett flew lead with Captain Ken Jayne as his wingman. As the helicopters thundered through the black night sky, the battle over Albany could clearly be seen. 'The sky over the battle zone was in total chaos,' Bennett remembered. 'Artillery was firing, there were Air Force A-1s zooming in and out, dropping ordnance, rockets, tracers, flares–the whole thing was brilliantly lit up.

'As we got closer, I didn't think we were going to be able to find the LZ; the lights were blinding, the tracers coming from every direction. The radio was full of crackling garbage. And the sky–the sky was an absolute mess. The parachute flares would arch up high and then float down, and there were so many of them I kept thinking one of them was going to go through the rotors and that would be it.

'Finally, a guy on the ground started blinking a pocket flashlight, and one of us picked it up.' Bennett recalled sending a brief, intense radio message: "Blink three times if that's you…now five times…okay, we've got you…we're coming in on your light.' We followed that thin red beam of light in almost like an instrument approach, until we touched down.'

If the troubled sky above the LZ was filled with gunfire, the contested ground at Albany was equally dangerous. As the rotors continued to turn, tracer fire lit up the area, and the battle began taking on a new intensity. The NVA now had two American helicopters as prime targets.

'My crew chief and gunner, as normal, kicked off the ammo and hopped out as soon as we touched down, to help bring in the wounded,' Bennett said. 'There were no stretchers or anything that night; they just pulled in the wounded and stacked them like cordwood in the cargo bay.' The crew chief and gunner were both awarded the Bronze Star with V for Valor for the night's actions.

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