Vietnam War Fighting Forces: 326th Medical Battalion’s Air Ambulance Platoon

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As Schwartz tried to hold the helicopter steady and get it shut down, those wounded passengers not strapped down went bouncing out the open doors. The Huey vibrated backward toward the slope on the east side of the LZ. Before he was able to shut off the engine, Schwartz and his co-pilot were physically hurled out of the vibrating aircraft.

Rosen came in for his fourth landing on the little LZ. This time the RTO on the LZ responded, but Rosen could hardly hear what he said due to gunfire, mortar explosions and yelling. As he came in low and fast, Rosen saw the wounded huddled near the LZ and the wreckage of the relief dustoff lying on the far side. He was dismayed to see that the main rotor on the wrecked dustoff helicopter was still pumping away and the engine revving up to an explosive level.

As soon as they touched down, Rosen’s flight medic, Brent Law, hauled Lieutenant Schwartz aboard, and then raced across the LZ, climbed aboard the still shaking wrecked Huey and shut off the engine. Law then dashed back, and worked frantically with the crew chief to get all the wounded aboard Rosen’s aircraft.

The wounded, including those from the crashed dustoff, were literally stacked up on the floor one on top of the other with their bloody dressings, broken bones and sucking chest wounds. Their screams of pain were mixed with the explosions of nearby enemy mortar rounds. Rosen could see the NVA only about 40 meters away, and with pieces of trees and chunks of dirt from the mortar explosions striking the helicopter, the unflinching crew chief and flight medic loaded another five or six wounded aboard. Lifting off, Rosen pedal-turned and dived down on the north side of the LZ, treetops slapping the bottom of his aircraft.

After unloading the casualties, and still without refueling, Rosen immediately flew his helicopter back to the about-to-beoverrun LZ for his fifth rescue mission. The interior of his medevac was splattered with blood, and the mood of his crew was somber. ‘We all knew that the repeated use of the same approach and departure routes to the same landing site was practically suicidal,’ recalled Rosen, who had felt obliged to ask his crewmen if they were willing to go in again. Everyone on board — Rupert, Law, Deocales and Wieler — agreed that ‘we would keep going in until there were either no more wounded or we were shot down.’ As Rosen later wrote, ‘We were all of one mind.’

Fearing the NVA had by now captured the RTO’s radio, Rosen approached the LZ without communication with the ground troops. He saw casualties squatting behind tree trunks, hiding over the edge of the north slope of the LZ and lying in ditches or craters made by mortars. On short final approach, Rosen suddenly heard the RTO on the LZ shouting to him, ‘Dustoff, dustoff, break it off!’ but Rosen was too deeply focused on the mission to stop.

Dodging, zig-zagging and flying at tree height, he set down on the LZ as mortar rounds hit around his aircraft. As the less severely injured soldiers helped load those unable to climb aboard, one yelled in Rosen’s ear, ‘We’re being overrun, get the hell outta here!’

The flight medic looked at Rosen as if to say, ‘What now, sir?’ The captain nodded toward the remaining wounded on the ground and the flight medic and crew chief unhesitatingly continued loading. With wounded both sitting and piled on the floor — their arms and legs hanging out the doors and heads bobbing over the edges of the cargo compartment — the crew chief standing on the right skid and the flight medic squatting on the edge of the cabin floor, straddling a soldier’s arm and neck, the nearly overloaded dustoff finally cleared for takeoff.

Just as Rosen started to lift off, mortar shells exploded around the aircraft, and a squad of NVA soldiers charged toward it. The heavily loaded helicopter struggled in the thin, moist mountain air as an NVA soldier popped up in front within 6 meters of it. He fired his AK-47 on full automatic, stitching bullets across the windscreen and the Red Cross-adorned nose of the helicopter just as Rosen lifted the ship from the ground. The fusillade severely wounded the co-pilot and killed flight medic Law, whose body would have fallen from the aircraft, Rosen reported, except that ‘Wieler caught him and pulled him back inside the Huey.’

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Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Historical Conflicts, Vietnam War

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