I PREFER HEIGHT

OH-6 CAYUSE

Another secret run, documents for the 25th Division G-2 in Cu Chi. I was picked up outside Tây Ninh East, on the runway next to B-32 Special Forces Camp.

No Huey this time. They sent a Loach, a Hughes OH-6 Cayuse, shaped like an egg, fast and beautiful. The moment I climbed in, I knew I was in for a helluva ride.

I was a wannabe helicopter pilot, and this was hog heaven. The warrant officer at the controls grinned and asked if I wanted to have some fun. I said yes before he finished asking. A Loach was a Ferrari at Le Mans — small, quick, and hard to hit. I felt safe. I felt alive.

We took off, nosed into a steep dive, and leveled out three feet above a winding river. Palm trees blurred past on both banks, and sunlight cut through the canopy in gold shafts across the water. It was paradise, with a war bolted on.

We chased that river for miles, low enough to feel the spray. Sampans appeared ahead, one after another, and we tore past them at treetop speed. Faces snapped up toward us — startled, wide-eyed, mouths open — gone before they could finish the thought. Farmers, fishermen, people who’d never seen anything move that fast, that low, that loud. I laughed into the wind. This was flying.

Then the pilot pushed it further. He dropped us to ten feet and ran us straight down the main street of a village, huts blurring past on both sides.

That’s when we saw the cable, strung across the street, right ahead of us.

The pilot hauled back on the stick, but it was too late. Our skids caught the last two feet of that cable, and the helicopter snapped into violent, uncontrolled oscillation, bucking like something alive and furious.

He fought it and won, seconds before we would have hit a grove of rubber trees.

I looked back and saw leaves exploding off the treetops where our tail rotor and skids had torn through.

Neither of us said a word for the rest of the flight.

Another lucky day in sunny Vietnam.