MILLION DOLLAR CARNIVAL RIDE

My last three months in Vietnam, I served as assistant 1st Brigade signal officer. Part of the job: check the brigade commander’s radios before every flight. The pilot flew me around the base perimeter while I worked the radios. The door gunners checked their guns at the same time.

One day, word came that the radios were acting up near Nui Ba Den. I had the pilot head that way.

The communists held ninety-five percent of that mountain. We held the peak. Just enough for our signal relay. Everyone in III Corps knew it. So when the pilot said he was taking us down the valley between the two mountains, I got apprehensive. Fast. That valley belonged to the Viet Cong.

We came in fast and low. Both door gunners opened up on the rocks. Close. Too close. On my side, twenty green tracers passed in front of the aircraft.

The pilot broke hard. A full 360, in a valley too narrow for it.

The turn nearly threw me out of the helicopter. The next one threw me into the radios. Saved my life.

We came out with both guns still firing and our hearts trying to punch through our chests.

Breathtaking. Also stupid.

The Army and its Vietnamese counterparts lost a lot of men in that valley over the years. If we’d gone down that day, we’d have been killed or taken prisoner. Nobody was walking out of that valley on their own.