Vietnam War Heroes by Allan Zullo

Author:Allan Zullo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2015-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

From the cockpit of his two-engine Air Force cargo plane, Lieutenant Colonel Joe Jackson stared at the carnage below. Two swarming NVA regiments were attacking the besieged U.S. Special Forces camp at Kham Duc with heavy fire from artillery, mortars, and recoilless rifles.

The unrelenting barrage had become so overpowering that Army General William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in South Vietnam, had ordered the camp evacuated. Beginning early in the morning, Army and Marine helicopters and Air Force transport planes had launched a frantic rescue operation under withering fire in a desperate effort to save more than 1,700 American troops and South Vietnamese soldiers and civilians, including women and children.

While Jackson circled overhead at 9,000 feet, hostile forces reached the edge of the burning camp. Their gun placements in the surrounding hills were pounding Kham Duc and its lone runway, while ammunition dumps were exploding and littering the runway with debris. Jackson winced as he surveyed the smoldering wreckage of helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft that had crashed on or next to the airstrip from direct hits during the hectic rescue attempt.

Despite the devastation from the fierce attack, by late afternoon the 1,500 surviving troops and civilians had been evacuated — all except for three American airmen who had been left behind in the chaos.

While still orbiting over the camp, Jackson watched a fellow pilot land a transport plane on the embattled airstrip in a courageous effort to retrieve the men. But in the midst of a thunderous fusillade of automatic weapons and mortars, the pilot was forced to take off before the airmen on the ground could reach the plane.

Realizing that the stranded trio would likely be captured or killed within minutes, Jackson volunteered to try to save them even though he knew there was a strong possibility that he and his crew would be blasted out of the sky. With complete faith in his men, Jackson put his C-123 into a steep dive toward the battered runway. As antiaircraft guns blazed away, he thought, I know I’m going to get shot. I wonder how badly it will hurt.

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