A Hundred Feet Over Hell by Jim Hooper

Author:Jim Hooper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Voyageur Press
Published: 2009-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Bombing Halt

It was Halloween and somebody got the idea of using our bed sheets to dress up like ghosts and going over to trick-or-treat the CO. With those sheets draped over us, Hudson, Doc, myself, and someone else went over and knocked on Wisby’s door. He got a real charge from it and tore the sheets off his bed so he could be a ghost, too, and we headed over to the XO’s hooch to give him a scare. We weren’t very quiet ghosts and Blanchard heard us coming. When he saw us in those sheets, he yanked us inside and squelched the frivolity by reminding Wisby of the racial problems the army was having and that we surely didn’t need a complaint of KKK activity! With our Halloween fun cooled down, we all went back to the Super Hooch for wine and cheese.

—Glenn Strange, Catkiller 2

IN ORDER TO BRING NORTH VIETNAM to the negotiating table, 1 November 1968 saw the end of American bombing north of the Ben Hai River. It was a move that stunned the Catkillers.

Bill Hooper: If U.S. airpower couldn’t take the war to the Communists by hitting their factories, roads, and supply depots, they would be free to marshal men and equipment along the border. Which meant it would be easier for them to infiltrate into South Vietnam and more Americans would die simply because we weren’t allowed to stop them. We were hard-pressed to find and destroy those who were already getting through. When Major Wisby told us that Hanoi guaranteed to respect the so-called Demilitarized Zone, we shook our heads at the naiveté of our politicians. Lee’s death had been in vain.

Our predictions that the NVA would cynically abuse the agreement were soon proved accurate. While the autumn weather remained good, the Communists began moving men and supplies into the DMZ under cover of darkness. Late-afternoon patrols returning at last light reported long columns of truck headlights moving south. In the first month of the bombing halt, we reported more than 1,500 NVA violations of the DMZ, yet our political leaders refused to unshackle us. With the arrival of the monsoons and the reduced threat of U.S. air strikes, the Communists gave up all pretense and brazenly began to operate during daylight hours.

Enemy troops and equipment soon appeared in the southern part of the DMZ in previously unseen numbers. Their lack of caution, however, opened a small window of opportunity for Finch, me, and one or two others. By launching patrols when weather conditions were well below minimums, the clouds that hid the enemy from us could also hide us from them, and we occasionally caught troops and equipment in the open. The downside to this was that we had to fly much lower than usual, which allowed little time to evade ground fire. Few of these low-altitude missions resulted in an engagement, but the fact that we were sitting ducks made them incredibly stressful.

I gazed morosely at the unrelenting rains. Finch and I hadn’t flown in days, and we were both starting to get twitchy.

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