COL Butcher Mission - 1969
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During my time in Vietnam I flew a mission for the 2nd of the 22nd 25th Infantry ("Triple Deuce"); probably more than once but this mission stood out. At the time the unit was commanded by a Lt. Colonel known for his willingness to engage and he was often called ‘Colonel Butcher’, or so I was told.
The Cobra and I were directed to a village, I don’t remember which one, and told there was a building in the village that stored a large cache of weapons and doubled as a hospital for wounded Viet Cong and NVA regulars.
I was sent down and, minus the chaos in Apocalypse Now, I was literally flying through the streets looking for signs of enemy activity. The houses had no doors and very few windows so we basically were looking through doors as we passed by. An interesting thing I saw were pigs walking around foraging and they had triangular wood collars around their necks to prevent them from being able to go into huts through the open doorways.
As we were passing a house I saw a man walking inside as he passed from one side of the door frame to the other. His legs were wrapped in white bandages from below his knees to well above mid thigh. I immediately told my door gunner to drop the smoke and called over the air I had located the target.
The Colonel called and said “permission to engage”. I replied “come back?” He then said “engage”. We opened fire as I circled the house with our mini gun and I turned the aircraft to let the door gunner shoot.
On one pass I saw a woman come out looking up at us with pain visible on her face. She collapsed in front of the door and lay still, I immediately ceased fire. The ground troops, 25th regulars, not our Aero rifle platoon, approached as they were sweeping toward our position.
A couple of them entered the building and immediately came back out. I was flying back and forth a few feet over their heads to watch for any kind of enemy presence and as I passed over the men who had entered the structure they shook their fists at us. I was thinking at this point I had made a mistake and had engaged innocent villagers.
As it turned out the weapons cache was there along with several wounded hiding in the tunnels under the home. Didn’t make me feel any better about the young woman I described. It still bothers me to this day.