GUN RUNS ON CU CHI
Two Of The Luckiest Gooks Alive
The our gunteam shot up the town of CuChi; Pat Eastes;
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The sirens went off and the first gun team was away by the time I got to the corral. 433 was on #2 or #3 gun team, I don't remember which. But sombody needed the Cav. The buzz on the airfield was we were going to shoot up Cu Chi, I couldn't wait.
When we got the call, we untied the blades and fired up. We started our gun runs over the Base camp, cleaning out pockets of fire. The MP's on the ground started making the Base camp troops move back from the wire, because of all the brass falling from the mini-guns.
On one of these runs, the ground fire was minimal, and I had a 45 caliber greese gun, which I decided to use. There was a small blue mororcycle leaning next to a shot up hooch, I always looked at it like it was the bike that the guy from Saigon was riding around on with the woman on the back called, I think, the Dragon Lady, shooting our troops on the streets in Saigon. The Bitch wouldn't be using that bike again. We were very low and one round hit the block of the bike and bounced it out in the yard about 6 feet. [ So Sorry! ] I traded the greese gun that shoots about 30 rounds a minute, for my speed equiped M60. We were flying maybe 200 yards north of the main road to Cu Chi. We were going down town.
We had been told about hay stacks and people hiding in them, and this one had a small fire at one end. So I laced it. Just as we started to go over the stack , two bad guys ran out and took off. We broke left and watched the two guys till I could get a shot. They ran into an out house approximately 3ft. X 3ft. and I shot the crap out of it. You could see the tracers going in and coming out the other side about knee height to a gooks height, knowing some of these structures lead to under ground tunnels or bunkers, I knew I had at least two body counts.
To our surprise, these two gooks came running out the door. Heading to this big building with a big tin roof. The ship made a very hard left break, The M60 must have weighed at least 150lbs because of the G forces, and the brass catcher half full of brass. The AC, Pat Eastes, as I remember, was yelling, shoot the bastards! But with the G force and the blades in the way, I couldn't. I'll shoot the skids, which I have in the past, but I draw the line at the blades. Just as soon as the blades cleared I opened up trying to get the M60 on target, the gooks were going in the building right then and we were flying over the top in another left break. I was shooting to where I thought they had gone just as we crossed the road that goes from the Base camp to the town.
I'm still shooting when I see all these, big eyed, grunts looking at us. Surprise! Surprise! I stopped shooting and motioned, "2 guys, In that building!" Thats probably the closest I came [I hope!] to shooting our own guys. I didn't know they were there. I often wondered if those two gooks ran out the front door right into all our guys? I don't know if that was the laundry or not. I never went down town Cu Chi.
I still can't believe, with all those tracers going through the out house, they got out. They had to have been hit! That was our last gun run on Cu Chi and when we landed in the corral, I half expected to be arrested for shooting our troops. Everyone on my crew knew what happened, but it still worried me, the days passed and I heard nothing, so I figured I hadn't shot anybody, friend or foe.
And that concludes the saga of the two luckiest gooks alive, as I remember.