A hailstorm of bullets rose up to meet us from the Vietnam jungle below. “We can’t see the landing zone!” I broadcast to the radio operator on the ground. We were a crew of four, flying a Huey helicopter ambulance on a mission to rescue four seriously wounded soldiers. But we’d be lucky to get out alive ourselves.
Two helicopter gunships escorting us returned fire on several low-level gun runs, but the billowing smoke from their rockets obscured our landing site. The enemy’s location under the jungle canopy was