RAT PATROL

One day, in one of our helicopter revetments, we cornered a rat. Not wanting to be bitten by those nasty looking, sharp teeth, we "froze" the thing using an aircraft, fire extinguisher. Quickly thinking of a plan, we took the rat and wired it to a smoke grenade. We took it with us on our mission that day, which was to fly down to Tuy Hoa, from An Son.

Flying at about 2,000 feet, I laid on the helicopter floor with my "grunt" M-60 (where that came from is a whole other story) while the gunner popped the "smoke" and threw it out the door. While the Pilot flew tight circles, I tried to shoot the smoke/rat from above, as it fell through the sky.

An Air Force spotter plane, unseen to us, saw the action and flew towards us, as this was the strangest thing he had seen.

Now picture this... a helicopter flying tight circles around a smoke trail falling thru the sky with M-60 tracers chasing the smoke trail and an Air Force plane flying straight towards it.

When the helicopter Pilot saw the other plane, he started screaming "Cease Fire, Cease fire!"

I had torn off about 50 belted rounds from my "helicopter supply" of ammo for the helicopter M-60, and was determined to shoot all the rounds. So I continued to shoot.

While the Pilot was screaming cease fire and the plane flying closer and closer to my "bullet trail", which was following the smoke trail, I finally ran out of ammo. It was just in time as the Air Force plane flew directly into the path of where I had been shooting.

Thinking we may be in trouble for "fooling around", we got the hell out of there and continued down to Tuy Hoa... with the Air Force pilot's words ringing in our ears..."What's going on, what's going on..."

Laughing, we replied... "Just test firing our guns."

One dead Rat – KIA.