Word: choppered
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...helicopter crash, while flying by night from his headquarters at Pleiku to the embattled city of Kontum, he had spent nearly ten of his 47 years in South Viet Nam. Two other Americans-the Army pilot and another Army officer -also died in the crash of the chopper...
...episode occurred early in the Communist offensive. An ARVN force of 20 or 30 troops found itself surrounded by the North Vietnamese near An Loc. As the South Vietnamese fought the Communists oft, the three American advisers with the ARVN unit radioed for an evacuation helicopter. When the tiny chopper arrived, it was rushed by desperate South Vietnamese troops; some of them grabbed the American crew chief and tried to throw him off. The overloaded machine finally got airborne after several hard bounces along the ground; one ARVN soldier aboard was swinging from the legs of an American adviser...
...eight more rolled through another. When the North Vietnamese infantrymen followed five minutes later, the South Vietnamese were already in full flight. One group ran straight through their own minefield. Others grabbed at the skids of a helicopter that came to pick up the U.S. advisers; the overloaded chopper staggered to nearby Dak To, where it was forced to set down. (Six of the advisers and four crewmen died when another chopper that had come to pick them up at Dak To was shot down shortly after taking off.) In all, some 600 ARVN troops were dead or missing after...
...troops from the 21st Division, normally stationed deep in the Mekong Delta. Everyone seemed confident, except for the American helicopter crews waiting to carry some high-level U.S. military observers to the battlefront. "They'll never win this war as long as the Vietnamese let those guys fly choppers," said one Army captain, gesturing toward the dozing crew of a ramshackle Vietnamese Air Force "Huey." "These guys can't fight and won't fight. You'll never catch them in the air after 5 p.m. Just look at that," he laughed as a troop-laden chopper...
...following day, the Saigon press corps arrived to witness what they had been told would be a triumphal march to the north. The optimism was bolstered by U.S. Major General James F. Hollingsworth, who dropped from the sky in his chopper (code name: Dynamite Six). "The North Vietnamese are trying to get back to Cambodia now," he said. "We are going to kill 'em all before they get there. These NVA are like mice in a haystack." Another U.S. adviser was less sanguine. "This is just like the First Battle of Bull Run," he muttered, alluding to the civilian...