First Mission

One of our first missions was a day time medevac of approximately 20 women and children who had been accidently hit by Marine Corps artillery fire. We landed in a rural area right outside a village and immediately began loading them on our helicopter. Both the crew chief, myself and the other gunner helped carry them on board. It appeared that most of them had receive some basic medical treatment although I don't remember seeing a corpsman. A number of the women and several of the children had bandaged stumps where legs and arms should have been. While their wounds had received some field treatment many had blood seeping through their bandages. Most needed to be carried onboard, very few could walk and there was one "stretcher" case that looked particularly serious, a woman with many shrapnel wounds. I can remember helping carry several people on board and placing them in the web seating. I particularly recall carrying a two year old girl on board that had no legs and thought how close she was to my daughter's age and how light she was.

We lifted off very quickly and initially I did not realize where we were going but at some point in the mission the pilot advised us we were headed to the U.S.S. Sanctuary, a hospital ship, located in Da Nang harbor.

We seemed to get there very quickly, landed on the ship's deck and then began off loading our wounded passengers with the help of the Sanctuary's crew.

I think the entire mission lasted less than 2 hours but I can remember being very anxious and upset after carrying that 2 year old girl. I now remember, 38 year later, glancing at the other crew members looking for some type of reaction, finding just grim faces saying to myself "I'm glad Marines don't cry"...