A door gunners story

[drussell41]

I had been in country for about three months as was still a new guy right seater. I was flying with Captain Vance who was the aircraft commander. Vance's call sign was Possum as everyone in the unit had their own nick name call sign. Vance was from West Virginia with an accent that would put a west Texas accent to shame. I flew several times with Possum and we always made it back alive.

This particular day we had been doing an 8 ship insertion with two snakes (Cobra gun ships) their call signs were Delta 21 and Delta 23 who seemed to fly with us quite a bit. Delta 23 was famous for putting rockets on target and even shooting rather close to you when on final approach to an L.Z.

We were returning to an out lying base to rearm and load up more troops for a later mission when someone in our flight called "Elephant" !

There were no friendly elephants in our area of operation as the NVA used them to carry heavy rockets and ammo.

Someone in the flight called in for a clearance to fire but we were told friendly were a few clicks to our south from our guesstimated position. The thing I liked about our unit is sometimes we paid attention to the REMF (MF does not stand for "My Friend") sometimes we didn't.

Vance had purchased a brand new camera and wanted to get some pictures of the elephant so he had me fly down to the spot where the elephant was standing in a big open area in about 3 feet of water. I brought the bird down to a hover in front of the elephant which had huge tusk and appeared to be very healthy. Vance was clicking away with his camera and saying get closer, closer, closer, until I was nose to nose and the rotor blades were almost over lapping the elephant's head.

The whole time the elephant just stared at us and stood it's ground..... until.... It filled it's trunk with water and charged while spraying enough water to make it impossible to see out of the front wind screen. I pulled pitch to gain altitude as the creature passed under us making all kinds of elephant noises which you could hear over the noise of the helicopter and through our helmets !

I remember thinking what a letter would have said if we would have been killed...." Mrs. Sky we are sorry to inform you your son was killed during a combat assault by a charging elephant. You have our condolences."

As we climbed up Delta 23 shot his only remaining missile at the elephant and missed !! He never lived that down.

I saw many things killed in Nam but few things remain with me like the death of that beautiful animal. He was put down with about 2500 rounds of mini gun from Delta 21. Some guys went back later and removed the tusk. I was offered a piece but I did not want anything to do with it.

As the elephant was sat down dying Vance had me fly back down for a few more pictures. He snapped a couple of pics and then pulled out his S.W. 38 revolver and shot the elephant between the eyes. Timing is everything as the elephant just lay over on its side and other than a few twitches he moved no more.

A .38 would never penetrate the skull of an elephant and would be nothing more than a thorn prick but like I said timing is everything. As the elephant rolled over Vance brought his arm and .38 back into the cockpit and blew over the end of the pistol to clear the smoke and make like a movie gesture. Vance's full call sign afterwords was "Possum the elephant killer" or PEK.

What a story!  No one expects Death by Elephant while airborne.

It made me burst out laughing at one point, but the ending.   I wish the elephant hadn't been killed.