Jerry William Elliott

The following is a letter to Donna Elliott, Jerry's sister, from Tom Pullan. Donna passed a copy of this letter onto my Dad, and I am passing it on to you ...

15 December, 1986

Dear Donna,
As I promised on the telephone, the following information is excerpted from a letter from me to my wife, Coleen, which was written the day after your brother jumped from his helicopter into the landing zone at Lang Vei to assist the survivors of another helicopter downed by ground fire. I was in a unique position to see what happened because I was flying the only aircraft loaded with cargo and, because of the gross weight, was making a slow, shallow approach, and when the trouble started I was still in the air. Since the passengers who were suppossed to unload the aircraft on the ground were killed or wounded by ground fire, I was forced to depart the landing zone with my severly crippled ship with the load still on board. This neccessitated a long running takeoff in a straight line, which took me directly over the crash site at an altitude of about 40 or 50 feet, and I could see quite clearly what was happening on the ground. I could not recognize people, but was able to distinguish the NVA from the friendlies, and after comparing notes with other crewmembers, Cpt. Stiner and Williams, I was able to put names to the people I saw on the ground.

In the following excerpts I have quoted directly, even mispelling words as in the original document (I even misspelled "Elliott"). I do this for the sake of authenticity. These quotes are in italic text. I have included explanatory comments where I thought they might be useful, but these are identified inside brackets. Other explanations or comments are made outside quotes in plain text.

Excerpt from letter dated 22 January, 1968, from me to Coleen.

Yesterday I should have been killed a thousand times and in a way I did die a little. Mark the day 21 Jan on your calendar as the day I was destined to die and didn't. It started with a normal resupply into Huong Hoa ner Khe Sahn. I was to take ammo in and get wounded out. I had Gilmore, a new guy, as Pilot and Seghetti as CE [crew chief], Payne as gunner. On approach to the LZ [landing zone] at Huong Hoa about 50 ft off the gound we took 4 rounds thru the belly, one of which went thru Seghetti's left foot. I flew back to Quang Tri while Col. Seymore, the Quang Tri senior advisor treated Seghetti's foot. We dropped him at the med-evac pad and after inspecting the ship I decided that no serious damage had been done and that if I could get another gunner [the crew chief acted as another gunner, one on each side while in flight] I would continue to try to resupply Huong Hoa. They needed ammo and wanted to get the wounded out.

I asked for gunships from the Company [the 282nd Assault Helicopter Company, our parent unit in Da Nang] but was informed that they were in contact [engaged in battle] down south. Black Cat 26, Edelheit and McKinsey, and Black Cat 24, Messer and Skulborstad, volunteered to join me for additional fire support and to help with the resupply. Not even stopping to eat lunch we all three went back to Huong Hoa loaded with ammo, grenades, and mortars. We drew heavy automatic weapons fire, including 50 cal anti-aircraft, but we kept them pinned down with our six machine guns until we ran out of fuel. Due to the large amount of fire received near the LZ we were unable once more to get the supplies in. We went back to Quang Tri to refuel and learned that the rest of the company plus two guns [heavily armed helicopters] were coming to help us, figuring that with the additional firepower we could run them off or at least make them keep their heads down long enough to get in and out.

We met the rest of the Company at La Vang Air Field and decided to lift in an ARVN [Army of the Republic of Vietnam] Company along with the supplies. I knew the area and had the strongest ship (I am also the best cargo pilot) so Major Rex [Company Commander] told me to take in the ammo and everyone else would carry the troops. That put me #7 or Tail-End-Charlie with the supplies. We took off, 7 slicks [lightly armed cargo helicopters of the type Jerry flew in] with 2 guns escorting and proceeded to Huong Hoa with 70 troops and 2500 lbs of ammo (my ship) but due to heavy ground fire couldn't land at the LZ. Capt Stiener, S-3, picked another LZ 1200 meters east on a hill top at an old abandoned Special Forces outpost.

We made a high pass over the area and didn't see anyone and the guns preped the LZ. All the ships landed before me and hadn't recieved any fire at all. The as I was about 50 ft off the gound, the NVA [North Vietnamese Army Regular] jumped out of a hole and stood right under me firing his AK-47. I saw the tracers coming up and heard the impact under my seat. I heard someone in tha back scream and blood splattered on the windshield and my left shoulder. I was very heavily loaded and to change altitude at this stage of the approach would have resulted in a sure crash. I saw that hundreds of NVA troops were coming out of holes all over the field and shooting everything. I saw the lead ship with Capt Stiener and Jerry Mc Kinsey (you have a picture of him) get hit by a mortar round, pitch up on it's tail and explode into flam. [I still have a clear picture in my mind of McKinsey's aircraft, #1, burstinginto a huge ball of fire. Even the rotor blades themselves were on fire and still turning. The aircraft racked back on it's tailboom, pitched forward getting about 20 feet of altitide, and then fell off the side of the mountain.] Everyone was shooting and the troops we lifted in were falling as they got out of the ships. My door gunners (I got a Marine PFC to volunteer to take Seghetti's place) were firing into 20 or 30 of them on our left and 10 or 15 on our right. The guy on the ground between my legs ran out of ammo when I was about 10 feet off the ground and tried to run left but my door gunner was trying to shoot him so he stopped. When he did, I caught him with my left skid and threw him to the ground and then landed on him with 10,000 lbs of chopper, crushing him. I could hear his bones pop. My left door gunner was firing 8 or 10 NVA who were about 20 feet away, evidently trying to capture our ammo. The 2 ARVN we had on board had already been hit on the aproach. I saw a line of bullet-strikes on the ground coming right for my door but they stopped about 6 inches out and the last round, a tracer, bounced up in front of the door window and did a flip, still burning. I saw tracers coming at the windshield and obe came thru hitting my chest protector just below my throat. The bullet frags inclosed are all that was left of the bullet. I saw that the NVA had control of the LZ so I decided not to drop the ammo. I took off, my Low-RPM warning horm buzzing in my ears, and just made it out. I hit another NVA in the head with my skids as I went out and one hung onto the skid until Payne shot him with his pistol. [At this point I was about 15 ft off the ground and trying to gain enough airspeed to make it to the side of the mountain so I could fall into the river valley about 3000 ft below and hopefully get enough airspeed to fly. I was expecting to crash at any second, and had stopped looking at my RPM when it went below 2800. I went off the end of the LZ and over a cliff about 20 or 30 ft high. I could see an aircraft on the gound directly below me which was buring, and could see another aircraft hovering just below and to my right. Another aircraft was taking off from the vicinity of the burining chopper, staying low and departing at about a 30 degree angle to my right front. There was an American standing in the open near the burning helicopter and appeared to be firing his weapon at targets to my rear. There were two other Americans running towards the lone figure, one did not appear to have a weapon. I heard an Alley Cat (gun ship) warn everyone on the radio to clear the area of the downed ship because they were oging to suppress the area, and as I looked up I saw Alley Cat cut sharp right to keep from flying directly across my path. By this time I had cleared the side of the mountain and dove into the valley below.] Some of the ships went back to look for Stiener, Mac, Sgt. Hill (gunner), Hollingsworth (CE), Williams (CE who jumped from #2 to try to get them out of #1 and then #2 got it's hydraulics shot out and had to leave), Col Seymore (passenger in #1), Elliot (gunner from #3 who jumped out to help #1 then #3 lost hydraulics and electrical system and had to leave). #2 got Hollingsworth out and then all hell broke loose.

There were about 5 or 6 hundred NVA troops firing at everybody and mortars and grenades were blowing up everywhere. The guns were firing rockets and 40 mm point-blank into them. Most of us went to med-evac pads from Dong Ha to Quang Tri. I had one dead ARVN, one wounded ARVN, and a wounded door gunner (the Marine volunteer) so I headed for Quang Tri. The ship was vibrating badly the whole trip so we shut down and checked her over. We took 13 hits in the body plus our collective lever was blown almost half in two, we had a hit in the collective sleeve, one in the swash-plate and one thru the hydraulic system. One thru the engine oil reservior, one thru the ARC-102, one thru VHF and one in the battery. I has 3 holes under my seat and one in the skid toe right outside my door. One even hit the barrel of the left door gun and, of crouse, one on my windshield.

This morning Capt Steiner and Williams staggered into Khe Sahn and we picked them up. They had slipped thru the NVA lines and made it to safety. They said McKinsey was with them but had been shot in the head and was dead. Col Seymore burned inside the ship. Sgt Hill and Elliot are still missing.