The Best Combat Mission I Ever Flew.

The last week of November 1970, was a tough one for the 11th Cav. Those areas that were close to Xuan Loc, the one where we shot up the log truck when I was with the 199th, were becoming more dangerous because of the continued immigration of the NVA. With the 199th gone, the call to respond to all the activity there was given to the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, and the Air Cav Troop was assigned the mission to stop it. Despite the fact that I had only been with the Air Cav for ten weeks, I was assigned the left hand seat and was to fly with John Finnerty, the most soft spoken of all the pilots from the Blues.

Even though I had already been serving as the Standardization pilot for Nighthawk missions for the 11th Cav, I never had to take a check ride for the position of Aircraft Commander. The Aircraft Commander always flew from the left seat and the copilot flew from the right seat. Despite that, I felt very comfortable about the mission because we were going to stage from Xuan Loc which was like a home coming for me and the landing zone was located in the same opening where we'd blown up the log truck.

We loaded the Huey with as many ARPs as we could and took off for Xuan Loc for a pre-insertion briefing. It actually was quite nice to be hanging out in an area that I considered to be relatively safe and to do so with a group of guys that I had become very comfortable flying with.

If you can visualize a dozen Hueys parked on the ramp next to 4 Cobras and 4 Loaches, you might imagine how large the force was. I don't know how many ARPs were there but I would have to guess that there was somewhere between 60 and 72 of them because we would carry five or six of them at a time. Those boys were carrying lots of ammo, M 60 machine guns, M 79 grenade launchers and the usual M 16s. It was hot and we were heavy.

When the Cobras and Loaches were given the order to take off, we knew it wouldn't be long before we were going in. We had already gone over the maps a hundred times and before the Cobras were out of sight, the ARPs began to gather around each Huey. We were ready and when the order to "Pull Pitch" was given, we loaded the Hueys and began our start up procedures.

It only took a few minutes to get into our formation and make our way to the landing zone where we were told to establish a holding pattern while the Cobras worked over the site where we would make our insertion of the troops. Radio checks were made to insure that each aircraft could communicate with the men on the ground and when that was done, we began our tactical approach to the landing zone.

Jim "Jelly" Gelsomin was flying lead that day and I was Chalk 2. Jelly was the top gun in the Slick Platoon and was respected by everyone. He was one of the best Huey pilots any of us had ever flown with. I can close my eyes and, just as we were about to touch down, I can still see my main rotor blades overlapping his tail rotor. It was the most precise formation maneuver I'd ever experienced at that time.

The Cobras and Loaches had cleared the way for the landing and I don't recall seeing a single tracer coming our way when we made our approach. We dropped the Arps at the exact location we needed to hit, and departed the LZ to head back to Xuan Loc where we waited and waited for the call to pick them up. It seemed like a long time but I doubt if it was much more than an hour before we received the call informing us that they were in heavy contact, that some of them had been hit and we needed to get them out of there and let the Air Force finish them off.

I received a radio call on my UHF radio, something that had never happened before. They asked if my ground radio was inop because I had failed to acknowledge a radio to call to insure that it worked. I made the call and when I reported that the radio wasn't working, they told me to hold west of the Pick Up Zone until needed.

Finnerty and I entered a holding pattern just west of the PZ and watched the extraction as all of the Hueys, except us, picked up a load of Arps and exited the PZ. That's when TSHTF. As the last Huey was just about to leave the PZ and we began to make the course correction to join their formation, my UHF received an incoming call informing me that 4 of the Arps were left in the PZ and we would have to go in and pick them up.

If there ever was an "Oh shit" moment, that was it. The Arps had already killed a bunch of them and I knew that they were chasing our guys as they made their way to the PZ. I knew they were hoping to kill some of our guys and take out the Hueys as they landed to extract the Arps.They told us that the 4 men were hiding behind a fallen log that was laying aside the main road we used to land on. I knew it was one of the logs that came from the explosion of the log truck we'd blown up a few months earlier.

We dropped down to tree top level so the NVA couldn't get a shot at us, screamed toward the road, and the moment we cleared the trees, we began looking for the log where the 4 men were reported to be hiding. We were a bit too hot coming into the PZ so we executed a "quick stop" maneuver where the nose is very high, the tail is very low and zero pitch is in the blades. We landed right next to the log and within an instant, the 4 Arps were on board and we were pulling pitch to get out of there before the NVA could shoot us down.

We hit the top of a defoliated tree with the chin bubble but managed to escape without too much difficulty or damage except for one of the Arps whose pants were caught by some limbs as we were clearing the trees. It nearly tore them off his body and almost allowed him to establish himself as the first guy in the 11th Cav, to get out of a fight.....naked. I'll try to cut and paste that story in Ed's own words but I'll have to do that later. Now, back to the fight.

At that point, we returned to Dian and made our landing in the revetment. As I was letting the turbine do it's 2 minute cool down, I looked out of the cockpit window and saw all 4 of the Arps waiting for us to shut down and exit the Huey. One was Sgt. Kerry Earl, the others were Ed Usrey, Sgt. Dee and one other Arp who's name I can not remember.

When I got out, Sgt. Kerry Earl came over to me, hugged my neck, patted me on the back and kissed me on the cheek. I was shocked. He told me that we had saved their lives and that the place was crawling with NVA. He told me: "If anybody ever screws with you, let me know and I will take care of it". He had the wide eyes of a man who had been in a tough fight and I knew what he meant. I didn't know that I wouldn't have to ask for any help but that it would eventually be needed and he would eventually come to my rescue. That's another story that you will hear but let me close this one with a report from Ed Usrey that came many years later.

Thanks to computers, Ed contacted me to let me know that every Thanksgiving Day he began his blessing with "Thank You for sending Mr. Butler to take us out of that horrible fight. Without him, I would not have my wife, my children or my Grand Children. Thank You for giving me my family".

The moment I had that conversation with Ed, I knew that it had been the best mission I had ever flown.  I made sure to let him know that John Finnerty was just as important to that mission as I was and eventually, through a mutual friend, Curt Lambert, Ed met face to face with John Finnerty during a reunion in California and had an opportunity to thank him. Thanks for letting me unload this story.