"Eject, Eject, Eject!"

by Robert K. Mock

as told to

Michael R. Daciek

20 JANUARY 1972

A RECONNAISSANCE PHANTOM WAS SHOT DOWN 15 MILES SOUTH OF THE BAN BAN VALLEY IN NORTHERN LAOS DURING A BARREL ROLL MISSION.

A day in the life of Major Robert K. Mock, World's Greatest Fighter Pilot, and occasional hero.

In June of 1971, I arrived at Udorn, Thailand, my third combat tour of duty. I was assigned to the 432 nd Tactical Reconnaissance Wing, 14 th Tac Recon Squadron, World's Greatest Fighter Pilot in my mind. At that time I wasn't a hero yet. However, I was A Master of Air Defense in the F-102 Delta Dagger, and a damn good "Recce" Phantom RF-4C pilot. Other pilots called us Recce Pukes, but they were just jealous. I believed it was an affectionate term, kind of like calling a marine a "Jarhead." The Recce motto was: Alone, Unarmed, and Unafraid. At times you could substitute Unafraid with "Scared witless!"

The weather wasn't very good, the monsoon season had just started, and it really was our best friend because it slowed down the traffic on the Ho Chi Minh trail, a 2000 mile network of dirt roads. Each one of the passes, Mu Gia, Ban Ravin, and Ban Karai, sat along a route coming out of North Vietnam and it lashed up into the jungle of Laos where it became a part of the Barrel Roll. It was similar to the arteries coming out of your heart, hidden trails running up into North Vietnam and Laos. These trails were not super highways by any stretch of the imagination. Steel Tiger, another designated battle area, sat to the south. The rains were terrible and the roads so muddy the supplies heading south were being choked up in North Vietnam. It was a field day for the Recce guys. We would roll in and perform "Protective Reaction Strikes." Legally, in order to have a protective reaction the reconnaissance airplanes would probe (trolling might be more descriptive) in a suspicious area, supposedly get shot at, and the reaction would be that the fighters could go in and drop bombs, but only at that particular target as dictated by 7 th Air Force. That's in accordance with the Rules of Engagement. General Lavelle said, "We have a saying we used in Vietnam, that we finally found out why there are two crew members in the F-4. One is to fly the airplane, and one is to carry the briefcase full of the rules of engagement."

Damn silly, but that's the way it was.

It was absolutely stinko weather and there was nothing more exciting than "scud running" at about 600 knots below 500 feet and the only thing going for you is your terrain avoidance/terrain following radar and the experience from other people. We carried no protective armament, missiles, or bombs. Speed, surprise, and evasive maneuvers keep us alive. We were doing visual reconnaissance with the RF4Cs called the Sports Model, because it was a sleeker, faster Phantom than the F-4 Fighter. We also had side looking radar, which wasn't very effective, but acceptable for intel. That would help us, except sometimes the foliage was so thick the radar wouldn't penetrate through the trees.

It was fall and I'd had all my practice missions. I was now a visual reconnaissance pilot operating in Northern Laos, an area designated "Barrel Roll." I had my own secret call sign, Bullwhip 26. Lieutenant John Stiles was my Weapons Systems Officer or WSO. I was also running the Command Post and since I seldom went back to my quarters I would often sleep there. The visual reconnaissance mission was to generate targets primarily for a cover story in Laos. We ran across the DMZ all the way up north past the Mekong River, which separated Laos and Thailand, an area where we sometimes trained. It differed from the fighting elsewhere in the theater in almost every respect, and to such an extent that it effectively amounted to a separate war.

A real hot spot in Laos was the Plains of Jars. Our mission would make your hair stand straight up! General Vang Pao, a Laotian Muong allied with American forces fought the other two factions in Laos. The American government had built Lima Sites for their Air America operations. This included the Raven FACS (Forward Air Controllers), primarily USAF pilots, who flew without any identification. In July, General Vang Pao forced the North Vietnamese Regulars, who were on the north edge of the Plains of Jars, back into North Vietnam. This back and forth went on regularly. The monsoon season arrived with a fury so the weather was horrible. This allowed Vang Pao to start his attack which forced the North Vietnam Regulars back to the Fishes Mouth near Vien Ban, a city just slightly east. The Chinese and Russians were providing the NVR with tanks, rockets and trucks to hold off, kill, and squelch the Laotian mercenaries.

The Ravens would FAC in a small single-engine prop airplane called an O-1 Bird Dog, similar to a Cessna 172, which carried smoke rockets to mark targets for the faster fighter bombers. When things got really tight the FACs would fly in bad weather while we stayed down. We cooperated with them by helping with intelligence, giving it to them over the radios in code. Strike missions were flown using Thais and Laotians, flying T-28s out of Udorn. Their armament consisted of two to four 500 pound bombs and a 50 caliber gun.

Air America's command post was next door to mine, so quite often we would eat and drink together. It was very low-key since their operation was top secret while ours was just secret. When we talked on the radios we knew everyone's voices so we never used names and we spoke in codes. The Ravens were outstanding pilots and I really admired their operation because they overcame insurmountable odds.

In September, even though the weather was marginal, the 7th Air Force ordered a Protective Reaction Strike. In one of the passes we were fired upon by a large number of 37 MM Triple A sites. Each gun emplacement took two hand operated gunners, one handling the horizontal, and one the vertical, and a third person would put a clip of six rounds into the weapon. A 37 MM is about the size of an oversized golf ball. If one hits you, it's curtains! Most are seven to nine level gunners with experience going back to 1964, so they're very good. It's awfully hard when you're in a duel and they are on the ground. In the airplane you're on a curved linear path, so it's like shooting ducks. All they have to do is lead you and you solve the problem for them. The rate of fire is tremendous. The fighter bombers had a very successful PR strike which was primarily for POL, a fuel dump at Ma Gia. It burned for days.

In December of '71 Vang Pao lost his advantage, the weather went from bad to worse. The enemy was dismantling tanks and trucks and hand carrying them down the trail because it was too muddy to drive. They reassembled them on the Plains of Jars and out-flanked Vang Pao's troops. He was wounded, evacuated to Udorn, and later flown to the United States where he had an audience with the president. He returned to Laos until the war ended and eventually he ended up in the United States along with many of his people.

A typical visual reconnaissance mission would require flying low at high speed over mountainous terrain, slipping through a mountain pass, and then dropping down into the jungle, a rain forest, where the normal trees are triple canopy. Every 100 feet is a canopy, 200 feet another canopy, and at 300 feet the top canopy. It would take four or five guys to wrap their arms around the trunk of these ancient trees.

The weather improved, so we programmed a PR strike on Christmas day, which made our spirits soar. Many of the clouds during the months monsoon season reached over 60,000 feet and the Phantom could not handle that. The real problem was descending. We had to letdown with our own TA/TFR radar which required slowing down because it was very difficult to know your position. It was very tricky. Once you got underneath the clouds you had to go visual because you can't fly instruments when you're at 500 feet cruising between 480 to 600 knots.

We had six Reccecrews in Operation Barrel Roll and eight in the Steel Tiger area. The Barrel Roll is the geographical area starting at the DMZ and proceeding west and north into the edge of Laos. Steel Tiger was everything south of Mu Gia Pass down to the Cambodian border.. Then again, it was the trails that fed back into South Vietnam. It was a better series of networks and the North Vietnamese were taking all the lumps. It wasn't the VC nor the Royalists Pathet Lao that finished off Vang Pao; it was the North Vietnamese Regulars. As you flew by you could tell that they were definitely North Vietnamese Regulars. The Pathet Lao didn't take prisoners. The Pathet Lao sent us someone's finger with a class ring on it and another time we got a lampshade made of human skin. It gets your attention because we were hanging it out every day. A recce pilot could forget about becoming a POW.

We would do a route trace of where we were going and we had frag orders telling us what to do. Generally, after departing Udorn we would proceed directly to the tankers, KC 135s, orbiting in the Orange Anchor area, the border between Thailand and Laos. With my Sports Model RF4C, we only needed 6000 pounds of fuel. That would allow us twenty-five to thirty minutes of high-speed patrol. We had very low drag without external stores on the RF-4. Not so with the F-4, which was similar to flying with the gear down. Trying to escort a Recce guy with the F4 was a joke.

The three passes; Mu Gia, Ban Karai, and Ban Ravin were being used by Strategic Air Command for IDP's, interdiction points, which we called sandboxes. SAC would launch a cell of B-52s and drop a full load of bombs from 35,000 feet, saturating the whole area. Hopefully they would hit something. And if not, we would keep the VC and North Vietnamese busy with filling up holes because the B-52s cratered everything with their 750 pound bombs.

In January, we had another protective reaction strike that wasn't too shabby. The SAMs fired at us while we had aircraft airborne on combat air patrol. I was working my day job as Chief of the Command Post. I went down to the 14th Squadron Operations room to brief with my Wizzo, Lt. John Stiles. Some of the younger jocks affectionately called me "Uncle Bobby," because I was a thirty-eight year old Major. I was old!

John asked, "Did you get the latest Intel frag?"

I said, "Yes, I had been briefed on it."

A B-52 cell operating in the Fishes Mouth area had a missile launched against them. The Fishes Mouth was a section of the border between Laos and North Vietnam on a navigation chart, when highlighted, looked like the mouth of a fish. SAC immediately ceased all operations, announcing their bombers wouldn't fly until someone neutralized the SAM site.

Captain "Peppermint Patty," our intel officer, and John Stiles exchanged glances.

John said, "We don't think that missile site is in Laos."

Peppermint Patty chimed in. "I agree with John. That's a low threat area. There's nothing there."

Maybe there was nothing in Laos, but chances were good that the site was across the border. I had no intention of going into North Vietnam, You load up the Sports Model to about four Gs and you rudder roll her down to about 500 feet. If you're level with or below the first tree canopy you're okay, but if you're higher the second and third canopy can block you out. The guns and missiles are all under the trees. It's not like going down a freeway, or a secondary road.

I had preplanned targets. One was Ban Ban in the Plains of Jars, where we had lost airplanes and Ravens. I did some visual reconnaissance in the Plains of Jars. Not just running the roads, but looking at gun emplacements and supply caches. We knew where some were.

Yours truly had not taken a bullet hole since my arrival in June. Most of the backseaters wanted to fly with me because not only was I the world's greatest fighter pilot but I wasn't a missile or small arms magnet . We had a couple of guys that no one wanted to fly with because they always came back with bullet holes in their airplane. Little did I know.

I took a deep breath. "John, let's make a run up the new road, and then we'll hit the tanker. After that we'll do some photo targets of opportunity, all visual."

We were running an infrared route trace. Normally we didn't use the cameras unless we spotted a really lush target. With photo recon we used super lenses while flying higher and slower. This made it easier for photo interpretation back at Udorn. Weather was about 5000 broken, 10,000 overcast in the Fishes Mouth. We had left the PDJ and were all cranked up. John always used a monocular, like binoculars, but with only one lens like the old spyglass. How he used it I did not know because four Gs was minimum.

John and I enjoyed our beautiful Sports Model, number 573, and life was great. We let down right on the deck and started rolling along the road.

We were weaving at four Gs, which caused the experienced enemy gunners to lead us for six Gs, which was hard to do.

Starting our run we went about three clicks, no more than that, and we saw a white object, possibly a transporter erector for a surface-to-air missile. It would be an SA-2. John turned his side looking camera on.

There's always more than one and they don't just leave things out naked as an ape. They have heavy concentrations of antiaircraft guns to protect them.

I turned my head, looking back. "John, we've surprised them."

There wasn't a round fired so we proceeded on about seven clicks to make them think that we had departed.

"Brace yourself, John," I called out and entered a wifferdill maneuver. Recce guys can do it and some of the bomber guys can do it but with a load of bombs it's difficult to do. I lit the burners. If I didn't, by the time I loaded up the airplane to four Gs my airspeed would decay. I pulled up like I was going to do a loop, did a half roll, pulled some Gs, and ruddered it right back down. This is when we took our first hit. As soon as my nose went through the horizon we started accelerating.At this point the aircraft shuddered and yawed violently. Suddenly, everything in front of me flashed white. At least ten guns had opened up on us! The Triple A gunners were protecting it. When we came in from the west, we surprised them. When we came back from the east, they surprised us! For a few microseconds I glanced in my rearview mirror, and there ain't no tail anymore! Damn! Why didn't I go to Canada! The rounds were coming up, and they hit the fuel tanks between the cockpit and the tail. The fire erupted out the piccolo tubes, air-conditioning vents on the side of the cockpit. This meant the engines were sucking in flames and the fuel tanks were on fire. When a fighter starts to go, it doesn't take very long. The whole airplane will explode very violently.

I yelled, "Prepare to eject!"

"I can't," shouted John. "I'm jammed up against the canopy." In order to perform his work it required loosening his seatbelt and shoulder harness. The G forces from the sudden shuddering and yawing had slammed him violently against the right side of the cockpit and upward numbing his shoulder and arm. "I can't reach the handle!"

The Phantom had rolled inverted which would have caused a downward ejection into the ground. "Not yet," I called. "Let me try something." Somehow I rolled her over. I grabbed the ejection lever and yelled, "Eject, eject, eject!" The Command Selector for the ejection sequence was in the vertical position which meant that if I pulled the handle we both ejected. I pulled the handle which automatically caused John's shoulder harness and seatbelt to jerk him down into his seat securing him for ejection. We didn't have much altitude because the aircraft was sinking. The ejection sequence is; back canopy, front canopy, back seat, front seat, so the backseater doesn't get scorched. We went out in that order. John was gone, and I quickly followed. The last thing I remember is that there wasn't much airplane left. I closed my eyes because I figured we were goners. There was no way that we were going to live through this. If the exploding rounds didn't get us the crash surely would. I closed my eyes and said the magic words, "Oh, crap!" two words all pilots say just before they die. I said it--John didn't--he's a different story. I could hear, but I had my eyes closed and my jaws were torqued. My visor was down and my oxygen mask was on. I felt and heard the cracking sound of tree limbs breaking--crack, crack, crack--which I was going through. I must admit it jarred me a bit. All of a sudden - SWOOSH! I'm no longer in the air. I opened my eyes and I'd come down around a piece of karst, limestone out-cropping. How I came around it, I don't know. It bent around a highly sloping slash and burn area. It looked like we had come down in a grove of aspens, except the trees were stripped and they looked like an antenna farm, straight buggy whips, forty or fifty feet high. That's what we had gone into, almost supersonic, which gradually slowed us down.

As you come out of the aircraft the seat rotates because of the rocket motors. We had garters and leg restraints to keep from flailing around when ejected. The rocket propelled me just far enough to clear the tail, which in this case didn't matter because the tail was gone. I didn't hear the aircraft explode or crash. I sat stunned for a couple of seconds and finally got my wits about me. I looked around, and son-of-a-gun, I'm sitting there in my seat with the lower ejection handle in my hand! The rocket motors had gone off, otherwise I would not have cleared the airplane.

The parachute is encased in a kidney shaped affair above your shoulders, a plastic mounted arrangement attached to you and to the seat. The first thing that should happen is a little drogue chute about twelve to eighteen inches wide blossoms out to stabilize the seat and after X number of seconds an initiator fires and a bigger chute comes out to extract the twenty-eight foot canopy, a sequence of three. These shotgun like initiators are built into the side of the seat, which you check on every pre-fight to make sure you have them.

Suddenly I heard banging! "Damn, the Gomers are shooting at me!"

It was the initiator for my lap belt letting go so I could separate from the seat, which had never happened! Now the next initiator can fire releasing the 28 foot parachute. Two of these shotguns sounded and I struggled to find my 9 MMBrowning automatic weaponso I could get even. I was in shock, but happy to be alive. My coccyx really, really hurt because I smacked the ground very hard. My first thought was to check my limbs. They are okay. My forehead was bleeding from the shrapnel. I figure that's no big deal. It's not a gusher. My carotid arteries and the groin arteries were okay. I looked for my survival radio and my 9 mm weapon. Just for a moment I thought about the survival instructor's warning at Clark Field. Major Mock, this is your third combat tour, you're never going to make it through without being shot down. He knew what he was talking about. Two tours later, I'm over 250 miles from Udorn in enemy territory, sitting in an ejection seat in the middle of a jungle. I thought, Let's see, if I can make seven to ten miles a day escaping and evading, that would take about twenty to thirty days to get home, almost a month.

I called John. "Bullwhip 26 Bravo, this is Alpha, how do you read?"

He immediately responded, "Five by!"

"I don't know where you are because of the velocity during our crash," I said. "I'm okay, are you okay?"

"Well, yeah, but I'm in a tree."

I learned later that John ejected almost horizontally. He had a streamer. It helped him to slow down even though it never fully blossomed. His parachute caught a limb and stopped him, where he dangled about 100 feet above the ground. He was a very lucky guy.

I looked down at my broken watch. I couldn't stay in my present position because there wasn't much cover within the Antenna Farm. The slope was pretty steep. I crawled on my hands and knees dragging my survival Kit. Suddenly it became increasingly hard to move. I looked back and saw that my parachute had unraveled. Just what I didn't need, a drag chute! I used my survival knife to cut the parachute loose and left it. The one thing I remember besides the buggy whips were the vines that had thorns like hypodermic needles. They broke off from the limbs and stuck into my entire body which hurt like hell and soon began to burn. Now I thought about the ants and the snakes. What else could go wrong today?

I crawled until I was out of breath. I had two water bottles in my G-suit, frozen water bottles that were like canteens, not baby bottles. I knew that I should drink water to stay hydrated.

Thirty minutes had passed, so I checked in with John. "What's going on?"

"Well," he said calmly, "I'm not up in the tree anymore. The lowering rope got me down close to the ground and I dropped the rest of the way to the ground. I'm okay."

He was from Hawaii, a surfer, a Hang Ten competitor, so he was unfazed by all this. So I thought. Many years later I learned that he had parachuted into the center of the exploding and burning aircraft. He had descended down a chimney forged by his ejection seat falling through the trees, escaping birds, debrie, and heavy smoke. Getting down from the tree he hooked up his tree lowering device backwards and instead of coming down slowly in chunks of ten feet he did a very fast freefall. Along the way his thumb got caught in the cord which he managed to extract without injury. On the ground he became aware that one leg of his flight suit had melted from the flames and was stuck to his leg.The enemy soldiers were spraying his area with AK-47s and shotguns and he could hear the pellets falling through the leaves before striking the ground.

"I don't know, John, what's going on here." I scanned the area. "I don't hear much activity, but keep your ears tuned."

We discussed our locations and the directions we should take.

"John, you maintain your route. We don't want to get together until nightfall." It was now about 2:30 in the afternoon. "Tonight, we'll join up and hit the trail together."

"Well, okay."

We kept evading and I made a broadcast in the blind, "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. This is Bullwhip Two Six Alpha. Bravo is okay." I gave the UT coordinates in the clear. "Anyone hearing this message, acknowledge."

We had codes for the day, and I hoped they would come back with something.

A couple of hours had elapsed, and every thirty minutes I transmitted. John's doing okay. I'm awfully tired and the thorns are really a drag. They've torn my G-suit and vest. We had to guard against an infection so we didn't want to pull the darn things out--let them stay where they are.

I called John again. "So far, no radio contact, how about you?"

"Not a thing."

John would listen for about fifteen minutes and shut his radio off. That's what we had briefed to conserve battery power.

Back at the Command Post, one of the backseaters from the Triple Nickel Squadron was Roger Locher, a Weapon Systems Officer for Major Bob Lodge. Bob and I broke out the Frag, worked out the configurations for the airplanes, what kind of ordnance caused most damage and least drag, etc. At that point he had a Mig or two. He was a brilliant man.

Roger cranked up the phone in the Command Post and checked the status of Bullwhip 26. "The Whip" should have connected with the tanker and the Command Post should have received a call from SAC saying Bullwhip had his gas.

"Oh yes," they said, "he took on 6000 pounds and departed." Another hour passed and Bullwhip 26 should have returned to Udorn. However, no one had heard from Bullwhip. Roger started checking. The "Whip" had not checked in.

At Ma Gia Pass an OV-10 from Naked Fanny was operating at 10,000 feet. On board was a navigator, Gary" Moon" Mullins, who had flown with me many times and heard a familiar voice call out Mayday.

"My God, that's Uncle Bobby!" He used his HF radio to call Naked Fanny and said, "The Whip is down. If the coordinates are right he's in the Fishes Mouth area."

The command Post at NKP used a secure phone to initiate a SAR. Lt. Roger Locher was now in the loop as the SAR progressed.

Roger reported to Colonel Gabriel and shared his find. "I know where there are two Air America choppers that can handle the job."

"Where is that?" Colonel Gabriel asked.

"I've been checking with the command post next door and I discovered that there are two Slick Hueys northwest of the downed aircraft. They will attempt the rescue."

Roger again called the Air America Command Post.

"Our Hueys are about one hour away from the downed airmen," they replied.

Roger was elated. He gave the coordinates, the call sign, and the survival codes along with a description of Major Mock and Lt. Styles. "Major mock, nicknamed "Uncle Bobby," is about 5'10" tall, and resembles a Mexican bandit sporting a terrible Fu Man Chu mustache. John Stiles is six foot tall, dark-hair, seldom combed, making him look like a wild man."

Air America had assigned the rescue mission to two Huey crews on training missions north of the PDJ flown by pilot Nikki Fillipi, copilot Lee Andrews, and crew chief Ron Anderson. The second crew was pilot John Fonberg, copilot William Phillips, and crew chief, Bob Noble.

On receipt of their instructions Nikki Fillipi requested "Pigeons," heading and distance to the downed aircraft, from the controlling radar facility.


At about 1600 hours the enemy soldiers had began spraying the jungle with their AK-47s, a sound I was very familiar with because I had fired them at survival school. Between bursts of fire I could hear their voices and the clanking of their tin cans, mess kits and helmets, a practice meant to flush us out.

I gripped my 9 MM weapon and recalled how lucky I was to have it. I was in Da Nang in 1964 and on my days off and I would fly with the Army in Caribou's re-supplying the special forces A & B teams stuck out in the jungle. I became friends with a certain army officer at Kham Duc, a terrible place, where seven or eight army troops managed to survive surrounded by VC just looking for a way to kill them.

I said, "What can I bring you when I return?"

The lieutenant looked at me and said, "God, I would love a bottle of Jack Daniels!"

I went back to the Doom Club, Da Nang's Officer's Open Mess and for $.75 I brought a bottle and gave it to him. In return, he gave me a 9 mm Browning automatic weaponwhich held 14 rounds.

He patted the gun. "You might need this someday."

I wondered if I would live to tell that survival instructor and army lieutenant how right they were, and how wrong we were.

I said, "Okay, you retards, John has a .38 caliber hand gun, and I'm going to be the biggest surprise you have ever seen because I am a master of the 9 mm with fourteen rounds and I'm going to take down fourteen Gomers." Then I started thinking, holy crap, they have five times the firing range with automatic weapons, and besides, if there's more than one of them and I'm surrounded how can I shoot anybody. This isn't good.

I made another radio call in the blind. "There are enemy soldiers in contact." I gave out my coordinates in the clear. I had hoped there was someone from the 13th Fighter Squadron or anyone from Udorn flying in the Barrel. It was very frustrating that several aircraft had passed over but none responded to our calls.

I called John again whose voice had changed just a bit. I told him, "We need to evade up a little bit higher. We'll go north, using our survival compasses. They'll be expecting us to go low, down toward the highway." Then I said something to bolster John's spirit, "I'm sure help is on the way."

John responded, "Right!" which made me laugh.

The OV-10 had flown north about 100 miles, and when I came up on the radio I heard my ex-backseater say, "Help is on the way. I have their call sign. Are you ready to copy, over?"

And that was it. I immediately called John. "Did you hear it?"

Yes he had. I knew it was going to take a while so I said, "Radio silence for thirty minutes."

The soldiers were getting closer. I didn't know it at the time, but there was a barracks of NVRs nearby which housed enemy infantry that had moved into our area. We had crashed in the middle of a hornets nest! Not a good deal. And, of course, they're taking their time, very leisurely spraying the area as they approached our position. They could have been a couple miles away, but in the jungle it's hard to tell. The guns kept going off and the sounds became closer. There were hundreds of rounds and they were hoping to accidentally hit us with their random shooting. It was obvious they didn't want to take prisoners. We knew from intelligence reports that most Recces don't last until sundown because of our spying mission. They torture you by hitting you with a two by four. Very few Recce crewmen end up in Hanoi.

I called John. "Let's conserve our bodies and our radios."

I didn't know what kind of choppers were coming. "Let me do the talking. You just monitor, because your receiver doesn't use as much power as a transmitter does. If my radio quits, you take over."

John, a man of few words, simply said, "Yes sir!"

The rescue choppers checked in. " We know where you are but we have to refuel. We'll pick you up in about one hour."

I was breathing a little better, and my hopes soared.

When they returned I reported to them. "My backseater is in the deep jungle below a 300 foot canopy. He's on a 360° heading, climbing up a karst. I guess we're about 1 1/2 clicks from the road. Pick up John first." That was the toughest decision I had made in my whole life. "He's more exposed than I am."

"Roger that, but it's not necessary. We're in two Hueys, so we'll make individual pickups but we can only make one attempt." There was a couple minutes of silence followed by an excited call. "We have a parachute in sight!"

A Huey (HU-1) was a Bell UH-1H Iroquois Utility Helicopter.

Now the rounds are getting rather close. Minutes passed before I heard one of the choppers say, "We've got Bravo in sight."

"I'm under your prop wash!" yelled John, quickly jamming his gun and radio into his flying suit. They dropped the penetrator above his head and at that very moment John spotted a figure in black clothing ten to fifteen feet away. His AK-47 was strapped across his chest and he had a wide grin, seemingly unconcerned about the situation.

John shouted at Bob Noble in the helicopter door. " There's a armed soldier down here!"

"Shall I spray the area?" called Bob.

"No!" John grabbed the penetrator. "You'll hit me."

The pilot gunned his engine and off they went.

"We got Bravo!" reported the Huey.

The second Huey barked, "We don't have Alpha yet!"

"Okay," I answered, as I searched for a flare. "I'm firing a flare right now."

The flare went off, traveled twenty feet, hit the canopy trees, and fell back down, setting the area on fire.

"Oh, crap!" I stomped around trying to put out the fire. They quickly did a 90° turn, and another 90° turn.. I could hear them and I felt a down wash!

I looked up and yelled, "You're right over me!"

Suddenly a rope fell down through the trees. I was looking for a tree penetrator, or a rescue hoist, something like the exotic stuff we had trained with in survival school. I scrambled to stow my radio and gun and I could hear the engine starting to race which meant it was moving out!

"Damn!" I lunged for the rope and captured it with both hands as the helicopter began to pick up speed and off we went. We weren't more than twenty feet above the ground as the bullets zinged by. The 37 MMs were firing and the only way a helicopter can survive is to stay right on the treetops. Robert K. Mock is doing a catenary at 110 knots. Coming out felt just like my arrival coming in - pow, snap, crack, pop. I hit the tops of the antenna farm, ricocheting like a pin ball, spinning left, then right, hanging on for dear life. I don't know how I hung on but I did. John could do that with one hand.

As I was being pulled up into the helicopter the crew member took one look at me and I thought he was going to throw me back. He was big and strong like a gorilla. He scooped me up and sat me down inside the chopper and offered me a cigarette. I didn't smoke at the time, but I didn't want to appear unappreciative, and I was happy as hell to be rescued. I lit up, took a good deep drag and started coughing and wheezing.

They had secret sites, which even we Recce guys didn't know about. Air America had established a network of about 200 "Lima Sites," staging bases and rough airstrips in the mountains where light aircraft could land with supplies and equipment for the guerilla units.

As we flew formation I looked out the window for John. He gave me the signal that he was okay. I signaled back with a thumbs up.

The choppers were now safely in the air, and headed west. It's getting dark, and I could see the sun setting, With time to think I considered how lucky we were. Why we didn't get bagged by the small arms fire I'll never know. They had to be within 100 yards.

My new found friend stared at me. "Are you okay? You look like a porcupine."

I nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine."Actually, I was in shock and one tired puppy.

We finally came to a bend in the river, which had to be the Mekong. We spotted an Air America C-123J, a STOL aircraft, made for short take-offs and landings, configured with two props and two jet engines. It waited anxiously on a short dirt strip along the river bank with the engines running. We landed next to it and John and I sprinted from the Hueys and ran up the ramp of the waiting provider. Before the ramp was closed the C-123s engines were at full power, and we were quickly airborne.

As I sat there in the C-123 I began to think about how I was going to debrief this mission.I thought about the mysterious Air America operations that can't be revealed. The Rules of Engagement are pretty exotic, and I couldn't blow their cover.

The mission had started early in the day and now it was eight o'clock at night and we were back in Udorn--we were home. When our C-123 taxied into the parking area John and I bolted out of the plane's rear end, down the ramp into Colonel Gabriel's arms and bottles of champagne. The men of the 13th were right next door and they came down to greet us. We drank up a storm, shook hands, and laughed until my squadron commander, Lieutenant Colonel Harry Brown said, "Well, Bob, I guess we better take you two guys to the hospital."

Wing Commander, Colonel Gabriel agreed. "Good idea. You guys need to get those quills pulled and they are going to take a blood sample."

I laughed. "Okay, but it's going to be pure champagne!"

We proceeded to the chapel and then to the hospital.

Unfortunately this event made the Air Force Times. I was still operational and the article had my name with the wrong base in the wrong place. The pathos of these events are just happy as hell for a number of reasons. Riding an ejection seat into the ground while going like a very fast knuckle ball and surviving to tell about it is somewhat miraculous. As for John's parachute canopy snagging a tree at an unbelievable speed is mind boggling. How about that, Evil Knievel?

The very next day I'm back at my desk, happier than a bird in a warm cow pie, thinking, Can you imagine two young majors running the war? I'm running the command Post and I own the airplanes and the mission, while Major Bob Lodge decided the ordinance and the tactics.

Two days later I'm back flying again. How lucky can one pilot be?

The Seventh Air Force put out a Protective Reaction Strike, and never found the airplane, no scorch marks, no nothing. This indicated that the airplane probably had broke into pieces. At the time, the shuddering gave me the feeling of being in a supersonic mode in a disintergrating aircraft. We were fortunate that the airplane didn't blow up. It just sort of came unglued. I never came out of afterburner. My conclusion is that I had experienced a somewhat perfect elastic collision provided by my deceleration while riding the ejection seat through the antenna farm all the way to the ground. Even "Ripley" wouldn't believe this caper!

As for the grinning soldier who watched John being rescued, it's believed that he was a friendly Laotian Muong soldier.

My silly thoughts were that Air America crews got paid in accordance with your body weight, or by their rank, their incentive to rescue people. Perhaps that's why the big fella who pulled me into the door of the Huey seemed disappointed when he saw my lean body. Not at all true! Air America was contracted by the federal government to perform rescue work when called upon and they had saved over 100 lives. The Huey crew members were recognized for their exceptional aerial skill and courage in saving two more downed airmen in an unarmed helicopter.

Someday, John and I will look back on this, laugh nervously and change the subject.

It was quite a day.

Colonel Robert K. Mock, USAF(RET), resides in Highlands Ranch, Colorado and currently serves as Professor, Aviation and Aerospace Science Department, Metropolitan State College of Denver.

John L. Stiles completed pilot training and flew RF-4Cs. He retired from the USAF in 1993 as a Lt/Col and resides in Goldsboro, North Carolina where he's studying for his Doctorate.