The Laotian hilltop where hundreds of shattered and bleedingSouth Vietnamese troops had swarmed in a desperate huddle waitingfor U.S. helicopters to rescue them March 19, 1971, was suddenlydeserted and quiet. Pilot Roger D. Riley, a California boy flying his third sortiethrough a virtual shooting gallery in the jungle below, had barelytouched down when an enemy soldier popped out of a foxhole a dozenfeet away. before Riley’s door gunner could cut him in half with100 rounds from his M60, the man from the People’s Army of Vietnamraked Riley’s Bell UH-1H Iroquois utility helicopter from tailrotor to nose, emptying the magazine of his Russian-made AK-47. “I was amazed that only three bullets out of 30 in the magazinehit us,” Riley said nearly 40 years later on the eve of his reunionin Billings with his old warship. On Saturday, Riley saw her for the first time since he bid hiscrippled helicopter farewell on an airfield in what was then SouthVietnam. The helicopter, now with a new civilian number, N458CC, has beena familiar sight in Montana since the late 1990s, when it becamepart of the fleet at Billings Flying Service. “I got the helicopter from a company that used it for cropspraying in Alabama,” Gary Blain of Billings Flying Service said.“They had crashed it and rebuilt it.” For the last 11 or 12 years, the helicopter has been used forfirefighting, construction “and just about everything but drug andgun running,” Blain joked. It’s been on the front page of TheBillings Gazette more than once, including a shot a few years agowhen it went down in the Yellowstone while fighting fire nearLivingston. “They are amazing machines,” the Billings pilot said of thehelicopter built for war in 1967. And this particular machine hashad an amazing history, he said. Blain, a history buff, was almost as excited about the reunionas Riley. a lot of former Vietnam-era pilots have flown for hiscompany over the years and they’ve told remarkable stories, hesaid. “These guys, they get an incredible attachment to theiraircraft,” he said. “They were 20 years old and they flew them inlife-and-death situations every day.” The door was closed when Roger Riley and his brother Robertdrove up to the helicopter hangar at Billings Flying Service onSaturday. a group of invited guests waited inside to meet them andshare a hot dog and hamburger barbecue. When the door opened, RogerRiley saw the UH-1H helicopter he last flew when he was shot downin Laos in 1971. The Blain family had it decked out with flags andU.S. Congressman Denny Rehberg waited to shake his hand. For Riley, Blain said, the reunion was “kind of like seeing hisold high school girlfriend again.” Blain said he was surprised when Riley contacted him out of theblue in January. One of Riley’s crew had traced the machine toBillings on the Internet, and the pilot wanted to pay a visit. “It’s going to be great,” Riley said in a telephone interviewfrom his Squaw Valley home, just before he and his older brotherRobert R. Riley hopped in a car for the drive to Billings. RobertR. Riley, who preceded his brother to Vietnam, also had occasion tofly the aircraft during his time in the Army. Roger’s crew chief,Harold Fetty, flew in from Oklahoma City, as did John Snyder ofSpencer, Okla., who was a crew chief on another helicopter in thesame unit. All four men were Ghost Riders, the name adopted by Company a,158th Aviation Battalion, which had been established at FortCarson, Colo., in the summer of 1968. The Ghost Riders were headedto South Vietnam with helicopters fresh off the assembly line. Robert R. Riley got there first and was done with his tour whenRoger Riley arrived in Vietnam as a replacement pilot in June 1970.by September, Roger had been assigned his own aircraft — the67-17678. For the next seven months, until the encounter in Laosdisabled the helicopter, Riley and his bird were almostinseparable. The operation that ended their relationship was one of thebloodiest episodes of that long war. Named Lam Son 719, theoperation was designed to disrupt a supply route in Laos that NorthVietnam’s army could use in an offensive against the South. SouthVietnamese troops were to cross the border into Laos, supportedfrom the air by American forces. U.S. ground forces were prohibitedfrom entering Laos. Contemporary accounts say 22,000 South Vietnamese troopsparticipated in the ill-conceived campaign. Many of them wereferried in by American helicopters beginning on Feb. 8, 1971. Thechoppers brought in supplies and took out the wounded for the next45 days. “I was under fire every day during that period when I was on amission,” Roger said. “I got a day or two off, but most of the timeI was flying.” It was a bloodbath from the start. Roger and hundreds of otheraviators assigned to operation flew in and out, ferrying theirsavagely wounded South Vietnamese allies from landing zones in Laosto the South Vietnamese base of operations at Lang Vei right on theborder, he said. North Vietnam, anticipating an incursion at the Laotian border,had brought an estimated 36,000 troops into the area. They camewith deadly artillery and anti-aircraft guns. Troops from the southwere shredded. some estimates put casualties at 10,000. a decisionto withdraw the South Vietnamese was made March 9, and thedangerous business of extricating the troops began. “We were always supposed to take out the wounded first, but theywalked all over the wounded, threw their guns away and got on,”Roger said of the ravaged troops. Frantic men grabbed the skids as the helicopter lifted off theground, and some fell to their deaths as the machine headed skywardinto heavy fire. On March 19, the pilots’ situation went from bad to impossible.ten Ghost Riders and 10 helicopters from the Robin Hood unit weresent to rescue a South Vietnamese battalion surrounded on ahilltop. “I personally successfully brought in two loads,” Rogersaid. But by the third sortie, all 10 of Robin Hood’s helicopters weretoo damaged to go and four Ghost Riders were out of commission. Thesurviving Ghost Riders flew in trail formation, one followinganother toward the landing zone, Roger said. Cobra gunshipscircled, providing cover as the larger Hueys maneuvered intoposition. One of the helicopters was shot down near the landing zone andRoger’s company commander, who had been leading the sortie, triedto fly to the rescue, but a bullet caught him in the spine. Twoother Ghost Riders broke formation to assist the command ship. Roger continued to the landing zone and put his machine downjust as the enemy soldier opened fire with his AK-47 from closerange. from the left, more enemy soldiers approached. There was no time to do anything but hope the wounded bird couldfly. Roger lifted her off the ground, bullets whizzingeverywhere. A bullet had torn through the 8½-foot tail rotor, and the damage“set up a vibration that just about set my teeth to chattering,”Roger said. “I just bit my lower lip, pulled pitch and got out ofthere.” He flew low, touching the treetops, so he could put down if hehad to. a command and control officer flying high above warned himthat he was headed for an enemy mortar barrage, so he quicklychanged course to go around. They flew over an anti-aircraft gun,but Fetty was able to kill that crew, Roger said. The South Vietnamese operations base was only about five minutesaway. Although the base was continuously under fire, they were ableto set down safely. A Life magazine reporter, John Saar, was there that day as theGhost Riders came in. “The Hueys flail into sight, but their cabins are empty,” hewrote. “The pilots are shaken and angry and they climb out of theirarmored seats for a council of war. ” ‘I don’t know who the hell is running that, but there’s NVA(North Vietnamese Army) right alongside the landing zone and .51(caliber) is hitting inside. six ships hit, one went down, and oneaircraft commander hit in the spine so he can’t move his legs. Whatare they trying to prove?’ “Yet the word comes down for another attempt and the grumblingGhost Riders climb into their cockpits to crank and fly.” But Roger and 67-17678 would fly no more that day. He spent the night at the operation base in a bunker dug out bya bulldozer and covered with a flimsy layer of logs. Enemyartillery battered the base through the night. “A direct hit would have killed us all,” he said. The next morning, he gathered his crew and they caught a rideback to Khe Sanh, a base in South Vietnam that had been abandonedearlier in the war, but served as the center for American airoperations in Laos that spring. Roger watched as a huge Chinook helicopter brought his injuredbird in, suspended from a cable. The 67-17678 landed hard, damagingthe skids. Checking her out, Roger found three bullet holes — onein the rotor, another that just missed him and knocked out one ofthe radios and another that shattered the lip of the cargodeck. Roger and his crew hitched a ride with another Ghost Rider backto Camp Evans, where the unit was based in the Haunted House. The67-17678 was already there. “She beat me back home,” he said. But her damage was too severe to be repaired at the camp and shewas soon hauled away. Roger, who received the Distinguished FlyingCross for the mission, was assigned a new machine. that was thelast time he saw her. Before his tour was over in may, Roger had been shot down atotal of three times. Fetty and 67-17678 were to meet again. The crew chief flew inthe repaired helicopter after the war, when she had become theproperty of the Oklahoma National Guard. Fetty received the AirMedal of Valor for his exploits in Operation Lam Son 719. On Saturday, after telling the story of the last flight, Blaininvited Riley for some recurrent flight training. it was one lastsortie in the ship that saw them through their worst nightmare. The helicopter seemed to slip sideways for a couple of seconds,but then Riley climbed and banked toward the South Hills. “It’sgreat. another month and it would all come back to me, hesaid.” “It was just automatic back then.”

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