bombs to clear a ragged escape route. Minutes later, two more call signs joined the mix of radio traffic. “Catkiller 1-8, this is Chatterbox 3-2, flight of two orbiting five miles east of your position, with two Seaworthy guns. Over.” This was the Recon team’s ride home, Marine CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters escorted by Huey gunships. “Roger, Chatterbox, this is Catkiller 1-8. Stand by.” Then on the intercom, “Hap, get those guys moving!” “Mustang, this is Southern Hotel. Choppers inbound! Get going to your east!” The Marines broke out of the bomb crater, heading across freshly churned earth and burning undergrowth. But the enemy could see the approaching Sea Knight and half-a-dozen of them set off; one RPG could easily destroy the rescue helicopter. Happe switched to the artillery push. “Cherry Buster 6, this is Southern Hotel. From the last gun target line, add 200, right 50, four rounds of whiskey papa. Repeat. Over.” Five miles away, sweating crews rammed shells and powder charges home and slammed and locked the breech blocks. The gunners took a twist of the heavy lanyards around wrists and held them taut. “Fire!” The guns rocked under the recoil, and shells went moaning down-range. White phosphorus rounds impacted in quick succession, the clouds swelling to screen the approaching helicopters behind a dense wall of smoke One Chatterbox orbited away from the action, ready to take over if the other was hit. The lead chopper flared hard over the edge of the clearing. Before the nose wheel touched the ground six young Americans were diving into the open tailgate, and Chatterbox was off again. A quick pedal turn swung them away and they were thudding toward safety before the smoke screen had dissipated. When the last Hellborne Skyhawks headed back to Chu Lai, Doc lit his first cigarette since taking off that afternoon and turned for home. Fifteen minutes later, he was rolling down the Dong Ha runway. When he and Happe reached the line shack, six Marines were slumped outside. It was the Recon team. “They looked like hell warmed over,” Doc remembers, “covered in mud and dust, a couple of them with singed hair from the napalm, their fatigues in shreds. They crowded around us, shaking our hands. One of them said, ‘When we saw you that low with tracers all around your plane, we were sure you were going to get shot down, and that would be the end of our air cover. We couldn’t believe that you kept doing it! If that’s what your job is like, lieutenant, you’ll never get me in one of those Bird Dogs. No way!”’ “As tired as I was, I had to grin. I guess everyone has his own natural element that he’s comfortable in, and mine was definitely in the air. There wasn’t enough money in the world to get me to do what those guys did.”
Charles Finch – Catkiller 19 Like Doc Clement, Charlie Finch was another maverick in the 220th and the risks he took to protect American troops are still talked about more than four decades later. He was one of the “Myth Makers” a select group of men who earned the title. Even today, the Catkillers wonder how he survived. “When Hooper joined the 1st Platoon,” Finch remembers, “it was like he had been there for months. Sarcasm in the 220th just dripped, and normally the new guy would take it and not come back at you. Not Bill. He wasn’t cocky, just very confident and sure of himself. Within days, everyone knew him. Pilots were talking about Hooper, Wild Bill, Hoops; Hudson was calling him “Billy” like he had 23