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Next day, as the march continued, Rogers tagged at the heels of the Vietnamese commander. Finally the unit ran into Viet Cong fire while moving along a river bank. Then Rogers' counterpart turned to him with a question: "What about some air?" Rogers agreed, and while his counterpart radioed for Vietnamese-flown Skyraiders, Rogers called in American-flown helicopters. "Then," recalls Rogers, "I asked the commander which he wanted to carry out the strike. He said both, and I had to explain that you couldn't have Skyraiders and choppers going in over the target at the same time. It was a real Mickey Mouse [the linguistic equivalent of World War II's snafu], but we got it all straightened out, and the choppers went in first."
Rogers worked with that same commander for weeks without really gaining his confidence. Finally, Rogers recalls, "there was a Viet Cong sniper who seemed to nip away at us every evening after supper. I used to sneak down to a dike just behind him and try to catch him. Then I went to Saigon for a couple of days. When I got back, I noticed my counterpart grinning widely. That evening he told me that that V. C. wasn't going 'Bang! Bang!' any more. He had shot him during my absence. He showed me the brand-new Russian carbine he had taken off the sniper. I had it chromed and polished in Saigon and presented it to him. That's when we first became really close friends."
Last week Rogers was in action with his Vietnamese unit near Danang. But he will soon be going home to Sumneytown, Pa., and he will be sorry to leave. "These Vietnamese are brave people," he says. "You go out on operation and — well — maybe things aren't done quite the way you want them to be. But then, in the middle of a battle, one of these little characters comes grinning up to you and hands you a hot cup of coffee."
The Skunk Hunter
WARRANT OFFICER CHRISTOPHER G. HUNT, 21, of San Jose, Calif., an Army helicopter pilot, currently operates out of Saigon airport, flying either a UH-1B "Huey," which staggers into the air carrying 6,000 rounds of machinegun ammunition and 14 rockets, or a "Hawg," a version of the Huey, which packs 48 rockets. Since last September, when Hunt arrived in Viet Nam, his outfit, the 197th Aviation Company, has suffered eight dead—out of a total complement of 160 officers and men.
Hunt's biggest moment came two weeks ago, when he led a "skunk hunt" for a suspected Viet Cong supply depot about 60 miles northwest of Saigon. "We were lucky," says Hunt. "One of our guys just happened to come in at a proper angle, and he caught a glimpse of something under the trees. He drew fire, so we all went to have a look." It was quite a look: the area was alive with Viet Cong. Hunt and his outfit marked the targets with smoke rockets and called in Vietnamese and American planes, which destroyed 21 Viet Cong trucks, five large ammunition dumps, 43 Communist-occupied houses, and an estimated 2,000 tons of rice—"enough to feed 25,000 guerrillas for a year."
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