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Something Special. Still another clerical hero is Captain James Hutchens, 31, a Church of the Brethren chaplain who at his own request was reassigned from an engineering unit to the combat-tested 1st Battalion of the 173rd Air borne. On a patrol one day last November, Hutchens' company walked into a Viet Cong ambush. Although crippled by a bullet wound in his thigh, Hutchens helped two rescue patrols bring the company's wounded back to safety, comforted the sick for 22 hours until engineers could hack out a landing zone large enough for medical evacuation choppers. After a month in a Saigon hospital, Hutchens talked his way back into duty with the 173rd; in January, two weeks after his return, Hutchens led another rescue patrol that brought a G.I. back to safety under Viet Cong fire. Understandably, Hutchens is something special to the men of the 173rd, who flock to his services. "I can't talk about him," says one G.I. in the unit. "You just wouldn't understand. You haven't been with us."