Company A

227th Assault Helicopter Battalion

1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile)


A Holy Flight

by CW2 Robert Kelly
with CW2 Rod Esterak


The day in early October began routinely.

After breakfast Don Phipps and Ralph Bowen joined Ernest Kramer and I standing at one of the mess tent picnic tables. The weather was nice so the sides of the mess tent were rolled up. Don and Ralph were up for combat assaults in an hour or so. So we did what any young pilot would do, a session of hanger talk. We discussed many topics, Don being the most mechanically knowledgeable.

It was time and the two of them headed to the flight line.

On the way back from the combat assault mission, their aircraft had a mechanical failure over the runway at LZ Betty (Phan Thiet). Don, Ralph and PFC Stanley R. Uding (Crew Chief) were killed. Gary Holtz, the door gunner survived the crash but was badly burned. He was taken to a medical facility where he died three days later.

Story of this accident

A day or two later Rod Esterak and I were assigned the mission of taking the three remaining bodies of the crash victims to the morgue at Saigon. Neither of us had been to Saigon, but the morgue was near the army heliport next to the AF runway.

The bodies in their bags were laid two side by side across the cargo hold and the third was stacked centered on top of the others. We had never seen friends or any one else in a body bag. It was a chilling site. I wondered if their parents knew their sons were dead. So off we went to Saigon.

I looked back a few times - a gruesome site. The thought that it could have been one of us in the future crossed our minds. It could not be helped. We were up so close to our friends. Death was in the air and a smell.

As we neared the outskirts of Saigon we could see a monsoon coming. We could see along a waterway shacks that were packed touching and two or three stories high in places. It was a terrible slum. Not the rice bowl and country side of Phan Thiet.

As we started into the rain we had no idea of where we were and we knew there were wire lines in Saigon. We were flying low and as luck would have it I spotted a Huey off to my right next to a building with room for one more aircraft. Rod, our AC executed a perfect landing. Two soldiers came to the door and we went inside. We stayed until the rain stopped. We got easy directions but I have to say when they found out what our cargo was they stopped talking to us and went about their business as far away from us as they could.

We took off and in no time we arrived at the army heliport. Some soldiers took the bodies away and others tried to get us to go to the PX, the largest army PX in Vietnam. Even though we had no PX in Phan Thiet we declined and got the hell out of there.

We wanted to go back home to Phan Thiet. And that is what we did.

We were glad to be back.

"We will miss our brothers,
until we are reunited."

Last updated March 24, 2018
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