Thursday, April 27, 1972
Flight To Kontum - A Mosaic Of War
KONTUM, Vietnam --"We can't get into Kontum," the young navigator said as the massive, camouflage-dappled transport plane taxied. "It's under attack."What kind of attack? How much fire? He couldn't say. The transport berthed itself back into a revetment at Tan Son Nhut AB and waited, the propellers churning. A hapless little private plane had almost been blown over as the C130 transport, out of the 374th Tactical Airlift Wing, reversed its engines."Okay now," the navigator smiled after a time. "We can go in. We were just waiting for the ice water." Now the plane trundled out again and soared aloft. The way into Kontum was clear, a reassuring, musically casual voice on the radio said. Everything below the transport was now green and greyish (sic) brown and a break in a thick screen of clouds showed a corner of besieged An Loc. Far below, a C130 gunship, one of the black Spectres, banked on to pour a searching tracery of red specks into Communist positions. Cobra gunships fluttered along patiently and waited their turn over the tortured little town.Then the clouds pulled back over An Loc like a shroud and the transport droned on -into Kontum, 250 miles northwest of Saigon. The clouds rolled aside. The skies were as clear as polished crystal and the landing should have been easy; but the pilot leaned slightly on the controls, and the plane banked and teetered in a way, that made the horizon bend. It was a piece of cautious and justified evasive action.Once the C130 was down, those making stopovers at Kontum were motioned out of the plane and across the field at a run. For earlier this morning, this airstrip in the central highlands had transformed into a kind of transistorized Khe Sanh. Communist observers had watched as ponderous specks make their descent; there had been a series of sharp whines and shattering blasts."There's a bunker and there's a bunker," puffed an impromptu guide. "Stay close to them. Last three out of four planes in here drew rockets."He remonstrated that one man for not having a flak jacket. All ears were attuned for a shrill and terrifying sound that likely would have been hard to hear in a maelstrom on noise -the engines of the transport bracing for a steep ascent, the drone of forklifts hauling equipment, the excited shuffling of ARVN airborne troops who moved in a tangle of equipment and were being shifted, like chess pieces, to the critically contested III Corps area.No more fire came in. Cobra gunships were cocked to strike beyond the airstrip, and their hovering presence likely smothered more barrages. But only 10 miles from Kontum was the serpentine tip of a long height called Rocket Ridge, gaining that name after friendly fire bases had been plucked away by enemy hands.Howitzers, cases of rations, piles of ammunition awaited shipment as one plane bounded away, another came in. Under a tin-roofed shelter was the body of a woman no one had known much about; the afternoon before she was waiting to board an Air Vietnam plane at the civil terminal a short distance from the bunkers. A rocket had wailed in, killing her and injuring three others. Now the little terminal was a deserted shell, littered with broken glass that sprayed like shrapnel when the rocket burst.The airliner still sat outside. Soldiers found it a restful arbor and shaded themselves under the wing. A thin handful of Americans pushed the loading, guided the planes in and out, and nervously hoped they had heard that approaching whine for the last time."Flight to Kontum - A Mosaic of War", by Hal Drake published in the Pacific Stars and Stripes on Thursday, April 27, 1972 and reprinted from European and Pacific Stars and Stripes, a Department of Defense publication copyright, 2002 European and Pacific Stars and Stripes.