Delivering Water to the Jungle

When patrolling the jungle for typically two weeks at a time, every three days, we had food and water delivered.  The morning of the drop, we would look for a clearing in the jungle large enough for a Huey helicopter to settle down in.  This snapshot was taken during one of those deliveries.

In the background you can see standing bamboo.  In the lower right corner of the picture you can see bamboo lying on its side.  So on this particular day, we cut an opening in the bamboo forest large enough to drop in the helicopter.  There were no natural clearings close to our location.

Machetes were used for cutting bamboo and we made quick work of it.  We likely had the clearing opened up within an hour.  When a bamboo stalk is alive, it is soft and easy to cut with a swipe or two of a machete.  If it is dried out, it gets so hard, that the only practical way to cut it is with a power saw.

Leaning out of the helicopter with his foot on the strut is a door gunner.  There was another door gunner on the other side.  The door gunner is helping guide the pilot down by telling him how close he was to the ground.  The pilot is concentrating on staying away from the edge of the bamboo forest with his main rotor and tail rotor.  Those five gallon jerry cans you see on the floor of the helicopter are filled with water.

We had the entire drop zone surrounded with M16 rifles ready.  You can see how vulnerable that helicopter was if a Vietcong soldier could get close enough to shoot at the pilot or door gunner.  They may have lived in better quarters than we did but they paid for it when exposing themselves like this.