Son David is in Washington D.C. for the World Vaccine Congress where he was on a Q & A panel on Tuesday. The conference is scheduled all week long and after the daily presentations are over he has been doing some sightseeing. His hotel is only 6 blocks from the White House and today he saw the Washington Monument and Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial. Then he went to the Vietnam War Memorial. 
He texted Jon to ask him the name of the helicopter pilot who had saved his life and also the lives of the men in the platoon he was with while on a mission in Vietnam.
The pilot's name was J.D. Phelps.
Many years ago when the Traveling Vietnam Wall Memorial came to Missoula, Jon's mom had tried to find J.D. Phelps' name on the wall, but didn't find it.
David texted again with, "what year was he killed in action?". Jon replied, "1970".
David had found his name on the wall. Jesse D. Phelps. Boise, Idaho.
Jon did not know until today where J.D. Phelps was from. It turns out he was another Idaho GI.
He had told me before about what had happened on this mission in Vietnam and now I'm going to do my best to re-tell it because it should be told.
Jon was an interrogator with the 3rd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division. He spent a year at the U.S. Army's Vietnam Language School in El Paso, Texas, learning to speak Vietnamese. At the end of that year he was deployed to Vietnam and stationed at Camp Evans, which was north of Hue.
One day about nine months into his tour of duty, he was given a Chieu Hoi to interrogate. A "Chieu Hoi" was a Viet Cong prisoner who decided to change sides after he was captured. Over the course of several days the prisoner told him he knew where the Viet Cong Headquarters for their area was and also an NVA hospital. The terrain in this area was mountainous triple-canopy jungle.
This took several days because the prisoner could not read maps. They finally discovered a location on the map they both could recognize, where a helicopter had landed on some mines, and then Jon asked him which direction was the HQ's from there and he said, "towards the sunrise".
Jon asked him, "how many creeks do you cross to get there?" and he answered, "three". He told him that they needed to hike down the mountain in a dry creek bed and then follow the trail. They finally pinpointed where it was on the map and the battalion commander decided they would send a platoon down the dry creek bed and a company would approach from two other locations on the mountains.
First two Marine jets bombed the top of the mountain to clear a place for the helicopters to land and/or drop off troops. There were six helicopters and Jon flew in the second helicopter along with his prisoner and his interpreter, Yen. He said that the jungle on the top of the mountain was a mass of jagged, burnt trees, snags and debris from the bombing. The helicopters couldn't land so they had to jump eight feet out of the helicopters to the ground. Once all of the platoon had been dropped off they formed a line and headed down the dry creek bed. About halfway down the mountain the Chieu Hoi showed them the trail that led to the headquarters. They then followed the trail around the mountain. Not wanting to go single file across the mountain, the platoon spread out on line and walked through the jungle. They came across a very large, bushy tree which had been fallen across the trail and suddenly the enemy started firing out of the tree. They returned fire until everything went silent. They moved ahead and found a dead NVA officer. Evidently, the rest of the ambush had run away when they saw them coming online.
They hiked a bit further to the recently abandoned VC Headquarters, which was a group of huts so carefully camouflaged into the jungle that you could hardly see them from three feet away. Jon went into the main hootch where there were beds and a fireplace. He noticed a place on the wall where something large had been tied up with white threads, which remained. At the time he thought it might have been a map. They searched the hootches but found no documents. Then the Chieu Hoi told them there was a cache hidden at the dry creek bed.
Jon and a squad of infantry went back to the dry creek bed. The creek bed consisted of very steep clay walls. The Chieu Hoi pointed up at the wall and said, "right there". One GI stood on another GI's shoulders and reached up and pulled out a dirt covered door with a hole behind it. The GI passed down ammunition, RPG rounds, guns, a small bag of documents and a plastic bag with a piece of red fabric in it with white threads. Jon put the documents and the bag in his pockets.
They spent the night in the jungle at the VC headquarters. The next day the platoon headed down the mountain towards the NVA hospital. They hiked a few hundred meters and the Chieu Hoi refused to go any further because he said they would all be killed. So they radioed for a "Pink Team". A Pink Team consisted of one LOH, (light observation helicopter), and a Cobra Gunship. This is where J. D. Phelps comes into the story. He was the pilot of the LOH.
They tied a smoke to a long pole so that it could be seen above the jungle canopy and Phelps could see their location on the mountain. He hovered the helicopter over the platoon, just above the jungle canopy. Then he slid the helicopter backwards down the side of the mountain just above the jungle canopy until suddenly they heard gunfire and he radioed that he was "taking fire".
J.D. peeled off and flew back up the mountain to hover above the platoon again and slid down the mountain until he started taking fire. Only this time, his door gunner was throwing hand grenades out the door of the LOH as fast as he could. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.
Phelps peeled off and he flew back up above the platoon one more time and he radioed that he really wanted to narrow down the location of the NVA, so he slid down the mountain - one more time. This time when he took fire, the door gunner dropped out a smoke grenade to mark the spot for the Cobra Gunship to open fire with mini-guns and rockets.
Phelps radioed to the platoon that they should move thirty meters back up the mountain to get away from the Cobra fire that was coming. Jon says that as far as he was concerned, thirty meters was not far enough. They were way too close.
The Cobra began firing and it looked like they were firing right at the platoon (which they kind of were), but fortunately Jon and the other GI's were only hit by flying trees, branches and other debris as they huddled down and tried bury themselves in the ground.
Once the firing was over they moved down the mountain to where the Cobra Gunship had fired and there in the trail was a large caliber machine gun which had been setup to fire on them as they walked down the trail. They would have walked straight into it. There was a dead NVA next to the machine gun. The rest of the NVA had fled down the mountain.
J.D. Phelps made it possible for the platoon to move down the mountain and complete the mission with no casualties. A few weeks later Jon learned that J.D. Phelps' helicopter was shot down and he was killed. He was a very brave pilot to repeatedly fly over the jungle and take fire to save the platoon from an ambush.
David set us another text saying that he told him, "thank you".
If you look closely, you can see the white threads.
Hopefully, there are still twenty other Vietnam Veterans out there, living somewhere in America, who can tell this same story.
