Beyond the Call of Duty

The following is an excerpt from Beyond the Call of Duty: The Life of Colonel Robert Howard, America’s Most Decorated Green Beret by Stephen L. Moore.

Bob Howard heard the welcome thump of rotors approaching. His company was in a desperate situation, deep in the lush green jungles of Laos in Target Area Juliett 9, but the cavalry was on its way.

Howard’s SLAM (search, locate, annihilate, monitor) unit had been inserted into Laos on November 14, 1968, to help save and extract a recon team that had been overrun by North Vietnamese Army (NVA) forces. The company-sized unit helped the wounded to be extracted by choppers, but  Howard and his men then remained on the ground near Laotian Highway 96. They were tasked with locating an NVA stronghold in the area that included 37mm antiaircraft gun batteries.

Days later, on the afternoon of November 18, Lieutenant Lee Swain and Sergeant First Class Howard had been walking point, leading their large recon force through enemy territory. Howard, a powerfully built and well-experienced Special Forces veteran from Alabama, scanned the distant tree lines with his Colt M16 automatic rifle raised, ready to fire. Seconds before their men walked into an NVA ambush, he had spotted enemy soldiers in the woodline ahead. Howard and Swain had opened fire first, gunning down some of their opponents with their M16s and initiating a vicious firefight.

Rifle grenades, automatic weapons, and mortar explosions had rocked their vicinity. Howard had been peppered with rocks, soil, and tiny slivers of red-hot metal. But Lieutenant Swain had been badly wounded by an NVA rocket that had broken his left leg and left his right foot hanging on only by the Achilles tendon. Howard had used his own belt to fashion a tourniquet around Swain’s right leg to control the bleeding.

The recon company continued to fight off the surging NVA, and A-1E Skyraider ground-attack aircraft had been called in to lay ordnance on the North Vietnamese opponents. Their explosives erupted close enough that Howard and others were lightly wounded yet again by shrapnel. Howard was relieved to soon hear that his company commander, Lieutenant Tom Jaeger, had been successful in calling in Bell UH-1 Huey rescue slicks from the 57th Assault Helicopter Company.

Four Hueys were soon overhead, circling as their recon spotter coached them in from the back of a nearby Cessna O-2 Skymaster aircraft. But each time the choppers moved in, the NVA unleashed hellacious ground fire toward them. The chopper pilots struggled to hear the radio calls from the ground forces due to such intense NVA ground fire directed at their Hueys.

It was finally decided that the 57th AHC choppers would make one fast pass and attempt to pick up some wounded while they still had ample fuel for the return flight. The first chopper to move in low for a landing was Gladiator 167, a slick flown by Warrant Officer Carl Hoeck.

Hoeck’s UH‑1 took small- arms fire on its approach, but things took a turn for the worse as the chopper went into a hover. A previously unseen quad-mount .51‑caliber (12.7mm) heavy antiaircraft machine gun on tracks opened fire. It was a half- track armored vehicle Bob Howard had earlier heard moving in the distance.

Gladiator 167 staggered under direct hits from the powerful NVA tracked gun. Rounds slammed into its engine, through the passenger compartment, and into all vital hydraulic gear. Pilot Hoeck struggled to control his crippled bird as it staggered directly above Sergeant Howard and his besieged SLAM com­pany. Hoeck had only a split second to select a thin patch of grass in the large clearing into which his helicopter would crash.

Howard was mortified to see that the would‑be extraction chopper was now just another casualty. Hoeck’s Huey slammed hard into the jungle greenery, its blades chopping through all sorts of vegetation. The UH‑1 bounced off the ground and went about ten feet into the air before it crashed back into soft jun­gle soil, flinging dirt, debris, and grass in all directions. Red- orange flames erupted from the Huey’s shattered tanks as the injured occupants tried to collect their senses.

Oh, no, thought medic Joe Parnar. I don’t need any more wounded!

Bob Howard and Tom Jaeger had other thoughts. The downed medevac Huey had no sooner crashed down than NVA troops began emerging from the nearby jungle thicket to finish off the wounded occupants. The burning Huey was about a hundred fifty yards away. Shouting to others to cover them, Howard and Jaeger jumped to their feet and sprinted toward the disaster scene. Jaeger had one hand on his pants to keep them from fall­ing down, as he had also used his belt as a tourniquet on one of Swain’s legs.

En route to the chopper, Jaeger shot down two enemy sol­diers emerging from the thicket to the south. Howard cut down a couple others running in from the north of the crash scene. Pilot Carl Hoeck was stunned and still fumbling with his shoul­der harness. Howard pried open the door and reached in to help pull the Huey pilot out onto the jungle floor. Jaeger and How­ard were joined by another platoon first lieutenant, Bob Price. All three had been wounded by shrapnel already, but they worked quickly to save lives and shoot down other NVA sol­diers charging toward the downed chopper.

Hoeck, his copilot, Green Beret medic Tony Dorff, and their crew chief scurried away from their burning chopper. Their door gunner, Specialist Fourth Class Wayne Gilmore, remained pinned in the chopper, scream­ing with pain. His right hip and upper leg had been ripped open by the antiaircraft gun’s fire. As Howard worked to free him from the wreckage, he spotted a North Vietnamese soldier at­tempting to climb into the back of the downed Huey.

A quick burst from Howard’s M16 ended that threat. Jaeger gunned down another NVA who tried to reach the chopper’s open door. Once Gilmore was free of the blazing chopper, Jaeger and pilot Hoeck tried to help him run for safety. But Gilmore collapsed in pain, screaming due to his severe leg wounds. Sergeant First Class Howard ignored the heavy enemy fire and fired vigorously toward the surging NVA.

During these minutes of fighting side by side, Jaeger noticed the actions of his first sergeant. “It was the first time I’d seen him in a combat situation,” he recalled. “I was impressed by how it didn’t bother him, and that’s rare.” To the lieutenant, it seemed as if Howard simply operated as if he were invincible.

Howard’s covering fire allowed Hoeck and Jaeger to drag the wounded door gunner back to a safer position within the SLAM company’s perimeter. Tony Dorff, now on the ground with the Kontum force, rushed to help fellow medic Parnar tend to the wounded. A short distance away, the blazing Gladi­ator 167 created such intense heat that its ammunition began cooking off.

For the moment, all hopes of rescue faded away.

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This first appeared in The Havok Journal on December 3, 2024.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.