![]() ![]() Several of the men wounded that day haven’t seen each other since what one of them calls the “day of the guns.” Fifty years ago. But to these men it will always be the Battle of Easter Sunday.įrom left to right: Delta Six crew chief Bill Rhodes, Dustoff Commander Jim Eberwine, Outlaw 17 copilot Jim Martinson, Outlaw 17 aircraft commander Jon Myhre, Outlaw 17 gunner Joe Watson, and ARVN adviser Rex Latham at the 2017 reunion of the soldiers who fought the Battle of Easter Sunday. If mentioned at all, it’s as part of Operation Long Phi 999G. But the Vietcong shot down three helicopters and sent more to heavy repairs.įor all the carnage, the fight rates only a few lines in the war’s reference books. More than 200 men died, most of them Vietcong. Half a million machine-gun rounds were expended, along with hundreds of bombs. In the many hours of fighting that followed, four helicopter rescues were attempted. It began with a platoon of Army helicopters landing among two well-hidden, well-armed battalions of Vietcong soldiers. The “place” they’re thinking of tonight is a paddy in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, and this second night of their reunion is precisely 50 years after an unusually protracted daytime fight broke out there. Over half of them are pilots, which means they started their Army rotorcraft training in the dry hills and fields around the town’s Army Aviation facility, Fort Wolters. This is a reunion of the 175th Assault Helicopter Company, Vietnam edition. ![]() They don’t mean this place they’re happy to be here. ![]() The chorus emerges with particular energy, as they sing the words Eric Burdon and the Animals sang that year: We gotta get out of this place / If it’s the last thing we ever do. ![]() It’s a Saturday night at a former Army-base auditorium in Mineral Wells, Texas, where two dozen men aged 70 and upward have stood to join in a song first performed in 1965. ![]()
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