THE BUFFALO THAT RETURNED FIRE
Story: "The Super-buffalo" or "How the water buffalo almost took down two of the mighty scouts."
The following is a recreation of a real incident, which albeit unbelievable, is nevertheless true. The names have been changed to protect the responsible perpetrators.
It was an afternoon in the latter part of May, 1969 as one particular scout team had just finished working around LZ Ike. With the emphasis focused on protecting the innocent, I will call the lead ship White 46 and the wing ship will be known as White 52. Also for the sake of the story I will also make up names for the individuals that were involved in this incident. Let’s say that White 46 was piloted by Hawg (alias Mick McCann) and the gunner was Len Padios, while White 52 was piloted by Pokey (alias James Howard) and the gunner was Jack Weichel. Having completed their mission for the day, the team was flying around LZ Grant heading back to Tay Ninh when they spotted a small herd of water buffalo. Hawg called in the sighting and was given orders to take the herd out. Upon hearing this, both of the gunners requested the opportunity to carry out the orders. It had been a quiet day and they still had a lot of ammo left. Hawg, opened the ship-to-ship channel and said, "Okay, Pokey, let’s circle the herd and let the gunners have at it." Pokey responded, "Roger that!" and moved into a position on the opposite side of the lead ship. This was just like the old west when the Indians used to circle the wagons; at least that is the way it was depicted in the movies. As soon as the gunners opened up on the water buffalo they started scattering in all directions. However, one specific buffalo stayed in the area and became the center of fire. It was obvious that this was a cow as there were two calves by her side. Well, she began bucking and moving through some bushes in what would appear to be an attempt to draw the gunner’s fire away from her calves while they moved off in another direction. While circling the water buffalo, with the door gunners firing down on the animal, the occupants of both ships noticed at the same time that tracer rounds were bouncing off her hide and moving up towards the other ship. This resulted in both ships taking hits from each other. Upon realization of what was happening, the gunners quit firing immediately. Hawg then made a tactical decision to switch to a "straight in" run on the target using the mini guns. This was especially wise since the previous efforts had not been successful in taking out the animal as was evidence by the ruckus she was still kicking up on the ground. Both ships had to complete three runs with the mini guns before the water buffalo finally went down. The team leader then assessed the situation and made another command decision to forgo chasing down the remaining herd and called in the artillery to finished the task. Once Hawg confirmed that the artillery had acquired the target, we headed back to base camp to assess the damage. The scout team made it back safely and the only injury resulting from this incident came about following an attempt to explain to the company commander how the ships were shot up. That day, the team members learned a valuable lesson. Throughout their remaining tenure in Nam, not one of them ever shot at another water buffalo again!
details supplied by James Howard, Mick McCann, Len Padios and Jack Weichel
compiled by James Howard