Shawn Ryan

Bird goes down, breaks the right strut off.

The right strut had landed on one of the guys who fell off.

It landed on his foot.

He lost his big toe.

Then we came to Christmas Day, 1968, and

Didn't even realize it was Christmas because we had been so busy planning, working things out.

And they had a mission where they wanted us to go in on a mountaintop for a trail watch and also look for enemy fuel lines.

Because the NVA were bringing down fuel lines from North Vietnam that were coming down into Laos.

And the fuel lines would come down to refuel the trucks as they came down the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

But nobody had found any yet.

So our mission was to get us this hilltop

get inserted, do a general area recon, then the next day move out to try to find some of those fuel lines.

So in November of 68, President Johnson declared a bombing halt in North Vietnam.

And all of, not all, but a lot of the anti-aircraft weaponry that had been up in North Vietnam

began coming south.

So on Christmas day, our target was just into Laos, maybe five or 10 clicks into Laos.

And we had a king beast, Captain Tuong, the one who pulled me out when I was upside down.

He was our pilot that day.

And instead of doing a yellow leaf, a spiral, he wanted to just go in low level, go right up and set down.

Well, somewhere,