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How Many Recon Marines Does It Take to Put an NVA Regiment to Flight?
The First Reconnaissance Battalion's Teams Chili Pepper and War Cloud Mission Impossible encountered loss and luck in the Que Son Mountains southwest of Da Nang on 1 Sept. 1970. The result was that one seven-man team suffered the accidental deaths of two Marines and two seriously injured while the other fourman relief team put to flight an estimated regiment-si zed North Vietnamese Army (NVA) outfit.
Team Chili Pepper was inserted by a Sea Knight helicopter on Hill 995 at 0852 Sunday, 30 Aug. 1970, and began patrolling the mountainous terrain for any enemy activity. The team consisted of Sergeant Dale E. Rowley, team leader; Hospital Corpsman Third Class M. J. McKinley; Lance Corporal Timothy J. "Tim" Luhrs; LCpl Jimmy Ray Holkcm; LCpl David F. Airaghi; LCpl Dale Allen Pennington: and LCpl David V. "Dave" Dclozicr. The team was operating over sleep mountains with 50- to 60-foot tree canopy and with a secondary growth of 8- to 10-foot-tall vines, small bushes, bamboo, elephant grass, boulders, thorns and thick bushes.
Two klicks (kilometers) and three days into their patrol, Luhrs spiked a 103-degree temperature, and 1 lolkem broke his ankle, resulting in the whole team needing extraction. In the fading light toward the end of the day on 1 Sept., a 120-foot flexible aluminum ladder attached to a CH-46 Sea K night was dropped to the team. The men were to snap link onto it from the harnesses they wore. Unfortunately, an unstable tree in the landing zone ( LZ) fell, knocking three of four men off the ladder. Holkem and Pennington were killed, and Rowley and "Doc" McKinley were injured.
Also, the team's two radios were either inoperable or sent over the mountainside, and most of their weapons were missing. They had no way to communicate with the helicopters to bring them back to their position after they waved them off.
As they waited for the Sea Knights to return later that night, Airaghi directed them to split their watches with two men up and one sleeping. Luhrs remembered the night as being "just black."
Marines from 1st Recon said the Sea Knight helicopter that had tried to extract Team Chili...