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CCAIR Inc.; Roy Hagerty - Cover Story - Cover Story
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On a wing and a prayer.
Flying lead on a nighttime medevac mission northwest of Da Nang, Roy Hagerty's chopper came out of the thick, low-lying clouds into a hailstorm of bullets from North Vietnamese troops.
He set his CH-46 down in a controlled crash not far from the wounded leathernecks he'd been sent to evacuate. While small-arms fire riddled the helicopter, he stripped the .50-caliber machine gun and ammunition and crawled to the sound of curses and moans. "The Marines were all in a large [bomb] crater, and ... there were a lot of bodies in the bottom of the crater and people shot and wounded," Hagerty recalls. "And it was pretty much bedlam. Morale had gone to hell, and they were all crying and had their heads down." A second lieutenant ran around, screaming and waving his .45 at the young Marines. 1st Lt. Roy Hagerty pulled rank. Immediately, he ordered the men to throw their dead down the hill. "Can you imagine being in a fighting position and standing on your own men?" he asks. "I stood up and got on top of the ridge looking at them - and I was taking fire and I tried to inspire them and said, 'OK, let's go, get your heads up. Feel the fire." When another medevac finally arrived, Hagerty stayed behind to coordinate the gunships hovering overhead, leaving only after reinforcements moved in the next morning. "I was flying again that afternoon," he says. You just...See the full content of this document
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