Yet another Chinook yarn....
Vietnam again....flying support missions for the Royal Thai Army units near Bearcat.
Firebase move underway....hauled some troops and general cargo then the guns and ammo. Final few sorties were left over items and thousands of empty sandbags. The Thai's removed everything when they departed a field site.
Approaching the old LZ....looked down at what looked like an Ant colony...lil bitty men scurrying feverishly to stack and bundle the empty sandbags into 8,000 pound loads.
Thai Officer in the helicopter talking to the ground troops calls for smoke on the ground....out comes a pretty purple smoke....load seen and hook up man fixed in our sights.
As we arrive at the load to be picked up.....fleeting thought of "I sure hope those bundles of sand bags are banded or some how secure....aw,cmon now....surely they aren't just stacked there loose? No one can be that thick?"
Everything looked fine as we hooked up, a few bags moving about but not bad...and began to lift...to discover we had way more than the requested load of 8,000 pounds.....more like 12,000 pounds maybe....both engines at max torque and barely able to ascend with it but still flyable. While concentrating on being as smooth as possible and keeping the torque right on the max mark....began to ease forward.....and all of a sudden the sky went dark....green dark....zillions of green sand bags dark! It was as if we had flown into a dark green cloud....with sandbags hundreds of feet in the air.
Conscious thought of "Lycomings don't let me down here...."
As we did a turn in the other direction we flew downwind by the LZ and it was still raining empty sand bags and scattering them over about a half square mile of the old Firebase.
Returning for another load.....instant replay of the same scene....again zillions of green sand bags into the heavens! Ultimately darkness interrupted the circus act with many...many...old sandbags littering the countryside.