By Paul Leighton
Staff writer
—
BEVERLY — Rick Lindsey was lying on the ground, blood pouring out of the severed femoral artery in his right thigh, his femur bone shattered, when he saw a beautiful sight.
It was a U.S. Marine Corps Sikorsky UH-34D medical evacuation helicopter, swooping in to Hill 55 in Vietnam amid intense fire, its machine guns firing back.
"It was about 100 meters away, and I'm thinking, 'Boy, I'd sure like to be on that,'" Lindsey said.
Lindsey, with the help of a cooperative Viet Cong soldier he had captured that morning, made it to the helicopter, as did two other injured Marines. As the helicopter roared away from the chaos below, Lindsay waved goodbye to the Viet Cong prisoner, whose finger Lindsay had shot off that morning. The POW waved back with his bandaged hand.
The Marines were flown to a hospital in Da Nang. All three survived. And Lindsay, who would go on to serve 24 years in the Marines before retiring as a lieutenant colonel, vowed that he would one day find out the identity of the man who daringly piloted that helicopter on May 13, 1967.
Lindsey's search culminated on Saturday, when he flew from his home in Virginia to meet Leland McDonough of Beverly, the man who saved his life. The two men shared a meal with family and friends at Caffe Graziani in Salem, and Lindsey presented McDonough with a gift — a 9-inch-long model of the UH-34D, which Lindsay had painstakingly created.
McDonough, a 68-year-old stockbroker, flew more than 900 missions in Vietnam and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. He said he had no memory of rescuing Lindsey until Lindsey first called him two years ago.
"Like most things, you just kind of push it to one side and go on with your life," McDonough said. "The mundaneness of your life, like worrying about the phone bill. But then the Catholic in me starts thinking there's a better reason.
"Without getting maudlin about it," McDonough said, referring to Lindsey's gesture of gratitude, "I find it very moving."
McDonough said others deserve credit, too. There were three others on his helicopter crew, as well as the Marines who provided supporting fire and the doctors who treated the injured.
Lindsey said he always wanted to learn the identity of the helicopter pilot, but Marine Corps records were mostly on microfiche and barely legible. It wasn't until two years ago, when he discovered a website of Marine Corps records, that his search became more realistic.
Lindsey signed up for the website and searched for weeks, page by page. He knew the date, the pilot's squadron, the type of helicopter and the grid location of the rescue. Eventually, he found the matching flight record, with the pilot's name — Leland McDonough.
"He was the only man flying Sikorsky helicopters that day in that grid," Lindsey said.
When Lindsey first called McDonough, there was a long pause. McDonough asked if Lindsey could call back in a few minutes. When he did, McDonough's wife, Linda, told Lindsey that her husband had needed time to compose himself.
McDonough grew up in Solon, a small town in central Maine. He joined the Marine Corps in 1964 at age 22 to learn how to fly. Half of his 900 missions in Vietnam were medical evacuations, most of them life-and-death operations under heavy fire.
He moved to Beverly in 1975 and has been active as an affordable-housing advocate with the Beverly Housing Authority and We Care About Homes.
McDonough and Lindsey met briefly in 2008 at a Marine Corps reunion in Washington, D.C. Lindsey showed McDonough the helicopter model at the time, but it was too big for McDonough to bring home on the plane. So Lindsey, 64, decided to deliver it personally.
Lindsey said it's funny how he remembers a small detail from that day in Vietnam. While he was lying on the ground, he noticed the rear wheel of the helicopter bobbing up and down.
Lindsey, a mechanical engineer who designed weapons for the Marine Corps, said that meant that McDonough was tugging on the copter's collective lever, causing it to lift and fall.
"That meant he was nervous," Lindsey said. "I knew he wanted to get out of there, but he stayed with me. If he hadn't, I'd have been done. It took a very, very brave man to do what he did."
Staff writer Paul Leighton can be reached at 978-338-2675 or by e-mail at pleighton@salemnews.com.
