Larry Liss (by his own estimation, nearly the worst helicopter pilot in his class), recounts the events leading up to & during a daring 7-hour rescue mission on the Ho Chi Minh Trail that he organized on Easter Sunday, 1967, involving his friend Tom Baca and hometown acquaintance Jack Swickard (also Huey pilots). Swickard's only passenger was an unarmed flight engineer who had planned to simply take pictures of the countryside that day. Previously, Liss had been harshly reprimanded for flying his unarmed Huey into a combat zone to rescue a downed crew. But when he heard about a company of soldiers surrounded and being slaughtered by North Vietnamese troops, he immediately agreed to help. He and Baca put their helicopter down in a bamboo forest on a path barely wide enough for its fuselage, mowing a 48-foot-diameter patch down to head-height using only its main rotor blades. They then loaded half a dozen wounded US & ARVN infantrymen under heavy fire and flew them out of danger.