It was sometime in the summer of '67 that Lt. Walter Koop was wounded. We had been making an assault that involved a left turn into the LZ, unloading the troops, and doing a 180 degree turn to exit the LZ. This made for a downwind takeoff. When we picked up the troops in the afternoon, we followed the exact same path. Of course, our enemies set up an ambush. On departing the LZ with a full load of troops, one of the ships could not get translational lift, and made a running landing in a paddy. When he hit, he rolled to the left, and the three troops in the right door jumped out and ran for it. The helicopter rolled back to the right, making ARVNburger out of the soldiers. With this distraction, a machine gun opened up on the flight. These people had enough sense to take the tracers out of their belts, so we could not locate their emplacement. They got good hits on Lt. Koop's aircraft, hitting the cyclic stick and also shattering his femur. As his tour was almost up, he did not come back to us. I later saw our Batallion Co. at a stagefield, and he assured me that the Lt. got to keep his leg. I developed contempt for the marksmanship of our foe, as they rarely hit any of us. If they did, it was usually in the tailboom, unless they caught us in the LZ. The gunships were usually successful in preventing this, and I was always somewhere else when they did. My own marksmanship with an M-60 was pretty good, due to firing whenever I had an opportunity. And careful analysis of why I missed. But to this day, I do not know if I ever hit anyone or not. The other photo is the only still photo of my nose art, Tiger Surprise. I chose this name in honor of the work done by Viking Surprise, which to my knowledge was fitted with the standard Viking insignia. This was probably on XXX980. Later, while I was on my extension leave, this helicopter was taken over by the Vikings to replace yet another Viking Surprise, and the nose cover was transfered to XXX129.