Those missions are flown directly into combat, most often the LZs (landing zones) are "hot", whereby receiving ground fire is common.

These flights are aways associated with transporting ground troups and immediate supplies, weapons and ammunition.

These flights in the Mekong Delta area, the southern-most part of South Vietnam, usually meant that we were transporting Vietnamese soldiers. The U.S. ground forces were deployed north of Saigon.

There combat assaults were typically of 1 or a few days in length. Thus, the Hueys flew these troops in and at the end of the operation picked them up and returned them to their home base or a staging area for the next operation.

Often, these flights included flying soldiers killed-in-action back out of the LZ, and sometimes, it included POWs.