Brave crewmembers of the "Phoenix," C Company, 158th Assault Helicopter Battalion, 101st Airborne Division, U.S. Army, lost their lives while serving in Vietnam, and another crew from the unit was lost while training at Ft. Riley, Kansas before the unit went to Vietnam. Their Bell Huey UH-1H helicopter, 67-17611, served with the unit for its entire tour in Vietnam. It was one of the original twenty aircraft and the only original one still assigned to the unit when it returned to the United States in December 1971. The aircraft saw action in Northern I Corps, flying from Camp Evans to Hamburger Hill, the Ashau Valley, CCN and SOG missions, the Demilitarized Zone area, the evacuation of Firebase Ripcord, and the Lam Son 719 invasion into Laos. It accumulated a total of 2554 flying hours in Vietnam, served many other units stateside, and was later retired.