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I participated in both invasions of Cambodia. The first was the U.S. Invasion in the Spring of 1970. The second was in early 1971 when the South Vietnamese alone invaded Cambodia supported by U.S. Gunship and medevac. I never saw Cambodia during the day, all of my medevac border crossings came at or after sunset. One night when we were deep in Cambodia (North of Phnom Penh) we were hijacked by ARVN's who were losing a battle. Because of the large number of casualties, the mission called for two Dustoff aircraft. I was the first bird in and Stan Shafer was right behind us with his. Our landing site was to the center of a ring of tanks and armored personnel carriers located on the top of a large bare hill top surrounded by jungle. The vehicles were all facing outward and engaging. The chaos reminded me of an old Western movie where the encircled wagon train was defending itself from Indian attack from all sides. When we touched down the ARVN's abandoned their wounded and swarmed the aircraft. My medic and crewchief started to throw the unwounded off the aircraft when the ARVNs pointed their weapons at us. I told my crew to get back on board and close the cargo doors when they could. I tried to pick the bird up to a hover, but with all the bodies on board, we were over gross max weight and our rotor (RPM) would keep bleeding off. Since we were sitting ducks where we were, I decided to try a running take off and attempt reaching translational lift by running down the hillside. I was surrounded by armored vehicles, so I looked for an opening between two vehicles large enough to fit, but ended up clipping off both of their FM whip antennas. Once outside the circle of armored vehicles we started our run down the hillside with all lights out except our search light. We slid and bounced towards the tree line, slowly gained ground speed by nursing the rotor RPM and torque setting to achieve lift off. As we cleared the treetops I turned the search light off and started a slow climb and increase in airspeed. I radioed Stan to warn him what he was in for and asked my crew for a head count of ARVNs on board. My crewchief said it was a pile of smiling bodies that he estimated at least 17- 18. Then my medic shouted that we had an ARVN hanging from our skids. I immediately reduced airspeed and power to begin a descent. I remember thinking, "Man oh man, now what are you going to do? You've got a guy on the skids and a triple canopy jungle beneath you and it's pitch black out there and your in the middle of bad guy country along the Ho Chi Minh Trail." As I continued my descent, I decided to look for a road or clearing that would allow me enough room for a "run on landing" and "run on take off". Shortly thereafter my medic came on the intercom and said "Never mind, we lost him." I immediately looked at my altimeter and saw we were at about 700 feet AGL. I finally got through to Stan, but it was too late. They pulled weapons on him too and I think he pulled out 18 or 19 ARVN's as well. I radioed back to Tay Ninh for MP's to meet us, but they were late getting there and all the deserters disappeared into the night.