I thank you for your answer to my question, Melgyver. I saw them on this illustration:
It would seem that there are two of them, the one you described and one on the bottom of the forward fuselage. Just what kind of wire are they supposed to cut? Power lines? May the good lord help them!
An old friend of mine was a Huey pilot in Vietnam, the troops preferred to fly with him because he was good at crash landings. He said he would aim the helo at the trees to strip the rotor blades away from the aircraft. Must have worked, he'd survived over 11 crash landings before a bullet shot up from the bottom of his seat and tore up his colon. He went on to fly with the Navy after that.