Going to put up the first and second of 18 chapters of the story of two years of my life that began in 1968 at Jacksonville, Fl. It doesn't come out of the gate snortin', but maybe it gets there after a bit. Anywhere along the way, you get tired of it just say so and I'll pull the plug. Someone was asking the other day here at the 'Fire about important decisions in people's lives. This was one of mine.

Not published, unlikely to ever happen.
______________________________________

Rotorheads Rule!

Chapter 1

I was born into aviation. Dad was an Air Force crew chief, big iron carry over from the Big One, and later, Korea. One of Curt LeMay�s boys. Later on he was appointed as a Warrant in the late 50�s and served as a Wing Maintenance Officer in a variety of MAC and TAC units, ending his career in Korat, Thailand in �71 while I was off making mothers out of whores in Nam. Point of all that is while he worked on the planes, I got to watch them crash (a lot) and fly patterns, and sometimes he let my brother and me cavort around the inside of such monstrosities as the C-124 and B-50. I thought the B-50 was cool, especially the dolly the tail gunner used to get back to his office. They always say how cramped it is back there. Ain�t true. Both me and my brother fit just fine at the same time.

Times passed and while on Guam my friends and I would go down to the Terminal to check out the new chicks when they showed up on rotation. Colonel�s daughters were usually the hottest of the lot, but some of the others weren�t so bad either. The flights came in every Tuesday. Along with that, we saw the other contract flights, usually DC-8s, which carried these dudes with funny hats and odd guns to Nam. They always looked weary and bored. I thought it very incongruent, all things considered. This was in 1964-65 and about that time dad brought home a training film about guerilla warfare and counter ambush strategy. It left a mark on me and I always felt weird about those fellows heading �over there� after that. One of our more enlightened teachers at school discussed Vietnam a lot in class, tried to get us into the reality of it all. We didn�t have much of an idea what was going on, except a lot of guys were heading that way.

We came back to the States the day they had their first publicized B-52 raid on Nam. The departure operations took about 45 minutes and woke everybody up on the base. As I recall they used a MITO launch with 57 bombers, all packed with about 60K # of bombs. Three of them were lost on the mission, two in a midair and I don�t recall the other. Wing Commander was on one of the two that collided, somewhere over the Philippine Sea.

High School came and went, college began. Hey, like dudes, I was lost in surfing and surfer girls, the Beachboys, the Stones and you know, school just didn�t work for me. Halfway thru the second term I knew I was not cutting the mustard so I began looking for a job. One that would keep my sorry ass out of ambushes. I explored the NavCat program but just as I enquired they raised the requirement to a 4 year degree. Pizz on that! Next I went down to the Army recruiter and looked into the Warrant Officer Flight Program. I took some tests, did well enough and the recruiter said to hang loose while he arranged for a class date. I said nothing to my parents about this. I told the recruiter about my lagging grades and he said, �If you get a little brown envelope in the mail that looks like this,� waving a little brown envelope in the air, �don�t open it. Bring it to me.�

I got my little brown envelope in the same week I got my class date, about 2 months hence. I went home one day and got my hair buzzed cut. It felt weird surfing like that. My friends thought I�d lost my marbles and my parents concurred. While they were confronting me about such dastardly acts I let them know it would work well in my future for I had joined the Army. I think Mom about wet her pants. Then I told them I was going into the WOC Flight Program and I thought Dad was going to pop a few buttons on his shirt.


I was inducted in Jacksonville, Fl. on the 19th of February 1968, while the TET Offensive raged. Typically, my timing sucked in a strategic sense. Tactically, I was #1 in the class on knowing when to duck, but this was a latent skill not realized for over a year. Two weeks later the Navy went back to the 2 year college requirement for aviation cadets�..

Chapter 2

There is nothing worth repeating about boot camp in Feb/Mar at Ft. Polk, La. It is a dreary place of little merit. I saw it snow, rain and reach 70* plus in one day. I saw our bivouac rained out and that is an odd concept to me. Like they're going to call a rain day in a war? Well, actually they do, but I'll get to that later.

After finishing boot the 7 of us destined to flight school were taken to buses and shipped to Ft. Wolters, Tx. Just outside Mineral Wells, which is just outside of Ft. Worth. I was processed in with the rest and within 2 days found out I'd been set back a month due to class size limits and it is the last I saw of my cohorts. I was labeled a "snowbird", meaning we got to do meaningless chores and eat 3 squares a day with minimal supervision. It was the time of "The Graduate" and Mrs. Robinson was big on the radio those days. I have no idea why but I found the entire scenario depressing to the tens. Idle minds etc.....I teamed up with a guy named Larry and we soon had a general handle on affairs. There were 5 TAC Officers in charge of general education of WOC's, (What do you throw at a Wabbit? A WOC of course); There was The Glove and The Gimp...they stick in my memory the most. As most TAC Officers were, they were Warrants that had been slightly mangled in the process of getting shot down or some such and were grounded. Ergo, they got to fug with us at leisure. Not just us, but any WOC within a couple of time zones. And they were Masters of the Fug, believe you me. Y'all probably heard some of this before, but it's all true. Their forte' was in the asking of questions for which there is no good answer. Like, "Are you looking at me Candidate?!!!", this at a scream 3" from your nose. "Sir, no sir!", voice quavering. "Why not candidate, is there something better to look at around here?!!! You think your girlfriend is coming to see you Candidate?!!!" "Sir, no sir!" "You got that right maggot! Drop and give me 20!!!"

Well, there were "solutions" to such affairs. One was called the "Medevac". If a TAC was on a single WOC for sport, ie, not in formation, we could pull off our dog tags, swing them over our head and yell Medevac! while we swooped in and physically picked up the victim and ran off with him to safety. There was also the contrived military letter explaining why you should be granted a weekend pass to go into Ft. Worth. Me and Larry got away with that once. It took a week for my headache to clear up after that, but I still have fond recollections of the Ft.Worth/Dallas area as a result. Oh, and TCU. There's a lot of pretty girls there.

The month passed and I found myself assigned to the 6th WOC Company. A week of preflight orientation and classroom studies began and on day one I found out I'd be flying the OH-23D made by Hiller. Other platoons flew the OH-13, or Bell 47 to you civilian types. Most flew the TH-55 made by Hughes Tool Co., later Hughes Aerospace. Those of us flying "real" helicopters from the Korean War era called the -55 the Mattel Messerschmitt. Were a tiny little thing and most likely to kill you amongst the three types of choppers used in primary training. It actually uses v-belts to drive the main rotor and was proscribed from flight in rain as it had a fiberglass tail rotor that turned at about Mach .9. Bad Combo.

The TH-55 had an articulated rotor system and because of that could enter a state of ground resonance at certain rpm ranges. It was funny to watch...they would literally eat themselves in about 6 seconds. Hysterical stuff. Well, I didn't care much for them and still don't. While we were in school there a tornado visited the heliport where they were based and swept about a hundred of them up like grasshoppers and stacked 'em up against a perimeter fence.

So, comes day one on the flight line. I met my instructor, a civilian named Joe Burkett. Hell of a guy in retrospect, and very capable in that profession. We went out to the flight line, he walked me through a preflight inspection, preflight checklist and then start up. Talk about an alien world....Jesus H. Christ....the noise, the sudden boom of his voice in the helmet, vibrations, needles flippin' this way and that.... Joe sez, "OK, we go now." It stuck in my mind as a curious thing to say....a year later I'd find out where it came from.

I was looking between by boots thru the chin bubble and after the collective lever to my left began to move upward, so did we! I was watching the earth shrink away between my feet...my first take off in a chopper....all the way up to about 3'. Damn, there I was with the eagles and stuff! Joe started talking to the tower and we hoovered over to a pad where everybody took off from. When he wasn't busy with the tower he talked to me thru the intercom. He asked me to change frequencies on the radio, a 10 channel coffee grinder set that used a tone to tell you when you were "there". I just knew this was going to be a snap, I mean, chitt(ok), I was already master of the radio! HA!

We were cleared to commit aviation and Ol' Joe pushed the stick forward a bit and we began to motivate. I thought we were going to trip 'cause there weren't nothing in front of me but dirt, or so it seemed at the time. Somewhere at about 15 knots the whole chopper shuddered briefly then we started to climb into the hot Texas sky. That shudder thing is typical of all chopper departures and it occurs when the rotor system leaves the circulation of turbulent air previously created and enters into "clean" undisturbed air. It's called translational lift and is a much more efficient regime. There are about 12 million stories about that little facet in the world of rotorheads, I'll tell a few along the way myself.

We climbed up to about 1,500' and headed out past Possum Kingdom Lake to a stage field. What's a Stage Field? What's a TH-55 etc? Well, pictures are worth a 1,000 words.

http://members.tripod.com/airfields_freeman/TX/Airfields_TX_Abilene_E.htm

I have no idea where we went that day. A stage field. If you follow the link above and scroll down to pictures of what is left of various stage fields in the region you'll see one referenced as Stage Field #1. That is where I would solo on 5 July 1968.

We shot an approach to one of the lanes and came to a hover over one of the concrete pads at the far end. Joe hoovered on into the grass infield and began the humorous process of teaching an idiot to hover. First I got to control the heading with pedals, then the up and down with the collective and throttle, and finally, where we was with the cyclic. Emphasis on "where we was", because I didn't linger in any particular spot for long. Where it gets funny is when one tries to integrate all the controls at once. It is counter intuitive to use the pedals for directional control, instinct demanding that you use the cyclic stick for that and forget about the pedals. Don't work that way, and that's why there was about 15 Hillers out in the grass doin' this really bizarre waltz, drifting sideways, yawing in all directions and generally making the jack rabbits pizz themselves with laughter. It was a totally humiliating experience! All said, it lasted about 30 minutes before Joe hovered over to the parking ramp, kicked me out and told me to send the next victim his way. I found my stick buddy in the bleachers...the guys were rolling around laughing too...and sent him to see Joe. I only got to watch this circus for about 15 minutes before all the students had swapped out and it was time to board the bus and head back to Wolters. We were, to a man, euphoric and humble at the same time. None of us had mastered the hover button but we were damn sure going to stay after it!

We loaded up and took the bus ride home thru the Texas Hill Country. Guys, I gotta say it is, or at least was, one of God's favorite spots. In time the Brazos River and rolling hills would become familiar and shame on me for not going back to that part of the world. Gorgeous place. The bus ride was about an hour, our buddies were in the barracks by the time we returned. Chow time for us....and the TACs. It was their favorite time of day, and probably ours too. In a rare fit of benevolence, the Army fed its flyboys well. Far better than in boot camp. Of course the TACs had already eaten dinner. Their feast was....us. I mentioned The Glove earlier if you'll recall. His name was Kittle. Every time we saw him it was SOP......"Hey diddle diddle, good morning/afternoon/evening Mr. Kittle!" We got to drop regardless but I think he enjoyed it as much as we did.

You know what? We got thru it all. Most of us did. They told us there would be 40% attrition rate and they met that goal, almost entirely at Ft. Wolters.

I'm not going to belabor the experience a lot, for flight school is what it is, no more, no less. I will touch on some high points though:

1. It is entirely possible that the post laundry could have put enough starch in our khakis and fatigues to make them viable rotor blades. 1 demerit for having wings in your pants, or more properly, failing to break the bond in your creases.
2. In that day and place, the appearance of a Huey on the flight line was tantamount to the Second Coming of Christ. Little boys would soil their flight suits if a Cobra showed up.
3. Regardless of the quality of your spit shine, or how many coats of Mop 'n Glow you swabbed on the toes, shoe wax will melt during a Saturday morning parade in the months of June, July and August in that region of Texas.
4. In the same venue, it is possible for surrounding flag bearers to support an interior flag bearer upright, even though he has passed out cold from the heat. The exterior guys were SOL and usually went face down in the dirt.
5. We did indeed fill Mr. Kittle's office with balloons on the evening of our last day there. We also turned his desk around but repositioned the blotter etc. so it would not appear so. Well, except for the 500# sandstone rock we put on the desk. That sorta stood out after all the balloons got popped. It was when he saw the rock that he swore for the first time in recorded history. The second was when he tried to sit at his desk. He put us at rigid attention and inquired if we thought that was funny. Without prior coordination we replied, "Sir, Yes Sir!" That's when we saw him smile for the first time.
6. A fellow confused the detents on his intercom/radio switch one day and thinking he was talking to his stick buddy rather than the radio said, "I'm really [bleep] up! I'm flying over Possum Kingdom Lake" (Restricted Area).
The tower said "Helicopter over Possum Kingdom Lake, say call sign." He replied "I'm not that [bleep] up."
7. 5 students flying the TH-55 died during my stay at Ft. Wolters. None were from my class. One instructor went down too.
8. I almost bought a cherry Austin Healy 3000 just before I graduated. Wish I had, glad I didn't.
9. I got western drunk 3 times in Ft. Worth that summer. God bless Ft. Worth!
10. There was an instructor who carried a bull whip and was known to frequently hit students on the helmet with it during training flights. He was also known to direct students to fly low level over a lake in the area then chop the throttle on them to simulate an engine failure. One WOC refused to comply with his instructions one day and things got a little grim in the cockpit. Finally, the student did as directed and when the instructor chopped the power the student reached up and turned off the mags. The instructor was fired, the student's flight training terminated and the chopper was a total loss.
11. My solo flight was one of the most exhilarating things I've done. One of the most disconcerting as well. During my 2nd pattern a CH-34 entered traffic and totally fugged me up. I survived despite the distraction...somehow. I somehow missed the dunk in the Holiday Inn pool in Mineral Wells that day. Not long after I left Wolters a student drowned in the pool and the ritual was forever banned. I was the first in the class to solo. I had a hangover. Yes, I was too young to drink but the folks in Ft. Worth knew what the white sidewall haircut was about.
My wife's birthday is also the 5th of July. I dunno what that means but thought I'd toss it in just for the helluvit.
12. My room mate was named Milton Remmler. He was a Mayberry RFD kind of guy, and we remained roomies at Ft. Hunter as well. He and I went down to the BX one day and bought a couple of those ready to fly u-control airplanes. PT-19s they were. .049 Cox engines and held together with rubber bands. There was a little storage shed out by the parade field with about a 5' roof that was gently pitched. We learned to land and take off from that little 8' roof that summer. We also had a lot of dog fights. A logical result was a lot of mid air collisions. We laughed, strapped them back together and carried on. Milt was the first fatality from our class in Viet Nam and died as a result of a mid air collision with another Huey.
13. Sometimes there are big hatches of crickets in Texas. Our flight training was suspended for 2 days after such an affair. It took that long to clean them out of the choppers. It took us about an hour to clean them out of the 3rd floor barracks.
14. You know how long it takes a flight platoon to scrape the wax off of linoleum floors with razor blades? All fuggin' day! You know how easy it is to die after that in those barracks? Simple, just scuff the floor and find out.
15. On a windy day while doing cross country, it is disheartening to get passed by a school bus.
16. Night flight was scary chitt(ok). Autorotations weren't a lot of fun either. The Hiller came down like a wet sock. The TH-55 like a sack of bricks. The guys flying the OH-13's were pussies.

I shall offer discourse on Ft. Hunter, Hueys and Cherry tobacco pipes next.

Most excellent and I look forward to the next installment. Of course, everyone wants to be an editor


"I explored the NavCat program" - it was the Nav Cad program.

Most excellent DD, ya need to write a book.

Well, here's some more. If I ever get off my butt and cover the second tour, maybe it'll get cleaned up and go looking for a publisher. Wrote this first part about 5-6 years back.

Dan

__________________________

Ch 3

Just prior to graduation from Ft. Wolters there came an offer, or rather an inquiry: "Whom amongst you maggots is man enough to volunteer for assignment to Ft. Hunter?". At that time there was a lot of mystique about the place. It was relatively new to rotary wing training, they flew Hueys rather than...uh, cough, H-13s for instrument training and legend had it the training was brutal. I do not know if we all volunteered but suspect it was so, for I talked to no one later that didn't. Anyway, we bade farewell to our friends headed to Mother Rucker. I saw only one of those fellows afterwards, a guy named John D. He was unfortunate enough to have a personal box fall out of the overhead locker during a Saturday AM inspection and the TAC took it in the face. The Child Killer was recycled without right of appeal and I did not see him until Winter of '70. He was called the Child Killer because he never shaved and had rosy cheeks. He also walked a bit odd, the result of polio when he was a lucky youth.

OK, we had 10-14 days of leave/travel time and I flew home. The fracture between me and my surfer dude buddies was enormous. Not because of ill feelings, just different directions. I surfed, went to a few parties and felt as out of place as a marshmallow in hell. I began making plans to migrate up to Savannah and the new adventure but Dad said I should just relax, he'd taken care of plans. He didn't say anything in particular about what the plans were and by T-12 hours I was getting a bit antsy. He finally told me he had arranged for me to ride up to Ft. Hunter on a "local area" training flight the next morning.

About 1030 hours the next morning we punched thru the stratus deck in a T-39, or Sabreliner in civilian parlance. It was overcast and drizzly and the ceiling was about 1,200', visibility maybe 3 miles. Ft. Hunter used to be a USAF field and has a very long runway. It was swarming with Hueys, hoovering all about the place. They seemed terrified of the "REAL JET" that swooped in from the heavens and chirped down in their midst. In retrospect the IPs almost certainly assumed it was a VIP flight. I know that Base Ops did! They sent out a Follow Me truck and all manner of brass assembled under the awning in front of the Ops shack, waiting breathlessly to greet a 2 or 3 star General I'm sure. The pilot that had flown me up was an old friend of Dad's and a Flight Examiner for the Sabreliner. He laughed, told me how to open and close the door, then said, "Make sure they all salute!"
Damned if they didn't! I gave my best salute in return, hoisted my duffle up on my back and their expectant expressions melted, to be replaced with that eternal question look, "Who the fug is this and who is he related to?"
I never told and they were forever respectful and polite.

Ft. Hunter was a different world to be sure. Very much more formal than Ft. Wolters, and yet more liberal with personal affairs. The class room academics were intense, the link trainers intensely frustrating....one of our boys actually crashed one....threw the stick to the side in anger and the whole thing came off the pedestal. He was "Candidate Crash" thereafter, to friend and foe alike. We were allowed to have a car and most weekends off to do what guys do. The weekdays though, were, in a word, exhausting. Early ups and late turn ins, studying like crazy. They bunked me up with a guy named Bob H. a devout non-violent type who swore he would fly medevacs. He like Peter, Paul and Mary a lot. Maybe he still does, but he got over the Mr. Nice Guy chitt(ok), more on that later.

First day on the line, damn, that turbine exhaust smelled good! No, GREAT! Start up was a mystery of quite building tempo, the multitude of instruments bewildering. Gone was the "Clear-cough-ca-cough-ca-vroom" of the Continental 6, replaced by a building whine and deep thrum-thump of the big blades over head. Comparatively, it was a Cadillac. The IP lit his cherry blend pipe, pulled pitch and off we went. When the battery is installed in the tail on a Huey, the cockpit is airborne several feet before the skid heels leave the ground. Odd feeling, change of perspective. Airborne at a "3' hover", and that's the Army hover altitude whether you're 6" or 6', the guy says, "You got it." Holy fug! Now here's something to ponder. The old OH-23 had the paddles 90* out from the main rotor blades. The pilot actually controlled the paddles, which in turn controlled the blades. It was direct mechanical linkage. The Huey uses hydraulic controls which directly control the blades. The difference is this: When learning to hover the Hiller, the instructor asked me one day to just start moving the cyclic in a 6" circle. I thought he'd lost his marbles, then he took the controls and showed me that such input actually led to a smooth hover because of control input lag between paddles and blades. I tried that approach with the Huey....the IP smiled and said, "You flew Hillers, right?" With the Huey, it's a 50 cent piece sized circle. We bobbled out to the takeoff pad, got clearance and committed aviation.

Mid flight and the IP had me exit the seat and my stick buddy take over. Now that was an odd maneuver to me...this being able to swap pilots enroute. What won't they think of next? Long and short of it, the first 4 weeks were instrument training....a gottdam unnatural act if ever there were. Choppers are not stable like planes and require attention at all times, with all your hands. Fortunately the throttle had a governor and we didn't have to futz with RPM but by damn it is a trial finding your approach plates and maintaining altitude and heading in an eggbeater on instrument rules. We wore hoods and saw precious little scenery in that month. 4 things stick in my memory. 1) Letting down into Hunter one day, the IP had me take off the hood to admire the rainbow hues of air pollution common to the area from chemical and paper mills. It was, like, groovy man.
2) One day he said "I got it, take off your hood and look 2 o'clock low. Damn if it weren't a B-17, low level bombing fire ants with Myrex. That was one of my aviation highlights but I didn't know it yet. I'd get to sit in the left seat of that plane one day not far down the road. 3) The last one started like the previous: I took off the hood and looked 12 O'clock as instructed and there was a B-52, head on and burning JP4 like no tomorrow, about 3 miles out. We were flying thru what was called an "Oil Burner Route" or low level training route for the Air Force. I said something brilliant, like, "Sir, you think we might want to move?" He said "No, keep and eye on his wings." Sure as chitt(ok), about that time the Buff started dropping flaps. The wings bowed up and he jumped over us like a friggin' gazelle....but we heard him go overhead, and that's fair enough testimony to how loud they are, or how quiet the Huey was....I dunno which. 4) Flying an NDB holding pattern at 80 knots with a 60 knot crosswind is a tedious endeavor best left to experts. I never heard our IP laugh so much.


Contact training was the euphemism for learning to fly the Huey, much as we had the primary trainers at Ft. Wolters. I don't recall with certainty but recollection has it the course was 25 flight hours and a multitude of classroom hours, probably 100 or more. There were several substantial difference between the Hiller and Huey. One noticeable item had to due with cool weather, light loads and LOTS of horsepower. Baby Huey was a quantum shift in all regards. For example, where you stood excellent probability of dying by attempting out of ground effect hover in a Hiller, the Huey was fully capable of doing so in the conditions we flew in. Systems where a lot more complex, as were the checks done on them before departure. I seem to recall the emergency check list options on the Huey had more pages than the entire operating manual for the Hiller. Of course, rote memory was required. Also required was the demonstrated ability to recite the check list while taking action to deal with such matters as a runaway governor, battery overheat, hydraulic failure, etc. etc. etc. Oh, I forgot engine failure. Minor point.

When you lose an engine on a Hiller you will see the earth rise up at a startling rate and the process of successful termination of an autorotation is quite a demanding feat. I never thought any but the H-13 were really appropriate as training aircraft in this regard. In fact, the 180* autorotation in a Hiller initiated at 500' is damn near terrifying. Little blades and little inertia at the bottom is a dicey proposition. I didn't complain much, the boys flying the Hughes TH-55 had it far worse. But the Huey, now that thing proceeded as if it had invented levitation when the IPs chopped the throttle. I mean, they floated and floated and floated. HA! That was something I could get used to in a hurry!

My stick buddy was an oddball in the training company. He'd been flying turbo props for some commuter up in the NE and pretty much thought his stuff didn't smell much. During the instrument phase he'd been the only one in the class to get a Standard Instrument Ticket, meaning his performance was up to snuff for that accolade. He was a bit arrogant and reclusive as well; generally viewed as "not a team player" by the rank and file, and as I learned later, the TACs. The rest of us got what's called a Tactical ticket, meaning we could fly in clouds in a combat zone, but not in the States. I didn't figure to be doing a lot of the latter, all things considered. Anyway, once we got into the Contact phase I actually got to see his face now and then. We went through all the various maneuvers, did the obligatory cross country flights and as the course progressed, Mr. Cherry Pipe took us out one day to a stage field to do some "outside the box" autorotations. We learned you could do a hovering autorotation and pick the beast up and relocate up to about 25' away. Lot's of blade inertia there. We did some low level autorotations and then some excursions from the standard profile. IP sez to me, "Mr. Dan, we're going to touch down on pad two with zero ground run. I don't care how you get there, I'll call the entry." Wiseass me sez, "Of course, yes sir, roger that." I hadn't a clue what was coming up.

500' up and centered on the lane, I watched the approach angle progress from "normal" to "steep" to "the fuggin' pad I'm supposed to land on disappeared between my feet". He says, "This'll do." Well, OK, I'm good with that. I dropped the collective and chopped power, pulled the nose up to decelerate, a very steep pull up indeed. I glanced over at the IP, puff puff puff on his pipe. Further back in the jump seat, my stick buddy's eyes were wide and he had a pale look about him. The airspeed zeroed out and we began to slide backward quickly, rate of descent building very rapidly. Just as I was about to push the nose over the IP said "About now will do.".......we be looking at nothing but asphalt and a 12' X 12' concrete pad, delightfully centered in the wind screen. Ah, we were cookin' with gas! It was an exhilarating view but I quickly grew bored with it, hauled back on the cyclic and looked to the side for ground and altitude reference as we were sinking through about 150'. Now I knew it was time to dust off the expertise learned in Hillers so far as timing went and I figure I was either really good or the IP was psychic, cause about the time I yanked...not pulled son...yanked the collective to the stop, he started to say something but held his thought briefly. We stopped about 6" off the tarmac and settled lightly to the pad. I looked over at him and he said, "I got it. I was wondering what you were going to do about that one." Behind us, my stick buddy puked....loudly. Several times. I cannot begin to tell you how gratifying that was!

Back at the barracks my room mate had been changed. It seemed they thought it would be a good thing to put last place in the class with one of the front runners and frankly, I was growing tired of "Puff the Magic Dragon". Country boy from Wisconsin who had a tendency to doze in class and try to make up for it by late studies. I dunno if it helped but the guy got through it all, went on to be a Scout Pilot for 1/9th Cav and rather notorious down in 3 Corps. Dandy Don just took awhile to bloom, that's all.

Tactical Training, or what we called TAC-X. Off to Ft. Stuart and now officially "Senior Candidates". That meant we could haze lower ranking candidates. There weren't any of those at Ft. Stuart. Anyway, it was a world of Mission Orders, formations, night formations, combat assaults and artillery simulators tossed about the compound by staff at 2 AM, just to give us a taste of the future. We did an E&E thing thru the Georgia swamps that was about as miserable as I've ever been in a cold February rain. One of the guys that got captured whipped the poop out a couple of the aggressors. I did not get captured but drew no solace from the adventure. Slept for near 24 hours the next day.

The highlights, other than making my stick buddy puke?

1) Hester's Martinique, a basement steakhouse down in the water front district in Savannah, replete with black waiters wearing red half tuxedos. Sawdust on the floor, an ancient lady playing the piano and whiskey sours. Savannah is less civilized by its passing only a few years back.
2) Setting off an M-80 about 4:58 one Saturday afternoon and bringing everybody to a halt to salute the flag. Two minutes later the cannon went off and they were damn confused. Particularly because of the broken window and smoke emanating from the barracks. Even more so by the long string of invective passing through the broken glass. Y'all remember the ass chewing Maverick got at the early part of the movie by the ship captain? Been there, had that pleasure. I was not sent to Miramar. Fug, Top Gun didn't even exist then. I are an old fart now.
3) Pizzin' on my stick buddy a second time by being selected the class honor graduate. THAT really frosted his ass.

Now there is but one thing left to be said about Ft. Hunter. Rumor had it that the top 10 class members got to select their advanced training. We had even filled out a "Dream Sheet". I did not dawdle on such fantasies as Germany or Alaska. Nope, I put down Viet Nam for my first two choices then Army laison to McDill AFB in Tampa as my second. They knew I was being a smart ass. For flight assignments I listed a preference in descending order of a) Cobra transition, b) Ch-54 transition and c) Chinook transition. I was feeling pretty good about my future until about 3 days later. They sent my sorry ass to Mother Rucker for the UH-1 Gunnery/IP course. Well, fug, at least it said "Gunnery". 100EC, Rotary Wing Pilot Attack. That would be my new MOS, or Military Occupational Specialty. In the immortal words of Arlo Guthrie, "I want to kill! Kill" KILL! Dead burnt bodies and veins in my teeth! KILL!" I related to the Group W Bench....for real.

good stuff. thanks for the post.

remember, every Story worth anything has a beginning, a middle and an end.

the edit key is considered a friend.

let's hear some more of the chapters as your time permits.

Ch 4: Guns & Roses

Guns. You guys probably think Winchester, Remington and such. At the point in time I arrived at Rucker my head was elsewhere. General Electric, Heavy Hogs, Heavy Scouts, Hog-Frogs. You know what the Mini looks like, but the configuration evolution of helicopter gunships was in its infancy at that time. The Cobra, or Snake as we called them was but a few short years in service and most of the tactical groundwork and hardware development for the Huey guns was only a little bit older.

Various weapon system monikers included the Light Scout, Heavy Scout, Heavy and light hog and so forth. The Heavy/Light generally referred to the rocket load, while the noun at the end defined nose or waist gun machine gun armament. I have seen everything from quad M-60's on flex turrets to twin minis in the nose turret, twin 40mm's, 20mm nose turret(Marine) and conformal mount, to the extreme of 6 minguns on a single Snake or in one case, 4 x 4-tube Zuni rocket pods on Snake wing stubs and twin minis in the turret. The last one was named by a brigade commander of the 101st Airborne as "W-T-F! Get me that pilot's name and rank!"

If you're curious about what these various beasts looked like, exercise your Google-Foo. Here's a sample:
http://www.myspace.com/p3tris/photos/54617590

I digress: Upon arrival to Ft. Rucker we began academics and flight training which would allegedly make us Instructor Killers. First part was Contact IP training and the "MOI" or method of instruction was fairly fresh in our minds. One other fellow named Ralph wound up as my roomy in a singlewide outside the main gate and we also were stick buddies. A few weeks of that and we went into guns. I spent all my time with a quad M-60 bird, and found it to be a bit of a hoot. Takka-takka-takka-yammer-yamma-tacka-tacka-yammer. Guns weren't synchro'd so they went in and out of phase as you shot them. Total ammo supply for that and the birds with minis was 4000 rounds....we got to shoot a lot longer than they did. First lesson I learned....conserve ammo!

First day at the range we hovered up to a bore sight pad to check the flex sight POI. Parked it and as we did one of the light scouts with minis sat beside us. I was in the jump seat watching Ralph...gettin' ready to shoot....the mini guns erupted and about 50 rounds of our ammo went helter skelter, tracers flying in all directions. Me an Ralph both about pizzed our shorts....DAMN, those friggin' things are LOUD! The roar just sorta wanders through your torso, fugs around with your heart and lungs, slaps your liver a few times then goes on to the next victim. Makes your eyes water too. M-60s fire at about 750 rpm and minis had a select rate of 2,000 or 4,000 rpm. So when pedaled hard we were shootin' about 3,000 rpm. Those guys were doing 8,000 rpm....the sound difference was profound. Muzzle flash too. Remember the Predator movie where the guy is carrying a mini with a back pack of ammo? Well, here's a reference check for you....if a Snake has twin minis in the chin turret and they are firing with about a 90* deflection...the A/C cannot roll in for a rocket run against the thrust until the gunner stops shooting.

I went down to Sebring, Fl. that spring with Ralph to meet up with my brother for the 12 hour race. He had an in with the guy running the show for RJ Reynolds (Camel GT Series) and we got to meet Stirling Moss, Mark Donahue and a host of other characters. We also accosted Chris Economaki about 9 PM cause he thought our car was his and he was lookin' kind of suspicious....

There isn't much left to tell about the whole thing at Rucker. Course taken and passed, assignment to RVN in my mitts and a 30 day leave. That's where the roses came along but I won't bother you with pornography. After all, this is a story about strong men and sterling honor. White Knights and violent hangovers. I bade farewell to Ralph and headed for home. The next time I saw Ralph he was falling thru the air amidst the many fragments of a Huey that had exploded after being hit by a 155mm artillery shell.

Thank you, Dan.

You have taken me places I have never been and reminded me of places I have.

I'm an Army brat, not much younger than you, and have the past experiences to bring sights, sounds, and smells to your prose.

I enjoy your writing. Please continue and I hope you DO get it published someday.

Ed

Ch 5: FNG

I landed in Saigon on 1 May 1969 after a long and weary flight; a very quiet flight. It was about 3 PM. The transition from the cabin to the great outdoors was like getting smothered with a vast inescapable smelly damp cloth that insinuated itself into every pore of your skin. The smell was one of diesel fumes, and that curious unidentifiable stench that was the essence of large cities in Vietnam. It is not pleasant. There are other odors to learn as well, but this was Saigon and III Corps. I decided before I hit the tarmac the next year would suck in a very fundamental way.

We were directed into a terminal holding area to await shipment to a processing and incountry training center in Bien Hoa. It was comforting to see the chain link over the windows of the bus. One, we were safe from the casual tossed grenade or satchel charge. Two, it was unnerving that we needed such contrivance. It speaks to the nature of the war and conceptually it was the first clear message to incoming troops that no single place was secure. It was a war zone with no front.

Night one....issued bedding for a canvas cot, mosquito net and orders processed. Directed to a large open barracks area with probably 150 cots and that was home for the first night. I may have slept 15 minutes? The whine of mosquitoes, the heat and lack of air flow...miserable. Up before dawn and already we had heard the distant thump of artillery and a smattering of outgoing mortar fire on the perimeter. Issued our jungle fatigues and other essentials and the class room activities began. Breakfast was a bust....green eggs and ham. And I thought it was a fairly tale.....

We were basically marking time while USARV HQ decided what to do with us. In the Army's infinite wisdom we received training on local customs, such as how VC slipped thru the wire, what malaria pills to take when, which whoores to not screw around with, the black clap, ambush and recon. Artillery fire missions and quals for the M-16. I received orders about a week later and about the 10th of May I was on my way to Camp Eagle, home of the 101st Airborne. AKA: The silly millimeter division, the One-O-Worst, 101st Chairborne/Stillborne, etc etc. There was a little part of my orders that said "HHT/2/17 Air Cav". I was confused. I thought the only Cav was the 1st Cav and the only Air Cav was 1/9th. Oh well.....my first ride on a C130 was cool. Literally. God, it felt good to be up there again. No stench, no heat. We flopped down at Phu Bai around dusk, bored Sp4s told us to sit tight and we'd have a ride to our units directly. I saw guys waiting to board the Herky Bird...tanned like walnuts, rail thin with 1000 yard stares. Their fatigues were faded yet carried a reddish cast as if dyed. One of them looked at me, shook his head and went back to his stare.

I do not remember the ride to Camp Eagle in any detail. I assumed we were in some sort of "secure" area for most of it until we approached the Main Gate. Big Bunkers, M-60s pointing our way. Flashlight inspection and we were waved through. Red clay roads with lots of gravel, very dusty and very curvy, following the contours of very small rolling hills...sorta. Bumps? We pulled up in an area that had a bunch of hootches, plywood sides with storm panels propped up on 1 x 2s, sandbags up to the screen level and corrugated steel panels. Mr. Speedy 4 led me into operations and introduced me to the XO, who in turn told the clerk to call the CO. So help me God, not 2 minutes passed before this lunatic walks in with a white towel around his waste, flip flops and a black stetson on his noggin. Major Gary Dolin, CO. "Mad Gary" as I learned only a short while later. Not mad as in angry, mad as in.....sane. Later on after some reflection on the state of our collective minds I decided we all were a bit daft, but Gary was special.

Hadn't hardly gotten over the formal nature of our introduction when he looked up at me and said "Dave, Mr. H is our new Scout Pilot." Now I have to say I was a bit conflicted over that. A LOT of TACs had been Scout Pilots and they were not bashful about speaking to the art. It was a high risk assignment and I knew that up front. I weakly pointed out that I had just finished Huey IP/Gunnery training and he said, "Scouts for now." Speedy led me down to the Scout Hootch and introduced me to some of the guys that were still awake and within about 30 minutes it was lights out. The nights were a little more tolerable up there in I Corps, a little breeze flowing out of the mountains, no bugs and no stench that I noticed.

Next day I found out that one of our Scouts had been shot down the day I arrived at a place that would be called Hamburger Hill. He had been following a commo line up a ridge when they fired him up. He and the crew were extracted without incident or injury and the rest is history. In a nutshell, the Division CG was curious about the commo wire, such luxury generally only available to large NVA units. He sent in the infantry....

I was introduced to the mess hall....better food by far but still not the stuff of legends. Met the Platoon Sargent and toured the flight line...actually touched a real OH-6 for the first time. Several of them were mission ready with guns and ordinance on board, flight helmets and chicken plates, or armor vests for you young pups. After that it was off to supply for issue of flight gear and other general stuff like an M-16 and S&W 38. That was just a starting point for me but I'll get back to Dan's arsenal later on.

Throughout the day I saw various pilots head to the flight line and depart and awhile later a flight would return to a small flurry of Q&A about the mission. I would learn soon enough this was the humdrum way we worked a continuous recon mission. A first team would start the day in a specified recon box and we would relieve all day unless otherwise distracted. Usually had a minimum of 4 missions daily on rotation with a first and last light rocket belt patrol. There was an ill wind blowing in from the South however. About 4 that afternoon we were all called together and learned we were being detached to the Americal Division down in Chu Lai. Seems they were getting their aviation ass handed to them and needed some help. I was too new to understand what was going on but I was about to learn a lot real damn quick.

There was a lot of hurried packing going on....me, I was already packed for the most part. I threw a couple of duffles on a duece and a half, another bag in the back of a LOH, or "Loach" for the phonetically confused. The bird had a minigun hanging on the left side and I thought is was kinda menacing. I was to ride shotgun with a 1st LT named Burns and in the course of affairs he was telling me particulars of significance, like, "Your better off in Scouts 'cause nobody gets hurt in the LOH when they get shot down", or "Cobras suck" and other odds and ends. In retrospect he looked a lot like Brad Pitt and had a lot of the same mannerisms. Good pilot I thought as we low leveled in a very loose formation down to Chu Lai. Low level is cool! It was going to be my office. Faster than a speeding bullet! Invincible! Yep, that was me!

I tried to point at something by sticking my arm outside....nearly had it wrenched out of the socket. Unlike the old Hiller, we was cruising about 110 knots...the airstream was solid! The LT laughed, "You'll get used to that stuff. I hit a crane one day and when I got back to base I was covered with blood. There was an eyeball hanging off the cyclic by the optical nerve." Cranes was coming up out of the rice paddies like flies, the LT was zooming between them or hopping over them....really cool! And I was being paid to do this!

We were bivouaced in a dry lake bed between Chu Lai Main and East runways. Tent mates were a random matter and I wound up in a 3 man hex tent with another scout and a gun pilot. While we were setting up the tent we watched three flights of Marine F-4s take off, make a left base departure and almost immediately begin dropping ordinance on the side of the mountains just west of the field. Pretty heady stuff for a FNG like me! I heard for the first time the sound of a Vulcan Cannon and decided it very much more appealing that Dianne...Cannon. Like The Joker said, "Where do they get those toys?"

The next day at dawn I stumbled down to the flight line with the LT and we flew 10 minutes up to a little PSP strip called Tam Ky International. Everyone's a comedian! 3000' of steel mat, a 20 man tent for operations and the LT told me to cool my heels while our mission rotation rolled around. I had C-rations for lunch and polished off the applesauce and "tropical" chocolate just before we took off. Both of the previous missions had taken fire and it was 118* when we launched. 47*C. Fug! My "orientation day" was just that. First off, when you put a punk just out of the States in a LOH and it's 118*, and he can't move because of the chicken plate and the tiny chopper he's in...and he's scared....and the LT says "If we take fire drop the smoke grenade out the door and shoot at muzzle flashes." Like that was going to help? We followed the Snakes out to the AO (Area of Operations) and the LT started chattering with the Snake lead. Soon enough I found out he old days of exhilerating low level weren't. No more Mr. Coordinated flight, not a trace of that, No Sir! We're on our side, cross controlled and spiraling to our graves I was sure. Sumbitch waits 'till we'er about 3 microseconds from sure death before pulling out with a controll reversal and about 2-1/2 gees. I picked my face up out of my crotch and tried to look at the LT when all the sudden he jerked a couple of controls I didn't know existed. Reached back into the cargo compartment and retrieved my head and so it went. Head bangin off the framework and I knew for certain I was not worth a damn in that mode at all!

We were flying down tree lines, crossing terraced paddies, across a river and .....sniff...sniff..."What the fug in that I smell?" LT looked up ahead, "A body." Sure as chitt(ok), there's an NVA floating down the river so bloated that about every button on his tunic is about to pop! God, what an awful smell that was! The LT laughed and called in the count. It was about then I started to get a little woozy. Now I'd never been motion sick in my life and the thought made me a bit contrite. I was determined to not loose it and kept my mouth shut. Over the ridges sideways, down the hills, hopping up over the tree lines sideways....greener and greener I got. I finally gave up as we flew down the edge of a paddy, punched the LT in the shoulder and motioned to my mouth.

He kicked a little left pedal to keep the wind out of my face as I leaned outboard to heave. Just as I did the tree line to my left front began to twinkle in about 10 places. I . I did not shoot back but I did drop the smoke. The LT decided to break right and my next heave blew back in my face as I suffered whiplash from the acrobatics. I heaved once more and the dinks quit shooting at us. Hell, if somebody was puking on me in such a fearless manner I'd reconsider what I was doing as well. As we flew back to Tam Ky he said, "You know you have to clean it up, right?" I nodded and he laughed again, "Everybody gets sick on their first combat LOH ride. Everybody." To this day I do not care much for applesauce.

After we landed I took off my armor plate and fatigue jacket and wrung it out. I think I lost about 5# of sweat that flight. I cleaned it all up, drank some water and the LT came out and said "We need to fuel up, hop in." We started it up, hoovered down to the POL point and we hot refueled. Hoovered back to the pad and had just set down when an arty battery opened up about 100 meters from us. 155mm and I think it was 3 guns, not sure about that. It startled me and I turned around just it time to see a huge fireball and pieces of Huey and bodies hurtling to the ground. It was too fuggin' weird for me to really comprehend what had happened right then so I just gaped at the scene. The LT pulled pitch and we were on top of the scattered wreckage maybe 30 seconds after it happened. There wasn't much left of the Huey....lots of small debris and a few bigger pieces like main rotor blades and the transmission. There were two bodies laying in burning grass and a few things that looked like legs or some such. Oh Lord, I was not liking the looks of my future!

What happened is simple. One of those simple 'fell through the cracks things' where left hand and right hand were not aware. It was a few weeks later I leaned my friend Ralph was one of the pilots and I'm certain to this day his was the first body I saw, if only because of his rather chubby form. There was a process over there wherein we would clear our flights into and out of the AO with ARTY. We would call on FM and tell them our general route and they would advise of fire missions underway or pending for that time frame and route. They spoke of azimuth, range and max ord, leaving it up to us to deciper our route to avoid the mission. It was not a perfect system and I too came close to going poof in the sky a couple of times. Ralph was not so lucky. There was a breakdown in the system and no doubt someone got an ass chewing. No doubt that was of little solace to Ralph's parents.

We did not loiter over the crash site....our next mission was on schedule. Day 1 of Vietnam, flight two. Maverick and Goose never trod is such deep chitt(ok) as we did that day. Well, the good news is that I did not get sick. Nope. We were back in the area of the stinkin' floater when we saw a bunch of civilians standing in something akin to formation in front of a grass hootch in the shade, all looking up at us. Women, kids, old men. I thought it was a bit odd myself, the LT didn't like it at all but he was concentrating on the perimeter while I just looked on, blissfully ignorant. Chatter to the guns, back and forth, the LT was nervous enough that it got thru to me too. So I started staring really hard...maybe I could make them run and hide? It was a free fire zone...I did not consider firing on them, and the LT told me to not shoot as well. Just then there was a rip of cracks, bits of plexiglas stinging my face and I looked up and found 3 holes in the windscreen about 3" above and forward of my face. Got Dam punk kids! WTF they want to do that for? Lt screams on the radio, "Takin' Fire from behind the hootch" and dove for cover behind a tree line. There was a problem with that however. It was that really big fuggin' tree between us and the tree line. 'Bout 130' of tree. Now I didn't know much and that's a fact. What I was sure of however was that we were going to hit that tree. My conumdrum was this: Do I cover my face like a Hollywood starlet that was about to hit a tree head on in her Caddy, or do I put my hand in front of the cyclic just in case the LT got skewered by a 6" diameter limb? Well, in the end I made the wrong choice. There was the most Gawd Awful racket you ever heard...sorta like you'd expect if a 22' diameter Toro mower squated down on top of your favorite oak tree? We took about 30' off the top...saw the tree a few weeks later...flew back w/o a windscreen on my side (bastid kicked right pedal again), the minigun was hanging loose on it's floor mount attach points, there was a broken off 4" limb thru the fuel cell in the belly and the diagonal stabilizer was...horizontal.

The main rotor blades were curved like scimitars too. I dunno what I was shaped like. I had so much chitt(ok) in my eyes they were afraid the foo had chitt(ok) in my face so they medivaced me to the evac hospital in Da Nang. I was bleeding a lot from facial lacerations too...probably looked a lot worse than it was 'cept I couldn't see squat until the next day. This was the next important point I learned over there. Nothing got you out of combat and into the care of a round eyed nurse faster than your donating blood to the American ideal. She were a pretty nurse too.

You know what? They only let me stay overnight. Then they made me hitch hike back down to Chu Lai with one of them pussy Americal Huey ash and trash flights. I was almost too embarrassed to show my face. But I did. I was grounded for 10 days and mostly sat around operations or over at the MAG 13 O'Club staying mildly drunk. I recall that in the interest of fair play I alternated days with that cycle. Toward the end I may have just stayed drunk 'cause I was watching my unit...the Scout Platoon....disappear one bird at a time. In the first two weeks of our deployment to Chu Lai my platoon lost 8 LOH's and was awarded 27 purple hearts. None were killed and only two were seriously injured...in my platoon. One of the injured was the LT. and I'll tell that tale next. One of the minor miracles was my incredible genius as a pilot however. Two days after I was cleared for flight I was signed off in the LOH for non-combat operations and dispatched to Pleiku to pick up a spare LOH. That way we'd have two.

By that time, the rest of my class had been in country 6 weeks. We had already lost two in Huey's and one in a Snake. The first two you know about. Milt in his mid-air, Ralph in the artillery mix up. One of our child killers was in a Snake that hard landed after combat damage, flying for D/1/1 Cav, also out of Chu Lai. The Main rotor flexed down during the hard landing and poor ol' Rosie lost his head.

Low level in never boring.

Dan, I don't have time to read all of this right now. With your permission I will print it out, and also with your permission I will provide it to my World History and American History teachers. I feel that they can certainly use it to incorporate the information into their lessons on Viet Nam (citing proper credit of course).

There is nothing better than first hand accounts. So far you have covered some things that nobody thinks about and aren't taught in school. I appreciate you taking the time and effort to write.

Thanks,

Alan

You may do so Alan, but you might want to clean up a few bleeps. Check your PM for proper credit info.

Dan

Ch 6: Snakeyes

In the ensuing carnage we had inherited, we stood bloodied but not beaten. B Troop, 2 Squadron, 17th Cavalry Regiment was seeing the elephant and did not flinch.

The conundrum I faced was getting some stick time in the AO to facilitate being branded an official target, yet we were running out of LOHs and pilots. Day two after I returned from Pleiku, early in the day, a ruckus started when the LT got shot down. He'd been flying over rolling hill scrub country and had splattered down on a gravel bar a bit down stream of where we'd seen the floater on my first day out. Mad Gary was on the scene but running low on fuel, so the XO had been alerted to launch to take over Command and Control (C&C) duties to orchestrate their recovery. I had nothing to do, he needed a copilot and next thing I knew I was left seat in a C model gun bird, launching into the clear blue western sky.

A word about our aircraft inventory: Our authorized equipment included 10 LOHs, 9 Snakes and 8 slicks, or Hueys. The general mission profile would be comprised of 1 LOH and 1 (Light Pink Team) or 2 (Heavy Pink Team) Snakes. The color was a derivative of the platoon colors: Red for Snakes, White for Scouts and Blue for slicks. Sometimes we had White Teams, or two scouts on a mission not expected to draw fire. Sometimes we had Red Teams, like when we tried to intercept Gen. Giap during a visit to the A Shau Valley in a Rooskie Chopper. Anyway, if something went astray or if we intended to insert the blue platoon grunts, the CO would be airborne in a C&C bird, or slick. In Mad Gary's case and due to the not yet completed upgrade to H model Hueys, we had 2 C model guns configured for C&C, that meaning they had an FM radio rack in the cargo compartment and carried an FO, or artillery field observer. That's the fellow that would coordinate arty fire missions when appropriate. One thing to be said about the Cav, we could deliver more hell in a hurry than most people can comprehend. I haven't even begun to describe the resources available to us. Our organic resources included, along with the three aviation platoons mentioned, a platoon of infantry, a vehicle and aviation maintenance platoon and mess hall plus a supply facility.

Back to the LT's situation. There had been no immediate effort to recover the crew because 1) Mad Gary tried that himself and took .50 cal fire from the same position that downed the LT, and 2) the gunner had a friend in another doughnut about 200 meters away. 3) The crew was covered by terrain from the gunners and were somewhat secure. So was the briefing we received when we arrived on station. Gary broke station and the XO got a fix on the gun pits while the snakes got their relief. The XO, a fellow I'd learn to respect greatly in coming months did something I thought remarkable, mostly 'cause I didn't know much of dick about what was going on and he did not want another bird shot down. He called our friends from the Corps at Chu Lai. You may recall I mentioned the MAG 13 O'club earlier? Biggest grass hut on earth, about 30 by 50....yards. It was the watering hole for Marine Air Group 13, a bunch of rowdies that ran amok with F4s, splattering VC cabbage patches at every turn. Now I'd never seen an airstrike up close before but I was sure looking forward to it. There was a FAC on station in a Corps OV10 and after a bit of discussion the XO pointed him at gun #1 and #2. Usually they would mark a target with a white phosphorous rocket (WP rock, or willy pete) and tell the fighters where the target was in relation to the smoke when they briefed the fighters. Not this time....

Y'all ever see the thing on the History Channel on Nam where they have an aft facing camera that records the dropping of a bomb and after it's pickled there are 4 big drag plates that open up? That configuration is called a Snake eye.....I dunno why. In this case it was appropriately named. The purpose of the drag mechanism is to slow the bomb to allow the fighter to egress before it goes off....it is intended for low level application. Now I thought I knew what low level was.....I mean, I been flying below the tree tops already at a blistering 80-100 knots, right? The FAC called inbound and I'm looking up....the XO says, "There he is..." and he's looking down. I looked thru the open cargo door in the direction of his gaze and see a sliver of shadow racing across the ground....took a second to assimilate it....fuggin' F4 was so low he was squatin' on his own shadow at about 9 AM that sunny day. Unusual to be sure, but the FAC had shown the Phantom jock where the pits were and they had almost simultaneous strikes going w/o smoke. The one I saw was inbound from the SE, the other from the NE. Sun behind the first one, and numba 2 was about 15 seconds behind the first. Cute. Those lads were clippin' along about 400 knots and about 30' off the ground.....

Did I ever tell you what a .50 pit looks like? I call 'em .50's cause that's what they are. The 12.7mm gun is .50 caliber although the case is a hair longer than the US .50 cal round. They use a tripod that straddles a mound of dirt left over from the excavation of the pit, leaving it to appear as a doughnut from the air. There is also a small bunker immediately adjacent, entry from the pit a direct and protected path. The pit is about 8-10' in diameter...the weapon is crew served and generally very effective against choppers of that era...unless they shoot back...so the dinks would sometimes use two....a helicopter trap if you will....very effective against Snakes if they were surprised. So.......I'm looking at this gray streak rushing across the ground directly at the #1 doughnut...thinking....OMG! He's gonna get shot down! Flew right directly over it too.........and about two blinks after he passed the pit, there was an enormous blast, centered on the pit. The dust drifted off a few minutes later and there were two great big holes in the ground where the gun pits had been before. As Lee Ermey would say, "OUT-[bleep]-STANDING!" I assumed the sky rained dink mist for some time afterward.


The Dustoff had been loitering to the north while all this was going on and as soon as they were advised of the strike's success they were inbound, more or less north to south on the river channel. As they approached the LOH litter on the gravel bar I saw another cute thing not taught in flight school. A serious deceleration maneuver wherein the rotor was used as an airbrake by laying baby Huey on its side, then eventually using the tail rotor to execute a 180* turn before they came to a stop. Whiff-bam-boom, they were on the ground and the medics were out the door to recover the crew. In and out....musta learned that in a Saigon bar one night?

The Lt had had his controls shot out and the last thing he'd seen before impact was 125 knots on the airspeed indicator. The Observer had a strained back and the gunner had been hit in the triceps of the left arm. There was not enough of the LOH left to identify it as a helicopter by the uninitiated. This was common as I learned later on. During the course of the war the Army lost about 1400 LOHs to combat and accidents, mostly combat. Of that number, over 95% of the crew members survived. Over 86% survived without injury. It was and remains an incredibly crash worthy design....believe me...we tried all manner of things and could not, no matter how we tried, win a CMH for our parents. The LT came back to the unit about 6 months later but the gunner and observer were sent home. Color me jealous.

You know what? I'd been in country for about 3 weeks and it was about to get really nasty.... We were also about to get a lesson and some help from a sister unit up on the Z...Alpha Troop. The Mad Men of the North....

PM received. Manuscript will remain intact complete with bleeps. The purpose (in my mind) of teaching others about that bleeping war is to show that America's young men of the 60's and 70's did their duty to their country just as they are doing it today. No difference. Whatever the politics were at the time or what they are today are of little significance or consequence when held up to the valor and devotion to duty displayed by the American boys that fought the war. Just from looking quickly at when and with whom you served, you are very much one who should be writing about these things.

Thanks again,

Alan

Ch 7: Over-under-sideways-down

An Air Cav Squadron is comprised of 5 Troops. HHT, A, B and C Troops were Air Cav while D Troop was a ground Troop. The HHT, or Hq. & Hq. Troop had 7 slicks, two of which were configured for C&C. The others were used for ash & trash missions and sometimes supplemented the other troops on CAs, or Combat Assaults. Organizational structure had all the Squadron Command Staff assigned to the HHT but each troop had its own command structure. Notably, the HHT Commander was a Captain while the other air troops had majors. Ergo, only the Air Cav Troops could have a Major fuggup.

Mad Gary was about to find himself with the same perspective held by Gen. G.A. Custer, and thus a major fuggup. Only a day or two after the LT was shot down, Gary took it upon himself to insert the Blue Platoon on a small hill just south of a ville called Tien Phouc. The insertion went well enough with all the standard sound and fury attendant such an operation. Shortly after the platoon began to move off on their recon mission they were ambushed by what was thought to be an NVA Company unit. Casualties were heavy. 7 grunts were down at the outset and the unit medic was killed trying to shield two wounded. He name was LaPointe and he was subsequently awarded the CMH for his actions that day. In the midst of all the confusion Major Mad Gary set about flying in a repetitive orbit at fairly low altitude and on the 3rd repetition got hosed with a .50 cal. The engine failed and the FO was hit in the ass. A successful autorotation was executed and in short order another medevac was logged into the history books. I don't recall the number of wounded in this fracas but 8 were killed on our side. The Blues remained on the ground that night and were assaulted in the wee hours of the morning. In the ensuing pitched battle they killed 44 dinks......all women....with AKs, RPG and other boy toys. They were extracted the next day and the unit went into stand down for 72 hours. Our only effective unit was the gun platoon....

It was about then that we had a fragging incident in the Troop Area up at Camp Eagle. A couple of disaffected maintenance types decided they didn't care for their platoon sergeants and rolled a couple of frags into the hooch late one night. The only guy to die was one of the perps who did not take heed of a Snake pilots admonition to halt and put his other grenade down. One 5.56 to the face rendered the other perp compliant. So far as I know he is still serving time at Ft. Leavenworth. My early days in B Troop were and inauspicious start by any standard.

A small point about the Troop. They had arrived in country around late February or early March that year and as was the custom, half the unit was sent to the 4 winds while experienced in country units were stripped to replace these loses. A great many of the people in the unit had come from down in the Delta and the 3/17th Cav. The Most Mad Major, ie. the previous CO had thought it appropriate to have 7 AM inspections every day. Well, they had come from Ft. Hood, maybe that's what they did there. Folks in country awhile had different priorities and standing inspection in the early AM was not on the list. Most Mad Major was fed rat poison and thus sent back to the States to recover. This left us with Major Mad Gary who was not so completely insane. Not so insane that he refused the temporary assignment from A Troop of two LOHs and crews. The pilots were named Szilagi and Jones, both Warrants. I gotta tell ya, them boys was some crazy sumbitches!

I don't think they'd flown 2 missions before the gun pilots were drooling all over the opportunity to fly with them. They were very aggressive and flew like they'd just done 22 pots of Cuban Coffee. I flew with each and had the interior cockpit paint skid marks on my helmet to prove it! It was Jones that taught me the air brake maneuver with the LOH and the deadly effectiveness of the trick. It was Szilagi that taught me some very superior tactics and a half dozen things to not do. He made me think about what I was doing from the dinks perspective and that little bit of osmosis served me well thru the balance of my time in Nam. There will be a bit more about Jones later on....he spent over 4 years straight in Nam, was promoted to a RLO and received every award for heroism short of the CMH. DSC, Multiple Silver Stars....and finally, one purple heart. It were the million dollar wound....

So, two days flying left seat with the Alpha-nuts and then one day in the right seat...that being the Throne in the LOH...one of them, I don't remember which said to my boss, "He's ready." and poof, I was a real live target! Certified bait in the hunter/killer team. One of Nixon's hired guns! HA! I was scheduled to fly the next AM out around Burke's Hill. Oh, I didn't tell you that. LT Burke was the platoon leader that day they got their azz handed to them. A very cool cookie and in retrospect, very capable. So capable that he went on to become a General, 2 or 3 stars, don't recall which. We named the Hill after him. It was the first place I flew as a combat pilot in charge. Took me all of 15 minutes to draw fire the first time. I was hoovering along this trail and saw a bunch of packs in a neat row in the shade. My gunner saw them too and said, "Sir, look at the packs!" About that time the little bastids started shooting at us. A lot of the little bastids. Well, another epiphany on the way....after doing what I'd been trained to do....scream "Taking fire!" and then running away, I got to watch the Snakes work out on the target I had so cleverly identified. I realized those boys had a great deal more firepower than I did and it was a defining moment in my tactical maturation process. Deference to those with the most firepower became my mantra. Well, we didn't get hit that first time out and it became the first of a mystifying chain of hits and misses over my first year. You may recall that I was missed the first time with the LT? Hit on the second? Now I had been missed again. The progression continued uninterrupted through my first tour. It was so predictable that the flight crews grew superstitious about it, but that did not develope until much later.

We had another pilot come into the platoon, a Texan from Killeen. He was crazy too. Fit right in on the Group W bench. He got the short course from Jones and Szilagi too and by that time we were starting to get back on our feet. Couple of days later I was hoovering around a cluster of hooches along a line of rice paddies and got fired up by an RPD, or their equivalent to an M-60. Different sound and rhythm from an AK. None of that raspy rattle, just a steady slower crack, crack, crack. Funny that you could hear the action on an AK cycle through all the noise but it was true. Anyway, he shot out my radios and split the keel between the rubber fuel cells. Streaming fuel out the belly (unknown to me) I hauled azz and screamed on silent radios. The Snakes thought it odd that I suddenly high tailed it out of there low level without a word. Sometimes they saw the muzzle flashes, sometimes they didn't. One of them flew down beside me and I pointed to the mic boom and shook my head. He pointed aft and down....I looked at the panel.... I had about 50# of fuel left after only 30 minutes of flight. And I knew what that big solid thump had been, other than a kick in the azz. About 3 minutes and 7 miles later I was laying face down in a dry rice paddy with my crew, 3 barrels laying on a tree line a 100 meters off as the rotor system spun down and the Snakes orbited overhead. I pulled out my survival radio and called on Guard, got a quick answer and then a question: "Why'd you land?" "Leaking fuel." I thought he already knew that?

Now Gary was really pissed about all the trouble they had to go to. After all , they had to sling the LOH back to Maintenance plus go out and pick up our boy from Texas who'd just gone down over the same hut where I'd been fired up. Got Dam things just weren't working for Gary at all. Fortunately for me the Maint. Officer found that a round had split the keel and in so doing had laid open the fuel cell in such fashion that the self sealing feature had no chance to work. Got me off the chitt(ok) list for awhile anyway. Tex and crew were OK, their LOH was totaled though...burned in place. It was a good night to get drunk.

Ch 8: Stepping into the void

There are those early experiences in every endeavor which indelibly mark one�s memory and it is invariably replaced by an adjustment wherein what was once thrilling becomes mundane. It matters not how high the pucker factor. On the matter of Pf, let me explain the Army Aviator index: 1 = wake me up when it�s time, to 10, which means there is a small hole in the nylon web of the seat where your [bleep] snarfed up a piece of fabric because your brain, operating at Pf-1 put orifice #2 in jeopardy beyond comprehension. In other words, if you can�t drive a greased16 penny nail up your butt with a 5# hammer, it might be a Pf-10. What I�m tying to get across, getting shot at became humdrum and it took something special to stand out in the fabric of time.

I do have a diary that I kept of the first year and will perhaps go review it�or not, as I write this. From where I sit, the highlights suffice, or the odd moment where epiphany was found. With that said, the last distinct memory I have of those early days flying out of Tam Ky led to a party that will be legend long after I�m gone.

Tien Phouc is a small ville northwest of Tam Ky. It is viewable via Google Earth and such and image is below. The ville is not important, but the foreground is�.Burke�s Hill. Not said previously was a cogent explanation of our foe. It was, if memory serves, the 3rd NVA Regiment. The entire span of our AO was a free fire zone and in the area around Tien Phouc the northern extremity of the AO was the river between the hill and the ville. HA! I�m a Suessian Poet! Anyway, it was a troublesome place as previously detailed.

The east west road in the image was a foot path back in the day. The scrub apron just north of the rice paddies is where I got fired up the first day after getting the sign off. The brown patch on the side of the hill center is approximately where the Blues were ambushed that day and this little story began in the scrub area right of the paddies. You will notice after close inspection the terraced paddies in the right edge of the image???? Look close now�there you are, about 20� in the air, just north of the old foot path heading a bit south of southeast across the path about where the sandy looking slash is�.it�s about 100* and the sun�s up enough that it�s not a problem that morning, nothing particularly troublesome going on��



Without warning, all of Minnie�s pearls erupted out of the scrub, little green bees swarming about with a sound like a thousand bullwhip cracks. Bringing with them the dozen or so odd thumps meaning at least some of them had found meat in the LOH and once again I screamed on silent radios as I broke left about 90* and headed for the low draw to the northeast. Now those radios are odd things. They send and they receive. That I heard nothing did not mean I was not transmitting, only that I might not be. The Observer (Oscar) had pitched a red smoke, the guns had seen the tracers and muzzle flashes and rained a little pee on the place, then joined up with me as I scurried back to Tam Ky, only a few klicks to the southeast.

Y�all recall please the beginning of the superstition I created�mentioned it just a bit ago. Well, when I did the belly flop in the rice paddy that day, I had occasion to go look at the LOH later on and saw a hole in the overhead about an inch from where my noodle had been. This is the second part of the legend. Every time I took hits that first year I could measure one or more bullet holes within about 3� from my head. So, the perspective of the Oscars and Gunners I flew with would become thus: Dan did/did not get hit/shot at on this mission. Ergo, option B would happen on the next mission. Option B meant 1) he might/might not get shot in the head and 2) he will/will not die mercifully while we scream all the way to the ground!

On the way to Tam Ky I looked up at the Plexiglas above my head and sure enough there was a hole directly over my head. Now that glass is about an 1� over my noggin because I�m a full sized pilot and the LOH was a little bitty thing that only weighed about 1300# empty. Combat emergency max gross weight was 2400# by the way and our lives were a continuous ongoing emergency�

My friend from Texas, Johnny Sprott was a curious blend of astute poker player and nerveless hooligan. Due more to our pilot shortage than anything else he was dispatched with another team before I even landed. We just did not let sleeping dogs lay, no sir. The short version of his investigation, and it was a short investigation: There were a lot of very unfriendly natives in the area and he had occasion to see a goodly number of bunkers before they fired him up. They did not shoot well that time and as fate would have it, were about to have a personal demonstration as to our sincerity and determination.

It was convenient being so close to MAG 13. We gave them targets; they delivered bombs and were home in time for lunch. Symbiosis at it�s very best. FACs monitored our frequencies routinely for much the same reason. There was nobody like the CAV to provide a target rich environment! Before the Snake lead could dial in the freq. for him, the FAC gave a holler and it was decided we�d have a grand spectacle for the fine citizens of Tien Phouc. Sorry phoucers. (phoucers � n. fook�-ers)

Two F-4s roared off from Chu Lai, probably got the mission brief before they had their wheels up. Their inbound was from over the top of Burke�s Hill with a planned left pull at about 2000� and they were loaded with about 12,000 # of 750# HE Quick each. Nothing fancy, just run of the mill cabbage patch medicine. Lead was flying a bird that had a history of hydraulic squawks though and this day the squawks would be resolved, for as he put the pipper on target at about center of mass for the bunker complex his hydraulic systems failed. Now the emergency procedure for that in a Huey was fairly complex. In an F4 the procedure was very simple�..EJECT! Two wee bodies flew out of the cockpit and before the chutes opened there was an M-A-S-S-I-V-E detonation on the ground, dead center in the bunker complex. Lest you think the Third World minions are insensitive to profound demonstrations of power I want to pass on the fact that both pilots were recovered within yards of the smoking residue that had once held dreams of glory, without a single shot being fired by either side. They were extracted by Johnny and a Corps CH-46 due to the need of a hoist to get to the second pilot. Johnny took advantage of the pilot he retrieved�hoovered down to him and the Oscar unloaded the M-16 and held it down for the guy to grab onto so he could clamber up on the skids.

We were indeed home in time for the floor show which had been scheduled at the MAG 13 O�Club that evening. In fact, we were there in time to drink all of the liquor in the bar before the show started. By that time, all that was left was Mateus and Cold Duck and Beer. I want you to consider the probability of drinking a Marine Corps Bar dry. Ponder that a moment. By the next morning there was a tear in the continuum and the Cav and Corps were One. Some of the Cav slept in the road in front of the Club, some in the dried up lake bed we called home. The Corps, in infinite compassion, drove around those sleeping in the road. I and several others, stout of heart and strong of will, flew off to battle again that morning, plastered beyond comprehension. It would be a good day for comedy!

Wonderful stuff, Dan, keep it coming, Bro.

Oh,.....and scratch that gator's ear bumps for me.

GTC

Dan, you really need to get a publisher involved in this.

Alan

Chapter 9: Weapons Cold

Mission launch from Chu Lai East @ 0630 or about dawn. I sat up in my cot about 20 minutes prior and felt like a million bucks! Reached under the cot and grabbed my canteen...found it next to an unopened bottle of Cold Duck... and took a big gulp of water. My head started to spin, stepped out into the front yard and puked. Boys, there were a lot of bleary eyed staggering war lords in tent city that morning. Somehow, and I'll never quite know how, we all made it out to the flight line and strapped on the war wagons, cranked and began the ritual.

We all parked in revetments and thus had to back out of them each day on the way to the front, such as it was. That done we all sat down in line, did a com check...there was a long pause...the Snakes used VHF for internal com, a radio I didn't have. I figured they were all telling Scout jokes on their private phone line all the time...but that day, as I later learned, it went like this:

Platoon callsigns were numbered thus: Snakes were 2-something, Scouts were 1-something...like me, I was "Won-Two"...as in, Banshee 12. The Slicks were 4s and the CO was "6". All COs were 6. So, here ya go.....

Snake Lead: "2-3 is up."
Snake Wing: "Uh, this is 2-7 alpha. I think the AC has passed out in back. What do I do?"
Lead: "Uh, who are you?"
Wing: "2-7 alpha. This is my first day flying in the platoon."
Lead: "OK, you flown front seat before?
Wing: "2-7 alpha, negative. Never even been in a Cobra before. Just got to the unit yesterday."
Lead: "......................" unkeys radio......."......uh, come up UHF, uh, 269.9"
Wing: " Roger."
Lead: "1-2, you up?"
Moi: "Roger"
Lead: "Wing, uh, has a problem. Give him a little room to hover, OK?"
Moi: "Roger"

I looked behind me, picked up and hovered back about 50'. Lead picked up...apparently there'd been some more chatter on the secret radio....he hovered forward about 50' and did a 180* turn to face Wing. I saw Wing get light on the skids, come off the PSP and wobble like a pre-solo rookie...I back up another 50'.

Well, I followed the wobbling Snake to Tam Ky and learned a little later in the day what happened. Poor guy in front did a right fair job of getting himself there and apparently the Lead Snake screaming "Taking Fire!" on the radio awakened the AC in back in time for him to put the thing on the ground safely. We used to call WO1s, or Warrant Officer 1s...Wobbly 1s. The moniker stuck on that guy for a long time. The new guy I mean, not the AC. But the day was young and we had a mission brief and quick launch afterward. It was a typical mission. Fly out, descend, get shot at and watch the Snakes roll in for a run. Lead spewed rockets and minigun fire, the wingman dove into the target and made a classic right pull...textbook execution, except he never fired a round. By this time I was up at altitude and watched Lead roll in to cover the Wing....hell fire and brimstone , then Wing was back in. He didn't fire the second time either. When we finally returned from the mission he sheepishly admitted he'd not put the armament circuit breakers in when we started the mission....and thereafter, I always...I mean ALWAYS gave him a friendly load of chitt(ok) about it when we went out to Indian Country together. After about 3 months he'd just say "Weapons hot" when I started down....

You know, there was a lot of stuff happened out there around Tien Phouc, some of it sticks and some doesn't all that much. I'll hit some of the highlights for you and keep this dog and pony show moving.

We used to fly down the beach low level at the end of the day, skimming the sand about 3' up and 100 knots forward. It was cool to watch the Snakes up ahead, dinks running for their lives like we was that "napalm in the morning" guy, Robert Duval. I saw some sharks in the surf one day and we peeled off and came back with some frags and chunked them on the noggin'. We never killed any of them but it was fun. Pure ol' innocent fun. Boys and their toys.....

We went out and reconned a place near the Kham Duc Special Forces Camp near the Laotian Border. I was first one on the scene and found a HUGE trail, what we called a high speed trail under deep triple canopy jungle. About 12', or wide enough for vehicles, to say nothing of bikes. The dinks used bikes a lot for carrying heavy cargo. They'd load them down and walk them from N. Vietnam to the south along the many corridors of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Well, this one was special we thought and we played it pretty cool. Got the info and fell back...until the next day. Tell you what, there's nothing in the world that will pacify a hostile region like B-52s. Nor have I seen anything that will put bikes up in the tops of 100' tall teak trees. Like a friggin' Christmas tree, all the colorful chitt(ok) hanging up there in the breeze. It was a night time strike and we were there bright and early the next morning picking thru the ruins. Gary put the Blues on the ground and they followed the trail to what would become the 2nd largest cache capture of the war in II Corps. It was also a significant intel find but we'd do better in about 6 months, more on that later on. It took 2 Chinooks 2 days to sling all the crap out we captured there and I felt pretty good about that one.

We kept getting shot up and kept getting Purple Hearts but nobody was getting killed in combat and that was a good thing. We did lose a Huey on a night maintenance test flight one night though and lost the Maintenance Officer and two enlisted guys. I'm pretty sure he got vertigo and flew it into the water but I never saw the accident report on that one. It was a sobering moment for all of us. The pilot was one of the guys that slept in the road that night after the party..... My friend Johnny crashed that day too, lost his tail rotor in the pattern and went into the drink also. Both he and the oscar survived without injury, well, except for that what they did to themselves at the bar that night.

One of the Snakes got shot up, the pilot took fragments from a .50 cal API in the throat but was able to fly back and survive...lots of blood in the cockpit from that one.

We invented a new strategy that we carried forth until the day I returned to the States. All of the area around Tien Phouc was a free fire zone, yet there were a lot of civilians in the area too. Those folks were damned if they did and damned if they didn't. You'll recall the incident when I got fugged up? All of those folks standing in front of the hooch when we got fired up...the ones standing there in loose formation, kids, women and old farts...they died that day. It was, the way it was. No sweet music there. What was happening was fairly common in such conflicts: The enemy hides behind the civilians and feeds off of their hard work. Xin Loi Nguyen.....that means "So Sorry"....we started destroying those things the 3rd Regiment needed to survive. If it was flammable, we burned it. If it moved we shot it. Sherman's policy is effective, no matter what you think of it. Once the theory was tested we began loading WP grenades by the case and we were relentless. Water buff, chickens, pigs, hooches.....all of it....poof! Some of the huts were rebuilt and we burned them again. We'd find rice drying on grass thatch mats and blow it into the paddies with our rotor wash. I saw buffs die from rockets, miniguns, grenades, 1911 Colts, the whole bannana.... Within about a month of our taking that action we stopped taking fire on every friggin' mission we flew. Within 6 weeks we took no fire at all.

On the 4th of July we were under strict orders to not use any ordinance for pyrotechnic displays. I considered this very insulting and as a result got myself seriously drunk. As a result I went to the flight line about 2200 hours and pulled a 37mm Very Pistol out, put a green star cluster in it and let it rip into the inky black sky of Vietnam. I was accosted by a line guard who informed me he'd have to turn me in. I said "What do you think they'll do to me? Send me to Vietnam?" About 30 seconds later the entire perimeter of Chu Lai lit up with a fire power display I'll not forget in my life time. God know how many tracers went into the sky that night and it's all my fault. Mad Gary was really pissed and he knew it was one of the Scouts that did it. Nobody breathed a word....not a soul. I guess my logic worked on the guard.

We were having a jolly good time at the MAG 13 Club one night with the Jarheads, drunker'n skunks of course, and the CG of the Base came in. A graying version of Lee Ermy to my eye. Ramrod straight and walnut tough. One of the Phantom jocks stood up and screamed, "Let's say 'Hello' to the General!" All the Gyrines jumped up and screamed, "Hello [bleep]!" The pilot screamed, "Let's say "Hello" to the [bleep]!" They all went "Hello General!" It's a Corps thing. They won't do it unless they like you. The General smiled and tipped his head then went to the bar.

About 15 minutes later a bunch of the Americal Division pilots wandered in and I guess they were feeling contrite 'cause we were kicking dink ass that they couldn't handle. A fight wasn't long in the making and it was fair to middlin' rough. We got some lumps, two of their pilots were hospitalized. Since we were under operational control of Americal, Mad Gary was Scared Gary...the Brigade Commander (full colonel) from the other side came over to chew on Gary the next day and in the course of it marched Gary over to see the Marine CG who actually was in charge of all that Chitt(OK). Gary said later on he was quaking in his boots. The Army guy started whining about how we'd beat up his boys and he wanted to Court Marshal Gary and all that chitt(ok)....and the Marine General stood up and said something to the effect, "I was there, your boys started it and if anyone goes up on charges it will be you. Do you still wish to pursue this?" Gary was almost a changed man after that. Well, for at least a few weeks anyway.

I learned one day how to turn a LOH upside down after one of our shark bombing missions down the beach. Boy, that was really cool! My oscar didn't like it much but hey, he was a volunteer too!

There was to be a party at the quarters of the medical staff there at Chu Lai one evening. A really nice doctor and nurse party. Real nurses with round eyes and all that jazz. We decided to invite ourselves and we absconded with a 3/4 ton and 2-1/2 ton truck and drove on over for the bash. I think there was about 20 of us or so. They saw us pull in and locked the doors. Now we thought that was pretty damn rude given all the business we'd been providing them with. What we didn't know was that their screened in porches were electrified and one of our Snake pilots found out the hard way. He was drunk enough that it really pizzed him off and he just got a running start and dove thru the screen and proceeded to tear out the wiring so the rest of us could enter safely. Thoughtful fellow, no? We crashed on thru the door and the doctors seemed both displeased and disconcerted. Now I was looking at several colonels and a few light colonels, majors by the bucket and they just stood there gaping at us. We gaped at the nurses....ZOWIE! One of the guys started to fill a plate from the buffet they had set up and then the docs finally found their nuts and tried to shoo us off. The guy that had dove thru the screen, his name was Rich. Ol' Rich jumped up on the buffet table and started tap dancing thru the buffet. He was doing pretty good too, until he tripped on the potato salad and went face down in the baked beans. The table collapsed with a thunderous bam...and some of our less aggressive buddies...musta been slick pilots, I'm sure they were, they picked up Rich and said something to the effect that we were leaving.

Rich was thereafter known as Twinkle Toes. He was also the best damn rocket shooter I ever flew with, bar none, and I don't give a hoot how fugged up this sounds but we were a band of brothers and we had been thru hell. Everyone there would have died for anyone else if called on to do so and we were by God fearless! The next day...Gary was nervous again. He told us he'd cut a deal with the Marines over that caper. If we'd accept restriction to quarters for two weeks they would be happy. So for two weeks after that we quit wearing our Cav hats to the MAG 13 club.

There's not a lot left to tell about Chu Lai, except maybe for the day I flew so low over a sampan the guy in it jumped overboard and my cherry new pilot pizzed his pants. I didn't tell you that after I got shot up the second time they made me the platoon combat check pilot did I? I was just getting warmed up on this cherry boy! Then there was the day I spooked a pair of water buffs a guy was using to plow his rice paddy. They took out 3 dikes before they stopped. I was bad sometimes, I really was. Oh, we went thru a Cat I typhoon too...my hex tent was the only one that didn't go down that night. The dried up lake we bivouacked in...wasn't....

In August of '69 our mission in Chu Lai was over. We flew home to Camp Eagle and a 1 week stand down for maintenance and general catching of breath. Make no mistake, Chu Lai and the mission we had there was brutal and costly, both in terms of lives and equipment. We lost crew, grunts and choppers at a prodigious rate. We lost our innocence and became a wickedly effective unit that was about to be turned loose in the A Shau Valley again. We learned a short while later that the 3rd NVA regiment had withdrawn from our old AO and was replaced by the 2nd. I dunno what they found to eat 'cause we'd left scorched earth. For our part, we had hard floors beneath our feet, hot showers and a water tight roof over our heads. Life was good! And I only had 8-1/2 months to go........


"Yeah though I walk thru the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I shall fear no evil."

On the nose of Huey in our unit, under the crossed sabres: "Muff Diver"

On the side of one of our unit's Snakes: "God of Hellfire"

On my Zippo: "Eyes of an Eagle, Heart of a Lion, Balls of a Scout."

We actually believed that chitt.

Ch 10: Down in the Valley

Down Chu Lai way we flew in rolling hill country mostly. It's the friend of the antiaircraft gunner in one part, yet it isolates the source and makes them fine targets for arty or tac air. By the time we arrived back at Camp Eagle I was conversant with the fundamentals of survival, knew how to call arty missions and generally stay out of trouble in that environment. I also had the ability to impart KNOWLEDGE into our new Scouts, something not particularly administered to me due to the need for warm bodies in the AO.

As platoon combat check pilot I had no concern about teaching systems or flight characteristics in a classroom sense, it was all about survival and tactics. I had flown with the good and the bad, a few of the uglies too, and had learned from all. One thing for certain, a continuous state of panic was not conducive to long term survival. We had guys that would fly everywhere as fast as possible, have the oscars drop red smoke when ever they saw something and then start prattling with the Snakes about what they had found. I relieved one of these fellows one day and when the team arrived for relief briefing the area looked like a rock concert with all the colors drifting around. Green here, grape there, white or red someplace else.....fuggin' guns didn't like it and I didn't either. Thankfully there were only a few that did that and they had short careers as Scouts. One was an Lt from Hawaii. Flew everywhere like a raped ape with gross control input that was hard on the bird and hard on the crew. When in free fire zones (most of the time) he would have the gunner "recon by fire", that being a term for random fire, and the intent was to draw fire. Now I want you to put yourself in Nguyen Van Dink's boots and think about it when this madman flies over at warp 2 dropping smoke and making violent maneuvers. Got that? You might think you'd been spotted, right? Right! So, what do you do when the only way you can avoid getting smoked by a pair of Snakes is to put the LOH down in your lap? Right! Ratta-tat-tat! The LT drew more fire than anyone in the platoon and never understood why...and nobody could make him understand. Bone head! Well, he got shot down in Chu Lai twice and lasted but a month or so up in the tall country. Sent him to a desk job after that and we all lived happily thereafter. Among all of us, the door gunners and oscars were the happiest about his departure. Even they understood his hazard. Perhaps more than us now that I think of it....

Teaching combat tactics is an art in itself. You're taking a neophyte out into the woods after his contact transition and pretending you're an oscar...telling him what to do and when at first, then eventually turning him loose. I never gave any of them less than 5 full days of dual and I cut no slack, be they a warrant or a captain. Basic rules of the road:
1) Do not repeat a ground track. Ever.
2) Do not forget to look ahead...dead trees grow with amazing speed.
3) Always have an escape plan, every second you're low level.
4) The UHF radio is yours. If somebody other than the Snakes starts jabbering on it, climb to altitude.
5) Do not look for a body count. Your job is recon. Let the Snakes take the Glory. More Scouts got shot down because of testosterone than any other reason.
6) Do not repeat a ground track. Ever.
7) Avoid hovering at max gross weight, or early in the mission. If you must, do it on high terrain so you can accelerate quickly...down hill.
8) Do not go back to see if a Snake knocked out the .50 cal that shot at you. He probably did not knock it out.
9) Do not repeat a ground track.......EVER.

It goes on and on guys. Yes, I did teach them some maneuvers and flight techniques such as the air brake stop. I also explained what the LOHs with miniguns got shot down about 3:1 over the other LOHs. Reason: Testosterone and the fact that once the bad guys were behind your 3 and 9 o'clock position you had no suppressive fire capability. One that point I had quit flying the mini equipped LOH by the 2nd month we were in Chu Lai and did not return to them until about month 9 of my tour. I'll get into that later. Anyway, from those early days I trained all of our pilots how to survive, first and foremost. Yep, we still got the chitt(ok) shot out of us, but not one of the pilots I checked off got shot down for nearly 6 months. I remain proud of that for it is a very improbable statistic.

We went into the A Shau with a different attitude than the unit had left with, and a great deep pool of experience. Flying in the tall mountains is a different trick that the coastal lowlands and rolling hills of our previous AO. The jungle was the jungle, the air was clean, the streams clear and rock bottomed. Monkeys everywhere bounding thru the canopy and we had to learn to find thing under deep canopy. Trees over 100' tall were as common as rain drops. Mountain tops to over 5000' feet likewise. I'd show you a Google image of the A Shau but it's a computer generated thing of no great worth. Take a look if you like but my old memory is much clearer. It is about 20 miles long, maybe 5 miles wide and has very high terrain on both sides of the north and south ends. Moderately high on the east side center and a bit lower on the west center. The terrain on the perimeter is rugged and quite amazing to view. That of the valley floor is elephant grass, boggy creeks and streams. When we were there it was a moonscape of Arc Lite craters and helicopter parts and pieces. In 1968 the 1st Cav lost 57 Hueys there in 2 days, most of them still visible when we arrived for our waltz. Many of them were in staggered formation on the ground where they had landed and never departed during combat assaults. Casualties were light but equipment loses were awesome. Apparently one thing the dinks didn't reckon on was that after all were disabled that instead of leaving 7 grunts on the ground there were now 11 and every little impromptu squad now had 2 M-60 machine guns. It was a mixed bag to be sure.

Tactics: People are animals and behave like animals when hunted. There are terrain features they will not occupy and they have necessities such as water and shelter. That they shoot back is not the issue. They can be hunted just like deer. I'm not kidding boys, you hunt peeps just like critters. They are lazy, they get hungry and they need to rest. They also cook and their cooking stinks over in the Nam. The gomers use a sauce on about everything, it's called Nuc Mam or something like that. Rotten fish with a lot of spices. Aged to perfection. I guess they do that 'cause they ate all the cats. I only saw two of them in 2.5 years over there, both in high gear headed for cover! Point about the sauce is this....you got to play bird dog in the AM...following the smell of breakfast. You use EVERY sense you own in battle, no matter how improbable it may seem from the recliner.

So, you get up in the AM and saddle up, fly west into indian country with the sun at your back. Up in the mountains the air is cool and humid, it feels good after a balmy night in the lowlands. It also does something curious to the rotor system of the Snakes, or the other way around I guess. The retreating blade of the system is moving thru air that is reverse flowed from the advancing side. If you're doing 100 knots and the tip speed is 400 knots, the airflow seen by the rotor blades is 400 + 100 on the advancing side and 400 - 100 on the retreating side. To provide balanced lift the retreating blade uses more pitch to compensate. The accelerates the airflow more and it causes humidity to condense on that side of the rotor disc. It looks like smokey scimitars and in the early morning it can be almost hypnotic. Well, cool things pass and soon enough you find yourself motoring past Fire Base Birmingham, then Veghel, Rendezvous and there you are, passing the east rim of the Valley. The place is ominous, a scared hellish vista of craters on craters, ours today, theirs tomorrow. Lead briefs on the area we want to work, we mingle a little so he can put eyes on us. I look over at the FNG who sports wide eyes and say, "Take it down."

He begins a gentle standard rate turn to the right (his side) careful to check for traffic and I'm thinking I know why Jesus wept. "Hey, you're making a helluva target out of us." He steepens the turn just a bit and keeps looking for Cessnas and Pipers like back in the States. "I've got it, lemme show you how to do this." I took the controls, put the pitch down to the stop and rolled us into a 70* bank, then sucked the stick back into his gut. "You mind backing into the seat a bit more?" He nods, looks a little....discomforted. His chicken plate was restricting movement of the cyclic to the aft. It's one thing to witness this once or twice, another to do it yourself. We wind ourselves into a little whirling dervish of azz chasin' nose and screw ourselves down, cross controlled and falling like a rock. Sure as chitt, about 2 seconds before we marked our position with black smoke I rolled out and dove to the back side of the ridge, hooked a left and continued down the draw at full gallop, bursting out into the elephant grass prairie of the Valley floor at 110 knots, just a few grass stains on the skid toes. "OK, you got it." I look over and Wide Eyes is a little green. They always get over that when they take the controls, just like they always puke their first time out. "Next time, don't dick around." A nod followed by an aimless wandering around without a clue as where or what he was supposed to be doing. Class is in session...............

It is an alien environment and nothing about it comes naturally. I found many different aptitudes of course but in the end everybody I trained got checked off except for the next to the last platoon leader we had. His name was Hector C. and he was an ROTC Lt from Puerto Rico. Poor boy saw too much violence one day and never quite recovered from the shock of it I suppose. Great disappointment to me is all I can say. I'll talk about Ol' Hector later on in chronological order.

We were lucky when we got back to the A Shau. Hamburger Hill was a distant memory and affairs were unnaturally quiet out there in the Zone. Well, I didn't mind the break and neither did anyone else. We flew hours, blew up some chitt now and then and not much of anything important happened for about 6-7 weeks.

Most of you know that major offensives are preceded by planning and staging, usually with stealth and cover. We knew something was up but it would take awhile to ferret it all out. Think Spring 1972 and you are there for the NVA ramp up to that party, pizzin' down their legs and calling it rain. Meanwhile, I liked the tall country. I liked the clean air and I liked droppin' frags on carp and other fishes in the streams, or shooting monkeys when we had a chance. Those little bastids......you're hoovering along a ridge real sneaky like, all concentrating and chitt and all the sudden 200 of the little fuggers start leaping across the canopy. Likes to scare you to death!

Dinks hang out in trees too and they carry guns......

Some folks don't like the use of the word "dink". If you prefer I can call them slopes, gooks, squints, zips, dudes, Charlie, dumb asses, targets, slow targets, Chuck, and a long list of other things. It's not that I disrespect them for I don't. They were about 5% as effective as killers as we were. I can and do respect the 5%. They were able and dedicated warriors. Their tactics were near suicidal in many ways and they never evolved much in the course of the war. If you wish me to be more sensitive, kindly piss in your hat. If you wish them to respect you, carry a bigger hammer and don't ever blink.

Ch 11: They are Lurking for YOU.

At Camp Eagle we normally ran a first and last light patrol along the rocket belt, or that region that describes the maximum effective launch distance for the 122mm rocket. It were a major piece of problem on odd intervals. Not long after we�d returned to Eagle one hit an engineer company mess hall about 5:30 one afternoon and killed a fair number of our boys. It was not something we ignored but it was so damn hard to defend against our hearts weren�t in it. Best part was down at the end of the run near the Hi Van Pass there was a spring fed bath where the maidens used to hang out and they always put on a show for us when we zipped around the base of the ridge and overflew the place. One day on the way back to camp there was a train rolling up the rail along QL-1. They�d gotten hit so many times by mines they put the locomotive in the rear and pushed the cars along their route. I flew up behind and through the steam plume�yeah, it was steam powered�went a little further and lightly touched down on one of the box cars just for sport then hopped off and ran on up the road about 6� high and 80 knots. Couple of kids walking along the road shoulder up ahead, thought I�d buzz them a little and as I drew close this little 8 year old fug whirls around and throws a softball size rubber ball at me. Came within a few inches of hitting the tail rotor�and that was the last time I did any of that crap.

To put it in plain terms, we were suffering adrenaline withdrawal and terminal boredom. It was late September as I recall when one of the LOHs took fire out in the A Shau. Just to show how fugged up we were, we had a party to celebrate such an auspicious occasion. Within a short few weeks we began to take fire more often and see ample signs of activity in scattered places around the Valley. We also took advantage of our brief lull to get the Scouts some night flight experience, something we seldom did. It was my idea and ultimately it saved my ass one bleak dark night a few months later. Anyway, we were assigned a LOH and simply went out into the coastal lowlands and flew around, maybe did a couple of GCA approaches into Phu Bai. I particularly enjoyed one brief period when we had cloudless skies and a full moon. It was on such a night that I stumbled across a fire fight. Red tracers going one way, greenies the other. My presence overhead did not deter them at all and I called back to operations to report it and see if Division Operations knew anything about it. Nope, nada, zip. I watched for about 15 minutes�the back and forth continued unabated. Now it was a curious situation. I had no clearance to fire, no contact with the ground unit, and they were almost certainly ARVN forces on one side and VC on the other. They were plinkin� at each other across a rice paddy about 50 yards wide and maybe 150 long.

One thing I liked about my job up in I Corps was the lack of towers and wires. It greatly simplified mission planning. No worry out there at all. I was without crew and the bird I flew had a full load of ammo for the minigun��..my mind was the Devil�s playground, and the only reservation I had was that sometimes we used Nungs in clandestine patrol mode and they carried AKs and dressed as NVA or VC. I did not wish to shoot any of those folks, nor did I wish to see a firefight on such a lovely night. Visibility was so very good�..I dropped down to bamboo top altitude and approached from the NW at about 80 knots, all nav lights off, right down the center of the paddy, gun in full deflection down. At the point that I was between the shooters I let a 2 seconds burst rip. I continued straight out, flipped on the lights and climbed up to about 1500� before circling back to see what was happening�nothing. All was quiet and it remained so for the balance of my flight. Yes, I did have reservations about the wisdom of my actions. A read of the action summary for the next two weeks revealed nothing about that evening, so in hindsight, I�m good with the results. My own personal shot across the bow as it were.

The Scout Platoon had the following pilots at this point. Moon Mullins, Johnny Sprott, Terry Petersen, Rich Pryor (no chitt) although he was humorless and white. Then there was me. A newbie named Billy Byers and a sweet promise of new meat in the pipeline. We had 7-8 LOHs in inventory and things were looking pretty good for us. Midnight struck on 1 October 1969 as we slept peacefully in our hooch. At 1 AM it began to rain.

Now I�d been scheduled for the first mission the next day and my bird was ready, all the flight gear in place. I�d once asked what the monsoon season was like and had been told it was something that developed gradually. Bullchitt. It went from a cloudless night to an unrelenting downpour that did not stop for 2 weeks. The Division weather guy said it rained 24� in the first 20 hours. Probably did�.I couldn�t see across the street to the Snake hooches and that was only about 40 yards. It was really novel the first day, and cool. Thank Jesus for the cool! We played cards, went to the chow hall, went to the Club, played cards, slept�and got cabin fever by the end of day two.

Our hooches were open air plywood and sheet metal. I had been wanting to do some rearranging on this point and when one of the other guys contrived a partition out of a flare parachute it was all the cue I needed. In skivvies and flip flops I picked up a hammer and headed for the ammo point where the Snakes were rearmed. Lots of wood there, and lots of dud rockets. I dismantled a couple of dozen rocket shipping boxes, boosted a few 2x4s from supply and dismembered a flechette rocket for the nail. 1100 in each rocket, about 2� long, maybe a bit less. Hardened steel. I lugged all this crap back to the hooch and found a saw, then got to work. Next thing I know, several other guys were off to the wood pile and we got busy. Come day 4 we had subdivided the hooch into 6 small bedrooms and a card room in the middle. I figured it was time for a Sanyo oscillating fan from the PX and when the wood dried, a paint job. Along the way I was designated the platoon ordinance officer and scheduling officer. Whoop-de-fuggin�-do.

After about a week the rain abated�a little�and we got scrambled. Diesel air horn blaring, a scramble to get dressed and up to ops��a Snake was down somewhere in the Valley and we had to go find it. I ran out to the line�yes, we�d had enough sense to put the doors on the LOHs but they leaked like sieves. No matter, I put on my mold covered helmet, strapped in and fired up�..one radio working�damn things didn�t like being soaked�..but it finally spooled up and I made contact with the Snake. Told him I had no FM radio. We launched into low scudding wet clouds and headed for Fire Base Birmingham as a flight of 3. Two Snakes and me. Other flights were spooling up�the Blues, Mad Gary�we had something to do! By God, we did it too! We flew out to Birmingham, refueled, parked and watched the rain. We did the same thing for 5 days running. No way in hell could we search anywhere to the west, the clouds were on the ground. It was frustrating to say the least. The question of the week: �How in fug did a Snake get out to the Valley and then go down?�

Well, it�s time to tell you about Nungs, CCN and FOB missions. As most of you are aware, to the west of South Vietnam is Laos in the north and Cambodia to the south. I don�t know a lot about our Sneaky Pete brethren but seem to recall that in general terms, CCN missions ran into Cambodia and FOB were in Laos. We sent Nung mercenaries into those countries via Hueys with Snake escort and they were in NVA uniform with proper equipment. Sometimes they operated inside the border regions and when this happened we knew about it because our free fire ROE would be modified within certain geographic areas�.NO FIRE. Makes sense, right? The tricky part is that we almost always put them in cold and extracted them hot. Well, that sucks pretty much, especially at night. Nungs were generally Vietnamese/Chinese mongrels, or other lost souls; mercenaries by any measure. They were not pussies; that�s a fact. They also provided some exemplary intelligence in the course of their missions. They might be out there a few days or a few weeks or longer sometimes. They often infiltrated NVA units as well. Big balls.

Anyway, the lost Snake had been escorting an FOB mission or some such and had gone down with a mayday. His wingman knew the general area where he�d lost his buddy but not precisely where. I can tell you from too much experience, olive drab is really hard to see on a triple canopy jungle floor.

Day six saw us give it up without a single flight to the Valley, then on Day 7 of the �search� the weather broke and we headed out on a standard recon mission in an area NOT where the bird had gone down. Have to tell you boys, we did not give up on our buddies that easily, any more than we paid strict attention to ROE. We entered the A Shau over the abandoned Fire Base(FSB) Rendezvous as we always had and always did, broke left to the search area, leaving our recon box behind us. We scoured hill and dale for almost 2 hours before heading back, gave our relief a briefing as to what we�d found in our recon box and�watched them break left. None of this was a result of conspiracy, we just did it. This continued all day and the next. On day 3 Mad Gary accompanied a team out to the valley and they went to the recon box we were supposed to be working. The Scout began picking up fresh sign immediately and it wasn�t long before he got fired up. Big brouhaha about that and in the afterglow Gary put 2 and 2 together and asked the team leads what the fug we�d been up to. They did not lie. You see, from our perspective, the only safety net we had was ourselves. We were way the hell and gone out in Indian country, beyond the artillery even, save for the 175mm guns at Birmingham and that was max range. We had precious little support. Gary understood this. He also understood we were had less fear of Leavenworth than where we were�and�that we were willing to get into a scrap so long as we knew somebody would come to snatch us up if we went down. He called Division Ops and got permission to resume the search. 13 days after the Snake went down we were out there and a Scout came so close to shooting this guy in a bomb crater�.�cept he didn�t have a shirt on and he was waving�.it was the AC from the Snake. The guy was so confused he didn�t even know which compass point the sun came up on in the morning. He had seen us many times but could not get our attention, so he�d slowly been following the direction we always used when we left the Valley�over FB Rendezvous. He only had about 30 miles to go. The front seater had been killed in the crash and for the first several days he had avoided many NVA patrols, but then got so ragged out that he just wandered aimlessly, his only sense of direction being the choppers flying home. Following the sun hadn�t worked well for him at all�.

Many NVA patrols��they were coming, all the signs said that. It was time to sharpen the fangs�.

Ch 12: Rotor Raptors

Most folks think of warfare in its component parts. Artillery, an infantry squad or something like that. Even warriors are prone to tight focus on the mission to exclusion of other facets and we were as likely to do that as any unit. The A Shau Valley was our turf and by damn we were going to do it our way! As the Monsoon progressed we found that very often the weather out in the Valley was good even if it sucked between Camp Eagle and FSB Rendezvous. Like flying thru a curtain�poof, pull out the sunglasses and there you have it. We scouted the Valley systematically although it would not appear so to the casual observer. A grid down at the south end in the AM, up north near Tiger Mountain in the PM, hopping around, picking up sign like a pointer after quail. We didn�t take much fire thru the month of October or even early November, but with each passing day the trail activity became heavier and we began to know our turf like no other unit in the region. There was the odd spat here and there, almost always a flurry of ground fire met with a barrage of rockets from the Snakes, but no .50 cals. or much else that was intimidating. Certainly not in comparison to our experience down Chu Lai way.

We had a new page turn in our endeavor that November though. 1st Marine Recon out of Phu Bai to be specific. Now the 101st had Lima Company, 75th Infantry, AKA �Sneaky Petes�, or LRPs. Say �lurps� and you are phonetically correct. The acronym stands for Long Range Patrol. 6 man teams that did on the ground what we did in the air, although they were not looking for the chitt-storms we were. I want to make clear I have nothing bad to say about Lima Company. Their job I did not want. On the other hand, 1st Marine Recon was a different animal entirely. We were tasked to provide support for a long term recon mission in the Valley and at first we were, well, very fuggin� underwhelmed. We, being as how we were a bunch of blood crazed maniacs, WE wanted to kill something, not baby sit a bunch of jarhead weirdos. I can only say they felt the same way and neither of our units understood that we were both sitting on that same bench�the Group W bench.

The basic set up was this: Insert a radio relay team of 12 as the old FSB Berchtesgarden, up about 6,000� in the cool�and then 4-6 teams of 6-8 men each at various other parts of the Valley. The theory was that we would rotate the teams out about every 2 weeks with replacements and let them do what they did. What we did not realize was the fundamental difference in mentality between Army LRPs and Force Recon. Those crazy fugs would start a battle at every opportunity and thus we wound up with more than a few hot LZs for extraction.

As example, one such team ambushed a water detail on a razor back ridge one morning, fell down grade to a previously established claymore ambush and popped the NVA company that came pouring down the ridge. They then withdrew and went up to the NVA bunker complex and took position in the bunkers whilst throwing smoke grenades outside and telling our guns to shoot the smoke. They didn't get a scratch, but the NVA were not so fortunate.

Well, that would probably be enough excitement for a single tour for most, but it wasn�t good enough for those nuts. No Sir! We�d be out doing our thing and they�d call up and ask if we were bored. Didn�t take long for that crap to get addictive, not long at all.

Along the way we were getting some new pilots and I was still the Combat Check Pilot. One was John Donnelly, the Child Killer. Just about fell off the bar stool when he showed up. Got him checked out pretty quick, and then a couple of others and we were starting to look fat for the first time since May.

It was around this time that my friend Johnny got shot down in the southeast fringe of the Valley. Johnny had this saying he repeated often: �Some days you get the bear, some days the bear gets you, and some days it just gets rained out.� This is how the bear got Johnny.

He had a nasty habit of trying to kill folks. You see, there was another Scout in the platoon named Mullins�.Moon we called him, and Moon was a USDA certified killer. I don�t recall his body count but by that time he had surpassed the 3 digit range and his glory inspired Johnny to do foolish things. He was operating in a large coliseum shaped bowl on the Laotian border�tall country with TALL trees and a few food plots here and there. Johnny saw some hooches under the canopy and spied a way to get closer. This was the psychotic part of him, the evil twin perhaps�he began hovering down between trees and under the canopy until he had worked his way about 75 meters into the forest and face to face with a hooch. Johnny and me, we had talked about this evil chitt he did and we both knew he�d get his clock cleaned doing it, but hey, he was the guy that had been ripping roofs off of hooches with his skids down near Tam Ky when we were out of willy petes so caution was not his middle name. It was about the time that Johnny said to himself, �Self, what do I do now that I�m here?� that about a dozen of Uncle Ho�s finest opened up on him.

The thought occurred to Johnny that an exit to the rear was called for and as they methodically chewed his LOH to shreds he calmly backed out of the hole he was in�all this without guidance from the gunner who was shooting everything that moved. Damn good memory and very cool maneuver, even if decidedly awkward. He had just cleared the canopy when lots of red and yellow lights began blinking on the dash and his power began fluctuating wildly. He stumbled down hill, headed for a very narrow gash in the side of the bowl where a stream had cut thru the terrain, then heard that incredible silence that can only come to a chopper when the engine quits.

I later gave Johnny a 10 for execution and a -2 for placement. He splatter-crunched into the stream bed with about 3 feet of air between each side of his rotor disc. His back was FUBAR and his gunner was, you know, like, �WTF do we do now?� I assume Johnny said something like �How would I know, I�m from Texas.�

In the ensuing melee there were several things that happened I thought had merit, not a one of which have I ever disclosed to a single soul. The Blues were scrambled as was I, and we raced out to save our dear friend Johnny. We flew out of the murky weather into sunshine and with guidance from the team lead overhead Johnny�s crash site I pushed the nose over to hurry things along. The LOH had a max sea level speed or Vne of 124 KIAS. That speed was reduced with altitude in accordance with the little red placard on the dash. I never paid it much mind. Problem with excessive speed in a chopper such as we flew could be found in two forms. In one case, usually under very high gross weight conditions, you could stall the retreating blade due to reduced relative air flow over the retreating side of the rotor disc. In the other, you could enter a transonic speed range on the advancing blade tip if you were at high altitude. I was 1) heavy and 2) at high altitude. The typical response in both events was a severe vibration and sharp pitch up of the nose with a left roll. Afterwards, my Snake lead said �You OK?� �Uh, yeah.� Oddly, my Oscar did not wet his pants, although I was close enough for the two of us. It were a wild ass experience, but we came out the other side upright and in one piece�so back to the rescue�at reduced speed.

The Blues landed upstream about 300 meters from the crash site and there was absolutely no way they were going to walk down stream to snatch Johnny. It was deep and the terrain on the sides was very steeply pitched. The grunts were milling around and I landed in the middle, told my Oscar to hop out and take ALL of the ordinance with him except for a thermite grenade. I called Mad Gary and told him I would go pick up Johnny, he said �Roger� and I was off to the task. Hoovered down the narrow cut a bit and saw Johnny and his gunner looking up at me�absolutely no place to park on either side and I had some very serious reservations about trying to hover while they clambered aboard�tail wind to boot. I backed up and saw a large boulder about 30� upstream from the downed bird and quickly settled down to it and found that with a little power I could balance on it well enough with only about 6� of belly in the water. That put my tail rotor blade tips about 2� above the water. Johnny and the gunner swam/sloshed their way over to me and started to climb in. I handed Johnny the grenade and told him to torch his bird and I would be back for him after I dropped off his gunner. In the process of all of this I had turned down the radio volume because Gary was yakking way too much and I found it totally unnerving, given the circumstances. I did not realize at the time that Johnny had fugged up his back as bad as he had�..figured the pained look was just for effect and a quiet plea for understanding. He backed away and I hoovered back to the grunts and dropped off the gunner along with his M-60 and other crap they�d brought with them. My crew started to load up and I waved them off, hopped up and went after Johnny. When I landed on the rock he pulled the pin and set the grenade on the floor above the fuel cell. Thermite Grenades pop as soon as you let the spoon go and the flare startled him�fell back in the rushing water then recovered, backpedaled away and as the flames began to roil up he turned and made his way to me. He climbed up on the rock and grabbed the door frame�I had let the power down a bit too much and my left skid slipped on the rock. Dan be yanking collective pitch pronto and Johnny be doing his best to hang onto the LOH as we staggered into the air. Short of it was that he crawled into the cargo compartment and as I hovered back to the LZ I remembered I�d turned the radios down.

So, I turned them up again. I was greeted by one of the longest strings of invective I�ve ever heard in my life. Gary going nuts �cause I wasn�t talking to anybody. I was down in the LZ and they were helping Johnny out of my ride before Gary shut up. When I got a chance I keyed the mic and said �I was sitting with the belly in the water, the antenna was under water sir.� Silly fug accepted that. Well, whatever works in a moment of crisis, right? We flew home in loose formation, surrounded by light rain. A hole opened up in the clouds and we were in a circular rainbow. One of the cool things I�ve seen in flight.

Johnny got about 3 weeks off and a new job as one of our maintenance officers. Well hell, he deserved that I figured. I was out in Johnny�s punch bowl a few days later and all that was left was one of the engine bay doors. A week later and it was gone as well. You�d never know anything exciting happened there that day, but by then our Recon boys were starting to have some problems. They had put so much heat on the NVA that the dinks brought in dogs to track them down.

It was just a few days after Johnny got shot down that one of the teams got hit hard and we had to make a hot extraction. 1st Recon lost two lads that day and the dinks lost about 30 for all their trouble, mostly at the hand of the Jarheads. It was a sobering loss but it was also easy enough to see the Recon boys weren�t going to weep in their beer over it. Their CO looked a lot like Yul Brenner. His philosophy was simple. If you call for extraction it should be a hot PZ. If you say you�re in contact there better be some blood somewhere. Within that company there were several of those boys that had been in country over two years. One had lost 3 brothers in the same unit. He had the most chilling eyes I�ve ever seen on a man in my life. They carried sawed off M79s in holsters, Swedish K�s, Winchester Mod 12s�nothing much standard at all, except for the odd CAR 15. They all carried more that one long arm, multiple 1911s and a lot of knives. They were not afraid of Chuck at any level, but it was about to get really rough in the next few weeks.

My recollection is that the end of our R&R came about a week later. I was working a muddy trail down in the south end of the Valley early one day and followed a squad sized unit all the way across the Valley floor to the west escarpment. Just before I found them I could see the muddy water swirling in their tracks which were leading directly to a low knob of a hill at the base of a sheer mountain face�little bit of single canopy scrub on top of the knob and a chill up my back. I knew we were fixing to meet each other�.

[bleep] me raw. Damn. Just damn. Keep 'em coming please.

Ch 13: Peace Through Firepower

I had picked up the trail very early in the morning on the east side of the Valley and began following it in a southwesterly direction. Looked to be squad size activity that had gone down in the predawn hours. Sun at my back and I began crisscrossing the trail in broad sweeps. Whether over jungle or open country with elephant grass, following trails be risky business. On one part the dudes leaving the sign will be fairly aware that you are following them. On the other, recall that this puts them in a posture of having to protect themselves against Snakes by dropping the LOH in their lap. It's a dicey game and there's no second place. We knew it and they knew it. Snakes can and often did deliver suppressive fire or close support within 10 yards of friendly forces...they are that good with guns and sometimes rockets. "In their lap" did not mean nearby.....

The Valley floor is a mishmash of crossing creeks and elephant grass. The trail I followed was one of many but the fresh activity was easy enough to see. It might surprise you that we were able, with consistent accuracy to look at scuff marks on dirt in the AM and ascertain within hours how fresh it was. Late afternoon in hot weather, not so good, but morning time, absolutely. Given heavy activity even the afternoon couldn't throw us far off track. Anyway, this was fresh stuff and I dodged and weaved my way along the trail, crossing over the dirt road that ran the length of the Valley N-S and then the A Loui airstrip, one of two on the valley floor. The other was the A Shau airstrip just west of Rendezvous, and both were the scenes of epic battles and great heroism during their active periods as Special Forces Camps earlier in the war. Passing the airstrip the signs of haste became abundant. Long strides and finally, muddy water swirling in the footprints. Ahead was the little knob I mentioned earlier and a stark earthen bluff about 75 meters beyond. It was several hundred feet high and had a foot path cutting across the face laterally. Now I gotta tell you that my stubby military hair was on end because it was a certain thing that a hot welcome awaited. I did a few didoes to the east, chatted with the crew and then cut in to the knob from the north, off trail and very low...and fast as my little Allison could peddle.

Here's the logic. You set a pattern, just like the enemy you trail. When you track somebody for 7-8 klicks they expect you to keep following the trail they took and they will so present their defenses. If you KNOW they are waiting it is insane to step through door numba 1. Ergo, here comes Dan from the north at about 100 knots and dragging skids through the elephant grass. What they can't see, they can't shoot. Visibility works both ways in this scenario and if that makes no sense, next time you're out in the woods, look up through the forest canopy and get an eye full of just how much sky you can't see. Add hills and ridges and you'll realize we were not without defensive tactics. So, we came smoking up on the knob and I pulled back sharply on the cyclic to do a "cyclic climb", or zoom climb if that makes more sense. You trade speed for altitude and it is a common maneuver used for many purposes in mountainous terrain. Two things happened as we topped the knob. First, I looked up on the bluff I mentioned earlier and saw a dink standing in the entrance of a small cave, looking down on me. Man oh man, I did NOT like that. Secondly, there were not dinks visible on the ground, but their packs were stacked at the crest and we were right...a squad. I saw this at the apex of the climb as I rolled into a 90* left bank to follow the off side terrain features back down and minimize our exposure. Quick call to the Snake lead and I'd like to claim a calm debonair demeanor by it weren't the case. By odd chance the Snakes SAW the guy standing in the cave entrance as I squealed like a pig....I rolled back level and headed back up trail toward the air strip as guns rolled in.

I told you earlier that "Twinkle Toes" was the best I ever saw at dispensing rockets and this was an example why. He fired 1....one rocket at the cave and as I looked over my shoulder in climb out I saw that solitary rocket vanish into the cave as Nguyen van Dink scrambled for cover. It did him no good. Belch of gray smoke, puff of dust and then a very large secondary explosion. Lead broke out to the left and wing started hitting the knob with rationed rocket fire and a barrage of mini-gun. The smoke cleared and the cave had totally collapsed. I was up to altitude within a few more moments and joined up in orbit with the Snakes just as Bilk came up on frequency. "Bilk" was the tactical call sign for a USAF O-2 unit that ranged over the I Corps area and though they used artillery often, their primary focus was FAC for tac air. I liked those guys, I really did. He was calm and debonair....inquired as what kind of chitt we were stirring up and got a brief from Lead. As was often the case when they called, he had a flight returning from aborted missions up north or in Laos with full ordinance loads and no place to drop. We always had solutions for such vexing problems. I don't think we were 5 minutes post strike when he put a WP rocket on the knob and we sat back with ring side seats for about 5 minutes while two F4s unloaded their 750# bombs and flew off to the O'club at DaNang. Their call sign was Gunfighter. Their O'Club was the DaNang Open Officer's Mess, or DOOM Club. They even had a DOOM Pussy on a mantle piece there. When a mission was underway the Pussy was turned to face the wall. When everybody was home, it faced the frivolity.

I never liked going back to an area where Snakes had fired up the bad guys, especially where there were bunkers, and there were bunkers on the knob. I had absolutely no compunction about doing that after a TAC air strike. Situations like that do not require direct hits or shrapnel to kill folks. Close proximity was enough to kill people with just concussion, or at least make them respectful. This was to be an exception to that rule I so faithfully believed. I came in with the rising sun at my back, did the cyclic climb and roll routine again, this time to the right...it happens so much faster than it takes to describe and your mind takes the snapshot images and digests them quick enough. Clothing and personal effects hanging from the tree limbs that remained, couple of craters just off the military crest of the hill, an open pit in the middle of the bunker complex with .....8 dinks laying curled up on the floor......fresh green uniforms.....all looking up at me.

You all remember that old Chuck Norris movie where he stands up in the middle of a river with an M-60 and starts shooting in slow motion? Well, that was all BS and we know it, but the slow motion part ain't. I experienced that many times over there, and in this case it was my gunner in back that was quick on the trigger...dull spaced flat blasts, links and cases flying out into the slipstream...splashes in the dirt that focused quickly on fresh green uniforms in the bottom of the pit. Tom was a very experienced gunner and let there be no doubt there were many like him over there that could and did shoot an M-60 as a point fire weapon. I know with certainty that he hit at least five of them in that very brief span of time that lasted a long minute or two in my mind. The target fell behind, time went back to normal speed and we rolled out under the collapsed cave northbound. I told the Snakes what we'd seen and we elected to call it good enough. There are very few OLD bold scout pilots. We wandered off to another recon grid and worked it without event until our relief showed up. Just another day at the beach....

Semper Worm Food.

I made it through Ch 8 Dan but it is taking me to a place I don't want to go, I'll bookmark it and maybe come back.

Fantastic Dan, just a fantastic story....

Terry, I understand that, truly.
___________________________

Ch 14: Comedy Hour

Before I carry on in the time line previously faithful, I think it appropriate to dispense some of the humorous things that happen, no matter where you are or what you're doing.

Tam Ky, 1969:

We were burning every hooch we found and going back for a second dose when they were rebuilt. Supply shortages made us creative as our appetite for Willy Pete was voracious. If we didn't get at least 3 hooches with a grenade we didn't do it. Sometimes we'd use alternative means for single structures, such as the 37mm Very Pistol. Single star rounds didn't work well, but the star clusters were the tens. Plus, nobody really used them much so there was a big supply...until we started using them a lot. Out of clusters one day and training another pilot...M-16 across my lap, Very pistol in my right hand and smoke grenade in my other, pin pulled. That's what we tossed if we took fire and we carried them in a 1/2 grenade canister which held the spoon down if we had to scratch our balls or something else. Anyway, we were out of clusters and I had a red star round. Did I mention that we shot livestock too? Well, we did. Sherman understood the tactic.

We had just torched a hooch when this pot bellied pig went scurrying down this dirt path, about as fast as a pig will go....I thought. My hands were full, my attitude fairly sporting....left handed, computing lead (its movement) and lag (our movement) and drop...blam! Nice red fire ball arched down thru the hole in the canopy ahead of where the pig was....what was that Disney pig's name....Charlotte?...the meteor arched toward red dirt and the pig appeared, unity was looking good except for trajectory...bit low. The flare hit the dirt, bounced up and immediately hit Charlotte in the left ham. You know what? I'll bet any one of you would lose the bet on how fast a pot bellied pig can run! I was still laughin' when we started taking fire....

My gunner was gonna shoot a water buffalo one day and asked if he could use the M-79, or what we called the chunk gun, or sometimes "thump gun". They sound like that when they shoot. Have a really vicious tearing sound when they detonate down range though. I said "sure" and he picked up the gun, loaded it and well, I figured he had enough horse sense to let me back off a bit.....nope. Thump, ker-rrrip! Buffalo hauled ass and I saw him jerk his hand....a piece of shrapnel had hit him in the thumb and another hit the belly of the LOH and pierced the fuel cell. To this day he can feel nothing in the thumb and still has the shrapnel buried in next to the first joint. My ass is still stinging from the azz chewing Gary gave me. I think the buff survived.

My platoon leader, a captain, was trying to clear a mini-gun jam one day and it was pretty hot weather. He dismounted the gun and was sitting in a Huey fiddling with it when it went off, grazing two crewmen and mortally wounding an adjacent Huey. I always thought the Captain was OK after that, 'cause Gary forgot about the buffalo thing pretty quick.

Hue, 1969:

-Chickens can't glide through more than about 5,000' or so of air before their wings give out. They lose a lot of feathers before they hit the ground. This amuses slick pilots a lot.

-I once snagged 3 kites in my rotor system flying over Hue' one breezy afternoon. It wasn't much problem cleaning the string out of the rotorhead so it became a sport practiced by LOHs, slicks and guns alike. My friend Johnny from Texas...he got 14 one day and the crew chief liked to fragged him after he finally got all the string out of that one. Maintenance issued an edict that said we weren't supposed to do that anymore. We tried but the legend had spread. Every time you just flew near Hue', all the kites started going down, sorta like WWI barrage balloons in reverse.

-We all got drunk one night (nothing new there) and on the way back to the troop area I started doing close order drill cadence and chitt. 5 pilot buddies played along and I thought it would be funny to right flank them while they were right next to about an 8' drop into a ditch...never dreaming they would actually follow my direction. They did. One guy was grounded for a week until they determined he hadn't broken his ankle.

-We used immersion heaters to heat water in big elevated bladders for hot shower water in the monsoon weather. They use a little gas tank that drips gas on sand and burns it up...heating the water pretty well. Somebody always had to light it and sometimes didn't know it had been lit and gone out...gas dripping in the sand and not burning. Remember Al Jolson? I saw a guy do that to himself one day just wearing his skivvies. Didn't hurt any more than his pride 'cause the whole troop saw it happen. Jesus, we laughed until we cried! Wasn't long after I did it too, but had enough judgment to not have an audience, plus it was really windy and rainy. Ya know what? Standing inside a fireball in your skivvies is a really odd experience. Illuminating is probably the right work. Made my skin tingle a lot and I didn't have any hair on the front half of my body 'cept for where my skivvies were.

-We had this slick platoon leader from Argentina named Suggs-Pierre. Curious fellow but well liked. Didn't understand English perfectly but did OK most of the time. He was out near the Valley one day doing a weather recon and operations asked if the weather was deteriorating. He replied:

"Thees es-a foura-seex, say again?"
"I say again, is the weather deteriorating?"
Long pause.
"Thees is foura-seex. Negative, eet es geeting worse!"

He retired from the Army as a Lt. Colonel. He is also the guy that almost dropped 3 guys on McGuire rigs on top of a tiger but that's another story.

-One of the grunts picked up a litter of puppies in Phu Bai one day. Standard issue mutts with the cockeyed half curl common to the country. He spread them around to all the platoons and they were named, "Slick, Scout, Snake and Blue." I never cared much for the filthy things so I didn't toy around with them. About November one of them started foaming at the mouth one day....we had something like 80 guys in the unit getting rabies shot schedules for 2 weeks, mostly pilots. Not me.

-I had a Winchester Model 12 riot gun I carried with me for monkeys and when I was Officer of the Guard. It hung on the wall by my bed and I had the only bed that commanded the front door. We always latched the door at night when we turned the light out to keep pesky frags out of the room. Johnny came home late on night from the club, Texas drunk. He crawled (literally) up the steps and was clawing at the door in a really odd way and I did not have a clue WTF was going on. I pulled "Da Judge" off the wall and racked the slide crisply. Johnny screamed "Don't shoot Dan! Don't shoot! Please God, don't shoot!" I think by the time I unlatched the door he was stone sober.

We're going back out in the Valley in the next chapter 'cause we left some Force Recon out there in indian country.

Good stuff DD, keep it coming. Did you read the book "Chicken
Hawk" ?

Ch 15: The Darkness

A very curious coincidence went down about that time, my direct participation with the Recon boys ended by random chance. My last mission working with them was the time they sprang the previously mentioned double ambush up in the north end of the valley. My distraction wasn�t planned, it just happened. I�d be off doing something really important like chasing monkeys through the tree tops and get back to find some other chitt had gone down.

We had begun working double teams on rotation and it was a period when we really didn�t see much of each other save for evening chow or at the club. Anyway, one day I came back with a couple of monkey scalps and found out that one of the Recon teams had been hit in their NDP. Couple of dead and a couple wounded. One of our slicks had extracted them and the pilot said there were a lot of dead Sons of Ho scattered about the perimeter, maybe 12-18 or so. We were philosophical about it for the most part, but sure did hate to see these guys get hurt. General consensus was that the dinks paid a dear price for what they did and we were pretty damn sure it wouldn�t happen again.

A really perceptive person would have known otherwise. The mission surge we were pulling wasn�t done to amuse the brass. In point of fact we were seeing increased activity. The usual flight hour schedule for a Scout normally ran around 60-80 hours per month, but it had ramped up to near 100 very abruptly. We had a �new� platoon leader, and I was training him out in the woods like everybody else. An ROTC 1st Lt. named Hector C. Scrawny little fug, egotistical and full of himself. Well, a fella needn�t worry much about that sort in that environment since attitude is the first casualty of any war. Now I didn�t think much of Hector�s skill as an aviator and that was going to be a problem. He had a tendency to fixate on things to the exclusion of more important stuff like dead trees looming ahead, or gauges past the red line.
I think there is a sidebar due here: The LOH was powdered by the Allison C250 turbine. It had an N1(compressor) redline expressed in percent, 100% being 60,000 rpm. The N2 or turbine was redlined at 6000 rpm but we didn�t bother with that since it was governed and was always superimposed on the rotor RPM (redline 540 rpm; operating speed was 520. The engine was rated at 317 SHP by Allison and was PILOT de-rated to 250 SHP due to gauge limits. Most of the time. Now this fella Hector, he had this issue with the LOH that you either learned to avoid or you picked up your Combat Infantry Badge.

It was called the Hughes Tailspin and what it amounted to was a loss of anti-torque command authority (tail rotor)due to high torque loads on the main rotor while hovering out of ground effect. In simple terms, too much torque in the main rotor could not be controlled by the tail rotor in certain circumstances and the result was an abrupt and rather violent yaw to the right which continued until one reduced power to the system or hit the mud, whichever came first. We lost two LOHs to that maneuver during my first tour as I recall and that�s fairly remarkable since we were doing the silk and goggles thing up in the high country most of the time where it is much more likely to occur. Hector, he just didn�t get it. He was just an FNG that wanted to be a platoon leader. Me, well I was the aircraft-fuggin�-commander. He was in charge of me (legally) and I were in charge of him when we was in my office. He had issues with that, so I always ended my tirades with ��sir.� Nobody else that ever flew in a LOH used that word over the intercom system in the history of the war. Me, I did, just to sooth his ruffled feathers. Like �Ya [bleep]� idiot! Don�t hit that [bleep]� tree�.sir!� I had a floor mic switch and most of the time I was stompin� it like I was keeping time to bongo drums or something. It makes the LOH shake a little when you hit it hard. My gunner one day asked me to take it easy on the floor switch and I asked if he thought I was being too hard on the LT. �No sir, he�s a fuggin� moron. It�s just we can�t get those switches through supply all that quick.�

The other stunt he liked to pull was the �let�s see just how quick Dan�s reflexes are!� maneuver. That was the tail spin thing. We�we the grizzled experienced survivors, we never began to hover early in a mission, regardless of configuration. We burned off fuel and ordinance before any of that foolishness went down. Not Hector. He was�in his mind�invincible and not beholden to the laws of physics or preachings of the Wright Brothers. �L-T, keep it above translational lift, don�t hover here.���.�L-T!� �IGOTITYOUCRAZYMOTHERPHUCKERSIR!!� One day I thought my gunner was gonna jump. It weren�t but about 20� down� We got to about 40 hours of dual in a world where 20 usually was sufficient and I had to go to the XO for a chat. Now this isn�t the kind of chat you want to have with anybody but I was firmly convinced that Hector was dangerous in the wrong direction and I liked the boys that would be flying with him. I hated laying this on Dave the XO but it had to be done. Next day after the fireside chat Dave took him out on a mission to the Valley. I liked Dave and still do. He had to do what he did, and since he was one of the odd guys that drove a desk and maintained proficiency with the Group W Bench�.I flew off to chase monkeys on my own.

Another team got hit that evening, and it weren�t good. One survivor out of 6 and there were, to hear it told, dinks stacked up around their perimeter like cord wood. The story I heard later on is that Hector hoovered down into a very confined LZ and landed after the decision was made to expedite extraction with the LOH. Our Blues were on the ground as well but it would have been a major undertaking to carry the dead down to a Huey sized LZ, so it was one at a time in the LOH. They got the wounded survivor out and it was the second or third guy that forever ruined Hector. The jarhead had died spread eagle and rigor had set in. There was no way he was going to fit in the cargo compartment of the LOH, so right there in front of Hector�s tender sensibilities the grunts go the fella properly oriented and broke a couple limbs to make him a bit more flexible. Now that ain�t pretty and my apologies to the family and all that, but after they put him in the LOH ol� Hector quit workin�. I mean it was zombie time for him. Dunno if he drooled or not, never asked. Dave took the controls and finished the mission�..and he had one helluva problem on his hands.

I�m not going to belabor the Hector story a lot longer and I want you to know his tale was an anomaly. The last day we flew together we were sent on a battle damage assessment (BDA) where a Spectre had jumped a convoy on the western fringe of the Valley. I stitched 2 dinks hiding in a 48� culvert as we flew by and Hector schized out and tried to kill us again. He had already been assigned as the Platoon Leader and about 30 days later when flight hour summaries were posted I mentioned to Dave that most of the Scouts had flown anywhere from 90-130 hours in the last month except Hector. He had eeked (not a typo) out 17 hours doing ash and trash flights when he could hook them, some as a slick co-pilot. That chitt didn't fly then and probably doesn't fly today. Hector had taken over the scheduling from me for obvious reasons and thus greased his way out of the unit into the Brigade liaison position. He never looked any of us in the eye after that.

Another team got hit a few days later and they had one survivor. This time the firefight was on when the Cavalry came over the horizon and the guy on the ground did a Hal Moore and called fire on his position. It worked and he got a purple heart from a piece of rocket shrapnel that ricocheted off the radio and nicked his dick. Don�t call for close air support from Guns unless you�re sincere.

The dinks had brought dogs in to track them down and in their world it was a new experience for which they were not prepared. 5 teams got hit in a period of about 3 weeks and the losses were too high to continue. We pulled the Recon boys out and had only minor interaction with them afterwards.

One thing they did for us I�ll never be able to repay is give us all their C4�all 1,800 pounds of it. We traded them pen flare sets for the C4. I was the platoon ordinance officer. ARRRRGH! They did not make LZs for extraction. If they needed a lift they either came out in Maguire Rigs or humped to someplace we could snatch them without a lot of fuss. They never brought us into a hot LZ and that by God is a good thing.

To this day I remember those boys and the missions they ran like it was yesterday. I never in my life presumed to be the meanest SOB in the Valley after I got to know them. I weren�t. Most twisted, maybe, but I was a wuss next to those fellas.

SEMPER FI!

Chapter 16: Sport in the Rolling Hills

Like the old war melody says, "Down collective, pedal right, hope I am alive tonight...spin, crash and burn!"(to the tune of Bye Bye blackbird)........

I always had that thought whilst plying my trade as one of Nixon's Hired Guns. Always wondered who coined those lyrics too. Anyway, When I flew Scouts with the various Cav units across the minor length and breadth of S. Vietnam, we flew as hunter-killer teams, which is another misnomer because the Cobra Guns did the killing for the most part, I was just bait. Those sick bastids in their air conditioned Snakes would joke about reeling Scouts up every once in awhile to see if they'd had any nibbles...

I was out in the A Shau Valley one day, only a few klicks from Hamburger Hill(Dong Ap Bia) with a heavy pink team, doing a visual recon east of THE HILL, and south of Tiger Mountain, a flat top massif that always appeared ominous to me. I never flew over it once in 2.5 years. Boogie Men lived there! We flew out at altitude and once in the general area I made a brief look-see for obvious signs of the enemy, like flak, or formations doing close order drill, then hummed my opening line as I started descent in a typically erratic spiral. No, not a Death Spiral, an erratic spiral. Yes, they look alike, that's the idea. The Dead Man Zone for small arms fire against choppers lies between 100' and 1500' AGL, the less time spent there the better.

As the rolling hills rushed up I added power, rolled back to the left, and began ferreting out the small game. Low, slow, cock-eyed out of trim, three shades hotter than Hades, and the smell of green. It was my world. My crewman, a Spec. 4 serving as an armed observer sat beside me in the left seat, M16 laying across his lap, red smoke grenade in his hand that was to be tossed in the event we took fire. That was a highly likely prospect out in the Valley.

Over the river and thru the dale, to Uncle Ho's Hoards we flew! Up a hill, negative G push to keep the altitude down, transmission pressure light glowing red as it always did when the oil floated in the casing during those maneuvers. Turn left, turn right, up the hill! They were all covered with scattered scrubby trees and lots of elephant grass, which can reach 12' in height and is a wonderful world for hiding things from people like me. Things like 12.7mm guns for one. Whoops! there goes one out the right side, well, not a gun, but the pit they build for them with the little bunker on one side. Freshly dug I might add.

The little vermin are sneaky bastids, I give them that. They found out early on that a flight of two Cobras could pretty much tap dance all over one of their 12.7mm positions and never even worry about it. Soooo, they started grouping them in twos and threes. "Okay', sez I, 'Hey Mr. Guns, there's a .50 pit 5 o,clock and 100 meters or so, fresh.' In our way, we called that gathering intel back then. Problem was they never deployed just one in the A Shau Valley. They had stuff they were proud of, and liked to take pot shots at interlopers. So, if one was on 'Hill A", there was likely to be another on "Hill B". Usually within a couple of hundred meters, terrain permitting, and also at the same elevation. This tactic permits "Mutually supportive fire", and changes the equation greatly in regards to the Cobras. It takes 3 Snakes to deal with 2 guns. I had two Snakes.

Low stayed, slow was out the window. 80-100 knots(that's faster than a buzzard) now, down the hill, up the hill, and about 250 meters away there lies a freshly dug pit for another 12.7mm. Entrenching tool still laying on the bottom of the pit. Whoops again, call the lead Snake and babble about stock picks, real estate, and cat hunting for a few seconds while I think "Whoa" to my trusty steed and get it turned around for another quick pass back to Hill A. Much to my chagrin as I fly over Hill B, the entrenching tool is gone, and I reported that before telling them that there was now a tripod set up at Hill A and my stuff is getting decidedly weak. Yes, Cobras can duke it out with .50's, the LOH cannot, and .50's will chew a new anal orifice in a chopper...chop chop!

As I went over the position I broke left toward Tiger Mountain and the guns rolled in on Hill A. A tactically awkward situation for me as they were my cover and life line, yet the gun had to be hammered, pure and simple. I knew full well that Hill B probably was set up or very close to it, I was pinned between the Snake's GT line and the mountain, the only path out being over Hill B. Yuckee-poo. The good news was that I had a brand new, never been fired GE Mini-gun hangin' on the left side, and a full load of ammo. I was also below their line of sight for the moment. Any attempt to climb to altitude would have put me in their sights sure as sunrise and voided any advantage I held at the moment. To paraphrase the old Indian saying, 'It was a good day to wet your pants'. I had long since learned that the best defense is truly a good offense, and since I was in the Cav, and certifiably insane since I'd volunteered for this crap, I did the only thing I could do. Charge! I have a long history of being offensive.

Not only can choppers do what planes do, they can do more. And less. A lot of less. Their advantage is that you can literally drag your skids through the grass and even at a leisurely 120 knots you go by pretty quick to a ground based observation. We were almost up to that speed when Hill B reared up a couple of hundred feet above us, a saddle on either side that blocked earthbound view of low level ingress. I used one of those "little less" tricks, called a cyclic climb, or simply pulling back on the stick to trade speed for altitude. Zoom Zoom! The Mini-gun on the LOH was flexible in elevation only, azimuth controlled with the foot pedals, and in the circumstance I'd fully depressed it as I expected to be looking at them through the chin bubble when they came into view. Further, I planed to go negative over the top and hopefully keep the gun on target until nearly overhead at which point I woud dive once again for the safety of lower elevations. Up the hill! Time for one of those famous "time standing still" moments.

The gunner was waiting, his azimuth about 20* off to my left, the other varmint was crouched low with an ammo can at the ready. He fired as he began to swing the gun, and as I replied.

Couple of points on this: 1) The 12.7 has a cyclic rate of fire in the range of 500-700 rounds per minute, it also has a huge hour glass shaped muzzle flash, visible even on bright sunny days. One in five rounds is a tracer, and if anyone asks what they look like, just give 'em your best steely eyed stare and say "basketballs". Big round red basketballs. Every time one goes by you hear a deep sonic crack, then you get 4 more audibles before the next light show. It is REALLY impressive. Tracers don't seem to move really fast when they are heading right at you BTW. At least not until they go past, ZIP-CRACK! They do not go "whoosh" or "whiz" like in the movies. 2) Mini-guns in US Army versions, have a selective fire rate of 2000 or 4000 RPM. At that time they were noted for jamming often when fired at 2000rpm, so that mode was seldom used. Both rates had a 3 second burst limiter, meaning that you got to shoot for 3 seconds, then your water hose shut down. Again, 1 in 5 was a tracer, crackety-crack, I'm sure it looked impressive from the wrong end too, but I never saw that. Effective range was touted at 1100 meters, mostly because the splash of bullets was visible at that range.

Up close they churn the earth, creating a rooster tail effect of earth as the rounds sought their target, usually a serpentine path of mauled dirt, trees, whatever got in it's way. Inside of 100 yards it is impossible to shoot somebody less that 6 times with one that is on low rate fire. God, what a beast!

My first rounds impacted about 20 yards low and left, a bit of back pressure on the stick, a bit of right pedal, and the dirt dragon began it's journey to the pit. Range at this point was about 60 meters. It was the OK Corral. High Noon. I was Matt Dillon, they were the guys in black. And only because the sound of my chopper had distorted in the hills and they didn't know precisely where I was going to show up, my vomit of lead got to them about 1/2 second before theirs got to us. I was able to hold on target for most of the remaining 2 seconds of burst, flew on over them and down the hill as planned.

Though I seldom reconned a .50 position that had been engaged by Snakes, I knew for certain the condition of this one. I went back, did one u-turn overflight then ran back down the hill, built up speed and then climbed out to higher altitude. The gun was mangled almost beyond recognition, and that was enough for me. Enough was enough. Neither the Oscar or me could talk for about 5 minutes afterward, and when I finally told the team lead I got a bad case of the shakes. Back at the club that night I got a really bad headache with a 6 hour delay fuse. Best thing I know of to cure a hangover is adrenaline. Down collective, pedal right, hope I am alive tonight...

If you do a Google Earth view of the Valley it's kind of hinky and bears little resemblance of what it was then. The valley is settled, agriculture well developed and it is difficult to imagine the moonscape it once was. It is a better place today than then. Gone are the dragons and terror. Maybe the spirits remain.

Chapter 17: Highlights in the Fog

The fog I refer to is not the familiar "Fog of War" where everyone's plans are irrelevant 5 minutes after the battle starts. Nope. I refer to that interminable time found between the day you last know visceral fear and the flight home, or the endless days of repetition, the crackle of small arms blending with the whine of the chopper, the Ka-rump of HE and whooshing rockets. Sometimes the drunken Knights, on the darkest nights, would pause as they left the O'club and listen to the distant moan of a Vulcan Cannon, silently hoping the little ferret destined to kill them had in fact just been obliterated by the hail of a thousand small bombs delivered by a crimson tongue. We had our superstitions and closely protected dreams.

I pulled out my diary and taken a stroll through memory lane. Memories flood back like a dark ocean wave, their foundation mostly adrenaline. The little notes on a 3x5" notebook are cryptic but speak volumes to me, each brief accounting a day in the life of and properly rendered, each worthy of a book...if one could only choreograph the myriad of coordinated activities necessary to allow events to unfold in such fashion that the reader would quite literally soil their shorts...there would be no more war, no more warriors and no more people such as me trying vainly to impart such first person knowledge.

I cannot instill the terror, or the numbness to that which is acquired. I cannot give you the scent of jungle, the enemy cook fire and fragrant sauces which leads the hunter to rain hell on their breakfast. I cannot explain the emotional conflict of seeing great beauty in a land and people devastated in one instant, and in the next, transforming into one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Of detaching from one reality and coldly ignoring the mothers and brothers and sisters in the distant background whose worlds will be altered indelibly by the twitch of a finger. Yin and yang.

There are five tales to be told in this chapter. They are disparate in nature and setting. I cannot state you will be amazed by the telling, but they are moments that linger, bubbling to the top whenever I recall those days.

25 December 1969 - Camp Eagle, RVN

Bob Hope was there doing his annual USO tour with all the pretty gals. The Gold Diggers and a select few starlets. I was by that time very senior in the platoon and opted to let one of our other pilots see the show while I did standby duty. Odds of me flying were nil since the camp was essentially a no fly zone during the show so it would not be disturbed by the beat of rotors and other obnoxious sounds. We had two teams out on rocket belt patrol and they would refuel/rearm at Phu Bai as necessary. Me, well, I figured to have the day to myself, maybe do a little reading. Such expectations were rendered unto smoldering rubble not long after the show was set to begin. I was in operations when the call came in from Division HQ. It seemed that a company unit was engaged down south in the foothills near the Bach Ma and we were to do what the Cavalry does...ride over the ridge with sabers high and save the day. Humbug.

There was the necessary back and forth Q&A: Why could not the rocket belt patrol deal with it, they were airborne and no doubt bored witless? Such logic does not conform to "The Plan", so the air horn was activated and we scurried to our steeds, certain this was another goat roping contest which would be the stuff of much laughter later on.

As you fly down QL1 from Camp Eagle the vista is one of great contrast. On the left is the coastal flat lands interlaced with the myriad of channels and waterways that are part of the coastal estuary. It is not broad, perhaps 5-8 kilometers before coming to the white sandy beaches on the shore of the South China Sea. On the right, foothills quickly give way to soaring escarpments, very shear slopes only a mountain goat could like. Beautiful yet always foreboding. There were steep walled canyons interspersed along the run of the rising gradient, some quite small, some very large and scenic. They were not the scenes of pitched battles in the main, mostly because access was not possible from the west and infiltrating large units into these features required passage through lands firmly under control of friendly forces. We did not expect to find what we found at all.

Fifteen minutes out of Eagle and we established two way voice with the unit commander who reported heavy casualties. This was one of those epiphany moments for several reasons. The commander was a fellow named Allen. Captain Allen, who had only a few months previous forsaken his position as Weapons Platoon Leader (Guns) in our unit for a ground command. Allen was second or third tour, previously a Green Beret, and was absolutely fearless. Most of the time. When he heard our call sign he knew who we were of course and made sure we knew who he was. Geesh, a real Xmas reunion! He seemed disheartened to hear we only had one Snake, or what was called a light pink team. On the other hand, he knew me and was somewhat pleased that I had a bird with a mini-gun. We were briefed, smoke was popped to verify position and I did a low speed overflight. I found his forward position on the first pass, saw a couple of friendly KIA's on the ground, and about 20 meters forward a large heavily reinforced bunker. Beyond that a series of heavy fortifications on the steeply pitched slope, straddling a trail network that led to the west. His forward position was pinned down by light machine gun fire....could we help?

I conversed with the Snake briefly. Due to canopy coverage and his mix of nails and HE Quick fusing, rocket fire was not the best approach. The canopy would cause the rockets to detonate in airburst form, likely causing casualties to our side and no harm to the dinks. I talked directly to Cpt. Allen and suggested I could keep the dinks occupied and allow the forward elements to withdraw under cover of mini gun fire and he agreed. I asked him to advise his folks that hot brass would rain on them as I would be hovering directly over their heads..and he should tell me when to go.... He coordinated this with his folks and I settled into a stable hover over the friendlies...they were all looking up at me for that brief moment...the firing slits in the bunker did not provide sufficient elevation for the bad guys to see me as I was about 20' above the canopy, or 125' above the ground. Cpt. Allen gave the go and the mini gun roared for a full 3 second burst. Most of it centered on the firing slits in the front of the bunker and as soon as the gun stopped firing I gave it another full burst for good measure. I looked down and the dozen or so troopers that had been below me were gone, as were the bodies I'd seen with them. Nothing like the heat of battle to mobilize a man. I peeled off the slope and took up a low orbit over the small valley to the north. Once a series of rice paddies, the terraced structures had long since be abandoned due to the war. Very pastoral....disarming....it did not seem like a place of death.

More pow wow with the Dai oui'...say it "Die We", or dink for captain. His position was consolidated at that point and he said his closest position to the bunker was about 80 meters east...could we put some rockets on the position? Why sure we could, no problem. Wasn't going to accomplish anything but boost the trooper's morale, but we could and did. Guns wasn't bashful on his run, did a salvo fire of all of his HE in one pass. Bravo, good show and all that chitt...but hey, Dai oui', what now? He needed Medivac and resupply. 8 dead and low on blah blah blah... Problem was, we were up in this valley and had no radio contact with anyone. His relay which brought us to his position was sent thru a passing chopper and was a fluke. We would have to exit the valley to bring help, pure and simple. Did he need anything prior to breaking station? Well, he understood the situation and asked if I could evac some bodies. Merry fuggin' Christmas.....

I wandered back over to the area of the bunker where the initial ambush had occurred and expended the balance of my mini gun ammo, mostly to shed weight. My gunner kept his ammo in reserve. A smoke popped to the east and I hovered over to an improvised LZ just big enough for a LOH. Vertical hover down to churned earth and stumps and the boys brought me one of their brothers for his ride to the 85th Evac Hospital. He was wrapped in a poncho and had no head. They loaded him in the cargo bay beside the mini gun ammo tray, backed away and I saw Cpt. Allen to my front...dirty, haggard but still with that fire in his eye. He nodded to me as I pulled pitch, I returned the favor and a few seconds later peeled off down slope to exit the area. I climbed to altitude with the Snake off my left side, that peculiar smell of death all pervasive. Guns asked if we were OK and I said yes. We exited the valley and he started talking to operations to explain what was going on. We were about to enter the twilight zone....

Guns called for a Medevac and air support as soon as contact was established. The message was relayed to Division Operations and our request was.....DENIED. WTF?

Say what? I guess Guns did all he could do and later I heard he came close to insubordination over the affair. I asked the obvious questions, like what's the matter with our sister troop at Phu Bai, the USAF, etc. etc....etc. He said "They have shut off all missions due to the show." Well, fug me gently. I dialed up operations and was no doubt more caustic than Guns had been but received some consideration because I was one of those insane Scout pilots who just didn't have the Big Picture. WTF? They wouldn't give me the Division Frequency either. You see, the likelihood of Scouts getting shot down was high so we never were issued the SOI or secret code and frequency book, cause it might fall into enemy hands. Like I gave a rat's ass. This was one of those pivotal moments in my life when I was introduced to the concept of cynicism. No amount of ranting or swearing on the frequency brought relief or courts marshal. Truly vexing....I didn't even have any ammo to shoot the bastids with!

I commensurated with Guns and we flew on to Phu Bai. He went to our sister Troop's rearm pad while I dropped off the kilo. Met him over at POL...put two squirts in the tank and we stole some ammo for the mini before heading south again. I gotta tell ya, between Guns and Me and Capt. Allen, we probably coulda cleared out the REMFs at Division HQ bare handed. It was a bad situation all the way around. What we did was a repeat of the first mission. We unloaded ordinance, picked up dead and went back to Phu Bai for the drop off, rearmed and repeated the cycle. 6 times.

On my last pickup I had a wounded fellow on board and that was an improvement of sorts. We landed in darkness, absolutely disgusted with anything having to do with our command structure. In one of those rare moments of contrition, we were met on the flight line by our CO and issued a half dozen mea culpas, a few WTFs? and a "I don't fuggin' get it either." Now I know with certainty Bob Hope would have chitt if he'd known what was going on, and I never held any of this against him. The responsibility for this debacle rests on the command staff, 101st Airborne, then under the leadership of one Major General John Wright. Azzhole.

The next morning there was a combat assault of battalion strength posited on Captain Allen's position. It was dispatched to relieve them and clean up this little untidy mess. The operation lasted for over a week and led to the effective destruction of an NVA battalion. Captain Allen's boys suffered something around a dozen dead and overall, 85% casualties in the brief period of Christmas day and night. They were probed and assaulted throughout the period, virtually ran out of ammo and were pretty much up the creek with no paddle when help arrived. The boys that relieved them were either not briefed on the situation or failed to take it seriously, for they had some pieces of their asses handed to them as well...before Tac Air was brought in and the complex leveled. Never saw the Captain after that but recall he made it out alive and back to the states. He was a war lover though, and I'd be surprised if he didn't find his way back before the war ended.

It was the Christmas that the Grinch stole and it took me a great many years to get over that day. I flew 11 hours that seemed like minutes. The show was over and gone long before I shut down and helped the gunner rearm. I did manage to get pie eyed drunk though....doubtless I never found an answer for what pained me in the bottom of a bottle. The only antidote for such poison is time my friends. It won't cure you but it will make you a better shot.


6 Jan 1970 - Khe Sahn

We were staging out of Quang Tri, working the Khe Sahn Plain. The weather was mostly suckish as is routine during the monsoon. Our recon grid, or "kill box" as they say these days, was west and south of the scene of the siege of Khe Sahn by about 15 klicks. The country is highly variable in I Corps...flat...majestic mountains, flat....up and down...etc. We flew along an old supply road which paralleled a river bed on the way out, slipping under soggy clouds and drizzle. A Heavy pink team with an extra LOH. What we called a white team with heavy cover. Theory was that if somebody got shot down maybe the second LOH could extract them. That my friends is a questionable theory, but we weren't deep thinkers when it came to safety. A LOH can heft two additional troops at sea level, but the odds of doing it within normal operational parameters in the high country is a long bet.

When we got to the end of the valley where the old base was we simply did not have the ceilings to climb so we slithered under the deck and between dead trees until we broke out into blazing clear skies just west of Khe Sahn. We worked west mostly and didn't find much to write home about. The time enroute was long, the recon mission short. An hour later we were on the way home. Our relief team passed us about 10 klicks east of Khe Sahn and we gave them a short debrief and went about our way. About 10 minutes later one of the LOHs in the relief team had a mechanical and had to abort. Now this is where is gets a bit weird and it illustrates the usefulness of sticking to a plan.

There was no one else available to provide backup so we scurried home to refuel. One of the Guns and me were to go out and provide backup...or complete the team. You see, when the scout had the mechanical, one of the other Snakes escorted him home. We had a single LOH and Snake on station, deep in Indian Country and a long way from help. We pulled pitch and headed west. Made it almost to the end of the valley when the team lead on station went bananas on the radio. His LOH was down and on fire. Guns was making runs on a .50 cal position single handed and his mini guns were jammed. We got to the valley's end and were met with a solid wall of clouds, right down to ground level. My friends, this is one of those real no chitt moments when only one word fits. Fug. I mean, just plain ol' fug. There ain't no depression know to this fella that exceeds that one. Sittin' there with your mil-spec thumb up your azz and nobody to pull it out for you. We're flying around in circles listening to our buddy taking all manner of fire, two guys are on the ground and we're about as useless as tits on a boar hog. I don't really recall how long we did that circular thing but about the time our buddy ran out of rockets and kept makin' dry runs on the dinks, me an Guns got to talkin'. I said something about like, "Well, you know I can hover from one dead tree to another, can you?" Hardly had the thought been uttered when Guns rolled out of his turn and headed for the juncture of trees and clouds. I gotta tell you earth bound boys, that is some seriously risky business. For me, in the LOH, it really wasn't that tough because I could get real slow. A loaded Snake can't do that, and when visibility is squat^2 and you don't have a windshield wiper, it is extraordinarily courageous. I was fairly convinced I was gonna see him fireball that thing on a dead tree. We were that low.

Even when you're a Cav Pilot and God's gift to the defiance of gravity, it is possible to forget just exactly how fuggin' good you are. We slithered out of the clouds just about where we had found sunshine on the previous mission and almost immediately saw the pillar of black smoke to our southwest. Guns went to altitude and accelerated, leaving me in the dust. I didn't bother climbing or zig zagging as I dragged skids thru the elephant grass at red line speed. We was headed for a serious piece of hell and I didn't have a clue where anything was 'cept my friend Rich the pilot and the gunner, Gerry. Their place was obvious for miles around.

As I mentioned earlier, guns had VHF radios and we didn't. They talked a lot on that one, so I didn't always hear what was going on...right away. The crash site was about 12 klicks from Khe Sahn, not a great distance actually. By the time they had briefed and my Snake had taken a few pot shots on the low ridge NE of the downed bird I was pretty much on the scene. I flew over the low ridge then down slope over the burning LOH. Rich had Gerry pulled off to one side of the chopper. Both were bloody and half of Rich's fatigues were burned away. Ooops! Dead trees, 12 o'clock! Breaking right, down into the gully, whoop-dee-fuggin'-doo....more dead trees, more violent turns, high gee yanks on the cyclic and then a looping return to the crash site. Guns asks if I can snatch them and I said I could but needed to dump ordinance. Chitt goes flying out the door, grenades, ammo, everything but the essentials. I was doing about 100 knots...we were seriously exposed and taking a load of fire from the ridge....two dead trees, violent jerk on the cyclic to the right and I roll to about 90* bank, sneaking my 22' rotor diameter through a 10' hole. That probably left about 2' top and bottom. My observer wet his pants. Thru the trees I did a reversal on the controls and put down the pitch, entering a speed reduction flare while in a steep bank left turn. About 50 meters out and we started taking intense fire from the ridge and my gun bird flew only a few feet above me a long ripple of rockets whooshing overhead as he did. It was, even by my standards, about time to crap my shorts. As if that weren't enough, suddenly the Snake that had been on station loomed into view from my right front quarter in a way nose high flare. He slowed, almost zeroed out on speed, jammed his pedals and did a little pirouette...like he thought he was some kind of acrobatic champ or something....then settled down to a very low hover right next to Rich and Gerry. Me...I was suddenly transformed into a gun bird...we started flying circles around the Snake (only time in history) and laying down M-60 fire on the ridge and surrounding real estate. I don't think my gunner let off the trigger once before the snatch was completed.

I saw something truly amazing when I came around on the second orbit. My friend Rich, all 160# of him, had Gerry, all 240# of him, over his shoulder as he reached up to unlatch the ammo bay door. The door came down and he sat Gerry on the door as gentle as if he was a little baby. Put his legs under the restraining cables, then laid Gerry on his side. He walked under the turret of the Snake and up on the downslope skid, opened that ammo bay door and climbed on. We did the infamous "di-di-mau" maneuver, heading out in the general direction of Laos. My gun bird held a high in trail position to cover us as we slowly climbed and turned back toward Khe Sahn.

I knew Gerry well. Despite both us being big we had flown a lot together. Flying along the river that defined the border of Vietnam and Laos he looked over at me and pointed down to Mother Earth. I waved to him to acknowledge his message and called Guns to tell him what was going on. Gerry's arm dropped beside him on the bay door and his head lolled down too. We broke right and scurried on to Khe Sahn strip where the Blues were waiting. I'm asking myself how that 3.2 seconds we'd just lived through allowed enough time for them to organize and launch the Blues to recover our boys. Time warp......

We landed next to a Medevac bird and the medics carried Gerry quickly away. Rich climbed on with them and we retreated homeward. I would never see Gerry again and he never regained consciousness. He had been shot through the soft tissue behind the left knee and bled profusely. He died 2-3 days later from what is known as a fat embolism to the brain. It's something that kills a lot of creatures when they are struck by high velocity rounds in or very near bone structure. Rich, well, I did see him again, many years later down at a camp ground on Bahia Honda Key not far from Key West. He was a pilot with US Air, had the family with him for a camp out adventure. His wife sat quietly to the side while we talked after the initial "how the fug are you's!" were out of the way.

He had gone ahead with the mission because he was, as many are, invincible. He crossed the ridge about the same place I had and seen a .50 pit with Chicoms manning the gun. He tried to do a reverse to engage them but had overlooked the possibility of there being another gun, and that one got him, along with a barrage of small arms. He had no recollection of putting Gerry on the ammo bay doors, or having ridden back to Khe Sahn on the other side. He knew what had happened up until the time he got shot down and had a recollection of seeing me fly over the first time. Other than that, bupkis. He had an enormous load of guilt over Gerry's death and we talked about that for over an hour. I think in the end it was a good thing for him I drove down that day to meet him, probably good for both of us. We still exchange Xmas cards and the occasional note about this or that. I got a long letter from his wife not long after we met, thanking me for talking to him about what had happened. Now and then, when I worked at Miami ARTCC he'd check in on frequency and say "Is that you 1-2?" "Yeah, it's me 1-5, howzit?" It was always clear and smooth, even when it weren't.

Feb/March 1970 - the "Z"

I don't recall the date precisely but it doesn't matter much. Again, out of Quang Tri, I was off on a recon with my good friend "2-2", the drafted Eastern pilot. We were a light pink team, though I don't know why. Probably the logic went something like, "well , we have no hostile intel out there so let's send somebody to look."

We flew past Khe Sahn to the northwest. Me, not caring particularly where we were going...after awhile, I sez to '2-2', "We gonna refuel in Peking?" Well, we had our grid and we was damn well going to take a look. It was right up in the extreme NW part of S. Vietnam, right square on the DMZ next to Laos. Craggy rock pinnacles amidst rolling elephant grass plains....perfect places for twelve gazillion guns..."Why don't you go down and have a look 1-2" Well, maybe not. I was looking at track trails in the grass. Tread tracks. Lots of them. Placed looked like a training course for tanks at Ft. Hood. Tanks and self propelled AAA guns, that sort of chitt. I asked '2-2' if that looked like track trails it him and he said...."uh...yeah. Let's get out of here." That's one of the reasons I like him. Sensible fellow AND really fuggin' good with rockets. They didn't believe us when we turned in the reports. Me and Bob, we just laughed and said we weren't going back to take pictures.

April 1970: One of my last Scout missions, "Flight of the Epiphany"

It was simple. Bait a .50 cal. It was one of those things I knew better than to do, yet did it anyway. My brother had told a tale about one of his college room mates that had died doing just that while flying C Model guns in the Delta. I knew it was risky but this dink azzhat had been plinking at us from the vicinity of FSB Rendezvous for several weeks and it was getting very annoying inasmuch as that was our preferred route into the Valley due to the availability of forced landing areas (roads). We went out, two Snakes and me. Simple and to the point. Get this guy to pop a few rounds at us, determine his position and take him out.

I descended over Rendezvous and started working up the ridge to the north. It was my opinion that the gun was on the top of the little knob about 200 meters up the ridge. Meandering over the ridge, whistling in the dark as it were, I did not overfly the hilltop. Instead I was teasing, hoping he would pop a few caps in circumstance favorable to my case and thus expose his position. As I passed the knob headed north I flew over the beginnings of a valley, the head of it actually. Trees defoliated, ground covered with leaves, little sign of note. Now I have to say that I never liked that kind of country, simply because it was too difficult to discern activity. It was something we did, this defoliation, but it was never to our benefit in truth. Certainly not from a Scout's perspective. Very abruptly I was surrounded by the most incredible hail of small arms fire I experienced in the course of 2.5 years in Nam. A curtain of tracers in all quadrants. It was one of those moments again, this one being the single time in Nam when I knew with certainty that I was going to die. Slow motion time...my gunner, a fellow named Mathews, was leaning out of the cargo cabin behind me, M-60 thumping away. As we accelerated I followed his fire and watched him stitch one dink after another, like ducks in a shooting gallery. Totally surreal. I yelled "Taking heavy fire" to the guns, they peppered the area with rockets and to my utter disbelief we flew over the low ridge to the left and out of their field of view intact, and without a single hit. File that under "Abso-fugging-lutely amazing." I don't think either of us could do anything more than sit there confounded by the idea that we were still alive. We certainly didn't say anything for awhile. Guns called and asked if we were OK. Told him we were but I wasn't likely to go back for a second round, and anyway.....

The FACs monitored our frequencies a lot and had heard the exchange. I don't recall if it was a Bilk FAC or one of the others, doesn't matter much. He offered to put some iron on target if only we would show him where it was. Well, I was not going back in to mark it, but the site was easy enough to ID simply by visual cues, so the Gun lead told him where to put the HE and we sat back to watch.

These Air Force boys, they had so many rules about when and where they could drop iron. A flight of 4 F-4s out of DaNang had aborted a Sky Spot in Laos due to cloud cover and were either going to drop their bombs for us or in the South China Sea for they were RTB DaNang with bingo fuel. I didn't know this and didn't care. The FAC called fighters inbound and movement caught my eye. It was the flight, in a diamond formation worthy of the Thunderbirds, dropping out of the sky as one toward the hilltop. Now I thought that was curious because I'd never seen such operational practice before. I watch closely and to my eternal amusement they all pickled ALL of their bombs at the same time and began their pullout, straight ahead to DaNang. There followed, the single largest explosion I have ever witnessed anywhere in my life. It took on the characteristics of a nuclear detonation.....the vast shock wave, the fireball, and the mushroom cloud. It was ASTOUNDING! And yes Virginia, I was very comfortable going back in for a review of the carnage. Even Mathews thought it was OK.

There was a lot of churned dirt and mangled stumps. A lot of clothing hanging from limbs from ruptured back packs. There was nothing recognizable in context of parts or pieces. We took not a single round of fire as I hovered over the scene and inhaled the smell of victory. It smells a lot like expended HE sometimes, napalm on others. We never took another round of fire from our .50 gunner over Rendezvous. Either he was taken out or decided he needed a less violent venue for his trade. It lends credence to the old saying, "Peace through superior firepower".

17 Apr 1970 A Shau Valley. Where common men did uncommon things and sometimes fools prevailed.

During the last 30 days of my first tour I spent about 2 weeks flying C&C and equal time in the front end of Cobras. The former was, for the most part, dreadfully boring. The latter was small retribution for being one of the unit's targets for those many months. It were fair fun, no doubt about it. It was also air conditioned.

There were two events during the C&C era worthy of recounting. The first occurred during an operation based out of Quang Tri. I have no recollection of the purpose of our brief deployment en masse to that dreadful little berg but to the first point, we departed Eagle early AM and went directly to the AO, flew an endless series of orbits while the new CO, Maj. David Larcomb directed operations involving air and ground assets in Happy Valley. Who has a clue why it was named so?

We entered into a cycle of refueling and missions that went on and on and on and....we finally parked after dark near the C Troop area. I went to sleep on top of a rappelling tower laying on hard timbers after a lousy meal. Reason for going up the tower? 'Skeeters down at ground level. I used a piece of armor plate for a pillow and was roused by someone about 5 AM to continue the mission next morning. What was noteworthy? Well, the dink overseeing water treatment for the base ran out of chlorine and apparently didn't think it all that important. Everybody who consumed anything uncooked that had used water, including bar drinks, came down with a raging case of the trots. Bad enough that they had to fly in a C-130 loaded with nothing but toilet paper for the base. Story I heard was that life inside a buttoned up Snake was not all that enjoyable as several of the crews had unscheduled evacuations as a result. Me, well, I'd taken a canteen and was one of the few not affected. We flew on that day, and on and on and on. The second part that stands in my memory was that we flew 26 hours in approximately a 30 something hour time frame. I had to be helped out of the cockpit at Eagle upon our return. The crew was depressed since the bird had come out of one recurrent maintenance cycle just prior to our departure, and it needed doing again, not even 48 hours later. Fug, you don't ever want to be strapped to one of those seats that long...unless you enjoy not feeling your legs for awhile.

On another day we were operating in the A Shau, early one morning. Our strategy for survival had taken a new twist by then, that being that pink teams operating out in Indian Country also were escorted by a slick. The purpose was simple, to snatch down crews if necessary. So it was that fine morning that we orbited above the old A Shau special forces camp at about 3000' AGL while the two Snakes orbited over WO1 "Pappy" Price and his gunner Sp/4 Dalton. He had dropped down on the west side of the strip and had not been buzzing around very long at all when the Snake lead blurted over the radio that the "white bird is down!". I was on the off side and did not see the shoot down. My diary states he was downed by an RPG but memory does not serve one way or the other. Pappy had been on a northwesterly track when he was shot down and when we finally orbited to a position where I could see the crash site there was a long string of debris through the elephant grass and one of the Snakes doing a low high speed pass over the site. The pilot called out that the crew was alive...Pappy shaved his head and it's white glow showed brightly against the grassy background. The old (30 +/-) fart was way ahead of his time!

Well, therein is found the seed of much discussion in the C&C cockpit. Maj. Larcomb inquired of me what I thought we should do. Obviously, in my mind, we held a superior tactical position. "Launch the Blues and kick ass" or something to that effect. We had the adjacent airstrip to use as an LZ and could, in short course land entire 101st if necessary. However, we were in an era where we did not engage in set piece battles if it could be avoided. It was a posture that grated on me, but it was official strategy nonetheless. Maj. Larcomb elected to snatch the crew and in retrospect I do not fault the decision, if for no other reason than we pulled it off and avoided a lot of casualties in the bargain.

The Major took the controls for the snatch....and after he did, ol'....no, make that young Dan began hunkering down. Seat belt inertia harness locked, check. Sliding armor panel locked, check. Seat all the way down, check. Visor down, check (see, I remembered). The Major told the Snakes we were going in to grab the crew and they should protect us from all evil etc....he lowered the pitch and we began our descent.

Credit where it's due, he took us in on an opposite ground track from the shoot down and with a high descent rate. At about 300 meters we were nearing dirt and whopping along at about 100 knots. Scattered AK fire followed us to the PZ as he flared and did a pedal turn to an easterly heading. We parked about 30 yards from Pappy and Dalton and when we went down below the tops of the grass the ground fire abated. Pappy's face was covered in blood from a big gash across his brow line and he had to hold his face on to keep the skin from falling down over his eyes. There was a brief moment when nothing happened, everybody simply sat their immobile. Maybe it was my survival imperative in high gear, but it seemed to last forever. I keyed the mic and told the gunner on my side to go help them get to the bird...apparently both gunners took it to heart and they got to Pappy and Dalton quickly.

Dalton had something wrong with one of his feet or legs, not certain which, but with helping hands hopped and/or was dragged to the Huey along side Pappy. After about 3 days they got to the bird and scrambled in. As soon as they were on board the gunners began strapping in and I yelled to Maj. Larcomb that we should go. Whew! That was close! It never, in all my days, crossed my mind that the good Major would do anything other than pick up, do a peddle turn and depart the same proven path we had flown inbound on. So he'p me Gawd.

I say this somewhat with tongue in cheek, but what seemed painfully obvious to me apparently was not to the Major. Airplanes go forward and so were we.... Holy Mother of Pearl! He had rotated and begun accelerating directly over the inbound path that Pappy had flown....I hunkered down as much as I could, even raised my feet off the floor onto the seat, and that's neat trick from one of 6'2" stature. I went into one of those time warp thingies where the world went to slow motion....looked at David, saw him focused on the task at hand, sun glaring on his face, jaw set...scanned back to see a dink swiveling a .50 cal on us, about 30 yards out the right cargo door....our gunner, sadly I cannot recall his name...swinging the M-60 and the slow, slow motion of his gun firing, cases shucking out the far side, the .50 gunner's spastic reflex as a half dozen or so 7.62 bullets stitched his torso...he melted to the ground and Dan thought "Holy Chitt" or perhaps some other eloquent expression. Memory is foggy on that point.

It was about that time, as later learned from the Snakes, that the elephant grass around us was fair enough lit up with sparkling muzzle flashes. Lead was already inbound and began firing very close suppressive rocket fire, and I do mean close. I could feel the bird "bump" with each detonation, hear the rattle of shrapnel on its belly. I felt the 'thunks' of AK rounds hitting us while the door gunners kept pounding away with their M-60s. I watched the dash disintegrate before my eyes and tufts of bandages from first aid kits wafting in the breeze after they were hit too. I looked back briefly at Pappy...he was sitting there stoically holding his face on and the irony of being not his savior, but executioner crossed my mind. I'm not certain to this day what was crossing his mind but he had a most detached expression.

Somehow, and I will never quite know how, we flew out of that mess into the morning sun with the engine running and rotors turning. We had few instruments working and most of the overhead electrical console was shot to hell. We had no intercom or radios up front. I raised up and did a quick check in back. Unbelievably, none had been hit in back. Our left gunner's ICS circuit was still functional so I took his mic cord and between us and a lot of hand waving managed to establish com with Guns. I looked to the left and in the plexiglas on my left was the most perfect cloverleaf of .30 cal holes with about a 1" spread...right where my temple would have been if I'd been sitting upright. They came in from the left, I never saw the gunner.

We flew back, mostly in silence. Dodging fate was part of our job description but everyone on board knew we had just graduated Magna Cum Laude. There was not much to say about it. We won, they lost and chitt happens. We dropped off Pappy and Dalton at the 85th Evac and to my consternation Maj. Larcomb elected to fly the bird back to the Troop area prior to shut down. I was pretty sure that was a mistake. Not because I thought we'd fall out of the sky, but because I doubted we would ever fly that bird again. After shut down I did a post flight inspection, a very meticulous inspection. I do not recall that I ever differentiated between bullet holes and shrapnel holes, but in aggregate there were 176 perforations in the Huey. A great many were from bullets. I was right, the bird went to the bone yard. I commented to one of the Gun pilots later about his expertise in close air support and he sheepishly admitted he was a little close with his rockets. As I recall my response was something like, it obviously wasn't too close and he shook his head....said something to the effect "I was sure I'd shot you out of the air with one pair. They went off right under you."

Chitt happens.

Good review.

Chapter 18: End of Tour

There are so many little anecdotal tales to tell I could go on and on and on. Most folks have perhaps one or two major life threatening situations to resolve in their lives and are thereafter coy about exposing themselves to such risk. Totally understandable. I have written about some of the crystalline moments during my period of training and subsequent deployment to SE Asia. There are quite a few other moments that might evoke laughter or lessor emotions but for the sake of brevity they will lay in the locker for future reference. Some of the topics are listed below:

1. How I almost got shot down by a rubber ball.
2. How I almost got blasted out of the air by 8"artillery.
3. How I almost got laid in Australia on R&R and how half my platoon married Aussie gals doing the same.
4. The day we had 24" of rain in 20 hours.
5. Chasing monkeys thru the tree tops with a Winchester Model 12 and a case of 00 Buck.
6. Fishing with Frags.
7. Flying with "real" pilots and making them puke.
8. You won't know quite what to say to the cute little blond you used to know, when she asks with breathless anticipation, "Did you kill anybody over there?"
9. You will know how to body block a flock of Hare Krishnas and put their sorry azzes on the deck at Oakland upon return...without breaking sweat.

...............like I said, on and on and on.....

There were some characters in my unit that deserve special consideration and recognition.

-Rich Ashton, who was the finest rocket shot I've known, and he does one helluva dance in potato salad!
-Moon Mullins, the polite and mildly aloof Scout pilot killer who quite methodically racked up a phenomenal body count w/o ever getting shot down.
-Johnny Sprott, who was a Texan's Texan and taught me how to do a flat 360* spin in a LOH at 50 knots while laughing hysterically. He also made me look brilliant every time I picked his ass up out of the woods.
-Bob Donnely, another Scout dubbed the baby killer. I don't know to this day if he's ever shaved but the boy was the Terminator out in the woods. There was the day after I left that Bob located a ZSU-23-2 out in the Valley and was crafty enough to take it out. The receiver and barrel assemblies were set in a concrete pad in front of Squadron Ops after they were recovered.
-Guns....God bless 'em all!
-All of our crew chiefs and gunners, without whom none of this would have happened. They deserve more recognition than can be said.

-My platoon buddy Ron Edwards took it upon himself to engage a .50 cal out in the valley not long after I left. He, like my friend Rich, did not factor supporting fires and was put in the dirt by an RPG that separated his main rotor. Guns said it landed somewhere in Laos...I dunno, those guys tell tall tales sometimes. Ron and his gunner survived with Ron having the only injuries. They were extracted by a C&C after the showing of ALL of the Snake inventory to the dinks....I mean the entire inventory of the 101st Airborne. Three Cav Troops(27) and a battalion of ARA, however many that is. I can't imagine seeing that many Snakes in the air at one time, but when they went in to pick up Ron, where they had previously taken heavy fire, not a round was fired. Like I said, Peace thru Superior Firepower.

-Our platoon leader, John Sensing was killed not long after I left near FSB Ripcord up in the tall mountains. John was about as hard drivin' as a guy can be and totally fearless. The guys liked him a lot and testimony to that is found in the final act of SP/4 Staton, a blond Swede from up Michigan way, who covered John with his own body after the crash. They were both shot to death where they lay.

My unit lost 44 LOH's in my year there, either destroyed or sent back to Depot for rebuild, plus 3 Slicks and 2 Snakes destroyed. My platoon had 27 Purple Hearts spread between 19 guys as I recall, all within the first 2 weeks of our deployment to Chu Lai. I quit counting after that but the flow continued largely unabated thru the end. Our respite was the 2-3 months after returning to the Valley but all things are relative, for we still took losses. Unlike most units, most of our losses were combat related. Not all, but an overwhelming majority. I'd been there for over 9 months before our maintenance took a LOH thru an Periodic Maintenance check, a 300 flight hour recurrent procedure.....unless you're flying in the Air Cav. This is how the Army went through about 1,500 LOHs before we left RVN. Very low maintenance aircraft they were.

As I was waiting to board a Herky Bird at Phu Bai for a ride to Saigon and a jet with long legs, I watched a bunch of newbies disembark in their clean new fatigues and lily white skin, sweat rings down to their belts. They passed 3 guys going the other way, walnut tans, faded fatigues dyed a little red from the iron in the local water, and 1,000 yard stares....grunts headed home. It was a perfect picture and I have it in storage...someday I'll scan it and post it here, for it tells more about that war than any words ever could. Fear.....and....loathing in Phu Bai. Yin and Yang. Hunter Thompson should have been there....

I saw stuff there nobody should see, as every combat warrior will, in every war we fight. It is my considered opinion that wars are fought by the brave and waged by the ignorant. We will certainly fight wars in the future and to those engaged in the Defense of the Country, you will know what I know. It is ugly, it is a ride you will never forget and it will make you wiser far beyond your years and your peers. It will activate your BS detector for all time. For those that have fought for it, Freedom has a taste the protected will never know.

So, to all the warriors, past, present and future, I salute your courage, commitment and fidelity.

Banshee 12, Out.

Dan, the beautiful thing about this is that this is a story that you needed to tell and it's a story that everyone needs to read. Thanks again.

Alan

Powerful, and very well written Dan. A wicked fun bunch you mob were, indeed. Sincere thanks for sharing.

I'm... speechless...

What can I say.....one helluva story!

THANKS!

Good read. How I still hate those three little letters, T A C.

Great read Dan, thanks. You are gifted.

Bump

Wow! Just wow!

Bump#2

Thanks to all for the positive comments. My second tour experience spanned 19 months and included the Spring '72 offensive. As indicated earlier, I may get around to that one of these days, or maybe not. It was a far darker experience in more ways than can be explained. Triple 'A' and SAMs take all humor out of the equation.

I'm rather inclined to think the missing part to this is that my experience was not unique. Over 3 million service members served over the course of the war and I imagine a great trove of history could be found locked in those memories.

This may surprise, but I have not thought the Vietnam War was necessary, or well conceived. It was foisted upon us by the Truman Administration, fertilized by JFK and ultimately went south under the command of LBJ and his toad McNamara. Of the lot of them, I hold the latter in great contempt for a myriad of reasons largely unimportant these days. With any luck I'll meet them in Hell and we can have a little chat.

A lesson learned and applied during the first Gulf War was to use overwhelming force to affect a clear objective in the shortest time possible. That was forgotten in the second iteration and this pains me greatly.

War is not pretty. It is not amusing even though the participants cling to gallows humor as a defense mechanism. IT IS NOT A GAME TO BE PURSUED BY AMATEURS OR USED FOR DOMESTIC POLITICAL GAIN.

To draw it out, to inflict gross suffering without end on our own or the enemy is grotesquely sick. If it is decided that war must be fought, end it decisively, quickly and with profound finality. To do otherwise is tantamount to treason.

My dad was a Korean vet and didn't want to share a great deal. I told him that he should at least write it all down, even if he did not want to share it. Maybe you would consider same.

Dan, I wasn't there and so can never fully understand but at least this sheds some light. Thank you for your service and thank you for sharing this.

Fantastic read!

Every war has its own characteristics but there is a strange comfort in reading your story and seeing that the more things change the more the stay the same. There are some aspects of the military and war in general that every new generation of warrior shares with the old.

Thank You........


MY Friend

Dan I lived in Mineral Wells for the last 6 years, and although i work in west Texas now I am based out of a shop that is on the base. I spend every free moment I have at PK. In fact my next set of days off will be spent floating around at Hells Gate. Do you remember a bar right outside of the front gate and back towards town that is a big rounded building? Its called Woodys now and i hear it got pretty rowdy back in the day.

The base is pretty run down and its mostly industrial businesses now. Excuse my terminology but the "on base houses" are now a run down neighborhood full of crime and drugs. The hospital is abandoned and last year there was an arsonist burning down a bunch of buildings. Turned out to be a cop setting the fires. What I assume was the main barracks is now a prison.

When you go in the gate if you go all the way to the back left (north west corner) of the base, that is our shop. Do you remember what it was used for? It has a tall roof, with a paint booth and a big ramp out back. Im assuming the ramp was used for auto maintenance.

Smithwr, sorry I have no recollection of the building you're referring to. Our movement within Ft. Wolters was restricted and I don't recall having ever been to that part of the Post. Classrooms were between the heliport and barracks and that was pretty much our world.

Funny, I sort of thought the barracks were a prison back then as well. Don't recall the bar but I'm certain the "real live officers" from that era would. They ran those fellas thru flight school as well but we had little interaction with them.

Ten 4. After looking at the link you provided I recognized a couple of stage fields. I used to maintain oil wells at the Bennett and the Bronco. The fella that owns the Bronco maintains it very well and has made his grandkids a pretty swanky playhouse out of the control tower, and he runs a business out of the place refurbishing airplane parts. The Dempsey is still very well maintained but i dont know what its used for besides community functions. I have to get to work now so ill read the rest later. Thanks for the story.

DD,
First, thank you for your service. I hold that in the highest esteem. As to your reference to the 1st Recon Bn., I can associate with their mind set as I was a member of that group; however some time before Nam. As you said, they are indeed crazy folks.
Secondly, Please, Please, Please write that book!!! Write about it ALL. Don't omit anything!! I have a good friend who was a Medevac pilot in Nam and he can tell stories that will curl your hair. This is the only way future generations can appreciate what you guys gave to this country, instead of the crap they're told in school by the liberal socialists. Your "book" is as good as any of the many others I've read about the same era.

Bravo Zulu, my friend and thanks again.
Semper Fidelis, Jim

SemperFi 57, my humble appreciation to you. I had occasion to work with a lot of ground forces over there. None cast a shadow so large as the 1st Marine Recon. Not even in the same time zone.

I don't mean to sound disrespectful of the others because I don't feel that way, but sometimes folks go above and beyond the call. That was Recon's norm.

Would be honored to share a bottle or a foxhole with you any day!

Dan

A small addendum: I have been stunned by the responses to this, both in the posts and via PMs. Thanks to all for that!

Have also found thru this a number of us with paths that crossed in the past, from Nam to the swamps in south Florida near Everglades City. Some of your words had me laughing so hard I might have blown a gasket once or twice.

Looks like I've some typing to do...

A few shots of some of the birds DD might be familiar with at the link below:

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forum...War-Helicopter-Aviation-OH-6A-and-OH-58A

Well Sir, I have finished your excellent little treatise at last, to say it brought back some uncomfortable emotions is minimizing. I shook, laughed and even had a tear or two.

Funny how close that can feel after all these years.

Ten Hut!, Hand Salute. Iceman 3, out.

Keep writing, man, keep it going. This is part of why I come here at all.

So are you - and I for one understand it, and it goes something like this:



If heeded by every idiot politican who has failed to employ LeMay's strategies, the US could have, no should have ended that war -- and every one fought since the Japanese empire succumbed to LeMay's strategy -- without you having to experience what you so perfectly put into words.

Great read, just unfortunate that it had to be.

^^^ !

Thank you very much !

I love this. I love being an American.

OK, after rereading now I'm into the disection mode, and have to know, what does it mean to fly "cross controll"?

Everytime I read the term, bad things seem to be happening, or are being avoided.

"Coordinated" flight means an aircraft is in trim, that being a balance of forces including aerodynamic loads and power.

"Cross control" means the opposite, ie not in trim.

Trim is represented on the turn and slip indicator by the ball position as indicated in this image:



When the ball is centered between the two vertical wires the aircraft is in a trimmed state.

Cross control application is commonly used in fixed wing aircraft during landing in cross winds to align the aircraft with the runway on touchdown to avoid excessive lateral loads on the landing gear. Simply put, an aircraft is crabbing on final (flying cockeyed but trimmed) and then aligns by "slipping" or cross controlling. An aircraft is "cross controlled" when the rudder or in the case of helicopters, tail rotor control pedals, and ailerons/cyclic are deflected in opposite directions.

My reference to this in the previous chapters goes to the point that LOH pilots and gunners both typically sat on the same side and to provide the best view and field of fire, we typically flew sideways in various degrees depending on airspeed. Our operating speed while on missions ranged from a hover to 120 knots, but typically we were somewhere between 20 and 40 knots. 30-40 degrees of yaw to the axis of flight was fairly routine. It makes new guys puke fairly quick.

Thanks for the explanation, if my inquiries get bothersome - just say so - 'cause you sparked a lot of 'em.



>laughin'<

Including new "in country" pilots, flyin' with tree-huggin' LTs.

Pretty bad when the guy who'll be doin' the flyin' is tossin' apple sauce.

True on all counts.

I don't post a lot (been here since the old Shooters fourm) - I just read a lot and this is one of the best reads ever on the Campfire. Write a book DD.

From a fellow Banshee Trooper (although a few generations removed) please do write a book. You have some awesome stories in these pages and a very unique way of telling them. I am going to bring all my Cav buddies in here to read it, I know I spend a whole night glued to my computer screen dreading getting to page 7. If you have some time I encourage you to visit www.kiowapilots.net and post this there as well. It's a pretty much an online scout pilot's hooch and the input and experience from your era would be invaluable there. I know I can relate to 80% of the tactics you describe here. We forgot a lot of them and had to relearn quickly once the current conflicts evolved into full blown counterinsurgency warfare. Take care and I hope I get to meet you in person one day.

Nah, this place came about in 2000, you are from 2010, your still a newby and wet behind the ears.

Wow...didn't see this one coming! Give my best to the scouts and thanks for your service! Appreciate the link. Was up at Ft. Campbell last May for what I recall as the ceremony for the return of colors to the Fort by 2/17 ACS. Told the squadron CO he looked too young to be in charge of that many pirates.

Dan, I like what I see so far.

My older Brother was at Guam in the 70's. He was a Navy Lt then, his job was head of security at Navel Air Station Agana. He too waited for the new crop of gals, and wound up marrying a Coast Guard Warrant's daughter.

LOL, we've probably met face to face then, I just have terrible memory with names and tend to forget an EP or limit when trying to commit one to memory . Apologies for not recalling yours. Small world indeed, honored to have meet you and hopefully you'll add more chapters to this thread in the future.

This is too precious, and too important to not be bumped again.

So, BUMP.

Cavman, I signed up at Kiowa Pilots and await confirmation. Thanks for the link.

Dan

Nice to see that your terminal is still dry.

How goes the deluge ?

GTC

Rain has abated, tide stage high. We're at low tide now and it looks like a spring season high. Looks like we'll do ok, wait'n see for now.

Digital Dan:

I just discovered this thread because I don't often visit the Hunters' Campfire Forum. But I'm wildly joyful that I did today: your multi-chapter narrative is outstanding!

I especially enjoyed Chapter 16, Sport in the Rolling Hills, in part because I so enjoyed "Off topic, but still a small game" a few years ago.

I have no idea what it cost you to write this material, but I am profoundly grateful to you for writing this narrative. It's one of the best narratives of personal military experience that I've ever read. Well Done!

22, thank you for that sir!

The personal cost was small. Had to rinse my shorts out a few times back then, and sit in front of the computer for several hours/days/maybe a week when I put it to paper. It came out in a torrent for reasons I've not contemplated much.

The other costs were severe. To the U.S. and our allies in dollars and lives. The other side spent few dollars but paid far more dearly than our side in terms of human life. It is a lesson that gives pause to older generations and is largely ignored by the younger.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties

Just re-read this, and it's just too good not to bump. I've never made an administrative type suggestion here before, but I for one wouldn't mind seeing a 'hall o' fame' post type forum. I'm on a saltwater fishing forum, and they have one. It's kind of neat to be able to go back and re-digest some amazing posts. No comments allowed, but they remain as an enjoyment/testament to the members who've shared some things that other members felt were deserving of recognition. There's a handful that stick out to me. This is one.

Anyway, you were very close, BTW, Daniel-san. It's Nuoc Mam.



Thank you for both your service, and your sharing of yourself. This is personal history stuff that needs to be preserved, IMO.

Oh, and not for nothing, but you've got some nerve calling others crazy...

Generous accolades there, thank you.

Nuoc mam, the sauce that keeps 'Nam rollin' along. The common folk over there put it on everything. Their lunch box is a wad of rice with sauce, rolled into a banana leaf. Simple, sound and expedient. Banana leafs are abundant.

I don't know this to be true, but my understanding is the sauce is made by layering small sea fish in salt and spices in an earthen crock and letting it age for quite a long time. It has that appearance anyway, and the odor and sharp bite of peppers.

It is quite pungent. Early morning, dawn just breaking. Mountains draped with thin misty veils sliding up the ridges and over the top, only to disappear on the back side as the moisture moved back to warmer temperatures on a soft mountain breeze. NVA cook fires hastily extinguished because of the approaching slap of rotor blades, but the thermal lift had already pushed the scent of Nuoc Mam into the tree tops and it didn't take a bird dog to follow that scent upwind until it vanished. The smell clashed profoundly with the moist jungle scent of wet green and rushing streams.

Like the pointer close to the covey, nervous flitting about the tree tops almost always led to the camp. Usually it had been quickly abandoned, but sometimes not. Sometimes fireworks followed.

To truly recognize "crazy" and appreciate the spectrum of nuance on that canvas, it helps if you have lived in that house awhile.

Hall of Fame Post--- Great post DigitalDan-- You are right about the home made aging fish in the crock. I love the smell of Nuoc mam in the morning.--- thanks Web

Write the book...it is that important!


Bump for a must read from DD

Agree. I've read it a dozen times so far. Hoping hard DD follows it up with more. These personal histories are so important, IMO.

Bookmarked. Truly excellent, Dan. Stunning.

Wow how did I ever miss this story. Very humbling. My best to all that served.

It is a remarkable narrative with wonderful style and prose. It's one I believe should be added to/appended/finished with the author's second tour, and published.

I bookmarked it, and have read it over maybe a dozen times. It really is a gritty, raw look at a man's experiences and observations during war, and I'm grateful for the privilege of being able to take it in.

I have noticed an endearing loyalty and support for veterans here at the 'Fire and I want to let you all know how deeply I appreciate the sentiment. It was Ronald Reagan who took the first bold step in honoring Vietnam vets from his high office. In a fashion it broke down a wall that had existed between us and the country at large for far too long.

In behalf of the many vets among us in general, and in particular those sentiments which so many of you have have expressed to me, I am humbled.

Thank you all!

Dan

Speaking for myself only: to virtually all of the people of my age that I know and call friend, you guys ARE our heroes, Dan. I mean that.

I'll tell you this, too: had I, or any of the same men I'm talking about above, ever seen any of you returning servicemen getting any shyt from any protester, hippie or random stranger on the street, you wouldn't have had to have lifted a finger or worried about just being left be. They'd have been dealt with with the same amount of respect that they'd demonstrated to the men they were deriding--none. A proper face stomping can make for a drastic attitude adjustment. I know this to be fact.

That's something I never understood, BTW. It was an unpopular, divisive and brutal war, yes, one with 'atrocities' that also happened to be widely broadcast. Yet the fact that so many turned out to attack the soldiers, as if it was strictly up to them to wage war? Does not compute.

Lastly, nah man, thank *you*, and all the former servicemen here who served our nation*. Same goes for our boys today, wherever they be, in harm's way or not.

Look into getting it published, please.

Edit: sentiment is the same for all the men currently serving as well, obviously.

Fantastic Stuff Dan, you really should consider publishing. j

Amazing story, Amazing record of
"behind the scenes Vietnam"
I was 10 yrs old in 72' and remember....
Dad was career navy, and I, USMC.
Thank You for sharing these memories
Powerful words, Powerful images
and yes, when you find the time or need...
Please write of it. Some things need to be recorded
for ALL who follow.
Again, very humbly, Thank You

My first thought was that my father would love this story. But he passed on in 2005. He loved Vietnam stories he did a full tour over there and probably another year of time on TDY. He was air force loaded bombs on planes. It is kinda a weird how something like that marks a person. They would never want to do it again but yet it so much of there life that it almost seems like they miss it. When he did talk about it you could see a fire in his eyes and a little bit of that twenty something young man come back. Any one that served has my respect.

Bump - I've just re-read this fantastic story. If you missed it first time around, don't miss it this time.

Dan and I met , face to face , finally, a coupla' days ago, and was the "Longest Distance Traveled" winner at The Desert Rat's third annual reunion .

We did a little feasting, drinking, shooting, and yarn spinning .

He headed out for his home place today, mid morning.

Having the fellow here was a lot of fun, and a distinct HONOR.

Greg

I hope to be honored in the same way myself. Good to hear you boys got together. Pour a couple of fingers of something for me for yourselves. Cyber round on me.

Good to have this thread bumped too. Epic.

Any time, L.

The weather really played in our favor, this time.

Saying, "A good time was had by all" would be trite.

GTC

Um, I was talking about Dan...



Hey, ya gotta' swing at a meatballs when tossed! But to be serious for a sec, thanks, Oops-san. We'll get a plan going. Glad that you lads are having fun at play at your fort. Lots of pics when you can, please. Some of Gracie too, please.

Thanks DD for writing this. And thanks is as close as I can come, but still fails to express the appreciation for the sacrifices made by you and your compatriots in arms, and all of your families.

And that to Mike for bumping it to the top as I was offline while this was going around earlier.

Once these gigs are rolling, I have a hard time even THINKING of grabbing a camera, and am going to have to work on rectifying that shortfall.

"elkhunterNM's" lady got a GREAT pic of Gracie hamming it up, ....I hope she'll post it.

Give it a day, ....once everybody's home and dry, I'll bet some pics will be posted.

GTC

Right on. Thankee bud.

I hope she DOES, my friend!

Mark

Had the chance to meet Dan a couple years back in my homestate while back visiting family. His stories are fantastic!!

Holly Cow Dan,
Im on chapter 14 after starting at 350 am today. What a read. I will be showing this to my son who is a great reader and a fan of US history.
Thank you From My Whole Family for YOUR SERVICE!

ps.. I read "Chicken Hawk" in high school back in the 80's working at a local grocery nights. I love helicopters. This is better by a long shot.

Interesting. Good writing IMO. I liked the parts about Wolters. I was going to say Dad was stationed at Wolters when he met Mom, but he wasn't, he was at Camp Houwse (sp?), near there. He was at Wolters at some point though. Did you ever stay at the Baker Hotel? Did you ever meet Colonel Herbert during your Southeast Asia adventures?

Excellent read, Dan!

Just spent a couple days with Dan, he's driving back to Florida right now. He was in the top couple I wanted to meet someday, he exceeded my expectations as a quality individual... and I didn't see this thread until this morning...

Words can't express my respect.

Hopefully I can see Dan in Florida sometime soon.

Kent

I smell a road trip.

GTC

Yep.

Kent

I bookmarked this so I can pick it up again at Chapter 3. Being a victim of military/government aviation myself it's a great read. Wish I'd read it before meeting the man in the flesh though.

Good stuff Dan, thanks.(Wherever you are right now)

Bump. I won't miss this thread this time.

Bump

Dan,

Thanks for posting these chapters. More importantly, thanks for your service.

Your story deserves to be published in book form and I think you could find a publisher.

Thanks again!

Dan, Thank you for your service. Also for taking the time to write of your experiences so that we may understand just a bit about the sacrifices that were made and the bravery that was displayed.

Kudos on your writing style. Very lively and interesting to read while at the same time getting all the pertinent details across.

Thanks again! I enjoyed every letter of your stories.

Don't recall the Baker Hotel clearly, old stone 2-3 story downtown Mineral Wells? If so, no. Don't recall the Colonel either but we may have crossed paths.

Dan you have a style of writing that works for me. I can not stop reading this. I am however sorry you had to live it.

Just read it for the 7th time. Bump for the new guys.

Just read this in one sit and it needs to go up top for all to see as mandatory reading. Yours was a finer generation and makes me somewhat embarrassed for mine! Much thanks.

You are welcome, but I would suggest that warriors are cut from the same cloth and forged in the same fire. It is a timeless brotherhood and your generation is brimming with heroes, some known and many unaware of their own courage.

Dan, I'm not much of a book reader but I spent the better part of the morning reading your story. I could not put it down.
I'm 69 so what you wrote about brought back lots of memories.
Served my time with Uncle Sam but don't have the tales to tell like I just read.
Thanks for your service and the ability to write.

What a read. I was trying to keep up with the word pictures, sounds and smells you were putting in my mind.

Thank you, Dan.


I don't think "enjoy" is the proper word for this, maybe "illuminate" works better, I dunno. I was glad to read it, and even happier that you came home in mostly one piece. I would encourage you to go ahead and contact a publisher, I'd like to read more, as would we all.
I was a little too young for Vietnam, but I enlisted in '77, and spent four years in the 82nd, reading all the novels I could round up (we'd pass them around the barracks).
Thanks again for your service, and by all means, if you can scrounge up the time, please write the book.

Eloquent brevity, Se�or.

I think that Ken's "make every word count" advisory is something that you exemplify, on a day in, day out basis.

Semper Brevity

GTC

"Swedish K�s" What?

Awesome story and very well told BD!

I'm embarrassed it took me this long to find it.

As an author, as well as a pilot, sir, you excel.

Until Tyrant Obama, LBJ was the worst president ever for sending our guys to Vietnam while preventing them from even trying to win and because of his war on poverty.

Did you ever meet LTCOL Anthony Herbert while over there?

Don't recall that I did. There were about 700 miles from north to south as the seagull flies and we didn't mingle a lot with personnel outside our units.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Gustav_m/45

Still top shelf.

Have enjoyed every word, D.D. Brought back lots of buried memories, feelings, tastes and smells.

Looking forward to more for sure.

You don't post that often but when you do it has both merit and grit.

Thanks.

Smells linger in my memory. 'Twas a stinky war, no?

No doubt they all are, D.D.

DD,

I dont know how I missed this thread, but I did. I found it this morning and read all of it.

First, let me thank you for your service.

Second, thank-you for writing this 'first-hand' account of what you went thru and witnesses.

And last, you definitely need to get this published.

Thanks again!

Oldman, I are too.

Thank you for your kind sentiments.

So........OK.......I'll check into getting it published. I still want to include the second tour though. Not because I want a fat book, but the dichotomy of the two tours so perfectly illustrates the nature of the war as I knew it. The second spin in the cycle was in many ways as surreal as 'Apocalypse Now' and in others turned into the longest 'Ho Li [bleep]!' moment of my life. Yin and yang, all under one spread as it were.

Dan

PS: It's sorta already been "published" here on the 'Fire I guess. Don't care about making money from it, hell, it was 3 hots and a cot + a monthly check. Lot of you fellas already 'paid' for it as I see it. I suppose as well I should let the copyright cat out of the bag. Done deal.

Dan,

This is a great read. Lots of young men were pulled into this war and most served honorable and were not given the respect they deserved. Thanks for your service and posting your story.

Just found this,..been reading it all evening.

I'll only get 4 hours of sleep before I have to get up for work, but the read was well worth a day of sleep deprivation.

You should check into the self publishing opportunities that are out there these days, Dan.

Nothing wrong with money.

Money is good.

Bump for a great story.

It is so....

GTC

As did I. I do not know how I missed it the first time around, but I did. Once found, it was read nonstop. I did Rocky's books the same way. Dan, did you ever get up around Quin-hon at any time? I was there from July 1968-July 1969. My tour was a lot tamer than yours. I do wish to thank you for your service and also thank you for writing it down. The thanks for service is extended to all that have served. miles

TAG

Miles, I passed thru there several times in '72. Was one of the very few peaceful places to be found over there. The ROK Army wielded an iron fist in that country. Nice beaches and at least one restaurant I enjoyed.

The locals would take to the side streets when they saw them coming. I had been gone a while by the time you were there. miles

Bam

Speaking of Bam, landed at a helipad in that neighborhood one day and was sitting there at flight idle waiting for the pax to load up. There was a ROK NCO, apparently equivalent to a Sgt. Major looking at the chevrons on his shoulder. Big and burley by Paul Bunyan standards, he was reading a younger ROK the riot act about something, much in the spirit of a boot camp private getting ass ripped by a DI. After several minutes of this he delivered a right hook to the youngster that laid him out flat. I was amazed..,

Then the fella jumped back on his feet and snapped to attention once more. More "in your face" followed but there were no further fisticuffs. Discipline is a marvelous thing in the Zone. Is stuff like that what made the region such a peaceful place I suppose.

WHAAaaaat ?

....you mean he didn't ask for a "Time Out" card ?

Sounds pretty "Violent" to me,....

Oh ,...wait, we're talking about WARRIORS here,...

disregard my last.

GTC

If you haven't read this.....

I haven't and appreciate it being brought back up. I've bookmarked it and am looking forward to reading it. I was a youngster during that time period but still remember watching the reporting on black and white television.

Just finished RE-reading this for 3rd time, BD.

Each time finding more to cringe at, laugh at, and that which takes your breath away.

Words fail me.

Maybe make it an audio recording in your voice. It always lends to the experience when one hears it from the men themselves; it brings the humanity, courage, and bravado into sharper focus.

Time dulls but it doesn't take it away. The best factual read I've had in many years. It should be mandatory reading for some of the young but I doubt they would understand (or care). Thank you very much .

+1

It should also be required reading for aspiring Helo pilots. Lots of good info here that has been forgotten for the most part.

Psst.
DD has put up some more of the rest of the story.......
You can find it in the misc. section in a thread about something called a 223ai.
I will warn you upfront, when I visited this thread a few days ago by accident, I was appalled and disgusted.
There were pics and verbiage there that were not safe for some women, all children and most workplaces......
But amongst this group of filthy losers, posting, boasting and lying of their sexual exploits and wet dreams, is the work of the humble CW2. DD, you are a man I hope to meet soon....even if it's just to shake you hand.

P.S. You could skip some of the dirt by searching the thread and only searching Digital Dan's post over the last couple weeks.
That's what I do......I just felt the stories needed to be seen by more of you all.
Well, I'm off to church, take care all.

enjoy the fruits of the collection plate, Father Vinny.

BTT

Business is good.

tag to read later

I was in a church Friday evening, after the ceremony was finished, lets say, I had a better understanding of the Salem witch burnings.

I would add that the Pope has far more pressing things to deal with than Climate change!

Just read it again.

Out damn standing.

new one up today from DD.

Bump for a must read.

cf

Tag

tt

I read the story off the other thread Dan and I will say first off thanks for serving. I was fortunate enough my father managed to stay stateside and got out before it really spooled up to what you dealt with but watched the planes come home on black and white TV with our boys in boxes. Your story from a first person side was a unbelievable read Thank you for taking the time to write about real life over there not a watered down version the media gave us.

I saw the link to this thread in another thread earlier this afternoon while at work, during one of those lulls when I have to let things run a little while to see what will happen. I think I got up to Chapter 4. Then when I got home this afternoon I picked up where I left off, and just finished reading. It is about 7:30 PM.

I guess I just want to say "thank you Dan." That is a riveting story to say the least, and I'm sure it was extremely taxing to relive all that as you must have done to get it put on paper. Had I been born in 1952 instead of 1955, I might know the story, but I have to be thankful that I do not...but I am enriched by at least understanding it. In that sense you have made what cannot be understood comprehensible.

One thing that I come away with is the sense that it was not a place you are ever able to really leave. An experience that horrific has to become so much a part of your very being and every moment you breathe. You are always there.

The debt this nation owes its combat veterans is beyond the capability of mortals to repay.

One of my favorite threads EVER. Should make a novel from it a la Matterhorn.

tag

RiverRider, in the sense that combat leaves a lasting mark I don't think Vietnam was unique. Any of the participants here on the 'Fire will likely agree. Have said more than once however, I would not trade the experience for all the tea in China, nor do it again for twice that. It was a formative experience in a multitude of ways and I am incredibly lucky to have survived it. That is the older, wiser man speaking of course; back then I was bullet proof. Mostly.

For what it may be worth, the writing about tour #1 was fairly easy. The catharsis came a couple years later when I was able to regurgitate the second tour. The sense of humor found here enabled me to step past the darkness that enveloped us during the drawdown and Easter Offensive in '72 and get that part off my chest.

Dan don't know how I missed this back in 2012. I was a phrog driver in the Marines back in the early 80s and had a couple of old salt HACs in HMM-264 who were former Vietnam pilots. Some of those maneuvers you described, when coming into a hot LZ to avoid small arms fire, they demonstrated to me in a 46. The first time we went spiraling straight down in that flat spin, I was just holding on as the HAC cooly described the maneuver and the control inputs he was using to effect the rapid descent and ball control. Just when I thought we were "going to hit dirt" . . . he cleaned everything up and smoothly flared into a perfect landing. Later in my tour, when I was a HAC, I used to practice that approach, letting my co-pilot know that I learned it from a Vietnam pilot, like I was some big shot. Ha! The thing I am really sorry about is that I did it with a full load of grunts from Camp Lejeune, that I bet peed their pants thinking they were going to die. I had a problem convincing myself that I was just a "bus driver" in that 46 and should not be trying to fly like a frustrated jet jockey. Great story, and I salute you and the men with whom you served. God Bless America!

just marking the page.

Tag

good read DD

No words! Just huge respect for you and all who served there.

My searchfoo is weak, does the mentioned thread still exist?

Great thread. I recall reading it when it was first posted and I'm in the process of reading it again.

I’m only up to Chapter 6, great thread, tks 😎

Great thread. I would buy the book if it comes to be.

A recent thread reminded me to look this up again an reread.

Is there a link to the second tour thread? Much appreciated.

Thank you DD for sharing your experiences over there. It's living history and can only be written by those who actually lived it. That perspective sadly is slipping away. This is an absolute treasure and should be recorded in book form so future generations may learn from it.

"Thank you" seems so insignificant, yet those are the only words that show our profound gratitude for service and sacrifice of all who have served.

CF, send an email via PM and I’ll forward a PDF version.

I remember DD from Accurate reloading days, maybe 15 years ago?

Wonderful writing style and a great sense of humor. After the fun subsided over there I looked for him across the net; I didn't want to miss more of his highly entertaining prose !

An interesting life to say the least.

Wow did you know the Skynyrd boys? They were Shantytown, west side.

😃

I’ve read it 3 times now! Great stuff DF !!!

I stumbled across this yesterday.

I was a Huey crewchief in the 4th ID from 81-84 and had several pilots in my outfit that had flown in Nam.


Great read DD !
Thanks

Lemme know when the second tour is available to read please !

Is there a link to any subject matter of Dan's 2nd tour?

Thoroughly enjoyed the read Dan. I believe this work would be highly marketable. Thank you for your service and memories.

Fun reading. I was in class 68-23

Dan, I printed this gem off way back when so I could share it with Dad in the nursing home.. I appreciate that it is back up to be viewed again..

Thanks again for finding us worthy to share.

I am just a bit too young to have experienced Nam. A fact which shames a bit, but for which one must admit one is eternally grateful.

Many wonderful, brave young men gave the ultimate sacrifice in that hell hole.

I did, though, have the experience of riding in a helicopter with a Nam Vet. He was flying water drops in 1981 for the BLM, in a Bell Jet Ranger.

Suffice to say, he took my breath away. I am pleased to report, I did not lose my lunch.

It was an hour worth of memories that I will cherish forever.

Incredible stuff.

Somewhere along the way there was a chopper unit sharing the airspace with a callsign of Hooker. Was that you??????

Tag friggin tag tag tag!

Anyone wishing to read this, send me an email address via PM and I'll forward a PDF copy. 113 pages it is. I have been informed that it "is not a book" by someone who I respect and I'll let it go at that. It is copyrighted and I did an edit about a month ago to clean up various aspects.

Dan

I have read it twice before, and it is fantastic. Not sure what the definition of "book" is, but this is an awesome read.

tag