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.
