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.
