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.
