Terry, I understand that, truly.
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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.
