Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire A roll of the dice

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.
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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

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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�.