My War - Installment 5

I was naive and unaware of the political nature of our involvement. I just wanted to serve my country and fly. Flight training in general had picked up and the Warrant Officer Program was being enlarged with the ever mounting need for more pilots in Viet Nam.

With this all-consuming demand for pilots, the Warrant Officer Candidate Program seemed to be lowering its qualifying standards and its operating standards. From our observation of the new candidates, the amount of "Mickey Mouse" and other Bull had also dropped off.

It had always made sense to me that if a man could be broken by a little harassment he might very easily be broken under the rigors of actual combat. In all likelihood, all Army pilots would spend sometime in southeast Asia at least once during their service years, and probably very quickly after graduation we would get a trip there. On the other hand the regular Army enlistee might never see action, even if sent to Viet Nam. Only about 10 percent of an Army sees combat action. The other 90 percent are paper pushers and logistics personnel. I am not saying that there is no danger in some of the other jobs, but it is less.

Hold Over Status

On the very day of graduation, our class, WORWAC 66-11, was informed that Fort Rucker could not handle all of our class. Some of us would have to remain at Fort Wolters for an additional unspecified amount of time before we could move onward to Fort Rucker. This was unfortunate or fortunate, depending on your point of view. Some of the class would continue at Fort Rucker designated as WORWAC 66-13.

I do not know who made the decision, but almost half of us were chosen to remain at Fort Wolters. My luck holding, as it usually did, I was one of those destined to stay behind. I felt as if I was being placed in "LIMBO.”

At first we had no real duty to perform. It was almost like a vacation. There were no TAC's to pester us. We had a great amount of freedom; but it would not last. Besides not continuing with the class we started with, we were given over to rather menial tasks. We were not even given flying time in any form during this prolonged stay at Fort Wolters. I was really disappointed. Others, the married men and those like Buddy, were in seventh heaven with the added time to spend with their loved ones were happy to hang around.

It worked out that we were put on temporary duty at Fort Wolters. My duty with thirteen others, fortunately with friends, was a burial detachment. We were assigned the duty of giving military honors to, military and ex-military, deceased. We traveled around central Texas and buried veterans from World War "I" to the present conflict, the latter in ever increasing numbers.

As macabre as it may sound, we found humor in some of the burial duty that we pulled. One that I can remember in particular was a Roman Catholic funeral. All of the men in the detail, with the exception of one, were of protestant background. The service was a bit strange to all of us non-Catholic, and we had it planned out that the one Roman Catholic service member would cue us as to when to stand during the service. There were a large number of WW-I veterans present, all being of an advanced age. We sat in the front pew. Our Catholic friend would rise; then we would rise; then the WW-I Vets would rise; then the rest of the congregation would rise. This comical routine continued throughout the service in a series of chain reactions of up and down movement. Our Catholic friend would sit, then we would sit, then the Vets would sit, then the rest of the people would sit. The humor continued while we carried the coffin out of the church. The priest threw Holy Water over all of us. We were inwardly giggling even at the grave site. In fact we were laughing so much that we folded the flag backward and had to present it to the widow in this condition. I don’t think she ever noticed.

This period of time in my military career moved exceedingly and variously, slow and then fast, depending on whether we were on duty or leisure time.

We finally finished our "hard time" and received our orders for Fort Rucker, Alabama. All of us had slightly more than a week before we needed to report for duty. We were given around ten days of leave time to move to our new duty station. I headed for Pennsylvania. I looked forward to a brief visit home with my parents and some of Mom's good cooking.

I set out, alone, on one of my usual straight-through drives, my normal mode of travel even to present times. In a small town just west of Indianapolis a lady pulled out in front of me from the curb. My car plowed into her rear bumper. My head went through the windscreen and the car was totaled. There I was in Indiana with no transportation and beat up to boot. The woman, in her large Chrysler, drove off unscathed by the impact with my little car. Later she returned and apologized. Some months later she claimed whiplash and tried to sue my insurance company. Well, her apology did me no good and was definitely no help in easing discomfort. A state trooper took me to a hospital where I was stitched up. My eyelids were filled with pieces of glass from the windshield. Fortunately my eyes were not cut. My left cheek was cut clear through from the corner of my mouth, on the left side, rearward about two and one-half inches. A small piece of my tongue was severed off on the left side. **

Before leaving the scene of the accident, I had called home, collect, and told Dad that I had been in a little accident. Dad was very concerned. I told him I would call again, after I got stitched up. The trooper waited for me at the hospital, and afterwards took me to a small motel, in the town where the accident had occurred. I called Dad again and told him the name of the town and the name of the motel. He, in the interim, had made arrangements, with my older brother, Tom, to come and get me and the remains of my car.

I spent the night in the little motel. My head was wrapped up like a mummy and I could barely open my mouth. The motel was owned by a very nice “little old lady.” In the morning she, being kind hearted and feeling sorry for a poor soldier boy, brought me a huge stack of pancakes for breakfast, free of charge. Unfortunately, I was unable to open my mouth more than a fraction of an inch; I thanked her profusely, through my clenched teeth.

I managed to push one ho-cake between my teeth with much pain and then in desperation fed the remaining cakes to Mr. Toilet, who swallowed them with no trouble at all. It was just too painful to try another. I later returned the empty plate and thanked the old lady again.

By that afternoon my father and brother had arrived at the motel where I was holed up. I threw the few things I had with me into my brother's car, and then we went to get my wreck. My vehicle had been pretty well demolished. My brother had foreseen having to use a tow-bar to bring my wreckage home. We hitched up and off we went.

My short visit at home was not nearly as enjoyable as I would have liked it to be. With my mouth all but closed, there was little in the way of Mom's cooking that I could enjoy. The majority of my time was spent convalescing and praying that this mishap would not interfere with my next phase of flight training. It had already been interrupted enough in my opinion. The only real fun that I had while at home, was meeting my brother's fiancée. I looked like the actor in the 1932 film "Return of the Mummy,” starring Boris Karloff as the mummy with my head all wrapped up the way it was. Tom said it was the best he could ever remember me looking.

I bid my folks farewell and, car-less, once again I boarded a bus, this time headed for Alabama and Fort Rucker, my next duty station.

Fort Rucker

I arrived at Fort Rucker, resembling a mummy dressed in uniform. By that time all of my old, ill fitting, basic issue fatigues had been tailored. I reported in early and was immediately ordered to the hospital for an examination, to see if I would be able to remain on flight status.

To my great relief I remained on flight status. My bandages were removed and the cuts on my face were healing nicely. I was ordered not be able to shave my entire face for a few days. I would then have to be careful until the stitches came out. But other than that no harm was done.

The wife of one of my friends (another WOC) had once told me that facial scars just added character to a man's appearance. She was prejudiced, her husband, of course, had a few scars.

Our training at Fort Rucker was divided into two segments as far as flying was concerned. One part was tactical instrument flying and the other was tactical flying. The difference was that one was done solely on instruments, without ever looking outside of the aircraft.

In instrument flying we practiced cross country flying under IFR conditions (instrument flight rules). We also practiced GCAs (ground controlled approaches). These are landings in which a radar operator talks the aircraft down. Its almost like flying a radio-controlled aircraft, except the control commands are verbal and the aircraft pilot executes them. I really had my doubts as to whether we would use these Ground Controlled Approaches in a combat situation. But I must admit the GCAs sure were fun to do. All instrument flying is flying without any visual reference to any landmarks. All contact with the ground, and one's relationship to it, is determined by the instruments in the aircraft. This is true for both civilian IFR and Tactical IFR.

My half of the class took instrument training in the Bell OH-13 helicopter. They are like the helicopters that are used in the old TV show "Whirlybirds" or "MASH, they look like a clear plastic bubble attached to a truss work tail. The other half of the class took their instrument training in another Bell Helicopter the "Huey" UH-1 models.

We all flew in Hueys during our tactical training. Hueys were the backbone of tactical Army aviation. In tactical flying we did low level flying and some contour flying. Low level is self explanatory. Contour flying is simply following the contour of the terrain just a few feet above it, at say one hundred knots air speed. We also practiced gun runs and rocket runs on the gunnery range. We executed tactical maneuvers which involved ground forces in simulated combat conditions. These tactical operations were fun, but very far from being convincingly real combat conditions.

Another pilot and I were out on tactical maneuvers one afternoon. There had been fifteen hundred or so grunts, from some phase of Basic training, that were playing the enemy. I was flying when I noticed two jeeps and some troops below. I initially thought nothing about it, forgetting because the grunts were dressed in U.S. Army uniforms. Suddenly they looked up and then proceeded to open fire on our Huey (with blanks of course). I immediately dove for the cover of a small hill, doing an evasive movement. Smiling to myself I thought I had done the maneuver well. Unfortunately, when I looked up the first thing I noticed that we were below some telephone lines. The lines were too low to go under and my airspeed was fairly high. I could only think of one thing to do. I hauled back on the cyclic pitch, forcing the nose of the helicopter up above the level of the telephone lines. Then I kicked pedal and swung the tail of the machine over the wires, like a high jumper clearing a jump. The fellow that was flying with me never even knew what had happened. He had been busily reading a comic book. He was startled by the sudden movements, but, other than looking up for a minute he did nothing and said nothing.

Along with classroom work there were sessions in survival techniques and counterinsurgency methods. We were shown what sort of things we could eat in the wilds, especially the wilds of tropical Asia. We were shown insects and plants that we could eat in order to sustain life if lost in the jungle. Roaches by the way can be a very good source of protein. That is if you can overcome your urge to throw up at the thought of popping one in your mouth.

There was one practical exercise that I especially enjoyed. I enjoyed it because it was the kind of thing that I excelled at as a boy growing up and spending most of my time in the Pennsylvania woods. The skills that were being tested were a person’s ability to find his way in the woods and not being caught, and other woodsman's lore.

We started the exercise at night in a replica of a Vietnamese village. The scenario was to go as follows: It is evening and we are downed and stranded in a Vietnamese village. We are in groups of four or five for this exercise. Suddenly there were actual explosions booming out everywhere. Someone yelled, "It’s a mortar attack."

We cautiously made our way to the edge of the village, to a hootch (hut) where my group was directed to an escape tunnel. We had learned that tunnels were a very popular item in Vietnam. Our orders were simple - to make it through the forest (jungle) in the dead of night to a predetermined helicopter pick-up site.

For this exercise we had to check in at various locations along the way. To make the whole situation even more meaningful and realistic there were enemy units, made up of our own GI's (grunts), of an undetermined sizes. I had heard that over eight-hundred grunts were going to be operating in the area we are to traverse. We were ordered to elude capture, by the enemy, while en route to our pick-up location.

If captured, we could be tortured by being placed naked in small dark cells, not big enough to do anything in but squat. Occasionally an ice cold bucket of water would be dumped on the captive. These bits of information had, previously, been passed on to us by our instructors and later verified by some of our classmates that had been captured.

My outdoor training while growing up served me well that evening. Who would have thought that all my camping and out door activities as a Cub Scout, Boy Scout and Explorer Scout would pay off in life. I assumed leadership of the group, mainly because the others were too unsure of themselves. I led them unscathed through the woods to our pick up LZ (landing zone) hours ahead of time. I was very proud of myself.

We finished the night around a campfire and waited for our helicopter to arrive at 0600 hours to take us back to the base. It was late in August and WORWAC class 66-13 was starting its final phases of training. For the first time some of us started to really wonder where we would be heading after graduation; probably a spot half way around the world. Most of us would be receiving orders for a unit that was actively engaged in the conflict in Southeast Asia.

As our class drew closer and closer to the graduation date, the time when we would officially receive our Warrants and Wings, there seemed to be a marked increase in the amount of drinking and time spent at the club in the evenings.

Most of the candidates had turned in the name of their dates or wives for the graduation ball. This was to have been done at least one month in advance. We had all bought dress blue uniforms for the occasion and for use in our future military careers. Dress Blues are fashioned after the manner of the old horse cavalry uniforms. A dark blue jacket with the rank shown on a shoulder board, lighter blue trousers with a gold strip down the outside of the leg, a white shirt, and black bow tie finished out the uniform.

Well, three days before the graduation ball. I lucked out and met a girl that I wanted to