My War - Installment 19

I was not personally aware of any others that might have been wounded or killed that morning. I continued to think of it all as part of the plague caused by the lack of communication which all Lift pilots shared. Maybe they did better not knowing all the details, it seemed they were content in any case.

Our CO had been evacuated with his back injury. He told me, personally, before leaving; that he was going to write me up for the Distinguished Flying Cross for my actions of that day. Almost a year later when I received an award for that day it had been degraded to an Air Medal with "V" device.

At the time, when I was in the heat of the action, the idea of getting an award for what I was doing never ever entered my mind. I had never, up to that point, ever considered decorations; my mind had been totally occupied with the job at hand. If getting awards was based on conscious, conspicuous effort there would be far fewer heroic acts; people would weigh all of the consequences of their actions before they would act. I would find out in years to come, that decorations were cheapened and made almost worthless by the actions of some ranking officers that received high awards for just flying over an area out of reach of weapons fire; usually they would see to it that those with them also got awards. There were also those awards that were politically given. There were also a few units that received awards for performing things that we commonly did every day. But, I suppose that these things are some of the additional corruptions of war.

My guitar came in that day from Phu Cat, in spite of the action and disruptions of the day. To top off the day another surprise arrived. This was a capital day: my direct involvement of the morning, my guitar, and the Coleman lantern, that I had ordered had also arrived. No more sitting in the drab interior of our tent, illuminated only by flickering candlelight. Things were really looking up. I was quite pleased.

At mess that evening I sat with some of the members of the Scout section that had finished early. I clearly stated my intentions, telling them that I wanted to fly with the Scouts. They seemed pleased and interested enough. Apparently they had heard stories about my craziness of that morning and it must have helped to qualify me in their eyes.

The evening seemed to pass by quickly. The sun sank behind Little Hong Kong hill, its shimmering rays resplendent in hues of orange, red, purple, and yellow touched with traces of gold. I was at peace with myself.

Jack had been letting me play around with his guitar for a week or so since I had decided to buy one for myself. One of the enlisted men, Robert Brown, came by and gave me a book of guitar music that had a chord diagram chart in the front. This helped me substantially. As I leafed through the book I listened to Jack strumming away and singing. After polishing the shiny sound box of my guitar, I joined him.

That night at the OPs meeting our suspicions of the day, as to what had happened and what would be going on in the morning, were verified.

We went back to our tent and I wrote to my parents that night and told them that "I had killed my first communist" that day, as if I had really done something for my country.

OVERLOADED, BENT AND JUMPIN

Mornings always came quickly in our unit. They for ever and a day seemed to start off the same. I awoke with the movements of the first Scout pilots and went through what was becoming my morning ritual of washing, shaving and the like. I ate an early breakfast and at the first glimmer of daylight I decided to go and begin my preflight. The air was cool and moist as I walked from the mess tent. All was quiet except for an occasional noise from another pilot or a waking bird in the distance. The rising sun began to give shape to the indistinguishable mass of the countryside. I thought to myself, Vietnam is really a beautiful country; I looked forward to being able to see more of it in the months to come.

As I finished my preflight the Scouts were taking off and the rest of the camp was beginning to stir to wakefulness. I paused and then climbed back toward the inspection platform on the top side of the Huey and quietly contemplated the progress of the early morning. Men were waking and moving about in a seemingly semi-sleep, semi-automatic way. Some were moving about with a purpose, doing their jobs. Others sat, or stood absentmindedly chatting with one another outside of their huts. Still others, in a fantasy world, standing outside their tents or huts practicing quick draw techniques, as if they were in the Old West or something. Each one was moving to his own beat, preparing himself for the day that lay ahead, in his own special way.

From my perch atop the Huey I saw Jack move sleepily from our tent to begin going through his morning ritual before starting for the mess. I clambered down and strode over after him to have some more coffee.

The mess tent was filled with the smells of eggs, bacon, pancakes, syrup, toast and the ever present aroma of the Mess Sergeant's coffee. I decided to have a little snack since I had been there earlier. We sat around drinking coffee and discussing the prospects for that day for some time before we left.

The morning air was still cool on that day in late October as we left the mess tent and headed back to our abode for our flight helmets and other paraphernalia. We took our things to the ships and then looked for First Lieutenant Williams, who had been installed as section leader since Cap. Richardson had been shot and evacuated to the hospital at Qui Nhon.

"Morning John, what's on the agenda for today?"

"Looks like we'll be waiting here for the Scouts to find something for us to get involved in, Sam."

"That sounds as good as anything to do, as far as I'm concerned. Thanks John."

We went back to the mess for some more coffee and played cards while we waited for a call to go somewhere. We were still sitting in the mess tent when lunch time rolled around. It was a pleasant change from our usual field lunch of "C" rations. We enjoyed smelling the food cooking, while we played our card games at the rough wooden tables.

The day was warming up and I could begin to see the rippling waves of heat moving off of one of the temple ruins to the southeast of the compound. The area between Little Hong Kong and Phu Cat and still further along the road heading toward Qui Nhon seemed to be littered with ruin after ruin of old temples or shrines or what ever they were. All were obviously ancient. Most were broken apart a good bit and overgrown with grasses and brush, but they were clearly distinguishable buildings each perched on a little hillock.

About an hour after we finished eating lunch we finally received a call to bring the recon platoon to an LZ just south of where we had made contact the day before. We were quick to respond and within fifteen to twenty minutes had landed and off loaded, in a sparsely planted sweet potato field. The field was located beside a small river which flowed east to the South China Sea.

We were not told what was going on, we did know that the commands were coming from our new CO, the old EO (Executive Officer) of yesterday, Lt. Col. Mendenhal. We heard later in the day that the Col. had selected the LZ on the north side of the river. We were sent back for more grunts. Why? We were not told. There did not seem to be much going on, and we were not going to ask. The old adage “Ours is not to reason why, ours is just to fly and die” went through my head. So we just flew the grunts in.

While in flight back to LZ Hammond we were called back. It seemed that the grunts had been put down on the wrong side of the river. They had tried to ford it, but the apparently, calm, shallow looking stream of water had surprised everyone by its depth and swiftness. Eight men had lost their weapons in the river and all had retreated to the northern shore. We were ordered to pick them up and set them down on the southern shore.

During the interval of time when we were lifting the grunts across the river, we received an order declaring that: "those without weapons were to remain on board." Bill and I landed on the south side of the river. Tom had passed the word to the grunts about remaining on board. We took off and then Bill looked around. Five out of the eight that had lost their weapons were on our ship. While taking off from the south shore we were told to proceed to Bong Son and lager there.

What fun! We were immediately accosted by the child hucksters, even before the rotors had stop turning. Most of the afternoon was spent as usual chewing the fat and swapping stories about the day before. At 1730 hours we took off and went to pick up the remaining grunts from the afternoon mission.

Somehow, perhaps from brigade, more grunts had been brought in to replace those without weapons. There was just one catch. Brigade did not send an extra ship to pull out the extra squad.

There were four full squads, plus two extra men on the ground and only four lift ships. Almost before we landed one squad piled into our ship with the five grunts we already had. With seventeen of us onboard we were not able to lift off with the rest of our section. After they were in the air we pulled in pitch attempting to lighten the load on the skids, and gradually we eased forward. We started to pick up groundspeed and finally hit translational lift and became airborne. We sighed with relief and took up a course for home. We were thankful that it had been a smooth field from which we had made our take off. It could have been a bit ticklish if it had been rough or muddy, causing some suction on the skids. We were thankful too that there had been no fire fight in progress. The only results of the afternoon had been that an enemy cache of rice had been found and the recon platoon had been sent in to destroy it.

A few days later Bill and I were called on a one ship mission to pick up a cache of enemy weapons that had been found about ten kilometers east of Little Hong Kong. I had been bored and was acting foolish. I should have known better. I made a fast approach into the area and flared to land. There was a sudden bump from the tail boom, but the ship responded to the control movements normally. The LZ was secure so I gently sat down and jumped out with Tom to see what was wrong. Bill stayed at the controls.

"Holy smokes! There's a dent in the tail boom, Tom."

I inspected the area of our landing more closely. Behind us, some fifteen to twenty-five feet, was what appeared to be a bush. In actuality it was a mound of dirt with vegetation covering it. When I flared I had brought the tail down on top of that mound and, zap. That quickly, a big darn dent was put on the tail boom. At least it looked big to me.

Boy! What a horse's butt I was. How was I going to live this down? Fortunately Bill backed me up and the dent was just a superficial wound for the Huey. The matter was easily resolved.

The days were passing by rapidly then. I had heard a rumor that the Scout section would be adding a pilot in the near future, either from rotation or...? I wondered.

All of our action seemed to come in cyclic spurts, from what I had seen and gathered by talking with others. We would engage the enemy for a big fire fight and then they would seemingly disappear. Afterwards there would only be sporadic contact, until the next big one.

One afternoon during one of the lax periods the lift section was called in to pick up some prisoners. We lifted off from LZ Hammond and took up a bearing of approximately 300 degrees. We flew toward some very steep picturesque mountains. As we approached the mountains we could see the tiny Scout ships hovering around some flooded rice paddies. These paddies were some of the first I had seen that appeared to be in a productive condition. At least these fields looked like pictures I had seen, from the orient, of productive rice fields. The closer we got the more detail there was to the scene below. There were a number of Viet Cong, in standard black pajamas, with their arms crossed behind their heads; they stood in a line on one of the dikes which separated the rice paddies. There were none of our grunts in the area. I wondered what was going on. It appeared that the Scouts had, literally, flushed the Viet Cong from the jungle, or brush somewhere and herded them out onto the dikes. They were hovering holding them at bay, so to speak, while waiting for the Lift ships to arrive to take custody of them.