As Jack flew through the same maneuvers that I had, I sat in the back of the helicopter staring out of the window, deep in thought.
This had been my first real, close-up, look at the country, at least the type of terrain that I would be flying in. I was fascinated by the lush growth, the profusion of green the immensity of the trees and the thickness of the forest canopy. It appeared that very large forces could move through those jungles undetected and pop up almost anywhere.
We had not gone close to any villages, but I was sure that I would see some later on, if not from the air from the ground. I figured that I would probably get my fill of both views before too long.
We returned to the heliport at Hong Kong Mountain and our first orientation ride was completed.
"You guys won't have any problems. You will probably fly copilot on a lift ship for a while before officially becoming a command pilot."
"Sounds good to me," I said.
"Yea, it’s OK with me. What other choice do we have at the present time?" said Jack.
We were dismissed, so we headed back to our unit. I did take notice that there was someone else waiting to take a ride. When we got back, we were invited to ride into An Khe, the local village, and check it out. The ride to town might be the only chance we would get to visit a friendly (ha, ha) village of this type, that is a GI oriented village. We had heard that "A" Troop pilots didn't get much time to do such things.
We rode south of the main base and then turned east into the village area. The village of An Khe was a sprawl of makeshift buildings. The buildings were constructed out of almost any material imaginable. There were buildings covered with cardboard, beer cans, soda cans and almost anything else the villagers could find. The beer and soda can buildings used the cans like shingles. The ends had been cut out and then the can was split and flattened out so it could be tacked to the structure. They were the fancier and by far the most durable of the buildings.
As we neared the buildings in our jeep, people swarmed around the vehicle. These jokers were worse than Saigon, it seemed. If they couldn't sell you something, they would just as soon steal something from you. Probably they would prefer to steal from you and sell it to you again. A double profit could be earned very easily that way.
Of course everything and anything was for sale. Before the jeep had even stopped we had all been propositioned a number of times. The inevitable porno shots were flashed at us with the line... "You wanna buy, Ja I. You numa won Ja I. You lik'a pictur my sister?"
It was interesting and funny in a way, how this guy's sister must have been the same sister of the last guy that flashed me the same picture in Saigon. I couldn’t imagine that all these girls looked just alike. My understanding was the Vietnamese girls were some of the most beautiful in the world, but obviously not around the base.
Somebody that we rode in with actually had to do something there in town. So, while he was doing whatever he was officially supposed to be doing, official or not, we walked around the village.
As we left the jeep, I did notice that a guard was left with it, an enlisted man of low rank. Oh, the joys of being an officer.
We window-shopped for a while and then ducked into one of the local sleaze joints for something to drink.
The place had a sign which read "Welcome GI's,” it looked just like all the other places on the street. As we entered from the humid street it was noticeably no better inside, it really seemed worse. The place was very dimly lighted and it took a few minutes for my eyes to become adjusted.
Eventually when we could see what was going on and make out the forms around us we were shown to a table.
Almost before we were seated, two girls, "B girls,” (bar girls) approached our table and took seats beside each of us. While talking briskly in broken English the girl beside me reached over and started to fondle my crotch. It startled me a bit.
"You numa won Ja I. You like a buy me Saigon tea?” fondle, fondle.
What could I say, but yes, caught up in my present circumstance I couldn't very well get up and leave. Well, I guess I could have, but I didn't. My companions would wonder what was wrong with me. This was apparently SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) in An Khe and perhaps everywhere in
I bought a coke and a "Saigon tea for the girl at the outrageous price of three MPC (Military Payment Certificate) dollars each. I relaxed and enjoyed the fondling. One fellow told me later that the Saigon tea was actually soda or colored water depending on the establishment. It had to be at the rate these girls belted that crap down. No human being could drink that much booze and function enough to hustle like these girls hustled. The girls would be content to sit and fondle and be fondled until the tea ran out.
Enjoyable as it all was, ho, ho. I had about enough. I thought I had grown used to cigarette smoke, but it was too much for me. The inside of the building was entirely a blue gray haze.
I finished my last coke and promptly made up an excuse about checking on the jeep and hauled ass. Fondle or no fondle, enough was enough in that atmosphere; I had to get some fresh air, even if it was hot, wet and foul.
It wasn't just the smoke and all the squirrely little slope guys staring at me. They kind of gave me the feeling that they were taking your money by day and going to try to take your life by night.
It was, I guess, a combination of the smoke and the slope creeps and the smells that made me want to get out into the fresh air. My skin was getting a feeling as if something was crawling all over it. In the Vietnamese boom towns there was very little thought, if any, given to the necessity of sanitation of any kind. It’s common in Asia to use human excrement as fertilizer. Fine, right? But why keep it in your house or building. The average country family does their number in a honey bucket and then they carry it out to deposit it in the field account.
There in the boom town there were no honey buckets to carry to the fields. Inside the bars there was the smell of stale smoke, beer and piss that assaulted the nostrils of those not drunk enough not to notice. Come to think of it, maybe that's why the girls fondled everyone, to keep them interested enough and then drunk enough not to notice the stench. Of course the girls were getting paid to put up with the smell. If you have ever been in an outhouse that has been in use for a number of years, you can appreciate to a small extent the smell of the bar we were in.
I really did check on the jeep. I asked our guard why he had to be posted by it in such a relatively small town. He told me that there had been a number of jeeps completely stripped, in a matter of minutes, when they had been left unattended. They are industrious little bastards when it comes to underhanded money making. The inscrutable oriental mind, eh?
Well, I decided I better wait and get away from the GI town before I made any superficial judgments about the people we Americans were there to help. GI towns even in the States are different from other towns, but they do have a normal side to them, a side where people live and work and do normal everyday things. At these towns that I had visited, Saigon and An Khe, they seemed to live only for the purpose of taking money from us.
I stood by our jeep and watched the seemingly endless hustling of any GI in, sight not to mention myself.
I was happy when the others straggled back to the jeep and interrupted my reverie. The other guys all seemed to have had a good time. They were all half drunk, too. I guess I had a good time too. It certainly was a different experience, even though I wasn't drunk. I have always had an aversion to not being in control of myself.
After mess that evening I was glad to have a chance to relax and lay down. I hadn't really slept much since before we left the states and I had experiences that I had never had before.
After almost dozing off I was awakened by an NCO with the message that Jack and I were expected to meet Red for a night orientation flight and the truck was waiting outside to take us to the flight line.
Weary and fuzzy eyed, I grabbed my flight helmet and started for the door of the tent building. I stopped just short and remembered that Jack was zonked out in the other cot. I shook him awake. He rubbed his eyes open as we walked outside to the waiting truck.
"What's up?" he asked.
"We're scheduled for a night flight with Red," I informed him.
"Oh, yea; you’re right."
He ran back inside, snatched his flight helmet, rejoined us a minute later.
The flight was uneventful, although it was different from night flying in the States. In the States there are lights everywhere. Even in sparsely populated areas there always seems to be those pearls of light dotting the blackened earth. Here on the other hand all was dark. There were the lights from An Khe, but it wasn't the same. Even the base camp was relatively dark.
The only excitement was the red glow from a stream of tracers, as we flew over an area northwest of the base camp.
Red informed us that in between each tracer were three other rounds. Tracer rounds glow red because they have a small pyrotechnic charge in their base that is ignited upon firing of the round. In the dark sky, with only the crackle from the radios and the pop of the rotor blades, it was hard to believe that we were actually being shot at. Some nameless and faceless individuals were giving it all they had to try and knock us out of the sky, to cause us to crash and burn as they say.
I hadn't heard or thought about that phrase since flight school. Surely there had to have been some crashes (crash and burns) with the huge number of students and helicopters operating at the heliports at Fort Wolters and Fort Rucker. There were only two that I had known of and both were pretty spectacular; funny that they were both during advanced training. Maybe they were being more honest with us by then? Who knows?
The real "crash and burn" happened with another class during instrument training. A Huey was climbing, after take off, and its rotor went into the rotor of an H-13. Both were flying IFR (Instrument Fight Rules) on training flights. The Huey was damaged but was able to fly back to the base heliport. The H-13 fell almost two thousand feet, I was told, in uncontrolled flight, crashed, and burst into flames. The IP had been thrown from the helicopter. An unnamed student was unconscious and strapped in the helicopter. The IP, with a broken back, crawled back to the burning aircraft and managed, somehow, to pull the student, still unconscious, from the burning wreckage. The IP later received a commendation for his heroic act.
One other crash was due to an oversight in preflight inspection. The lock on the "Jesus Nut,” the one big nut that holds the entire rotor system on the rotor shaft, was cracked, or the lock was not properly inspected. Right after take off, in a "B" model Huey, the "Jesus Nut" came loose and down came Huey, as the rotor system flew off for a short distance on its own. Fortunately they had barely gone into translational lift. The only damage besides losing its head, rotor head that is, was that the skids were sprung.
Another burst of automatic weapons fire shocked me from my reverie. As the red glow of the meteoric looking tracers faded from the last burst, we turned and headed back toward Hong Kong Mountain.
"There, you've been baptized by fire boys. I don't know when those stupid assed gooks’ll learn they can't hit us at this altitude. In most instances you'll find that there are two ways, maybe three, to know you’re getting shot at. Better make that four. One, you can see the tracers. Two, you're close enough to see them shooting at you, tracers or not. Three, holes suddenly appear in the Plexiglas or metal around you. Four, you have a strange, they tell me, burning sensation from being hit. Other indications than these and you're either wounded too badly to know or you're dead."
Red had been telling us these little ditties as we made our approach and landing. All of what he said we had heard before at one time or another. It was simple logic. I wondered if he had experienced any of the symptoms that he had mentioned other than the tracers. The thought quickly passed.
"Tomorrow we'll finish your orientation flights. Jack, you'll preflight and fly first. Sam, you'll sandbag in the left seat and I'll ride in the rear. We'll go out about 0830 hours. OK?"
"Fine with me," I said, "I've got nothing better planned."
I wanted to get this crap over with and move on out to Alpha Troop in the field. I felt I was ready to do the flying I had been supposedly trained for.
The next morning we finished our flight early. Jack had flown first from the right, and then I took over from the left seat. In that way we didn't have to land and trade places.
When we arrived back at the operations hut we heard that a ship was coming in from Little Hong Kong, we would be moving out that afternoon after mess.
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