Surprised at Being Alive: An Accidental Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam and Beyond (12 page)

Pickle. A small jerk as the sling opens and the drums begin their fall.

Hold course and speed while the crew drags the sling into the aircraft through the hellhole. Behind me, I can hear the lead Cobra calling in hot. This time we did not drop a smoke grenade to light off the napalm. The lead Cobras FFARs would do that after the fumes had time to spread out enough. miniguns and 2.75mm FFAR and red, red black into the green.

The sling inside now, I push the nose over and add power speeding up to 140 knots and back to the PZ for another load. Behind me I can hear Chalk two Chinook talking to the grunts and the LOACH as he moves to drop his load. I hear the grunts telling them the first load missed. The NVA is still firing, heavier if anything, pissed that the helicopters came and they had no heavy weapons to reach us at 3,000 feet. Brave men, the NVA, to face napalm, the miniguns and 2.75mm FFAR and the grunt’s .50’s—brave men.

Fifteen minutes later, I am inbound again, another fifteen 55-gallon red drums swinging below my aircraft. Both loads have missed and the NVA are still attacking. I see much smoke from the first two drops now as I get within five miles. The Cobras are shooting less now, saving their remaining rockets and minigun ammo to light off the red drums. After my run, they will have to refuel and rearm, and the grunts will have to call for artillery until we get back. Brave men, the grunts, but they are fighting other brave men.

As I start my second run, I see the LOACH, low and fast right above the trees. I see him slow over the target, frustrated with our misses, dropping a smoke grenade right on top of the NVA troops. This time the LOACH seems to wobble in the air for a moment, then it falls spinning among the green trees, hacking into them as it goes down. I can see bits of rotor blade fly into the air. No black gray smoke, no orange red flame, the LOACH was just gone into the green.

I turn my Chinook to the right, away from the unknown situation to give things time to settle down. As I turn, I see two tiny figures, the pilot and the gunner from Little Bird running away from the green woods that hold the crash site across an open area. I see them running, running and I see tracers pouring from the American positions down into the woods, covering the two figures as they run. Both Cobras are diving now, spraying the woods with their remaining red streams of tracers. When I complete the 360 turn, the running figures are no longer visible, they must have made the lines safely. Or they are down wounded or dead among the green brush.

A breathless voice on the fox mike says, “Playtex One two, Little Bird. I went right down in the middle of the bastards. They were dodging pieces of my rotor blades. Drop right on the LOACH! Drop right on the LOACH!” there was no attempt at pilot cool in his voice, just a 19-year-old exhilarated at surviving, at being alive. Once again a LOACH had crashed without killing the crew, a characteristic that truly made it a beloved aircraft.

I complete the turn, and as I line up the Chinook with the target, I see the LOACH’s fuselage lying on its side, light green aircraft on dark green jungle as the last wisps of purple smoke from Little Bird’s grenade dissipate. As the aircraft wreckage passes under the top of the dash, I tense, ready to push the pickle switch when it appears between the rudders.

Pickle now.

Unseen to me, the front of the sling releases, the cargo net opens and the drums fall, red and red, end over end, spreading out as they drop. Again, no smoke grenade to light them, we are too high, and the drums are spread too far apart. The red drums hit the earth as the lead Cobra is in hot, his rockets leaving a white line in the sky as the last of his high ex-plosive 2.75mm FFARs hit and explode in the middle of the ruptured red drums in the green trees. White flash from the exploding rockets, then big red orange ball changing to black gray, spreading in a wide area over the LOACH and the thin purple smoke until both are quickly gone from sight.

I circle wide to the right, watching the flames and smoke above the green forest. Then secondary explosions start on the ground around the burning LOACH, small ones when seen from 3,000 feet. Flash, flash, white, red, black gray, among the red orange and bigger black gray. Three, four, now five explosions then they stop, leaving only black smoke.

“You got the motherfuckers! You got the motherfuckers! that’s their RPG rounds going off. You got them!” Little Bird yells over the fox mike. I hear the grunts yelling in the background as he speaks, happy or perhaps relieved, yells now that the NVA fire from the tree line had stopped. The NVA soldiers had withdrawn, broken contact with the Americans. Or they were dead, either way, no fire came from the tree line.

As Little Bird spoke on fox mike, the lead Cobra calls me on UHF to tell me that a Huey was inbound to pick up the LOACH pilot and gunner. I would not have to land and carry them back to their base after all. After I talk to the Chemical Corps officer, I call Chalk two Chinook and tell him to take his load back to the PZ. We would have to re-plan the original mission and start over again. The mines we originally set out to burn were still there and the mission must be done.

Six hours later, the day was done and both Chinook crews are in the Playtex Club. I am closest to the phone when it rings, so I answer.

I identified myself and hear, “Just the man I was looking for. Great job today. must have been a hell of a show,” the battalion operations officer was actually calling for me, another CW2 amongst the many in our battalion, a first, since he normally only talked officially to RLOs.

“Thanks,” I reply. “What are you talking about, sir”? We had done ten or more missions that day, including finishing the original napalm drop, and now after 12 hours in the air they had all run together in my mind.

“The napalm drop, asshole.” He replies. “You got 18 confirmed KIAs (enemy Killed in Action) and took out a big ammo bunker. The captain you had with you just wrote you up for a Silver Star.”

I didn’t say a word for a minute. I just sat there thinking about it. When I did speak, I told him it was a crock of shit. The captain just got it wrong and the battalion operations officer should just tear up the recommendation.

Silver Stars are for people who have done brave things. I did nothing brave to deserve a Silver Star that day. It is not brave to sit out of range and kill the enemy with napalm, turning men into unidentifiable things, shrunken and black against the unburned green jungle and gray ash where the flames were. If the green tracers had been reaching up for us and those drums of napalm, it might have been brave, but it is not heroic to kill men who cannot kill you in turn. The brave men were on the ground, trading shot for shot. They are not back in a bar having a beer. They are still out there, out by the Rock Pile waiting for the NVA to attack again.

That is, if we killed anyone at all. The NVA could have just given up and moved away when all the helicopters were overhead and the napalm and streams of red tracers and the rockets began to fall. Maybe killing the LOACH was enough for them. Maybe they just dropped their ammo and moved out of the area. Did anyone actually go to the burned ground and count 18 dead men? Who saw the destroyed bunker? The Chemical Corps officer must have wanted a medal and the only way he could get one was if the aircrew got one, so he wrote us up for one and was waiting for us to write him up for one. Or, he just wrote himself up for one without waiting for us to do it and turned it in to higher headquarters himself.

The battalion Ops O is incredulous as again I tell him that it just isn’t true and that he should tear up the write up. He sounded disappointed but agreed to do so.

I read, sometime after this event, that Napoleon understood decorations and medals—that he could get men to fight and die for a piece of colored ribbon. He was right, they will. But some men will also lie for them. In my remaining 22 years of service I arranged to never get another medal…

12

LAST ’NAM FLIGHT

NORTHERN I CORPS AND PHU BAI,
VIETNAM ■ AUGUST 1971

In most wars, one of three things happens to the combatants. One: your side wins—or loses—and you eventually get to go home; Two: you are wounded too badly to continue and you are shipped home; Three: you are killed. Not in Vietnam, though. There, all you had to do was survive one year, just KNM days, and you flew home on a big jet airplane while the war continued on.

I
n our 365 days, we found that mostly we all went through three stages—newbie, confident AC, and burn out. A newbie was too ignorant to know when to be scared and would do anything simply because he did not know any better and besides, ACs were god-like individuals; they were like the flight instructors at Ft. Wolters and Ft. Rucker, and could do no wrong. This stage lasted about two months. The confident AC knew he could do absolutely anything and get away with it because he was 20 or 21 years old and obviously the most skilled and knowledgeable pilot in the company, if not in the Army. He was also invulnerable. This stage started about three months into the 12 and lasted until about month 11. By then the confident AC became the burnout who knew in his heart that everyone was out to kill him; only his skill, his skill alone, could keep him alive and by God, he would do everything himself to keep anyone else from killing him.

The newbie had to be watched to make sure that, like a child, he learned that fire burns and you must not run with sharp objects or play in traffic. The confident AC had to be watched to make sure his ego did not take him past his actual skill level. The burnout had to be watched to keep him fit and alive to return home. We instructor pilots (IP) tried hard to ease that transition between the second stage and the third so that he could keep his pride and maybe recover somewhat before he went home. And so that after a year or so stateside, he could return to the war to do it again.

I reached the third stage in the second week of my twelfth month…

We, the operations officer and I, the senior instructor pilot, watched closely as the pilots got close to the end of their tour for signs that they were at the end of their rope. We did this by flying with them sometimes and by flying missions as wingman with them at other times. Even so, sometimes we missed seeing it coming.

“The son of a bitch pulled his pistol on me,” the copilot yelled as he banged open the screen door to the Club. “He pulled his fucking gun and threatened to shoot me if I touched the controls.”

Leaving my open beer on the bar, I went behind the counter pulled two new ones from the refrigerator and went looking for the AC in question. I found him in his hootch, sitting still and silent in his desk chair with his chicken plate (body armor) and survival vest dropped on the floor beside him. He had tossed his helmet bag onto his bed. His pistol was in its holster lying on the desk where it should have been, and not in his hand, where I feared it might be. He was just looking across the room at nothing. I could see him through the screen, sitting there, just sitting. Without knocking, I went in and pulled his roommate’s chair next to his. He didn’t even look up as I sat down. I open the two beers with my church key, handed him one and took a pull on the other. They were flat and tasted of tin, but they were cold and had alcohol in them. We drank in silence until they were empty, not talking or even looking at each other. I finished mine first, threw the can into the trash and looked directly at him for the first time since I came in.

“We’ve got a lot of ACs right now and the number of missions Division is sending us is slowing down. Would you like to stop flying now so that some of the newer ACs can get more flight time?” I asked, leaving him an open door, a way out without having to admit he was burned out.

He looked back at me for the first time since I came into his room and took the offered open door.

“Yes. Yes, I would,” he said, his voice tired and the strain apparent.

It turned out that for his last few flights the AC would not let any of the copilots fly or even touch the controls. All day, every day for the last week, for somewhere around eight or more straight hours of flight time per day, the AC had been continually flying the aircraft instead of taking turns with the copilot, as was customary. He was respected for his flying and leadership over this tour and no one had said a word until finally this new copilot put his hands on the controls and said he wanted to fly. At that point the AC pulled out his pistol, pointed it at the copilot’s head and told him that if he touched the controls again he would kill him. And he just might have…

“Yes. Yes, I would.”

I tried to watch myself, but others saw it first. The first week into my twelfth month, and while still at least nominally the company senior IP, I found myself getting fewer missions and the ones I got were the easy ones. No Cobra escorts. No napalm drops. No night re-supplies. Finally I was assigned the aircraft recovery standby, usually the lowest tension mission Playtex had.

Aircraft recovery standby consisted of sitting in the battalion tactical Operations Center (TOC) and waiting for a helicopter—anything smaller than a Chinook, since it usually took a CH-54 Flying Crane to lift a Chinook—to go down somewhere. Aircraft were often shot down, but even more often something simply failed; the pilot might have landed the aircraft in the closest spot available, and it was just too much trouble to fix whatever was wrong with it in the field. When that happened the aircraft recovery standby was called and we would pick up the downed bird and carry it as an external load back to Camp Evans or Phu Bai or Camp eagle, wherever the unit it belonged to was assigned. No big deal as far as an external lift went, a routine load, one all the ACs had done many, many times.

However, an aircraft going down, whether shot down or merely broken, was a big deal to everyone else. A reinforced platoon of infantry was also on standby, as was a specially trained crew of riggers, the men who prepared the slings necessary to lift the aircraft as an external load. When Division made the decision to recover an aircraft, the infantry platoon would be lifted to the spot by Hueys while the on-call Cobras orbited over-head to provide air cover. Once the landing zone was secured by the grunts, the riggers would be inserted into the LZ by their own Hueys with their gear. If the aircraft was intact and upright, they would rig it for a routine external load. If it went in un-controlled and was more or less in pieces, they might wrap it in a cargo net. The grunts would provide security while the riggers worked. Most of the time, eight out of ten anyway, the birds would just have a mechanical problem that was too hard to fix in the field. With shot down aircraft, Division normally waited until things had cooled down before they called for the Chinook to pick them up. Most times.

The standby Chinook always flew from our home heliport to the spot set aside by the battalion TOC, near the runway at Phu Bai, to wait. The AC went to the bunker to wait for a call while the pilot and crew hung around the bird, sunbathing, writing letters, sleeping. When a mission came, the HAC would get the brief and go out to the bird, ready for whatever the mission required. When the recovery had been made, the duty bird would return to the helipad and wait for the next mission. At dusk, they would fly back to their home heliport, mission complete. No recoveries were done at night, too dangerous all the way around. It was also very rare for a mission to involve hot landing zones; again, too dangerous for the grunts, riggers, hookup men and helicopter crews. Why lose more aircraft when you’ve already lost one at that spot? So, recovery standby was usually a nice easy mission, requiring some skill but no real nerve, perfect for a soon-to-be burnout.

I was in the TOC, reading a paperback when the first call came in. A Cobra was down on a ridge, close to the Rock Pile, up near the DMZ. Not shot down, but an engine failure, which unfortunately occurred while the crew was shooting it out with an NVA 12.7mm machine gun. Hot zone, but the Cobra crew does a magnificent job of autorotating their powerless helicopter to a very small, clear spot and then, since there is no place to land another helicopter, rides out, draped over the stub wing of their wingman, hanging on to the rocket pods to keep from falling off. Division commanding general (CG) is pissed, not at the crew, but at the thought of losing a Cobra to an engine failure and wants that Cobra back. At the call “Launch the recovery standby,” my aircraft will be on its way north very shortly.

I’ve got my map out, though I knew the area where the bird went down very well. It’s a skinny ridge by the looks of the map, with contour lines very close together. More information is coming into the TOC now. The Cobra pilot says he autoed in, was right on top of another couple of NVA digging another gun pit. Reports are coming in from other aircraft about seeing many NVA in the area. F-4’s called and will be overhead shortly. Artillery is shooting up the area already. My rectum is puckering as I listen. The recovery plan is simple. They launch the grunt security element in a combat assault to a zone just below the Cobra’s position. The grunts will fight their way up to the downed bird if they have to, and secure it for the riggers. Other Cobras are shredding the jungle all around the downed aircraft with their rockets and miniguns as the grunts start their way up. NVA tracers are coming back at them, but it’s hard to see where the fire is coming from through the thickness of the jungle trees. The NVA must be rattled since their fire is ineffective; at least so far, it’s ineffective.

Before I leave the TOC, I tell a runner to alert my crew while I get as much information as I can. In a few moments I hear the Chinook’s APU start up, followed by both engines. “Burn, burn goddamn you, burn,” I think to myself, hoping the NVA will light the Cobra up and set off the fuel tanks or the rocket pods before the grunts get there. It doesn’t happen. They do light it up, but the Cobra refuses to burn.

The aircraft is completely ready to go as I strap in and brief the crew over the ICS. They know perfectly well where we are going and that it will be hot when we get there. No one runs to the aircraft for a routine recovery. No one says a word, except those few required to get us airborne. “Takeoff checklist complete,” says the copilot. “Ready in back,” says the flight engineer, and I am climbing out, turning north as I go. The copilot knows better than to ask if he can fly, not this time. Thirty minutes later, at 6,000 feet altitude, I can see the black smoke on the green ridge still ten miles away to the north. It’s a pretty day for I Corps, blue sky above green mountains, puffy clouds up above us, all the way into North Vietnam fifteen miles away.

As we get closer, I see new smoke coming from flashes on the hillside. Artillery? No, then I see the F-4 pulling off target and his wingman rolling in. Jets, Cobras, artillery, all for one downed Cobra. My flight engineer came up front, something he rarely did, to watch the action through the cockpit windows. I looked over at him but neither of us said a word and after a few moments he returned to his position in the cabin and lay down on his stretcher, ready to make the hookup.

As we flew toward the smoke, I told the crew all I knew. The Cobra had an engine failure while engaging an anti-aircraft machine gun position. It had just refueled and re-armed so it was heavy. We had 6,000 pounds of fuel when we took off and would have around 5,000 when we got there, which made us heavy. It would take everything we had to lift it from the ridge where it rested.

As we got to within five miles, I could see the F-4s departing the area. Now the Cobras and their LOACH were working the area, talking to each other, calm and relaxed as they did their mission—major cool points for all of them.

“Little Bird, Gun One, you got a 12.7mm tracking you from your three o’clock.”

“Gun One, Little Bird, don’t see him. Can you do something about that?”

In the distance, I could see a Cobra rolling in and the streaks of his 2.75mm FFAR as they went toward the green hillside, then an orange flash and another, then gray smoke among the green of the forest.

“Gun One, Little Bird. I see him now. You got him. Want me to pick up the gun?”

“Little Bird, Gun One. Nah, leave it, It’s bound to be fucked up anyway.”

Pucker. I’m puckering, sucking the seat cushion up my ass, my hand is trying to crush the cyclic grip, and my legs are stiff against the rudder pedals. I take a deep breath to try to relax my hand, my legs. My Chinook is not a little LOACH dancing above the trees and dodging .50’s until the Cobras can kill the NVA gun crews. My Chinook is big and slow and ungainly, particularly when it has a broken Cobra swinging on a sling below it. I am an easy target for the machine gunners. Pucker. But I force myself to breathe deeply again and exhale slowly and relax my right hand on the cyclic and my legs on the rudders. The pucker remains, diminished, but still there. My right arm is starting to ache from squeezing the cyclic.

I knew how high up the mountain the Cobra was when they gave me its position, but now it comes home to me. It’s nearly 4,000 feet above sea level on a narrow ridge. The day is hot, the wind is light, my aircraft is heavy with fuel. Lifting this load is going to be close to all the aircraft can do and close to all I can do.

As we approach, I can see three Hueys orbiting to the east, over the lowlands. They had brought in the riggers and the infantry security and will pick them up after I get the Cobra out. The two Cobras that took out the 12.7mm machine gun are above the pickup zone. Two more Cobras are orbiting to the north, ready to come in when the first section runs low on rockets or 7.62mm minigun rounds. I cannot see the LOACH, but he’s there right above the trees, searching for more 12.7mm’s.

I can see the downed Cobra now and can see the hookup man standing on top of it, holding the donut up as he waits for my Chinook to come overhead. For a second I think about who has less fear of death, the LOACH pilot presenting himself as a target so the Cobras can come down to kill the NVA, or the hookup man, standing there high against the sky, a target for all as he holds the donut high.