Surprised at Being Alive: An Accidental Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam and Beyond (13 page)

“Load coming under,” I call.

“Load in sight, forward ten,” my flight engineer replies.

I see nothing now but the pickup. I am the Chinook. It takes no conscious actions on my part to make the machine do what I want it to do, to go where I want it to go. It is almost like I am outside the aircraft watching as it comes over the load.

“Forward five, four, three, hold your forward. Load’s hooked, up twenty. Slowly, tension’s coming on the sling. Sling’s tight. Up twenty. Hold you forward, up, up. Load’s off. Jesus, it’s shot up. Hold your forward. Up ten. Steady,” the flight engineer calls, but I am looking at the torque as I hold the aircraft over the ridge. It is taking everything this aircraft has and I have not yet lifted the broken Cobra the twenty feet we need to get it to clear the trees around the zone. The Chinook’s engines can produce no more. If I pull more thrust, rotor speed will drop, maybe to the point where the aircraft settles into the ground, with the dragging Cobra pulling it down in a crash.

When stressed, pilots seem to go into a zone of relative time. In your mind, events stop, or at least slow way down. You can step back mentally and view things from different angles. In my moment of relative time, I considered what to do. Put the Cobra back down and fly away to burn off a thousand pounds of fuel? No, that would mean leaving the grunts on the hill to hold the position for another 30 minutes, maybe enough time for the NVA to kill some of them. Maybe enough time to get another machine gun into place to kill my fat, slow Chinook with its ungainly load swinging below it, sky-lighted above the ridge.

Relative time ends and real time returns to normal speed and I pull the thrust lever up rapidly to use all the power I have to get the load above the trees before my rotor turns droop and I settle the aircraft back down to the ground. At the same time, as we climb out, burning up the momentum from the last of the added thrust, I push the nose of my Chinook over and we dive down the mountain, the Cobra swinging below us just barely clearing the trees as we fall down the mountainside. Everything the Chinook has is now applied. There is no power left. My crew does not talk or maybe they do, but I don’t hear.

Fly. I need to get enough speed so that I can fly with the load. Fly. I am trading altitude for airspeed to get there and I must get there, say at least sixty knots, before I have no more altitude left to trade. We stay just above the green tops of the trees in our dive down the mountain, our external load Cobra probably too close to the treetops. God, don’t let it snag in the treetops. Flying now. Flying, vibrating and shaking now, but flying. With our speed, we no longer require all the power the Chinook has to stay in the air, but I don’t reduce it. I want to get away. The Chinook is flying and now it smoothes out as we end our dive down the mountainside and begin to climb, climb above the altitude where the NVA can hit us with small arms and then even above the altitude where they can hit us with machine guns, as we pass through 5,000 feet out over the low lands.

“Load’s riding steady,” I hear the flight engineer call as I climb the aircraft and its load away from the smoke of battle behind us. The riggers have done a good job. The drogue chute is steadying the Cobra and keeping its nose more or less straight with my Chinook as we cruise southeast at 90 knots. Looking off to starboard, I see the Huey’s that were waiting for us to clear, now headed in to pick up the grunts and riggers waiting in the zone.

“Nice job, Playtex,” someone calls over the UHF or fox mike, but I know better. I risked my crew unnecessarily to recover a shot-to-pieces hulk of an aircraft. But that was the mission and the mission must be done.

Thirty minutes later, I drop the Cobra at Camp Evans. We fly on back south to Camp eagle to refuel and then back toward the battalion TOC to wait for the next load. But as I report inbound from refueling, the TOC releases us to return to Playtex and Liftmaster Pad. Darkness is too close now for another recovery so we can go back home and call it a day.

Suddenly I am tired, very tired. I realize I have flown every minute since we took off from battalion three hours ago and my right hand and arm hurt from squeezing the cyclic grip. My copilot never said a word about wanting to take the controls.

Tired. The voices of my crew seem distant as we go through the shutdown checklist. As the APU comes off line, and the blades slowly spin to a stop, shut down is complete, the aircraft now secure in its steel revetment. I look out through my window to see the other company IP and the Ops O standing outside the rotor disk watching the blades slow to a stop, dipping close to the PSP (pierced steel planking) as they complete their final turns. Gathering my gear, I climb out of the aircraft and walk over to them.

“Would you like to quit flying now?”

“Yes. Yes, I would.

” Yes, yes, I would. On August 7, 1971 my combat missions in Vietnam were done. I never flew a Chinook again.

FLYING LIFE TWO

THE NATIONAL GUARD

1972–1975

The US Army was nearly destroyed by 1972. Drugs, the unending war in Vietnam, and the growing fight against it at home—all of it came together to bring morale to a very, very low level. I came back from Vietnam gung-ho in 1971, a budding lifer, but within a year I requested release from active duty so that I could go to college full time. A former active duty Army aviator, now a student at the University of Kentucky, suggested I join the National Guard while I was going to school like he had done. I would still get to fly and the extra money would help. He told me that the Kentucky State Aviation Officer, a colonel, was coming down to Ft. Campbell and I should talk to him. I leaped at the chance and called the colonel. He agreed to meet, so I picked him up at the airfield and took him to lunch at the Officer’s Club. He invited me to Frankfort to see their operation, so a week later I went to the Boone National Guard Center for an interview. After we talked, the colonel said, “Let’s go flying.” I declined on the grounds that I did not have flight gear, but he said it would not be a problem. So, in civilian clothes with only a flight helmet, I started up a UH-1H and we took it around the traffic pattern for an hour. He liked my flying and I was formally invited to join the Kentucky Army National Guard as a CW2. I accepted immediately.

13

TRUCK STRIKE

BOWLING GREEN, KENTUCKY ■ JANUARY 1973

“2II3th Transportation Company, you call—we haul. We got J-bys, L-bys, and them great big mothers that bend in the middle and the brakes go SHUUUU.” (My company’s standard telephone greeting, circa 1975)

W
hen the call came from a fellow student at the University of Kentucky, a National Guard captain when he wasn’t studying accounting, I could not believe it was real. I knew him as a friend, and while I knew he was a captain in the Guard, I didn’t think of him as a “Captain” like the RLO (Real Live Officers, as opposed to warrant officers) captains I had known when I was on active duty in the Army. He was just a fellow student and friend that I flew with now and then.

“They’re calling us up. Report ASAP to the Aviation Center for your assignment.” he said.

“Right. How about you kiss my ass instead? I haven’t got time for this shit, I got a big test tomorrow,” I replied and hung up.

The phone rang again, in just as long as it took to re-dial it.

“Look, man, I’m not kidding. Call them, if you don’t believe me. You are supposed to bring clothes, money and whatever else you think you will need for a one week deployment somewhere in the state.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

It only took a few minutes to call my wife at work and the two professors from tomorrow’s scheduled classes with the news. Instructions were left with my wife to call the remaining teachers. The RON call (“remain overnight” call, made so that all would know you actually made it to wherever it was you were going) would come from wherever and whenever the night ended.

The drive to Frankfort, the base of all Army National Guard aircraft in Kentucky, in my red Pinto was faster than usual, not that I could be fast under any circumstance in a 1600CC 1972 Pinto. Somewhere, I had read that a Guardsman called to active duty could not be arrested except for a felony, so I used the opportunity to see just how fast the Pinto could go. The answer was not very. In fact, it was hard to tell I was going for max speed—even on the interstate in the days of 70 MPH speed limits and 80 MPH drivers—when my red, gas-tank exploding model Pinto would only do 83 no matter how long I kept my foot to the floor. Had I passed a state trooper, I doubt he would have even bothered to stop me.

At the Boone Aviation Center, many of the other pilots, 20 or 25 of them, were already there. The pilots talked excitedly about the truck strike and where they were going to be assigned, while the commanders gathered around maps and talked about who should go where. All were excited to be back in action as opposed to their normal civilian lives, even if the “action” was going to be routine flying, not combat. I found 35 cents in my pocket and bought a soft drink from the machine while waiting for some order to come from the full time Guard officers who were in charge of us “weekend warriors” milling around the room. Finally the RLO’s conference broke up and a sheet of paper listing aircrews, aircraft assignments, and deployment destinations was taped to the whiteboard in the front of the room.

“OK, here’s the deal,” the colonel started, “As you know there’s a truck strike going on. Some truckers are blocking gas stations, others are slowing down traffic, and some people are attacking trucks on the roads. Sometimes it’s rocks thrown from overpasses, sometimes it’s shots fired. We’ve had reports of both, so the governor has decided to call us up to provide air surveillance of the roads. You are not to attempt to interfere with whatever is going on. You will each be assigned a state trooper to ride with you. He will have a police radio, since they operate on different frequencies than we do and
he
, I say again,
HE,
will call any trouble in to the closest police unit. You keep the helicopter in position for the trooper to observe what is happening but far enough away to keep from getting shot. I realize nearly all of you are Vietnam vets and this must seem like a bit of a joke after that, but wouldn’t it be really stupid to get killed here in Kentucky after the war is over?”

We all nodded in agreement, but I could see a bit of a light in the eyes of a couple of the old LOACH pilots. I had flown cargo helicopters during the war, and did not want anyone shooting at me then and certainly did not want anyone shooting at me now.

Scanning the aircraft assignments posted on the board, I saw that I had drawn an OH-58A Jet Ranger and since I was the senior pilot in the crew, I would be the AC and another CW2, the copilot. Our flying assignment was to patrol a triangular stretch of interstate highway in the western part of Kentucky from sunrise to sunset starting first thing tomorrow morning. We were to be billeted at a Holiday Inn located just outside Bowling Green, home of Western Kentucky University and General motor’s Corvette plant. After a quick preflight of our Jet Ranger, we took off into the cold, gray Frankfort afternoon. Since I was the AC, I did the first takeoff, like all ACs do. Got to make sure the helicopter is working as it’s supposed to.

As we were climbing out, my copilot, said, “Would you mind stopping by my mom’s place. I don’t have any money.”

I looked over at him in the left seat of the cockpit in amazement. It had to be a joke, but by the look on his face I realized that he was serious. How could anyone go on an active duty mission like this without any money was a mystery to me, but that pretty much was him. I knew he was a student at the University of Kentucky, like me, but he was not married and so was apparently less concerned about money and things like that. Since I did not have enough money to support two of us, I saw little choice.

“Sure. Where does your mom live”? I asked, trying to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

“She lives south of Louisville, right on our route,” he said while holding a chart under my nose.

The town he indicated was indeed not far off our route. He assured me that the backyard of his mother’s house was plenty big enough for a Jet Ranger. When we arrived there 15 minutes later, I agreed that his mom’s back yard was indeed a big enough landing zone for a 58. I landed the helicopter a ways back from the house so as not to blow things around and he un-strapped, opened the door, and trotted up to the back door.

He must have called ahead before we took off because an older woman was waiting there at the back door as we landed. She gave him a hug as he came up, and then she disappeared into the house. I could see the neighbors coming out into their backyards to see what was going on, wondering if anyone was calling the police about the helicopter making all that noise out back. A few moments after she went inside, the woman was back and handed my copilot some money. Trotting back to the aircraft, he strapped in and we were off to Bowling Green again. Normal operations for the 1970’s National Guard.

It was dark by the time we finally landed at Bowling Green’s airport. After I called back to Frankfort with our RON and to confirm nothing had changed in our mission instructions, we caught the fixed base operator’s (FBO) aircrew van over to the Holiday Inn. The FBO would pick us up again in the morning about an hour before dawn.

Everyone in the motel lobby stared at our flight suits and helmet bags as we checked in, curious but not asking questions. Unpacking only took a few minutes and still in our flight suits, we went to the motel restaurant for dinner. We could have changed clothes, but as a Guard pilot you don’t get to walk around in a flight suit very much and they do get attention, always positive in Kentucky and the south in general.

Even if the Commonwealth of Kentucky was buying our dinner, we didn’t order too much. The saved TDY money could be better spent back home in our real lives as students, as would the extra pay for every day this mission continued. After dinner we went to the bar for a drink, as is usual when you are TDY (“TDY” is a government term meaning detached duty away from your home station. The marines and Navy sometimes call it “TAD” for temporary Additional Duty, which is also translated as “traveling Around Drunk”), and as usual, going to the bar was a mistake. There in the bar was a group of “West-by-God-Virginians,” all older women (since both of us were less than 25 years old, about everyone was an “older” person), in town for a meeting of some sort. As soon as they saw the flight suits, they wanted to buy us drinks, among other things.

By 10:30 Pm, I was beat and a little bit wobbly from free drinks. It had been a long day and free beer or no, I was not used to drinking late into the evening and still making a dawn launch. I told my copilot I was going back to our room and rack out (sleep). He said he would stay for “just a little while longer.”

Sometime later, loud noises in the motel room woke me up, loud noises followed by bright light. I opened my eyes to see that my copilot had thrown open the curtains on the picture window. He was standing there, framed in the plate glass facing the parking lot, stark naked. His arms where stretched out to the sides like he was making wings.

“What the fuck are you doing”? I asked, very sleepy, but rapidly becoming awake and becoming very angry.

“Hot. It’s hot in here. I need some air,” he replied.

“That Goddamn window doesn’t open. And close the fucking curtains,” I shouted.

He was in no condition to argue or do much of anything else and began fumbling to close the curtains. Before the light was gone I looked at the clock and saw 1:30 Am. He opened the door before he hit the bed so he could have his cold air. I closed it as soon as he went to sleep, about 30 seconds later.

At 5:00 our wake-up call came from wherever wake-up calls come from. I figured it would be best if I went ahead and took a shower before trying to get my copilot out of bed. When I did, he came up easier than I thought he would and was ready to go in short order.

The FBO van was there and ready to go when we got to the lobby. We managed to get a roll and some coffee from the buffet to take with us but my copilot pitched his roll out the window as we pulled out of the parking lot.

When we got to the airport, our state trooper was waiting for us in his cruiser. We shook hands and he came inside with me as I checked the weather at the Flight Service Station. While I talked clouds and visibility, he called his police command center in Frankfort to confirm the mission was on. He was excited about flying instead of driving all day and writing speeding tickets. The weather was overcast but fine for the kind of flying we would be doing, low and slow observation work. While I was inside, my copilot preflighted the helicopter.

With the state trooper and his radio strapped in the back seat of the OH-58, we lifted on schedule in the gray light. I hovered the aircraft out for takeoff since my copilot was looking a little pale. With the control tower’s permission, I did not bother with the runway, but instead took off from the taxiway across the grass toward the airport fence and headed out toward the Interstate Highway we would patrol. We could just see the beginnings of daylight as we climbed out from the airport. We saw nothing significant for the first 20 minutes of flight along the highway, except cars on the interstate and trucks parked at rest stops, but then my copilot began pointing violently at the ground.

I thought he saw a sniper or some sort of ambush on the side of the road, so I pitched the nose of the Jet Ranger sharply up about 30 degrees and began a split-S type maneuver, a “return to target” we called it, a rapid turn accomplished by pitching the nose of the aircraft up and rotating it sharply to the right before pushing the nose down toward the ground, so we could get back around, keeping the target in sight the entire time. As I banked the aircraft hard in the tight turn, I saw my copilot suddenly put his hand to his mouth.

No ambush, no sniper—my copilot was sick from too much “West-By-God-Virginian” beer.

As quickly as I had turned the aircraft into the return-to-target, I rolled it wings-level, and lowering the collective, headed for a rapid landing in a pasture beside the road. Too late. At least he threw up straight-ahead; projectile vomiting, I think best describes it, covering the windshield and dash on his side, and luckily for him, not covering me. The smell in the small cockpit nearly made me vomit too, but I slid open the small window in my door to get to the cold outside air and kicked right rudder enough to get air blowing through my door and carry the smell out his side.

By going direct instead of following the road, we were back at Bowling Green Airport in 10 minutes. No words were said by the trooper or me or the copilot until we were on the ground.

“You son-of-a-bitch, clean up the goddamn aircraft. When it is clean and doesn’t smell any more we will go flying again,” I told him as calmly as I could. If a pilot gets air sick,
he
cleans it up, so I did not offer to help him.

The trooper went back inside to the FBO’s ready room with me and drank coffee and talked as if nothing had happened, expressing no interest at all in the copilot. The thought occurred to me that had my copilot been driving a car, the trooper would have been very interested indeed in his blood alcohol level. Forty-five minutes later the copilot came in and said we were ready to go. To try to make things better he had refueled the aircraft, and so, without another word we went out to the bird and took-off again.

The day passed without incident. No snipers, no ambushes, just three refueling stops and six hours of flight time up and down the interstate. He did not get sick again. We returned to Bowling Green just as the sun was setting.

After having a hamburger in the motel bar, we watched the Nashville evening news on the television.

“The Kentucky National Guard is patrolling Interstate 75 today as the truck strike continues,” the announcer said, while showing a picture of a much larger Army Huey from Fort Campbell, instead of our Kentucky National Guard OH-58. The mistake was obvious to anyone who knew anything, since the Huey had a big “101st Airborne” sticker on its nose, while our Jet Ranger had even bigger “Kentucky Army National Guard” stickers on both cockpit doors.

“I wonder why they did that,” I said. “Our Jet Ranger was parked right next to that Huey when they were filming.”