Surprised at Being Alive: An Accidental Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam and Beyond (26 page)

It couldn’t be. The airfield should be directly ahead. But maybe in the handoff of the flight controls, we got further off our course than I thought we did. “turn right,” I called to the CO over the ICS. He started the turn and as he did, I saw through the NVG that the gunner had mistaken a private grass airstrip for the target field. Behind us the other aircraft were handling the turn with no problems in the tactical cruise formation.

“Roll out and turn left to 020, Sir,” I told the CO. As he steadied out on the new course, the target airfield came into sight. As we planned, we landed at the north end, leaving space for the other seven CH-46s behind us. As we stopped, the ramp was down and the Marines in the back were out and running to their blocking positions. I looked at the clock as our wheels touched. We were exactly on time, not early or late—exactly on time. Twenty seconds after touchdown the ramp was coming up and we were airborne again, climbing out rapidly to our holding point. Ten minutes later, we were coming back in to pick up the grunts. Their blocking mission was complete and we just had to fly them back to the ship.

The flight back was uneventful. We climbed to 500 feet and one at a time, took off the NVG and transitioned back to normal visual night flight. Crossing the beach inbound to the ship, we made the normal radio calls. Emcon (emissions control, meaning no radio transmissions) was over now that the mission was complete. The first four aircraft landed in order and we barely got the blades folded after shutdown before they were towing us to the boneyard to make space for the second four Frogs. The entire mission had taken two hours, one and a half of it on NVG. Thirty minutes after the last aircraft landed, we all gathered in the ready room for the debrief. Nearly all the pilots were there, even the ones that did not fly on the mission wanted to know how it went.

After the marine infantry mission commander and his platoon leaders joined us, the CO, as flight lead, did the honors of beginning the de-brief. He was all smiles since our part went exactly as planned. The XO had been leading the second division of four. He complemented the CO on the “S” turn on the final leg to burn off the few seconds that would have made us early. The CO did not mention the turn was made because our crewman called of the wrong airfield. The aircraft commander of the last 46 reported the tactical cruise worked as advertised. All the other ACs agreed in turn that it had gone very well indeed, as did the grunt commander. We put them exactly where they wanted to go exactly on time. The projected reenforcing bad guys did not show up, so no shots were fired and no casualties were suffered. Pickup and the return flight were uneventful from their viewpoint, just about as perfect a mission as you could get.

Our squadron debrief complete, the CO, XO, and I went down to the Ward Room for the overall mission debrief by the Special Ops major general. Because of how the mission had been conducted, we had no idea how it went overall, we just knew our portion was as planned. We had passed our “final exam” for the MEU-SOC designation.

The Special Ops guys were already there when we came into the back of the Ward Room. They were all very quiet, none of the earlier cockiness in evidence. The MEU commander (a Marine colonel) and the LF6F commodore (a Navy captain) were seated at the front table, but it seemed that we were waiting for someone. Then an Army two-star in camouflage uniform stomped, literally stomped, into the room. His face was red and it was readily apparent that he was very, very angry. He was the Special Operations overall commander and his Special Operations had not worked well, had not worked well at all. He started off strong and got louder and stronger as he talked.

The problems started when the Special Ops assault troops, the ones that would be taking out the bad guys and rescuing the hostages, elected not to fly down to Camp Lejeune with the helicopter unit. Instead, they would drive down. to do this they used three unmarked rental vans, the kind that tradesmen use. They would travel in “civies” so that the locals would not get too curious about all the military people passing through.

In a small North Carolina town not too far from the target area, they stopped to buy gas and several of them got out to use the men’s room. One of the Special Operators left the door to the back of the van open just a crack. Of course three van loads of muscular young men did get the locals curious. One of the gas station workers casually walked past the open van door and saw a machine gun. Keeping as calm as he could, he went back inside and called the local sheriff, “Sheriff, we got a bunch of what looks like to me to be terrorists here at my station! they got machine guns and who knows what!”

The Sheriff had spent a lot of money equipping a SWAT team and now it looked like they would be needed. He hit the panic button, and in short order they were descending on the gas station. Faced with real armed men, the Special Ops guys tried to explain but would not tell the Sheriff what they were doing in his territory. Try as they might, they could not talk him into letting them go. In fact, they right pissed him off by being evasive about what they were up to. No one had told him about any military exercises in his county. Finally the Sheriff agreed to call their commander at Fort Bragg. When he talked to the general, he told him he would let them go if and when the general himself came down and signed for them.

The general had no power over the Sheriff, and if he wanted the mission done on time, he really had no choice. He called for one of the Shorts Skyvan Special Ops fixed-wing aircraft to take him down immediately. to try to maintain some sort of tactical posture, and to land as close as possible to the gas station where the Sheriff was holding his men, the aircraft would land on a logging road a half-mile away instead of going to the nearest airport, ten miles away. Unfortunately, upon landing the pilot lost control of the Skyvan and it went into a ditch. No real damage to the plane and no one hurt, but the aircraft would need a maintenance crew from Fort Bragg to get it out. When he finally got to the gas station the general signed and the sheriff released his very sheepish men to him.

Meanwhile, the Special Command and Control G-IV flying from Washington was overhead with all its communications electronics out of communication, meaning no contact with the assault force and/or blocking force. None of its secure radios and links were working like they were supposed to. Our liaison officer knew we would abort the mission at push time if we had not been given the “go ahead” to execute, so in desperation, he came up On Guard so give the order to execute. He had to use his personal call sign and the CO’s personal call sign to let us know it was real. everyone involved with the mission knew that if that happened in reality, the mission would have been compromised and would have been aborted, but this was an exercise so we went ahead.

Now, instead of flying into the target airfield, the Special Ops men would simulate that they had been inserted by helicopter some distance away and would assault the bad guy’s hideout on foot. The hostages would be freed and Special Ops’ “Little Bird” helicopter gunships would provide air support, if needed, and their Blackhawks would fly the hostages out after they were freed.

The Special Ops forces moved into position for the assault as planned, but bad guys had set up trip wires on the likely approaches to their hideout—nothing fancy, just some wires tied to tin cans that would rattle when they were moved. At the same moment the Special Ops men began to move forward, the airborne “little birds” were a bit off on their navigation and got too close to the hideout, close enough that the bad guys heard them at the same time they heard their trip wires being tripped. The bad guys then “executed” all the hostages and disappeared into the night, leaving only “dead” hostages for the Special Ops guys to find. The general saw and heard it all from his concealed position near the hideout.

The general finally ran out of steam. In the silence that followed, the Special Ops grunts and aircrews looked straight ahead. It was all the three of us regular “Special Operations Capable” pilots could do to keep from laughing. Sometimes “Special Operations Capable” supporting cast gets it right and sometime “Special Operations” superstars do not. Had we actually laughed, I think the general would have had us executed, or at least contemplated it. Instead, he addressed the commodore and the MEU commander directly and told them that the only part of this debacle that had gone right was the performance of the Marines in setting up the blocking force. They were in place on time and ready to meet the threat. With that, he thanked the commodore and the MEU commander for their cooperation and left the room followed shortly by the Special Operators.

The commodore and MEU commander remained behind. The commodore motioned for us to come over. All he said, after we gathered around him, was “Well done,” the highest possible praise in the Navy and Marine Corps vocabulary.

We were now a MEU (SOC) and ready for our six-month deployment as LF6F.

23

BROKEN ON A MOROCCAN BEACH

EAST OF TANGIER ■ JANUARY 1988

One thing about being a Marine is that you can never let someone else be in charge if you are senior. Officers never ever stop being who they are no matter what role they may be in at any given moment, and Marine officers like it that way because it makes things black and white, no ambiguity. So while for training purposes we pretend, otherwise, pretension stops when reality intrudes. This is not a bad thing; it is just the way it must be.

W
hen our helicopter had an engine that wouldn’t start, I could not just sit back to see what the helicopter aircraft commander, the “HAC,” would do. I was the major and he was the lieutenant and with the engine problem, the section leader’s evaluation I was giving him on this mission was now over. So, there we were, stuck on a beach on the mediterranean coast of Morocco with one engine that wouldn’t start, 70 miles away from our ship, as it got dark.

I arrived in Morocco via Lisbon. As the senior WTI and director of safety, standardization, and NATOPS (DSSN), another officer and I were sent ahead of our ship, the USS
Nassau,
via Marine Corps C-12 (a Beechcraft King Air) from NAS Sigonella, Sicily, to Lisbon, Portugal, to liaise with the Portuguese Marine Corps for an upcoming NATO exercise we were going to execute down south of Lisbon. It was to be our final exercise of this six month deployment and we wanted it to be as nearly perfect as possible, a sort of graduation exercise. When we arrived at Lisbon’s International Airport, there was a brand new Mercedes SUV with a Portuguese Marine officer and driver there to meet us.

As life sometimes works out, I was, unknown to me, a friend of the commandant of the Portuguese Marine Corps. A few years before, I had been deployed with my British Royal Navy (RN) squadron onboard HMS
Illustrious
for a small bi-lateral exercise between the RN and Portuguese Navy. Two Portuguese Marine Corps (PMC) officers were also onboard, but for some reason, perhaps because they were Marines and not Navy, the RN officers were ignoring them. Seeing this and being a Marine myself, I introduced myself to them and in short order, we were the best of comrades, swapping stories about wars lost: theirs—Angola, and mine—Vietnam. We exchanged names and addresses and as men often do, never communicated afterwards; however, the senior officer remembered my name when he saw it on the list of inbound officers. It was golden.

The mercedes took me to the four-star hotel my friend had booked me into, at the “military rate” of $10 (US) a day. The PMC driver/body guard was stationed outside my door anytime I was in residence. When I came out the door he came to attention and drove me wherever I wanted to go. The first place was to HQPMC to discuss the mission and to thank my friend for his hospitality. Over the next three days, we completed the liaison, driving to the south coast to pick out the site for our squadron base camp and doing reconnaissance on the LZs we would use in the exercise. When we were finished with our work in Portugal, another C-12 flown by two Marine officers from Rota Spain flew into Lisbon to pick us up and take us to Tangier, Morocco, to meet the USS
Nassau
. In Morocco, we would complete a minor bi-lateral exercise a few miles down the coast from Tangiers with their military before moving to Portugal for the last exercise of this six-month LF6F.

The C-12 dropped us at Tangier’s airport, about 20 miles south of the city, where US embassy people were supposed to meet us, take us through customs and get us to Tangier’s harbor where our ship was to anchor. No embassy folks were there when we climbed out of the C-12. There was not a sign of a Moroccan Customs and Immigration Station either, so we went into the terminal building to wait. While the terminal building was full of exotic people coming and going, after an hour and two coffees, we were tired of waiting. We went out to the taxi rank in front of terminal and climbed into the old Mercedes that was first in line.

We were expecting to get ripped off as often happens in out-of-theway airports but instead, found the driver reasonable in his rates, friendly in his fluent English conversation, and a willing tour guide as he took us into the city. As we headed toward the city at a leisurely pace, he pointed out objects of interest along the road, ruins, colonial buildings, etc. We told him we were waiting on a ship but did not know exactly when it would arrive. He told us he knew just the place for us to wait and dropped us at a slightly seedy but lovely bar overlooking the harbor. An hour later we were on our second beer when we heard the “whop-whop-whop” of a UH-1N out over the water. As the Huey headed further on down the coast, the bow of the
Nassau
appeared around the headland as the ship headed for its anchorage. An hour later, we were at the dock waiting for the first ship’s launch to arrive. The Moroccans were more than a bit surprised that we had not cleared customs at the airport, but after a few signatures and stamps on our orders, things were cleared up and we were on the launch headed toward the ship.

Five days later I was on a mission in support of our Moroccan hosts, joint training with our SEALs and the Moroccan Special Operations troops, at a beach about 40 miles to the east, down the coast from Tangier and the
Nassau
. The mission required a flight of two CH-46E (a “section” in Marine Corps aviation terms), with my aircraft in the lead. Using the mission as a target of opportunity for training the junior pilots, I was acting as copilot while giving the real copilot a section leader check that would let him command a flight of two helicopters. The aviator taking the section lead evaluation was doing fine. He had hit all marks from the start of the brief to the navigation to the LZ and leading the second helicopter. Our flying was fun, too, just the two helicopters headed out east, down the Moroccan coast on a beautiful North African January day.

The SEALs we were supporting were already there when we arrived at the training site on the coast, having driven down with the Moroccans a few days before. After a short briefing, they had us doing interesting flying instead of just the usual landing and taking off, ferrying them from one LZ to another. Instead, we were flying low and slow over the water while they jumped off the ramp into the blue sea. Sometimes we would fly low over the water and they would put inflatable boats out the back and then jump into the sea after them. It was all supposed to be training for the Moroccans for their Moroccan counterparts, but the US SEALs were enjoying it greatly, too, after the routine of deployed LF6F life.

At the end of the day, both aircraft shut down on the beach above the high tide line for a final debrief before we flew back to the ship. Everyone was well pleased with the day’s work. Brief complete, the SEALs and Moroccan commandos left by truck to continue their training at other locations. We too were finished for the day and had only to return to Tangier and rejoin the
Nassau
after a very satisfying day of flying. We expected to be back before dinner time and certainly before the movie in the ward room. The mission had been fun and the section leader check went very well indeed, but when we tried to fire up our 46, the Number 2 engine would not start.

The engine motored over like it should. Through the helmets you could hear the turbines spinning up and the igniters firing like they should, but it would not light. The crew chief tried various things, magic things, routine things. The crew chief from our wingman came over and he too tried various things, all the magic they knew between them. Nothing.

The helicopter was on the beach, but close to a Moroccan village that was not far removed from stone-age construction, at least to our eyes. There were no power lines or telephone wires going in or out, meaning, of course, no electricity, and in the pre-cell phone days, no telephone communications. We were well beyond UHF radio range with the
Nassau
and so had no way to tell them we were broken. It was getting dark on this January evening and we were soon to be overdue for our return. Rather than have the ship launch a search for us when we did not return before dark, I told our wingman to fly back to Tangier and tell the squadron our problem. We would spend the night in the bird and they could come fix us in the daylight tomorrow, rather than go through the whole complicated dance of flying a maintenance crew down in the dark and quite possibly working all night.

I watched my wingman disappear off up the coast to the west. Before long, he would have to turn north to continue to follow the coast to Tangier. It is always easier to follow a coast, a road, railroad, than just cut cross country, at least it was before GPS.

As I watched him fly away, I contemplated how many times I had broken down in helicopters and how it was usually in some very inconvenient place. Bermuda was one, not usually a bad place to get stuck, but the timing was off. We were on our way back from a six-month deployment, not on our way over to the Mediterranean. The ship’s captain was very angry with me because he had to turn his ship around and come back so that maintenance people could come ashore and fix my aircraft. Istanbul was another, an exotic place that would have been worth exploring except we had to stay with our aircraft until maintenance could get to us. Farmer’s fields from Alabama to Kentucky, very nice places I’m sure, but why did they always have dogs that came charging at you as soon as you stepped foot out of the helicopter? Now I could add Morocco to my list.

In the fading light, I thought about how it was going to be a cold night. Because we had not planned on spending the night on a beach 40 miles from our ship, we had no sleeping bags, nothing beyond our normal flight equipment. It would be another cold night in the “Boeing Hilton,” not an unusual event given the normal rate at which helicopters break down. One good point was that at least the Mediterranean has a very small tidal range here so I did not have to worry about trying to move the aircraft, on one engine, up higher on the beach and away from an advancing tide.

As I stood there smoking my pipe and looking out across the darkening Moroccan semi-desert, I noticed two men in uniform walking down the dirt track from the village, headed toward my aircraft. As they got closer, I could see that they were moroccan policemen, the local beat cops. I wondered if they were from here or sent here as a form of punishment. The older one greeted me in Arabic but of course, I do not speak Arabic except the phrase phonetically rendered, “tatti tacalum swayee swayee, min fudluck”—please speak slowly. Not helpful if you don’t speak Arabic at all, since incomprehensible words are just as incomprehensible when spoken at any speed. I tried English, but neither of them spoke English. As a last resort, I tried my French, picked up from a “NATO French for Officers Assigned to Brussels” tape set I studied for a while on my last med cruise. Bingo.

In my terrible French, “Le Helicopter et on pain. Nuh marsh pas.” the helicopter is broken. It will not run.

“Merde,” they replied.

Between us we established the fact that we were not going anywhere tonight and that my comrades would come in the morning and fix the aircraft. The senior policeman communicated that we should “dormay” and they would stand guard; given the circumstances not necessarily a reassuring thought, but one that we had to accept given that we were on a beach in nowhere Morocco and they were the local authorities.

No sleeping bags, no blankets, January on a Mediterranean beach in Morocco and trying to sleep on an aircraft bench seat—it cannot be done, at least for more than a few minutes at a time. The red nylon seats normally seat three passengers in each section. They have two metal bars that connect from the back of the seat to the front longitudinal bar to support the passenger’s weight. Whenever you try to lie down on one of the seats, the nylon sags just enough that the bars dig into your back. Think of it as a very cheap pullout couch, only worse, since there is no way ever to get comfortable.

The crew chief, being a good Marine and knowing what could happen, had a stretcher stashed in the back underneath some of the troop seats. When we did external loads, he would lie on it when looking down through the hell hole, instead of lying directly on the metal deck as directed. Sometimes he slept in his aircraft on the flight deck, so that he would not have to put up with the constant noise and motion of the troop berthing area below decks on the ship. He would be comfortable, if not warm, tonight.

After a few hours of fitful sleep, I gave up trying to sleep on the troop seats while staying warm with only my leather flight jacket, and climbed into the cockpit and tried to sleep in the pilot’s seat. That didn’t work very well either, so just before sunrise, I gave up altogether. I climbed out of the aircraft, walked 50 feet or so, and lit my pipe. I was jumping up and down doing a modified jumping jack in the wind, trying to warm up, when I saw the two policemen returning down the rocky trail from the village. As they got closer I could see one policeman held a large metal kettle in his hand, the other policeman had something wrapped up in towels held out before him.

The kettle held hot, sweet tea and the towels held local cornbread straight from the village’s ovens and still hot. The policemen also had a small container of butter and another with some homemade jam. Their hospitality took me back to the Kentucky of my childhood and the way the mountain people, my relatives, always greeted strangers with food and drink. I don’t think I ever had a better breakfast than that one, that morning on the beach in Morocco. We sat in the back of the 46 out of the wind and ate the cornbread and drank the hot tea with our new friends. We took all the MREs we had and after removing all the pork items that are forbidden to Muslims, gave them to the two policemen to thank them.

Later the villagers came over to see the helicopter stuck on their beach. We greeted them and gave them tours of the aircraft. Some of the less shy children loved sitting in the cockpit and pretending to fly. In due course, the repair aircraft arrived and the mechanics fixed the problem. As I took the aircraft off, I kept it away from the small watching crowd but then circled back, and descending to 200 feet, waggled the rotors as I went past to their excited waves.