by Matt Jackson
“Damn, this place sucks,” Specialist Mickey Barry complained. Barry was an avionics technician and a wizard when it came to figuring out the radio systems in the aircraft.
“This ain’t so bad. Think about the grunts and what they’re getting. At least we’re dry with three hots and a cot each day,” chimed in Specialist Mike Kelly, whose aircraft they were all waiting to work on.
“Hey, if the grunts didn’t want this crap, they should have joined up. They could have sucked it up and gone down and joined for a decent job and training rather than waiting to be drafted. Serves them right,” Specialist Leitzen interjected.
“Stop your pissing and moaning,” said Stevens. “I don’t care how bad it gets. We have it pretty good.” On that note, Sergeant First Class Kanardy walked in dripping wet. He was the maintenance platoon sergeant for the Cobra company, Delta Company, across the tarmac. Alpha and Delta Company maintenance platoons frequently helped each other out as many of the parts and systems between the UH-1 and the AH-G were similar. Kanardy was an impressive figure. He was a well-built six-foot-four black soldier with a booming voice. He was also a plank holder along with Stevens. Kanardy was on his third tour in Vietnam, all of them with the 227th.
“How about a cup of that coffee, Sergeant Stevens?” Kanardy asked.
“Sure thing,” Stevens said and looked at Specialist Kelly. “Kelly, get Sergeant Kanardy a cup of coffee. He likes a bit of milk in it as well. What can we do you for today, Sergeant Kanardy?”
“I would like to borrow Specialist Barry there to come over and help us with an avionics problem we got. Bird took a hit through a wiring bundle and my guys can’t figure it out. I’m sure Barry can,” Kanardy said as Kelly handed him his coffee. “Thank you, Kelly.”
“Yeah, you can have him. All he’s doing today is bitching about life in general,” Stevens replied.
“Whatcha got to bitch about, Barry?” Kanardy asked while blowing across the top of his coffee to cool it down.
“This weather, the way we live, everything about this place,” Barry responded.
“Hell, boy, this ain’t so bad. You should have been with Stevens and me when we brought the division over from Fort Benning. That was bad living.”
“How so? Worse than this?” asked Barry.
“When the Boxer arrived in Qui Nhon—that’s the ship we were on for thirty-one days—we unloaded aircraft for five days, getting them off the ship and ready to fly. Then we moved to An Khe, and there was nothing there. We landed on this grass field and moved to a field next to that field. We were sleeping on the ground, with nothing but barbed wire between us and Charlie. Me, Mike Schlaudraff and Jim King made a three-man pup tent. There was nothing there for support. Somebody got a backhoe and dug us a slit trench for a place to crap. Eventually, we took fifty-five-gallon drums and cut them in half, placed a board across the top with a hole cut in the board and that was our toilets until three-hole shitters were brought in. The cooks had a GP Large tent for cooking, but you got your chow and ate wherever. Finally we got GP Large tents for everyone and cots, and some showers were built and shitters too, but that was the extent of our luxury. Now you have hooches with refrigerators and a mess hall and movies some nights. We have it good now, so you shouldn’t be bitching.”
“Hey, Sergeant Stevens, where were you guys when you got the word you were coming to Vietnam?” asked Leitzen.
“We were at Fort Benning. The CO had a company formation and announced it officially, but everyone already knew. Some wives had called their husbands at work and told them where we were going. They told the husbands that the president had just announced it on the radio. They said he said he’d just ordered the airmobile division to Vietnam. There was only one airmobile division and that was us.”
Sergeant Kanardy joined in. “Then we really got busy. Everyone had to get processed for the move. Physicals and dental exams had to be up-to-date. Immunizations and wills and powers of attorney were required. They would take about eight hundred guys a day over to the field house at Harmony Church and process them. We also had to turn in our M14 rifles and were issued M16s, which meant everyone had to go to the range for weapons qualifications. Add to all this, we had to start packing our company equipment and get the aircraft ready for shipping. No one had ever done it before, so you can imagine what kind of a goat screw that was.”
“I remember Sergeant Stevens getting the paint on his head,” Kanardy said with a smile.
“We don’t need to here that story,” Sergeant Stevens injects quickly.
“What happened?”asked Kelly.
“Sergeant Stevens was down marking CONEX containers. He placed a bucket of white paint on top of the container. Somehow, he managed to spill the entire bucket over his head. He looked like a walking ghost. Took him forever to get it off. Had to soak his flight suit in paint thinner to get the paint out. He was a mess. Hey, remember the cluster about uniforms?” Stevens asked attempting to change the subject.
“Oh yeah,” responded Kanardy. “At that time, we all wore white underwear and white name tags with green fatigues. Our shoulder patches were the yellow Cav patches. Well, there were no jungle fatigues, at least not enough for an entire division.” Kanardy paused and looked pensive. “I think the Special Forces guys may have had jungle fatigues. Anyway, someone gets the bright idea that we have to have everything dark green—everything. So the order comes down to dye everything dark green. The base laundry starts it, but soon every box of black and green dye in Georgia is sold out and wives are dyeing our uniforms and underwear. What color does black and green dye make? OD green, and that’s why your uniforms and patches are OD green today. Bet you didn’t know that.” Kanardy started laughing. “And the funny thing is that the sewage treatment plant in Columbus couldn’t handle the amount of dyed water coming from the base, so it was pumping OD green water into the river for weeks.”13
“What about your families? Did you just leave them at Fort Benning?” asked Barry.
“Some guys did. Anyone who wanted to send the family home had to do it at their expense. No, families just stayed at Benning or Columbus if they lived in town. Hell, the Army wasn’t concerned about families. If the Army wanted you to have a family, the Army would have issued ya one. Once everything was packed up and the aircraft shipped to Mayport, Florida, we had nothing to do, so we did get a week’s free leave to spend with our families and get them squared away before we left. No one knew how long we would be gone.”
“You wouldn’t be bullshitting us about how bad it was at An Khe, now would you? I heard it was pretty nice. In fact, I heard it was called the Golf Course, it was that nice,” injected Leitzen.
“You know why they called it the Golf Course, smart boy? I’ll tell ya. When the ADC, Brigadier General…ah…ah…what was his name, Stevens?” Kanardy stammered.
“Oh hell, I don’t remember…oh yeah, Wright, Brigadier General Wright,” Stevens responded.
“Yeah, Brigadier General Wright. When he gets up to An Khe with the advance party of about a thousand people and supplies, he tells them they’re going to put a base in and no heavy equipment will be used to build it. No bulldozers, no graders. He said that with four hundred helicopters coming in, it would just become a giant dust bowl. So what does he do? He ties a bandanna around his head, takes off his shirt, picks up a machete, and starts chopping brush. They had colonels, officers and everyone else out with machetes cutting brush and clearing a landing area with grass so the dust wouldn’t be bad. I tell you, boys, that’s leadership when the officers get their hands blistered and dirty just like everyone else. When they were done, only grass was left and it looked like a golf course. And that’s how it got its name. That brigadier went on to be the Division commander. He was a good officer.”
“When you got to An Khe, was anyone else there?”
“I recall some guys from the 101st Airborne Division being there. I think they had one brigade over here at that time. First Brigade, I think. They had secur
ed the area around An Khe, secure being a very loose term, but we were responsible for base security, so we stood guard each night besides flying missions during the day. Some guys were really jumpy about being on guard at night. When we first got there, the only thing between us and Charlie was a single strand of barbed wire and those 101st guys. We got mortared that first night, and about every other night after that. The infantry had to string concertina wire around the entire perimeter along with the engineers once everyone got there, and that took some time. Over time, sandbag bunkers were built and slit trenches dug so when we got a mortar or rocket attack, we had someplace to go,” Kanardy added, “You just had to be sure you knew what slit trench you were getting into, the empty one for mortar attacks and not the full one for shitting in.” At this point he had the full attention of the younger soldiers. As the rain was still coming down, most of the maintenance guys that had some work outside were inside mesmerized by his story. The coffeepot was empty.
“Remember the mule?” Stevens asked.
“What mule?” asked Barry, looking for another story as opposed to an opportunity to go out in the rain and work.
Smiling, Kanardy looked up at the roof. “The colonel, don’t remember his name, put a mule on the Boxer. The mule’s name was Maggie. She was a beautiful white mule. The colonel says we’re Cav and therefore where we go, our mule goes. Well, Maggie is loaded aboard the Boxer, but no one remembered to bring hay or oats or anything. Before we got to Qui Nhon, we were at sea for four weeks. Maggie was about starved. We were bringing apples, carrots and anything else we thought she would eat just to keep her alive. Maggie was so happy to be back on the ground, but then what do you feed her? They don’t grow wheat or oats in Vietnam. Finally one night, some dumbass on guard got jumpy and shot the mule dead. So what does the colonel do? He arranges for the Air Force to fly in another mule, but this time arrangements were made to keep a supply of oats coming.”
“Where’s that mule now?” asked Barry.
“Shit, I don’t know. Not here,” Kanardy said.
“Hey, do you remember the shoot-out at Bear Cat?” Stevens asked with a bit of a laugh.
“Do I? It was two of my guys,” Kanardy answered.
“Shoot-out! What happened?” Kelly asked.
“We got to Bear Cat and that was the first time in a long time that the boys could go to a club that had females. Two of my guys take a fancy to this one Vietnamese chick and get into a fight in the club. Club manager tosses their asses out. What do they do? They come back to the company area and are still going at it over this chick they’re never going to see again. Things just continue to heat up and they continue to drink. Finally, it all comes to a head. Next thing we know, they’ve both strapped on pistols and are facing each other just like in a Gary Cooper cowboy movie. There they stand, thirty feet apart, half-drunk, shouting obscenities at each other and then…BAM BAM! They drew and shot at each other,” Kanardy explained.
“Holy shit,” Leitzen said as everyone else laughed. “No shit?”
“God’s honest truth,” Kanardy said. “One guy is shot in the leg, the other is winged. The CO is pissed but doesn’t want it to go up to higher as they’re both pretty good kids. Doc patches them up. The CO makes the guy with the clean leg wound his driver. The other guy was due to rotate home soon, so the CO just let him finish his tour with nothing but a royal ass chewing to both of them.”
Staff Sergeant Stevens was now deep in the reminiscing mode. “We had this one crazy dude back in sixty-five. Held the record for the most court-martials in his short career. His name was Frank Spade.”
“What did he do,” asked Barry.
“What didn’t he do would be a better question,” Dickson answered. “He volunteers to fly one day as a door gunner on a CH-47. They fly out to pull a rescue of a downed crew. They’re flying a CH-47 because it has the ladder that they can drop. Arriving over the downed Huey, they drop the ladder, and Spade and the crew chief climbed down to this downed Huey. Spade and the crew chief started carrying the pilots up. They return to the Huey and get the gunner and crew chief and bring them up. Then Spade has to go back down to retrieve this general that was a passenger with a broken back. Spade can see the damn backbone sticking through the guy’s shirt. The VC are moving towards the crash site, but Spade goes back down and gets the general who was in a lot of pain and really can’t do anything to help himself. Spade puts his belt around the general to hold him and grabs the ladder. Now the VC are getting close, so Spade tosses a grenade into the Huey and it blows big-time. The CH-47 takes off with Spade hanging on to the ladder and the general hanging on to Spade. Finally the CH-47 gets over a rice paddy and lands. You all know how the Vietnamese fertilize their rice paddies with human shit. Well, Spade lands right in a pile of it. He smells like shit when they finally get to a hospital.”
“Damn, he should have gotten a medal for that,” Leitzen said.
“Yeah, should’ve… but he blows it a couple of days later. Him and myself take a deuce-and-a-half truck to the supply depot in Nah Trang to get a load of sandbags. On the way, they pick up about half a case of Bami Ba and are sipping suds going down the road.14 Spade has one of the new M16s and decides he wants to try it out, so what does he do? Shoots a damn water buffalo for shits and grins. Some Korean general sees him do it and starts giving him crap about it. The general was in a jeep right behind us. So what does Spade do? He shoots the tires out of the Korean general’s vehicle! Before they get back to the company, the general is there and raising holy hell. Another court-martial. I was damn lucky Spade kept his mouth shut about the beer or I may have been court-martialed too.”15
“Don’t you people have something to do?” Mr. DeAngelo, the assistant maintenance officer from Alpha Company, had just walked in, looking to see where everyone was. “If you can’t find something to do, I’ll find it for you.” Mr. DeAngelo was a prior service NCO, who went on to attend warrant officer candidate flight school, so he knew all the tricks for getting out of work. There was no pulling the wool over his eyes. With that, the crowd started to break up, those with outside work reluctantly putting on rain jackets that for the most part were ineffective in the monsoon deluge.
Chapter 10
Learning to Fly
“I’ve been thinking,” Mike George said, dragging up a chair in the club and opening a soda.
“Really, did it hurt? What about?” Ritchie replied.
“Our crews fly every day with us, and right now when God decides that our time is up, automatically the crew’s time is up. Not fair. I know Cory taught Lovelace to make a running landing if both pilots were hit and if he could get into the seat quick enough—which, considering that both pilots are seldom taken out, except in the case of Hanna and Tittle, a crew chief or gunner should be able to get to the seat. If they know how to do a running landing, then they may just make it. They don’t need to know how to hover but certainly make a running landing,” Mike expounded thoughtfully.
“You’re a bit late thinking that, Mike,” Lou interjected. “Back in sixty-seven, we taught our crew chiefs to make running landings. I taught Jenkins when I first got him as my crew chief three months ago.”
“Does the CO know about it?” Mike asked.
“Plausible deniability. No, he doesn’t, and I’m not saying anything to him.”
Ritchie and Mike looked at each other. It was obvious the wheels were turning, but nothing was said. As Ritchie was getting ready to head home in a week, he would not be training any crew chiefs. He was on orders to Mother Rucker to be a flight instructor with a January 1 report date.
The next day as Mike walked out to his aircraft with Mr. Reid, his copilot for that day, he informed him of what he was about to do. Reid had a couple of hours under his belt, having taken his orientation check ride a few days earlier after arriving in the unit with Dorsey.
“We have a rather easy day scheduled for today, flying a psyops mission out of Bu Gia Map. Shouldn’t be more than a couple o
f hours. If we get released early, I’m going to put Kelly, our crew chief, in the right seat and start teaching him how to fly. You got a problem with that?”
“If I can get on his gun and fire it I don’t,” Reid responded with a wide grin. Pilots were always wanting to get on the guns.
“Yeah, I’ll get us a free-fire box when we start back,” Mike said as they approached the aircraft. Specialist Mike Kelly was already going over the aircraft, and the door gunner, Specialist Conrad, was mounting the guns.
“How’s it looking?” Mike asked.
“Good, Mr. George,” Kelly replied.
“Reid, you take the bottom and I’ll get the rotor head,” Mike directed as they placed their flight gear in the aircraft and commenced the preflight. When all was done, both pilots climbed in and began start-up procedures. Kelly and Conrad closed the pilots’ doors after pulling the armor plate side panels into place and ensuring that there were no leaks or fires in the engine compartment. When all that was completed, both climbed into their positions and cleared the pilots to come out of the revetments.
“Clear right and back,” Kelly said.
“Clear left and back,” Conrad parroted.
Bringing the aircraft to a hover, Mike backed the aircraft out while Reid received clearance from the tower to take the runway and depart.
The flight up to Bu Gia Map was pleasant, with clear skies and no turbulence. At Bu Gia Map, they refueled the aircraft and then shut it down to get a briefing at the Third Brigade TOC on the mission they were to fly. Entering the TOC, Mike was met by the brigade operations officer, commonly referred to as the S-3.
“Good morning, Mr. George. Good to see you today.”