by Robert Mason
Astor did pretty well at the beginning of the mission. He had the eight ships assigned to him split up, each one resupplying an area of its own. This made the work go faster. Resupply was considered tedious by most pilots, but Gary and I took these delightfully boring occasions to play with the machine while we did the job. Nothing malicious, like buzzing MPs, but the kind of play that challenged our skills.
It could be something like ticking a tree limb with the rotor in an LZ just to see if you could pull it that close. That would be considered foolish back in the States. Here, that kind of judgment could save your life.
I experimented with the Huey tuck that day. If the Huey was nosed over too far on takeoff, the wind resistance on top of the flat roof would force the nose even lower. The ship would then try to dive into the ground as it accelerated. If this happened over level ground, you were trapped in a vicious circle. Pulling the cyclic back would not overcome the wind pressure on the roof. Pulling up on the collective to stay away from the ground only added power to the system, causing you to crash at a higher speed. If you didn’t do anything but curse, you hit the ground at a lower speed. Either way, you lost.
I almost got caught in a Huey tuck once, and I wanted to know just how far over was too far. I found out by simulating a level takeoff from a pinnacle.
I nosed over very hard and pulled enough pitch to keep the ship flying horizontal to the ground. I tested the cyclic, and the ship would not respond. I could feel it happening. Adding power only made it worse. When I could feel the trap and feel how I got into it, I knew I could never get into it by accident. I was experimenting with this over a valley, so all I had to do to recover was dive.
Near the end of the day, Charlie decided to try to wipe out a platoon or two before dark.
We were at a field command post where our ships were being loaded when the grunt commander called Astor over to his command tent.
There were six Hueys in the laager. When Astor came out minutes later, he signaled for a crank-up, then walked over to Gary and me.
“There’s a platoon coming under attack just a few klicks from here. We only need five ships to get them out.” Astor zipped up his flak vest. “I want you to stay here and monitor our frequency in case we need you.” He trotted to his ship, which was already running.
“Pretty tough assignment,” said Gary. We both climbed into the cockpit. Gary started up so that we could monitor the radios without draining the battery. Having to get a jump start in the middle of nowhere was something neither of us wanted to experiment with.
I tuned the radios.
“Charlie One-Six, Preacher Yellow One,” Astor called.
No answer.
“Roger, Charlie One-Six. We are inbound. Throw smoke.”
No answer. On the ground we could hear only Astor’s side of the radio conversation. He sounded just like he knew what he was doing.
“Yellow One, they are on the other side of the tree line.” That was John Hall’s voice.
“Negative, Yellow Four. I see the smoke,” said Astor.
I started to fasten my straps. If they were that close to pickup, we would be in the air in minutes.
“Negative, Yellow One. The target is upwind of that smoke,” said Hall.
“Yellow Four, I am in charge here,” said Astor.
“Roger.”
“Do you think we should get into the air?” asked Gary.
“Naw, not yet. Wait for Astor to give us the word.”
“Yellow Four is taking heavy fire from the tree line!” yelled Hall.
Astor, possibly already on the ground, did not answer.
“Yellow One, we are aborting. My crew chief has been hit.” We could hear the machine guns on Hall’s ship chatter while he talked.
“We’d better go,” I said.
“Right.” Gary brought the Huey up to rpm and made a quick takeoff.
“Yellow One, Charlie One-Six. I have you in sight. You’re about five hundred meters downwind of us.”
It was clear to Gary and me that Astor had really blown it. He had landed downwind of the grunts’ secure position, following the drifting smoke, even though Hall had seen the correct position. I saw the flight and called Astor to say we were joining up. He radioed a curt “Roger.” We joined up and made the landing to the grunts’ clearing without incident.
As the crews mingled after the mission, back at the Golf Course, Astor separated himself and walked away quickly.
“That guy is an accident looking for a place to happen,” I said.
“Yeah, he’s a disaster all right…. Hey. Major Disaster!” said Gary. Everybody laughed. He was christened.
Hall met us at the tent. His crew chief, Collins, was dead. The ship had taken more than twenty rounds. Hall was shaking with anger. He had been right. Disaster had ignored his warnings.
“I’m going to kill him,” said Hall.
“I know how you feel,” I said.
“No, I mean that I will actually kill him. You know, dead.” Hall unsnapped his revolver holster and walked off toward Disaster’s hooch. I thought he was just acting tough, but when I got to the mess line fifteen minutes later, I heard Disaster calling for help from inside his hooch.
Hall stood tall and silent, his pistol at the ready, a can of beer in his left hand. He had taken a position midway between Disaster’s hooch and the mess tent. About thirty men, getting their evening chow, looked on with interest.
“Hall, if you don’t put that gun away immediately, I’ll have you court-martialed.” The voice came from behind the hooch door.
“You’ll have to come out sometime, Major.”
“You’re crazy! You can’t pull a gun on a superior officer and hold him captive in his own quarters. You’re going to be in serious trouble if you don’t put that gun away. Right now!”
“You killed Collins, Major. Now it’s your turn.” Hall raised his pistol to aim.
“Help!” Disaster screamed when he saw Williams come near the mess tent. Williams looked up and saw Hall in the darkening twilight. Disaster peered hopefully out, then yelled again, “Help! Major Williams, get this madman away from me!” Williams nodded and rinsed his mess kit before he walked into the mess tent.
Nobody came to Disaster’s aid. Once in a while we heard him yell. No one paid the slightest attention. Later that night Hall gave up the vigil. I heard him singing drunkenly on the path outside my tent. The next morning he was still so drunk that he could not be allowed to fly.
That incident seemed to precipitate a series of conflicts among us as tension took its toll. Hall beat up Daisy one night, splitting his lip. He continued to harass Disaster by throwing Montagnard spears at him as he walked around the camp. Soon after Captain Fontaine was carried screaming back to his hooch; Riker told Shaker, very plainly, to shove it, when Shaker told him to go work on the club. Connors and Nate pushed each other around over where the laundry should be hung. Nate and Kaiser scuffled over a territorial dispute.
The farewell party for Williams was very quiet. The major, an excellent air leader, was being transferred to brigade staff in Saigon—a move up. The party was restrained because Williams had never been close to us, like Fields had been.
The next day, after an award ceremony to pass out air medals among us, our new CO, Major Crane, made his introduction speech.
“I think that everything around here is just fine except for personal neatness,” said Crane. “This company has an impressive list of accomplishments in the Cav. I’m sure you’ve been so busy that you just let things slide.” He wore crisp fatigues and spit-shined boots. Even Williams, Mr. Hardass himself, didn’t worry about that kind of bullshit. Williams concentrated on our missions. Crane was already talking about the busywork.
“You may not think that wearing a shirt in the company area is very important—and, by the way, the shirt must be tucked in—but I do. Sure, it’s tough here. This is combat. But if we let just one aspect of our professional demeanor fall to the wayside, our ov
erall performance will suffer.” He paused, smiled. Just a regular guy doing his job. “So from now on, we will conform to standard army dress codes at all times. That means tucked-in shirts outside the tents, bloused boots, and clean uniforms.”
It’s our own fault, I thought. We spent so much time making this place look civilized that this guy thinks he’s back at Fort Benning.
“While I’m talking about keeping yourselves clean, I may as well announce a bit of good news.” He smiled. “Starting tomorrow, we will be digging our own company well so we can have our own showers.” He waited. I think he expected some cheers here. We were silent. “Captain Sherman will be the project leader, and I want you all to give him your fullest cooperation. Dismissed.”
“My aching fucking back,” said Connors back at the tent. “I was kind of getting used to cleaning up the way I do.”
“Shit. How do you think you clean up?” asked Banjo.
“Well, just like everybody else. I keep my uniform on until it becomes a second skin. Then, when I peel it off, it takes all the crud with it.”
“I would like to have a shower around here,” said Gary.
“Yeah, I would, too. I wonder how deep we have to dig?” I said.
“Maybe all the way to Cincinnati!” Gary said.
Farris walked in. “I have another announcement for you guys.” He waited until we gathered around him.
“We need volunteers to transfer to other aviation units to make room for the replacements.”
“Transfer out of the Cav?” Gary asked.
“That’s right.”
“When?” somebody asked.
“Sometime between now and the end of next month.”
This was my chance. Maybe I could get a cushy job at Qui Nhon, flying advisers or something. I raised my hand.
For the next few days I flew local routine missions or dug the new well. While I filled buckets and watched them being hauled up on a rope, I daydreamed about my new assignment. A friend of mine from flight school had written saying that he was assigned to a navy carrier with his own Huey. I knew there were better jobs than the Cav. Maybe a 9-to-5 courier pilot in Saigon. Imagine, no more mud, tents, or boonies.
At twenty-five feet we struck rock. Sherman called in some guys from the engineers who said we’d have to blast.
Gary and I flew over the Bob Hope show on our way to Happy Valley. While we flew ass-and-trash that afternoon, we listened to the most bizarre radio conversation I had ever heard.
“Raven Six, Delta One. We have a target in sight.” Delta One was a gunship.
“Roger, Delta One. Do you see anything on their backs?”
“Negative.”
“Well, there’s just no way to be sure. Go ahead and get them.”
“Roger.”
“What the heck are they talking about?” asked Gary. We had just picked up some empty food containers and were sailing down the side of a mountain.
“Got me,” I said.
“Raven Six, our guns just won’t stop them.”
“You tried to get them in the head?”
“Roger.”
“Use the rockets.”
“Roger.” Silence. Gary was setting up for an approach to the road patrol on our resupply route.
“Raven Six, Delta One. That did it. We got both of ‘em.”
“Glad to hear it, Delta One. I was beginning to wonder if anything we had could stop an elephant.” Elephant? We’re killing fucking elephants?
“Roger. Anything else?”
“Of course, Delta One. Go down and get the tusks.”
“I’m sick,” said Gary. “Killing elephants is like blasting your grandmother.”
Back at the company, there was general outrage at the news that the ivory was delivered to division HQ. It was okay to kill people in a war, but don’t touch innocent by standers like elephants.
“Any man who’d do that would come into your house and shoot your dog,” Decker said.
“Get your camera, Mason!” Sherman yelled.
“What’s up?”
“We’re going to blast the well. Get your camera.”
I stood back along the trail to the well and pointed my camera.
“Everybody clear?” Sherman yelled.
“Clear.”
Bonk. A small cloud of dust rose five feet above the site. I snapped the picture.
“Shit. I thought it woulda made more noise than that,” yelled Sherman.
“Yeah. Did it go off?”
“Is there water?” Everybody went over to the well.
“Hoo-fucking-ray,” said Connors. “We got more dirt under them rocks.”
“We’ll just keep digging,” announced Sherman.
Somebody had painted a five-by-ten-foot mural of LZ X-Ray on the wall of our new club. I had a bourbon and water in my hand as I walked around. The furniture, shipped in from the States, looked foreign. The chairs were stained bamboo with tropical-print cushions. The tables had bamboo legs and Formica tops.
The place was packed for the official opening. We all knew that the Colonel was going to bring nurses to the affair. The Colonel wasn’t around yet. The hundred or so guys passed the time drinking twenty-five-cent‘drinks in rapid succession.
Nearly everybody from our company was there. Nate and Kaiser talked seriously at the bar while Nate’s hand kept time with a song played on the new stereo system. Connors and Banjo laughed from a table nearby. Farris nursed a Seven-Up but smiled anyway. Hall sat in a corner staring at the mural. Disaster shadowed Crane and talked business. Wendall and Barber watched the tape recorder work. Resler grinned like a child on his second beer. Riker’s red face was bright as he drank more than he usually did. I stood by the bar wondering whether I got the clap in Vietnam or in Taipei.
“You’re not… sick,” I had said, pointing to her groin, “are you?”
“Me?” Her face showed pain. “Me? Don’t be silly. I no sick.”
“If there’s one thing I can’t do, that’s catch the clap,” I said.
“Well,” she huffed, “I’m almost a virgin.”
Just as I noticed the silence, Resler shoved me. “Bob,” he whispered, “the nurses are here.”
The Colonel had come unannounced, through the club’s back door, escorting his promised nurses. They, I’m sure, did not know that they were the inspiration that had built this club. They did have a look of extreme self-consciousness about them. The entire club stared intently and silently as four elderly, high-ranking females from the medical corps took seats at the Colonel’s table, cause enough for their nervousness.
The music played on. Two very plump lieutenants followed. I kept looking at the door to see the rest. That was it. After a long minute, that was clear to everyone. Talk began again.
“There must be some real nurses in this fucking division,” snarled Connors. Banjo was laughing so hard that he was in tears.
“Those are nurses,” said Resler.
“You know what I mean,” said Connors. “You know, nurses. Like with tits that come up here”—he gestured—“not down here. Shit, my grandmother is more appealing.”
The Colonel kept looking around while his aides talked to the nurses.
“Ladies.” A drunken warrant officer walked over and bowed politely to the nurses. ‘Gen’lmen…“ He nodded to the aides. ”Sir…“ He bowed again.
The Colonel glared at him. The nurses laughed. When he turned to leave, the Colonel relaxed. At a moment when the club was silent, and while every eye was glued to the scene, the drunk released a fart that stopped hearts.
The Colonel, his men, and the nurses flinched at the report. The Colonel grew red in the face and started to get out of his chair, perhaps to kill the drunk. Noise returned abruptly to the club and he hesitated. Everyone was laughing. It was as though everyone had delivered that fart, and the Colonel knew it. He sagged back in his chair helplessly. The nurses explained that they had to get back, right away.
Farris said, “I think you
men should stop drinking and go home. We have a big mission tomorrow.”
It wasn’t a very big mission, just lengthy. Since I’d been back from R&R, the daily missions were in the mountains forty and fifty miles north of An Khe. We started each day at 0500, picked up grunts at the Golf Course or the refueling area, flew them out to the mountains, placed them at various LZs, and picked up wounded and dead from the patrols already out there.
This area wasn’t too bad for the pilots. We weren’t getting killed. The grunts, though not beaten, were suffering losses from constant sniper fire and devious booby traps.
After a week of our carrying wounded and dead people, the deck and bulkheads of the cargo area got very rank. Dried blood caked under the seats, and miscellaneous pieces of flesh stuck to the metal. When it became absolutely necessary to wash out the gore and smell, the pilot would make an approach toward the bridge going to An Khe and land in the river.
Washing out the Hueys spawned a new support industry among the Vietnamese around An Khe. As we came across the bridge, boys would scramble toward the shallow area near the sandbars where we usually landed, ready to work.
The only thing we had to worry about was not getting the electronics wet. Everything else, up to deck level, was unaffected by water. I hovered around in the shallows with the skids underwater until I found a spot that was the right depth. It was safe as long as you kept an eye on the tail rotor. As soon as the engine shut down, the boys would grab buckets and brushes and begin scrubbing the ship. The crew chief usually took out the seats for the scrub-down.
I took off my boots and socks, stashed them on top of the console, rolled up my pants, and made it to the shore. While I stood on a sandbar and watched, the crew chief supervised the project and the boys did most of the work. They even climbed up on the roof and poured water down the hell hole, which was industrious of them but completely unnecessary.
Other forms of business prospered on the sandbars. One was the Coca-Cola business. The other was mermaids. The Cola girls had exclusive territories. The girl in the area I usually landed was named Long. Because I flew to the sandbars a lot, she knew me pretty well.