by Robert Mason
Behind him I saw the maintenance ship take off carrying a damaged rotor blade attached to the sling hook. Maj. Steve Richards, the maintenance officer, had been hitching the rotor blade to his ship’s cargo hook to carry it out to sea and drop it. He did nothing more dangerous in this war than to check out freshly repaired helicopters. When the blade had been attached to the hook, Richards asked if anyone wanted to go for a little ride. Five men, mostly mechanics, jumped on board.
As the ship took off, it became obvious to the men on the ground that carrying a rotor blade dangling vertically beneath the ship was not going to work. It swung wildly under the ship as Richards gained speed. The maintenance sergeant ran after the ship, yelling, “Major Richards! Stop! Stop! The blade is swinging!”
I saw the blade whipping around under the ship at 300 feet. Apparently Richards could not tell that the blade was gyrating under him. Before he reached the water, the blade slashed up behind the ship, knocking off a section of the tail rotors. Richards flared back, trying to slow the ship, but it was no use. As he flared, the blade knifed forward under the ship and swept up and hit his main rotor. The damaged main rotor flew off. Time seemed to stop, and I saw the ship nose down, invert, and then disappear behind some tents and smash onto the beach. It fell like an anvil. There was a brief moment of quiet after the crash and then a whoosh. The flattened Huey burst into flames. Orange flames first, as the fuel burned, then bright-white flames as the metal ignited. Helicopters contain a lot of magnesium.
People ran toward the ship, only to be driven back by the fire.
Major Richards, his crew chief, his gunner, and three mechanics were incinerated. I was still alone on my precious beach blanket. I cried.
That evening, on the beach, six flight helmets were placed on stakes in a line. The chaplain conducted the service.
My one comfort in the hell of waiting was that I had a companion. Gary and I flew together always. Then, with five days to go on our tours, Gary left for Phan Rang.
“Don’t worry, Bob. They’ll get your orders.”
“I know.”
“Really, it’s just a minor fuck-up. Ringknocker’s going to tell you tomorrow or the next day that you can leave. Really.”
“I know. I’m okay.”
“So, I’ll see you back in Phan Rang in a day or two. Okay?”
“Of course. A day or two. See you soon.”
“Good-bye.”
“ ‘Bye.”
Gary ran out to the ship going back to our main base. After a few days of out-processing, he’d be in Saigon, getting on a big bird for the States.
Ops assigned me to fly with a new pilot, Lieutenant Fisher, the next oay.
Fisher and I flew to a place in the jungles west of Tuy Hoa to pick up a reconnaissance squad. When we flew to the coordinates given us, it was an almost circular funnel of a valley. The squad was at the bottom of the giant funnel. They told us on the radio that they were getting occasional sniper fire and that we should be careful in the approach. I took the opportunity to show Fisher how to get down to the bottom of this place without getting shot.
I flew toward the funnel at 80 or 90 knots, heading on a tangent to the rim of the funnel.
“I’m gonna keep us low level all the way to the bottom,” I said.
Fisher nodded from the right side of the cockpit. This was his first mission in-country. For a second I saw myself there, wide-eyed, riding with Leese on that low-level run in Happy Valley. I had been overwhelmed by the speed at which things happened, and I’m sure that Fisher was experiencing the same feeling.
As I crossed the rim, I banked hard, putting the ship level with the incline. “If we stay close to the treetops and keep moving fast, they won’t get us.”
We spiraled down the funnel. The squad called and said that they heard many shots. “Don’t worry,” I said to Fisher. “They’re shooting blind.”
There was a stand of trees at the bottom that would force me either to pull away from the tree cover or to go through the trees. Since the whole point of this approach was to maintain cover, I chose to go through the trees. Near the end of the spiraling ride, I leveled the ship and rushed for the stand of trees. The squad was behind them. As I leveled, I had also dropped below the trees out of sight of the squad. Because we didn’t come over the top or to the side, the squad assumed that we had crashed. When they called us, I was busting through the trees. I had swerved off to one side of the stand and then swung back in fast. This allowed me to bank very sharply so that the Huey and its big rotor disk squeezed between two tall trees thirty feet apart. After hurdling through the trees, I flared the ship quickly to make the landing. The radio operator who had been asking where we were said, “Oh.” We landed right in front of the squad.
As the team quickly loaded, I noticed muzzle flashes ahead of us. The team leader pointed all around, at places he had seen shots fired. We were right on time. The squad was surrounded, and the VC were moving down the funnel to get them. Altogether there were eight grunts, not a giant load at sea level but enough that climbing out of this place was going to be slow. “I’m going to accelerate across this field as fast as I can, and then we’ll do a cyclic climb up the side of that hill.” I hovered for a second, then nosed over hard, lumbering off across the field. I kept the ship at 4 or 5 feet until we reached 90 knots. Then I pulled the cyclic back and the ship swooped up. The climb was very fast at first because we were using the accumulated energy from the acceleration run. As we neared the top of the funnel, however, we slowed to a grinding crawl. I knew that this was when they would be shooting in front of us, taking a lead, as a hunter does with a duck. So when the ship was straining hard, with very little forward velocity, I did an abrupt pedal turn at the top of the climb and headed back in the opposite direction. That took everybody by surprise, and I heard shouts from the back. Fisher involuntarily reached for the controls, but stopped himself. A few seconds later we were beyond the ridge, heading back to the beach.
“Beautiful!” said Fisher. He was grinning.
“Just remember, keep yourself low when there are trees, keep moving as fast as you can, and never use the same route twice.” I grinned as I said that Leese had told me the same thing a year ago.
When I was flying, my life was in my own hands. When I was back at the camp, the army was in control of my destiny. And the army still hadn’t found my orders
“This is a hot one,” said the operations officer, Major Ramon. Every pilot in the Prospectors was at the briefing. The major droned on with battle plans, frequencies, ship numbers, crew assignments, and suspected enemy locations. It was so much noise to me. My hand was writing information down on my pad, but my mind was in shock. Two days to go, said my mind. Two fucking days to go and I’m going on a hot one. “We will make a total of three lifts this morning,” said the major. Three chances. Step right up. Three, count them, three Huey rides in a combat assault absolutely free. Win yourself a body bag. Become a hometown hero. Become a memory early in your life. “Okay, you’ve got everything you’ll need. Let’s go.”
I walked across the quarter mile of sand with Fisher. I kept checking my gear, like a novice. Pistol, flak vest, maps, chest protector. Oh, yeah, the chest protector is in the ship. Helmet. Courage. Where is my courage? Oh, yeah, my courage is in the ship.
“Lose something?” asked Fisher. He had been watching me check myself, patting my pockets and gear.
“No, I’ve got everything.”
“This is really exciting,” said Fisher.
“Yes. It’s very exciting.” You dumb shit. I hated Fisher when he said that. Exciting? Is that like excitement at the old football game? It’s exciting to get killed? Fool. Wait a few months and then tell me it’s exciting.
Fisher climbed up to the rotor head, and I checked the air frame. As I opened the radio hatch at the nose, an orderly ran up to me and said, “They want you back at ops, sir.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know, sir. Major Ramon tol
d me to tell you they have something for you at ops.”
“Right.” I looked up at Fisher. “I’ll be right back.” Fisher nodded.
I pushed the flap aside and walked into the ops tent. Ramon wasn’t there. “Where’s Major Ramon?” I asked the sergeant.
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Well, what did they want me for?”
“Who wanted you, sir?”
“Ramon, I thought. I was just told that somebody had something for me here, and I’m here. Is this some kind of joke?”
“I don’t know, sir. I don’t know anything about it.”
I heard the turbines winding up to shrills behind me. The Prospectors were cranking up. I turned and left. If I didn’t hurry, I’d hold up the mission. I ran across the sand. A hundred yards away the lead ship took off. What the fuck. I waved. “Hey, wait. There’s only one pilot in my ship!” I ran faster. Then the whole flight took off. I stood in the sand, watching the flight cruise west, completely confused. A Jeep I hadn’t noticed before drove back from the flight line. The driver stopped next to me. “Want a ride, sir?” The driver was the orderly that had come with the message. All my flight gear was in the Jeep. I got in.
“What the fuck is going on? Where’s Major Ramon?”
“Major Ramon is flying your ship, sir.”
I wasn’t the only one who thought I needed a break.
The next day, August 10, I was called into the operations tent and handed orders. I was to proceed to Saigon to catch an eleven o‘clock morning flight on the fourteenth. I was exhilarated.
That afternoon, I was flying a Huey back to Phan Rang. The ship was due for a major overhaul, and so was I. I flew along the coast and went through a notch in a tall hill next to the ocean. As we crossed the ridge, the crew chief, a new guy, called me. “Sir, we’re being shot at from that hill. Shall we engage?”
Shall we engage? I couldn’t believe what I heard. Shall we engage?
“Not today, Sergeant.” I turned to Staglioni, the copilot, and grinned. “Not today.” I laughed so hard that I cried.
Sitting in the soft airline seat, I savored the air-conditioned crispness of the air and breathed in the scents of the passing stewardesses. I had a grin on my face that wouldn’t quit. I was the Cheshire cat. The man who sat next to me was Ken Klayman, a guy I had met on the Croatan. We were both aboard a chartered Pan American 707 going to the land of the big PX. We were no longer in-country.
“I suppose now we could say we’re out-country?”
“Yes. Definitely out-country,” said Klayman.
“It seems like a dream.”
“Yeah: It is nice to wake up from a bad one. And just when you thought they had you.”
Since I had left Phan Rang, every time I checked the time I remembered that the maid had stolen my watch. The maid who neatly arranged my gear for me, who’d never steal a thing—until the day you left. I had considered the watch a charm.
It had been lifted once before—the first night I tried out the new shower we’d built in the Preachers. I hung it on a nail, took the shower, and it was gone.
“I’ll get it for you,” Rubenski had said.
“You know who took it?”
“Not yet. But don’t worry. I’ll find the fuck. Stole your grandfather’s watch. What slime.”
An hour later Rubenski walked into my tent carrying the watch. “Here ya go, sir. And don’t worry; it won’t happen again,” Rubenski said.
“Hey. Thanks a lot. You’re amazing.”
“It was nothing,” he said. “Just remember, Lake Tahoe…”
Klayman and I reverted to early adolescence during the flight back. Neither of us could sleep during the twenty-hour trip. Instead we cracked jokes and pretended we were flying the plane. The pilots we played didn’t know much. “Compass? What’s that?” “Holding pattern? Are you crazy?” “I can’t put the gear down. We’re too close to the rooftops.”
We landed at the Philippines and then headed for Hawaii. At Honolulu, we were invited to get off the plane to stretch our legs, buy gifts, and such. Klayman told me to pick up a small chess set so we could play on the long nonstop flight to Fort Dix, New Jersey.
I found a small traveling set at one of the airport gift shops. I also grabbed a Newsweek and went to the counter to pay. The clerk, a young woman, took my money and asked if I was returning from Vietnam. I said yes, proudly. She suddenly glared at me and said, “Murderer.” I stared at her for a long minute, feeling confused. Then I smiled. I realized that she was talking about someone else.
Epilogue: And Then What Happened?
Ground war here in Vietnam is taking on a new cast—with more and more direct conflict between U.S. and North Vietnamese troops. At this point, no one is sure how far this dangerous confrontation will go.
—U.S. News & World Report, August 15, 1966
“I made it.” I smiled as Patience ran toward me. She was crying. Jack toddled across the parking lot at the bus station, holding my sister’s hand. He looked bewildered; I had been away half his life.
“I thought you’d never get here,” said Patience.
We spent our first week in an apartment my father had rented for us near the beach. We spent the days at the beach, which I enjoyed. My nights were troubled. I kept waking up three feet in the air above the bed, frightening Patience. The dreams continued relentlessly, though the dreams were not what woke me.
Back at Fort Wolters, Texas, I began training to become an instructor pilot. During this training phase, my sister asked me to come to her wedding. She wanted me to wear my uniform.
“I don’t think people would like to see me in uniform, Susan.”
“You look so good in your dress blues. And I’m proud of you.”
“Okay.”
I flew to Fort Myers for the wedding. I wore the uniform, the silver wings, and a bunch of ribbons. Looking good. During the reception, I heard some laughter when I walked in the door. A man I did not know asked loudly, “Hey, where’s your flag?” I flushed with anger. The place was quiet for a minute, people looking at me. Susan looked horrified. A fight at her wedding? No, no fight. The only fight going on was the one inside my head. I should have gone over and decked him. Alas, there are no time machines. I cooled myself by thinking, If he knew me, he wouldn’t have said that.
I took the instructor-pilot job very seriously. It gave me the chance to cull out potential Stoopy Stoddards. During the two-month cycle each group of four students spent with me, I taught them stuff not covered in the school syllabus. The school was interested in getting numbers out the door. I was interested in their survival. For example, the school no longer allowed simulated forced landings to the ground. Instead the instructor had to take control of the ship and abort the landing before the ship hit the ground. I thought that actually skidding across the ground, finishing the autorotation, was a key experience, so I let each student do it.
Instructor pilots flew half days. The flights alternated weekly, so that you flew mornings one week, afternoons the next. I spent my free time learning photography. I taught myself how to print photographs and enlarged some of the pictures I took in Vietnam. (I won an army photo contest with one.) Invariably, I tore my displays off the wall. I wanted to say how I felt about the war, but my pictures weren’t doing it. I took pictures around central Texas, mostly of abandoned farmhouses, and my technical skill grew with the practice.
A few of us who flew the H-23 Hiller were picked to cross-train in the new army trainer, the Hughes TH-55A. When I became rated in both trainers, I became a substitute instructor pilot in addition to my normal load. The demand for new pilots was growing monthly.
The new trainer was falling out of the sky, killing veteran pilots and their students. The ships were always found the same way—nose down in the ground, mush inside the cockpit. One or two pilots and their students were killed each week. After two months of this, an IP called in as he crashed. He said that the ship had tucked n a simulated forced landing an
d the controls had no effect on the dive. Then he died. They found out that if the cyclic was moved forward when the power was cut, the ship would immediately nose over and dive. Once in this position, pulling back on the cyclic was useless.
Hughes test pilots discovered that the ship could be saved if the pilot pushed forward on the cyclic (not back, as he would instinctively do), and if he had 1000 feet of air to wait for the recovery. We flew at 500 feet in the training areas.
We were told to demonstrate the tuck and its hairy recovery to all our students. I had it shown to me a couple of times, but I felt that students were not going to be able to appreciate the subtlety of the maneuver, especially since they were still trying to get the trainers into the sky and back to the ground in one piece. I found that a vivid explanation of the tuck effect and an immovable hand in front of the cyclic were adequate.
Four students stayed with me for a two-month cycle, and then four more would take their place. They were overjoyed to be in flight school. So was I. I flew all the time. I began to know each of the hundreds of confined areas the army had rented from the local farmers. Even though we had so many places to train, the fact that there were fifteen hundred helicopters milling around the sky each training day made flying dangerous. Midair collisions, especially between two solo students, became commonplace.
One afternoon, I cut the power on a student, near a grassy clearing used to demonstrate forced landings. The student reacted quickly, bottomed the pitch, maintained airspeed, and maneuvered the ship toward the clearing. He was doing just fine. Unknown to us, however, another ship was autorotating to the same field at the same moment. I noticed a shadow above us while we sank toward the clearing. He was descending faster than we were. As his skids closed on our rotors, I knew there was no way out. If I moved the disk, the rotors would swing up into his skids. We were already descending as fast as the ship could go. At the last second, the other ship saw us and jerked violently away. By my reckoning, he missed us by an inch. But close calls in training were not what was bothering me during the night.