Surprised at Being Alive: An Accidental Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam and Beyond

by Robert F. Curtis

  The flight engineer lay on his belly on the stretcher from where he watched the red drums as they swung beneath the Chinook. He would be holding a smoke grenade, and as the sling opened, he would pull the pin. As the red drums began their fall, he would count, “one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three” and on the third beat he would throw the smoke grenade down through the hellhole after the red spinning drums and toward the green earth.

  The impact of the fall would rupture the red drums among the green forest, sending the jellied gasoline in a wide splashing arc, the gasoline fumes rising very quickly to meet the burning smoke grenade arriving three seconds after the drums hit. No more red drum, red drum, green forest, but now just a brighter red with orange in it, flame red, and then black smoke turning gray as it rose above the green forest.

  If you knew you were going to be shot at or even thought it possible, the drop would be from much higher, 1,500 feet or more to stay above the small arms or light machine-gun fire looking for the napalm drums swinging below your aircraft. Accuracy was not too important in either case. Napalm, as dropped from Chinooks, was an “area” weapon, not a “point” weapon like a rocket would be. Smoke grenades would not work from 1,500 feet; dropping from that height, more often than not, they missed hitting the fumes of the napalm. Instead, the Cobras that came with you on hot missions would play their miniguns over the ruptured drums—1,500 rounds a minute and every fifth round a tracer. There would be a stream of red, like water from a garden hose, into the green forest and then red orange and black gray over the green.

  Today we would be shot at. It was easy to tell. The mission was clearing mines near the DMZ, always NVA there, and because of that, the mission sheet told me I would have two Cobras for cover and a LOACH to mark targets for my two Chinooks. We knew we would be shot at. We were not picking up at Evans, but at another base further north and closer to the DMZ, which would reduce turnaround times between loads.

  At the appointed time, all five aircraft arrived at the PZ, actually a small landing zone (LZ) named after a marine killed near here three years ago. Both Chinooks and the LOACH landed while the Cobras circled overhead. The Chemical Corps captain that was commanding the mission came onboard and reviewed what we were going to do. We didn’t shut down the helicopters for a brief since all of us had done this many times before, so we left our copilots holding the controls while the ACs walked over to the captain to hear what he had to say. After confirming what I already knew with the captain—mines and booby trap clearance today, probably NVA in the area—I called for the first load. The other Chinook would take the second, and after two loads each, we would all fly the 20 miles back to Quang Tri for fuel and to let the Cobras and LOACH refuel/rearm.

  With the load hooked, I climbed out for the target area, near the Rock Pile, a singular pillar of rock that stood in a valley between the first row of mountains before you got to the high plateau leading to Laos. Two years before, the marines had seen heavy fighting around the Rock Pile and now it was the Army’s turn. QL9, the main east-west road, wound beneath me as the Chinook and its red drums swinging below flew past. Dash two, the second Chinook would pick up its load and follow in five minutes. As I passed over the first ridgeline, a grunt called me over the fox mike, “Hook over the Rock Pile, Alpha Zulu One three, over.” He sounded excited, upset, not the usual flat tone.

  For a brief second I wondered how he got our frequency, but quickly figured that if he had an SOI it wouldn’t be hard, considering there are only three Chinook companies in I Corps. You just call on all three until someone answers.

  “Zulu One three, Playtex One two, go ahead,” I called in my best bored aviator voice. Death before loss of cool.

  “Playtex, One three, We’re pinned down by NVA about a mile north of the Rock Pile. Can you send those Cobras with you over to help us out, over?”

  Looking off to the northwest, I could see smoke on the other side of the rocks below. Concentrating on the source of the smoke, as we got closer I could see small flashes from weapons and tracers from a ragged line of armored personnel carriers (APCs), firing their machine guns to the north, and there among the vehicles, a red flash with black smoke rising after it. Then, a streak from the north toward the APCs and a flash from one of them—probably a rocket propelled grenade, an RPG.

  The Chemical Corps captain had a headset on, but couldn’t hear the fox mike, so I briefed him over the ICS on what the grunts were telling me about their urgent request for fire support. Pulling my map from its place next to my seat, I pointed out to him that the area where the NVA fire was coming from was a free-fire zone. We could kill anything that moved there, people, animals, trees, anything. Anyone and anything were all NVA in a free-fire zone. Even the earth itself was the enemy in a free-fire zone.

  The captain approved the mission change, and I told the grunts they would have more than Cobras coming. The grunt acknowledged, his voice under control now. The LOACH pilot and the Cobras had been monitoring the exchange. The LOACH pilot sounded near ecstasy at the thought that he would be marking targets other than just the forest canopy.

  “One three, One two. They got anything heavy? They got.51’s?,” I asked the grunts.

  “Negative, One two,” he replied. “We’ve seen nothing heavier than AK’s and RPGs. Maybe an RPK (a Soviet light machine gun), but no .51’s or tracers.”

  Still, we would drop from 3,000 feet, I decided. Maybe the NVA were just sandbagging while they waited for the helicopters that always came when the grunts called. Maybe the grunts didn’t tell us, afraid we would go away and tell them to call for artillery support instead. The drop would be from 3,000 feet so that if they did have hidden machine guns, one of their tracers would not hit the red drums of jellied gasoline hanging below us and put the red and black smoke over the streaked green of my Chinook, leaving just a black smear in the sky as the pieces of ruined aluminum rained down on the darker green of the forest below. It would be 3,000 feet for the drop, not lower.

  The Cobras knew what to do without a word being said, and sprinted ahead, lead Cobra pulling in front of Chalk two Chinook. Far below, just above the trees, I could see the little green LOACH weaving and sprinting just above the darker green trees. Even though they are slower than Chi-nooks or Cobras, LOACHs always looked much faster down there, darting about just above the trees.

  The LOACH pilot was talking to the grunts on the fox mike and the grunts were firing red tracers into the area where the enemy was, to make them easier for him to find. Suddenly I saw a yellow smoke grenade come from his aircraft, and I watched as it hit the ground in one patch of jungle no different from any other. The LOACH jerked away and back toward the grunts and their APCs, as the LOACH pilot called for me to put the napalm right on the smoke.

  Lead Cobra rolled in on the target ahead of me, firing 2.75mm folding-fin aerial rockets (FFARs), and 7.72mm minigun rounds streamed red from his nose turret toward the green below. As he broke hard right just above the trees, Chalk two Cobra was in rockets and miniguns, both slamming into the green to protect lead as he pulled away. As he pulled away, I was in, 70 knots level flight, not the diving 140 knots of the slim Cobras, but a fat Chinook with fifteen 55-gallon drums of napalm swinging below me in their red barrels, red over the green.

  The yellow smoke of the target marker was gone now, but the smoke from the rockets marked the area clear enough for my napalm. Unlike the Cobras, I was flying parallel to the grunts instead of over them, trying to keep down any possibility that the load might hit them instead of the NVA; it needed to spread out linearly over the NVA, killing more of them with the load if possible. The patch of black smoke and green forest I picked for a release point moved under my nose, and then appeared in my chin bubble.

  Pickle. A small jerk as the sling opens and the drums begin their fall.

  Hold course and speed while the crew drags the sling into the aircraft through the hellhole. Behind me, I can hear the lead Cobra calling in hot. This time we did
not drop a smoke grenade to light off the napalm. The lead Cobras FFARs would do that after the fumes had time to spread out enough. miniguns and 2.75mm FFAR and red, red black into the green.

  The sling inside now, I push the nose over and add power speeding up to 140 knots and back to the PZ for another load. Behind me I can hear Chalk two Chinook talking to the grunts and the LOACH as he moves to drop his load. I hear the grunts telling them the first load missed. The NVA is still firing, heavier if anything, pissed that the helicopters came and they had no heavy weapons to reach us at 3,000 feet. Brave men, the NVA, to face napalm, the miniguns and 2.75mm FFAR and the grunt’s .50’s—brave men.

  Fifteen minutes later, I am inbound again, another fifteen 55-gallon red drums swinging below my aircraft. Both loads have missed and the NVA are still attacking. I see much smoke from the first two drops now as I get within five miles. The Cobras are shooting less now, saving their remaining rockets and minigun ammo to light off the red drums. After my run, they will have to refuel and rearm, and the grunts will have to call for artillery until we get back. Brave men, the grunts, but they are fighting other brave men.

  As I start my second run, I see the LOACH, low and fast right above the trees. I see him slow over the target, frustrated with our misses, dropping a smoke grenade right on top of the NVA troops. This time the LOACH seems to wobble in the air for a moment, then it falls spinning among the green trees, hacking into them as it goes down. I can see bits of rotor blade fly into the air. No black gray smoke, no orange red flame, the LOACH was just gone into the green.

  I turn my Chinook to the right, away from the unknown situation to give things time to settle down. As I turn, I see two tiny figures, the pilot and the gunner from Little Bird running away from the green woods that hold the crash site across an open area. I see them running, running and I see tracers pouring from the American positions down into the woods, covering the two figures as they run. Both Cobras are diving now, spraying the woods with their remaining red streams of tracers. When I complete the 360 turn, the running figures are no longer visible, they must have made the lines safely. Or they are down wounded or dead among the green brush.

  A breathless voice on the fox mike says, “Playtex One two, Little Bird. I went right down in the middle of the bastards. They were dodging pieces of my rotor blades. Drop right on the LOACH! Drop right on the LOACH!” there was no attempt at pilot cool in his voice, just a 19-year-old exhilarated at surviving, at being alive. Once again a LOACH had crashed without killing the crew, a characteristic that truly made it a beloved aircraft.

  I complete the turn, and as I line up the Chinook with the target, I see the LOACH’s fuselage lying on its side, light green aircraft on dark green jungle as the last wisps of purple smoke from Little Bird’s grenade dissipate. As the aircraft wreckage passes under the top of the dash, I tense, ready to push the pickle switch when it appears between the rudders.

  Pickle now.

  Unseen to me, the front of the sling releases, the cargo net opens and the drums fall, red and red, end over end, spreading out as they drop. Again, no smoke grenade to light them, we are too high, and the drums are spread too far apart. The red drums hit the earth as the lead Cobra is in hot, his rockets leaving a white line in the sky as the last of his high ex-plosive 2.75mm FFARs hit and explode in the middle of the ruptured red drums in the green trees. White flash from the exploding rockets, then big red orange ball changing to black gray, spreading in a wide area over the LOACH and the thin purple smoke until both are quickly gone from sight.

  I circle wide to the right, watching the flames and smoke above the green forest. Then secondary explosions start on the ground around the burning LOACH, small ones when seen from 3,000 feet. Flash, flash, white, red, black gray, among the red orange and bigger black gray. Three, four, now five explosions then they stop, leaving only black smoke.

  “You got the motherfuckers! You got the motherfuckers! that’s their RPG rounds going off. You got them!” Little Bird yells over the fox mike. I hear the grunts yelling in the background as he speaks, happy or perhaps relieved, yells now that the NVA fire from the tree line had stopped. The NVA soldiers had withdrawn, broken contact with the Americans. Or they were dead, either way, no fire came from the tree line.

  As Little Bird spoke on fox mike, the lead Cobra calls me on UHF to tell me that a Huey was inbound to pick up the LOACH pilot and gunner. I would not have to land and carry them back to their base after all. After I talk to the Chemical Corps officer, I call Chalk two Chinook and tell him to take his load back to the PZ. We would have to re-plan the original mission and start over again. The mines we originally set out to burn were still there and the mission must be done.

  Six hours later, the day was done and both Chinook crews are in the Playtex Club. I am closest to the phone when it rings, so I answer.

  I identified myself and hear, “Just the man I was looking for. Great job today. must have been a hell of a show,” the battalion operations officer was actually calling for me, another CW2 amongst the many in our battalion, a first, since he normally only talked officially to RLOs.

  “Thanks,” I reply. “What are you talking about, sir”? We had done ten or more missions that day, including finishing the original napalm drop, and now after 12 hours in the air they had all run together in my mind.

  “The napalm drop, asshole.” He replies. “You got 18 confirmed KIAs (enemy Killed in Action) and took out a big ammo bunker. The captain you had with you just wrote you up for a Silver Star.”

  I didn’t say a word for a minute. I just sat there thinking about it. When I did speak, I told him it was a crock of shit. The captain just got it wrong and the battalion operations officer should just tear up the recommendation.

  Silver Stars are for people who have done brave things. I did nothing brave to deserve a Silver Star that day. It is not brave to sit out of range and kill the enemy with napalm, turning men into unidentifiable things, shrunken and black against the unburned green jungle and gray ash where the flames were. If the green tracers had been reaching up for us and those drums of napalm, it might have been brave, but it is not heroic to kill men who cannot kill you in turn. The brave men were on the ground, trading shot for shot. They are not back in a bar having a beer. They are still out there, out by the Rock Pile waiting for the NVA to attack again.

  That is, if we killed anyone at all. The NVA could have just given up and moved away when all the helicopters were overhead and the napalm and streams of red tracers and the rockets began to fall. Maybe killing the LOACH was enough for them. Maybe they just dropped their ammo and moved out of the area. Did anyone actually go to the burned ground and count 18 dead men? Who saw the destroyed bunker? The Chemical Corps officer must have wanted a medal and the only way he could get one was if the aircrew got one, so he wrote us up for one and was waiting for us to write him up for one. Or, he just wrote himself up for one without waiting for us to do it and turned it in to higher headquarters himself.

  The battalion Ops O is incredulous as again I tell him that it just isn’t true and that he should tear up the write up. He sounded disappointed but agreed to do so.

  I read, sometime after this event, that Napoleon understood decorations and medals—that he could get men to fight and die for a piece of colored ribbon. He was right, they will. But some men will also lie for them. In my remaining 22 years of service I arranged to never get another medal…

  12

  LAST ’NAM FLIGHT

  NORTHERN I CORPS AND PHU BAI,

  VIETNAM ■ AUGUST 1971

  In most wars, one of three things happens to the combatants. One: your side wins—or loses—and you eventually get to go home; Two: you are wounded too badly to continue and you are shipped home; Three: you are killed. Not in Vietnam, though. There, all you had to do was survive one year, just KNM days, and you flew home on a big jet airplane while the war continued on.

  I n our 365 days, we found that mostly we all went through th
ree stages—newbie, confident AC, and burn out. A newbie was too ignorant to know when to be scared and would do anything simply because he did not know any better and besides, ACs were god-like individuals; they were like the flight instructors at Ft. Wolters and Ft. Rucker, and could do no wrong. This stage lasted about two months. The confident AC knew he could do absolutely anything and get away with it because he was 20 or 21 years old and obviously the most skilled and knowledgeable pilot in the company, if not in the Army. He was also invulnerable. This stage started about three months into the 12 and lasted until about month 11. By then the confident AC became the burnout who knew in his heart that everyone was out to kill him; only his skill, his skill alone, could keep him alive and by God, he would do everything himself to keep anyone else from killing him.

  The newbie had to be watched to make sure that, like a child, he learned that fire burns and you must not run with sharp objects or play in traffic. The confident AC had to be watched to make sure his ego did not take him past his actual skill level. The burnout had to be watched to keep him fit and alive to return home. We instructor pilots (IP) tried hard to ease that transition between the second stage and the third so that he could keep his pride and maybe recover somewhat before he went home. And so that after a year or so stateside, he could return to the war to do it again.

  I reached the third stage in the second week of my twelfth month…

  We, the operations officer and I, the senior instructor pilot, watched closely as the pilots got close to the end of their tour for signs that they were at the end of their rope. We did this by flying with them sometimes and by flying missions as wingman with them at other times. Even so, sometimes we missed seeing it coming.

  “The son of a bitch pulled his pistol on me,” the copilot yelled as he banged open the screen door to the Club. “He pulled his fucking gun and threatened to shoot me if I touched the controls.”