Chapter 6
Settling In

T he pilot who delivered me to this lush tropical rubber tree plantation said to wait and someone would come to get me. So, I waited and took in the surroundings. I was standing on the tarmac in the middle of a rubber tree plantation covered in red clay dust with everything the Army had issued me. My relatively clean jungle fatigues and steel pot with fresh new camouflage cover screamed new guy. No one else was wearing a steel pot. The flak jacket I was wearing might as well have been a sign around my neck. “Danger: New Guy. Beware.” No one else was wearing a flak jacket. The tarmac had revetments for about eighty helicopters to be parked. A few of the revetments had some holes in the sides. Each revetment was about six feet high, ten feet wide and twenty feet long, just big enough to slowly ease a hovering helicopter into place and be offered some protection from rocket or mortar attack. Some revetments were empty and some held a Bell UH-1 Iroquois “Huey” or a Bell AH-1G “Cobra” gunship.

A jeep came to a stop in front of me with a hatless captain driving. “You Mr. Cory?”

“Yes, sir.” I snapped to attention and saluted.

“Shit, you trying to get me shot? Damn sniper sees you doing that and I’m the one he’s going to shoot. I don’t have a hat on for a reason, so get your shit and let’s go,” he said with a disgusted tone.

“Sorry, sir.” I tossed my duffel bags into the jeep and climbed in.

He extended his hand and grinned. “There are no snipers here. Just thought I’d scare the crap out of you. I’m Captain Goodnight, the operations officer for our merry band. Welcome to the Chicken Coop. The Chicken Coop is the company location, and this here parking area is the Chicken Pen. Our call sign is Chicken-man.”

“Chicken-man! That’s our call sign?” I responded. That ought to instill courage in the hearts of our troops and fear in the minds of the enemy. Why couldn’t it be something bold and dynamic? I thought. Chicken-man?

“Sir, how did we come by that call sign?” I asked.

“The official call sign is Drumstick. There’s a popular radio show in the Chicago area, and now it’s on Armed Forces Radio in Vietnam, about a wicked white-winged warrior called Chicken-man. Some of the episodes are hilarious. When the unit first came to Nam, we were the Hoot Owls, and the name has changed several times over the years to Apache and Lucky Shot in 1966, Sidewinder and Swordfish in 1967 and Drumstick in 1968. Some of the warrant officers decided about six months ago to start using the Chicken-man call sign, and it’s pretty much stuck. So now it’s the unofficial official call sign for the unit.” I was starting to like this Chicken-man call sign now.

The ride was short, but I was thankful for it with all my gear. The Chicken Coop was located in a rubber tree plantation surrounded by the First Infantry Division and owned by the Michelin tire company of France, which owned all the rubber tree plantations in this part of Vietnam. Our parent organization, 227th Assault Helicopter Battalion, was located at Phuoc Vinh, but that place was overcrowded, so our company, along with Delta Company, was located at Lai Khe. Everything except the flight line was under rubber trees, which made it cooler here than at Phuoc Vinh, and no dust. I was starting to like this place already. The only downside was the fact that our company was living in General Purpose Medium tents with wooden floors, six men to a tent. Everything was under tents except the mess hall. There were no sandbags around anything for protection from mortars or rockets. For that, there was a bunker made out of four-by-four-inch timbers for framing and dirt-filled ammunition boxes for siding, all covered with sandbags. The roof was tin, with two layers of sandbags.

“This is the operations tent. Drop your gear and come inside. I’ll call your platoon leader,” Captain Goodnight said as he rolled out of the jeep. As I entered, he indicated a guy with what was probably the nicest, most well-groomed handlebar mustache I had ever seen. He appeared older than most, with gray invading his once very red hair. “This is Sergeant First Class Robinson, our operations NCO,” Captain Goodnight said.

“Welcome, Mr. Cory,” the sergeant first class said and extended his hand.

“Glad to meet you, Sergeant.” I was a bit unfamiliar with meeting NCOs in a casual manner. For the past year, sergeants had been taking bites out of my ass, and now they were so polite.

“I called your platoon leader, but he’s still out flying, so one of the pilots is coming over to get you and show you where you bunk. How about a beer?” he offered.

“Yeah, thanks,” I replied as I took in the operations setup. It had a counter with a map of the area under plexiglass. Behind that were a couple of folding tables and folding metal chairs. In the rear was another bench with three radios mounted and a clerk that monitored the calls, keeping a daily log of all calls coming in and going out as well as any significant events. There was a chart on an easel with aircraft numbers, call signs, pilots’ names and a mission number.

“Let me give you a quick orientation,” SFC Robinson offered while handing me a very cold tin can of Carling Black Label beer with rusted seams. He pointed at the map on the counter. “This is our area of operations. It’s commonly referred to as Three Corps of Vietnam, with Four Corps south of us in the Mekong Delta, and First Corps, or Eye Corps as we refer to it, along the DMZ with North Vietnam. Two Corps is between us and Eye Corps. Our actual operating area runs from Tay Ninh in the south to Song Be here in the north along the Cambodian border and back to Long Binh here to the southeast of us. Here’s Phuoc Vinh, Division HQ. Operating in the region besides the First Cav are the First and Twenty-Fifth Infantry Divisions, as well as a couple of separate brigades that we’ll fly for. There’s a Special Forces camp here, here and here,” he said, pointing at each location. “There was one here back in 1965, but it was overrun and abandoned back then. That’s Bu Gia Map. Another is here at Bu Dop and it was overrun at about the same time. Song Be is the closest we’ve gotten to the border since then. Right now most of the stuff we fly is between Phuoc Vinh and Long Binh. The generals are worried about a major attack on Long Binh with TET coming up again next month,” he added. The whole time he was talking, he was pointing at places on the map, and I still had no idea where everything was located.

“How much flying are we getting?” I asked.

“Every newbie asks that question,” Captain Goodnight chimed in. “You’ll get all the flying you want and more than you can handle. There’ll be days when you go to bed with your butt cheeks hurting and they’ll still be hurting when you wake up and you have another twelve-to-fifteen-hour day ahead of you. Some days you’ll get twenty hours in before you shut the engine down. Normally when you get a hundred and forty hours for the month, you get a two-day stand-down, if I don’t need you,” he explained as another individual walked in. “This is Lou Price, and he’s going to show you where you can set up housekeeping.”

Lou was a skinny guy from California, tall, but almost everyone was taller than me. He had long blond hair for a non-military look, a thin build, and an immature mustache. His military attire was a T-shirt, OD green jungle pants and flippy-flops. Not married and no kids, that he knew about.

“Come on, newbie, let’s get you settled. Where’s your crap?” he asked with a beer in one hand as he reached for one of my bags with the other. We walked over two rows of tents and into one.

“Hey, guys, we have a new guy,” Lou said as he tossed my bag on an empty bed.

Four other guys were present, and introductions were made, but as no one wore a shirt, I had no idea about rank or names. I could remember faces, but names were a challenge. The GP Medium tent was approximately sixteen feet by thirty feet with two fifteen-foot poles spaced twenty feet apart to hold the top up. These tents were on plywood floors that were positioned on wooden blocks. Six metal-frame beds with wafer-thin mattresses were positioned on the sides of the tent, along with six single wall lockers and six footlockers. All of the furniture had seen better days. In addition, it appeared that everyone had a lawn chair positioned around a homemade table. The bed that received my bag was pointed out to me, as well as a single wall locker and a footlocker.

“Don’t worry. The guy that did occupy that bed just rotated home. That lawn chair was his too, but he left it for you. Want a beer?” one of the others offered.

I was beginning to see a pattern here, and beer was it. There was one refrigerator in the tent, and it was a community beer machine. You took a beer, and when it ran dry, someone went and bought more beer. No matter how much you drank, everyone chipped in to buy the beer, and Lou could drink some beer, I was finding out. In fact, from the look of the empties, they all could drink some beer.

“Chow time. I hope you like roast beef, because that’s what’s for dinner. Bring a beer,” said one of my new tent mates.

For what they had to work with, Army cooks did some amazing work in fixing meals. It wasn’t Mom’s home cooking, but it was better than most institutional food. Roast beef was for dinner that night, and almost every other night, I came to realize. If not roast beef, then spaghetti with sauce, marinara or something like that. We not only had roast beef for dinner, we had roast beef for breakfast some days too, and roast beef for lunch if you were lucky. When we were flying, we would have a case of C-rations, and they were a welcome respite from the roast beef menu.

As the four of us were eating, more flight crews came in to grab dinner. Being the “new guy,” I was sort of the center of attention. Some attention was appreciated and some not. Right off the bat, the attention from the platoon leader was not appreciated.

Captain Jamison was a rather large man and not fat. “Are you Mr. Cory?” he asked.

I looked up from my tray. “Yes, sir.”

“When I speak to you, mister, you will stand,” he said loud enough that everyone turned and looked as I unwound from my seat.

“Sorry, sir,” I mumbled and stood up.

“When you’re done eating, report to my tent. Someone will show you where it is.” And he walked off to sit at an empty table.

“He’s an ass,” Lou stated in a hushed voice. “Don’t let it bother you. He’s that way with every one of the warrants. Has a feather up his ass.”

“Are you in his platoon too?” I asked.

“Nope, and I don’t fly with him either. Not that I don’t want to, but he doesn’t want to fly with me. See, I’m an aircraft commander and he’s still a right seater. He thinks just because he’s a captain, he should be an aircraft commander. But he can’t fly for shit and no one will sign him off for AC. He thinks the ACs have it out for him, and we do.” Lou was digging out another beer from his cargo pockets.

“How do you get to be AC, and how long does it take?” I asked as I accepted another beer from Lou’s other cargo pocket.

“First you need about four hundred hours’ flight time in-country. You’ll have that in four months easy, unless you’re a dickhead and scare every AC. Then when the ACs think you’re ready, we have a meeting and make a recommendation to Major Dickson. Have you met him yet?” Lou asked.

“No, who’s he?”

“Damn, you are a newbie, aren’t you? Major Dickson’s the company commander, and you’ll be told by the XO or by Captain Jamison when to go see him. I’ve been in this unit for almost a year now and still haven’t reported to him. I’ve only seen him out of his tent maybe four times. He doesn’t fly missions, he doesn’t speak to warrant officers or anyone except the first sergeant and the XO. Even his meals are brought to his tent. Guy’s a real hermit,” Lou stated as he finished his second beer and stood to leave.

We left the mess hall and headed back to our tent with a detour to the “Officers’ Club,” which was another tent with a makeshift bar, refrigerator and tables. The latest Led Zeppelin song was playing on a reel-to-reel tape player. “You a poker player, Cory?”

“No, never learned. Figured if I didn’t lose money gambling, then every time I passed it up, I was making money,” I explained as I opened another Carling Black Label with the rusted seem. Lou introduced me to more pilots that were in the game. Hugh and Dave were both ACs and getting ready to rotate home in a month or so.

“Hi, I’m Chip. Really glad to see you here.” A tall lanky fellow extended his hand.

“Thank you, I’m Dan,” I responded as I shook his hand. “But why are you glad to see me?”

“Because I’m no longer the newest new guy. You are.” The pecking order had just been established. It quickly became obvious that the evening would continue with jovial bantering and beer. However, I still had to go see my platoon leader, so I excused myself and went looking for his tent.

Captain Jamison had a tent all to himself. It was what the Army called a General Purpose Small, and it was the same size as the company commander’s tent. In fact, the platoon leaders, XO, and first sergeant all had “single-man tents” that you could sleep ten men in if need be. After the incident in the mess hall, I thought it best to exercise proper military decorum. Announcing myself, I was told to come in, and I did so, coming to attention and saluting. Captain Jamison sat at a field desk. He smiled and stood, returning my salute.

“At ease. Nice to see a warrant with military manners, Mr. Cory. You’re a first,” he said, shaking my hand. I wasn’t sure what to say.

“I come from a military family, sir, and manners and traditions are big in our house. My dad is Navy, submarines, so from the time I could talk, manners were ingrained in me. ‘Yes, sir’ and ‘no, ma’am’ were expected,” I explained.

“So why didn’t you join the Navy?” he asked.

“The Navy isn’t really in this fight, is it, sir? I wanted to do more than sit off the coast doing mundane stuff on some ship. I was a merchant sailor for about five months and made good money, but I wanted to be here, doing something worthwhile,” I divulged.

“Cory, you may be an idealist, but we can use you.”

Surprisingly, Captain Jamison and I had a nice discussion on what I could expect in the months to come. After about thirty minutes, he wrapped up the conversation and asked if I had questions, which I did not. I was dismissed. He just wanted the warrant officers to extend military courtesy to his rank. I got along with him just fine until he rotated home.

The pilots were a mixed bag. Most of the warrant officers fell into one of three categories—either high school graduates, college dropouts, or former NCOs that had gone to flight school. Most of the warrants were bachelors with girlfriends back in the States, except the old guys, who were married with wives and two kids back in the States. The commissioned officers, Real Live Officers (RLOs) as warrants referred to them, were all college graduates, but I didn’t notice any West Pointers in the unit. You could spot them by the large ring on their finger, hence the nickname, Ring Knockers. Although no one did PT, there were no overweight pilots. Most were attempting to grow mustaches, with limited success. We were all just too baby-faced.

Most of the crew chiefs and maintenance personnel were volunteers who had enlisted rather than waiting to be drafted. There were twenty-nine draftees, and most were door gunners who had volunteered to extend for door gunner duty to cut their draft time short or put more money in their pockets before going home. All were prior grunts. They were all good soldiers. There was an occasional drunk and disorderly and maybe an occasional pot case, but I couldn’t recall any specific cases of a lack of discipline. If pot was being smoked, it was kept pretty quiet and infrequent.

The unit at the time of my arrival had one major, the commanding officer, plus five captains, nine first lieutenants, and twenty-nine warrant officers. Enlisted strength was ninety-six enlisted at the time. There was no such thing as racial discrimination in the unit, from what I experienced. We were all OD green in color and all bled red blood. We had two black officers and several blacks in the enlisted ranks, but from what I could see and knew, everyone was treated with respect and equality.