part0020

“Hey, Dan. Two newbies arrived today.”

“Damn, that makes me feel good. Any idea what their names are?”

“One I don’t know, but the other is Major Anthony, our new company commander,” he replied. Well, I guessed I wouldn’t be jerking his chain anytime soon. I hoped the other was a warrant officer.

“What’s the rank on the other guy?” I asked.

“He’s a warrant too,” he said. I might be able to pass off some shit details to him , I was thinking. For the rest of the day, I concentrated on my flying, especially getting better at this formation flying, as we were still moving the Second and Third Brigade around.

Arriving back at the Chicken Coop, I was thinking of one thing—a cold beer. I dropped my flight gear in my tent and headed to the club. It was closed. What’s up with this? I returned to my tent to find Lou sitting there on his bunk. “Hey, Lou, why is the club closed?”

“We got a new CO and he wants to see all the pilots in the mess hall after chow. The club’s closed until after that meeting. You want a beer? I have a couple here, but not very cold.”

“Hell yeah, and I don’t care how cold they are. I heard we got a new warrant in today.”

“Yeah, he’s in the next tent over. His name is Hanna.”

“Dave Hanna?” I asked.

“Yeah, I think that’s it. Why, you know him?”

“Yeah, we were together at Fort Polk. I’m going to find him.” As I got up to walk out, who walked in but Dave.

“Dave, how the hell are you?”

Dave had started basic training with me at Fort Polk and was supposed to start in my flight class but had to drop out for two weeks to go home on emergency leave. It put him in a class behind me in flight school. He was married and a baby was on the way. This guy was amazing when it came to musical instruments. Piano, guitar, you name it, he played it.

Sitting down, we proceeded to drink the rest of Lou’s beer—actually, it was probably my beer that I’d had to buy since I’d screwed something up, but who was counting? Most of the pilots waited until the end of chow to wander over to the mess hall as we were going to have to stay anyway. Little did we know that the entire company was going to be there too. As the place wasn’t that big, it was crowded with the whole company in there.

“Attention to orders,” bellowed the first sergeant. Everyone stood, and some even remembered what the position of attention was. Up front stood the first sergeant and our new commanding officer.

“By order of the President, Major… blah, blah,… signed…blah, blah,” the first sergeant announced, reading the orders.

Major Anthony, now the new company commander, just stood there looking over us, and we at him. No one said anything until he finally told us to take our seats. He then went on to give us his philosophy on command and how he expected the unit to operate.

An hour later in the club, some discussions took place about what had been said. Mike asked me, “Dan, what did you get out of the major’s speech? I’m wondering if I heard wrong.”

“What I heard was, ‘Don’t do anything that’s going to jeopardize my success in command, and we’ll get along fine. Do so and I will be unmerciful upon you.’”

“Yeah. That’s about what I heard too,” Mr. Hess agreed.

I continued, “You know, I’ve seen commanders like this when I was a kid with some of my dad’s skippers. Having a command is mandatory for a successful career, especially the higher up you go. However, managing and leading that command effectively and efficiently is what’s important. Some officers view it as a threat if their subordinates do anything that would reflect badly on them. Major Anthony strikes me as that type. We’ll just have to wait and see, I guess.”

Shortly thereafter, Major Anthony walked into the place. Okay, good time to get to know the man.

“Gentlemen, I believe you’re all flying tomorrow. Why are you here at twenty-one hundred hours drinking? There will be no drinking in the club twelve hours before launch time. Good night.” And he stood there waiting for us to leave. Slowly, those on the board for the next day got up and moved out.

Holy shit , I thought. We all fly off at 0500, so that means we have to stop drinking at 1700 hours the night before. Hell, we aren’t done flying until 1800 or 1900 hours. This shit is not going to work. After that, we had no club. The Warrant Officer Protection Association concluded that he was covering his ass. If we had no club, and someone screwed up, the screw up couldn’t be blamed on him as he had demonstrated that he didn’t promote drinking but enforced Army policy of no drinking twenty-four hours before flight. What we did on our own was okay as the blame would just fall back on us. Even the RLOs and first sergeant were taking objection to this one.

Other small stuff began to appear as well.

Major Anthony moved his tent out of the Chicken Coop to the edge of the Chicken Pen. That way he could see and mark off each aircraft as we departed. Woe betide the aircraft commander that got off late, because he and the copilot would hear about it when they got back that night. And God help anyone who was unlucky enough to have a blade strike or a chin bubble knocked out.

One morning just after I made aircraft commander and about the second month into his six-month command, I was woken up and told to get out to the flight line right away. It was a down day for me. When I got there, Major Anthony was standing under the tail rotor of the aircraft I had flown the day before with my copilot and the crew chief as well as the two pilots who were taking that aircraft out that day. As I approached the group, he turned to face me and took a couple of steps towards me.

“Mr. Cory! Did you do a post-flight last night?” I could tell he was pissed.

“Yes, sir, we did.”

“I told him we did,” said the crew chief.

Turning towards the crew chief, the major said, “You will speak when asked, Specialist. Now shut up.”

Wow , I thought. Officers do not speak to soldiers that way. NCOs might, but not officers.

Turning back to me and pointing at the tail rotor, he asked, “Well, if you post-flighted this aircraft last night, why didn’t you report that tail rotor strike?”

The tail rotor was in a vertical position with one blade pointing skyward and the other pointing straight at the ground. There was a crease on the lower blade that ran from the tip to the hub. No marks on the top blade. Normally, on a tail rotor strike, both blades will have a crease and maybe a tear on one or both, and the damage will be horizontal to the blade, not vertical. As he was another non-flying CO, he probably didn’t realize that. He flew milk runs, not combat assaults or log missions.

I stood there and studied the blade. Finally, I said, “Sir, I did not report that because that was not there last night.”

“What? Well, Mr. Cory, if it was not there last night, did anyone else fly this aircraft last night? And if not, how did it get there?”

“Sir, I can’t tell you if anyone flew this aircraft last night. But if they did, they didn’t have a tail rotor strike either. That isn’t the mark of a tail rotor strike. I would say that is the mark of a whip antenna on a jeep that was driving around the Chicken Pen in the dark and smacked the tail rotor, as the revetment doesn’t cover the end of the aircraft and the tail rotors stick out.” Leaning slightly forward and pressing my luck, I added, “But that wasn’t there when I post-flighted last night. Anything else, sir?”

Everyone was looking around, attempting to avoid eye contact with the major, who was showing signs of possibly exploding. “You’re dismissed.”

“Thank you, sir, and good morning. I’m going back to bed.” I turned and walked away.

That night, the other AC came to me and said that after I left, he tore into those still standing there to get that tail rotor replaced and get in the air. He never said another word to me after that but showed his disdain later.

On April 16, 1969, I was flying with Mr. Driscoll, returning from a long day in the Quan Loi area flying resupply of one of the infantry battalions. It was late in the afternoon and the sun was setting. We were monitoring the four radios when we heard the mayday call.

“Mayday, mayday, Lobo One-Three is going down.”

“Mr. Driscoll, a Cobra just went into the bamboo at three o’clock,” said our crew chief, Specialist Grossman.

Lobo One-Three got off one call before he plowed into the bamboo. He was in a dive on a gun run and pulled out too late, only being able to get the nose of the aircraft up but not enough to stop his downward motion. He crashed into ten-foot-high bamboo and put the aircraft over on its side. He was on top of an NVA bunker complex.

Quickly, Mr. Driscoll took the controls from me and told me to plot our location and get out an additional mayday call, which I did, alerting everyone where we were. While I did that, Mr. Driscoll made an approach into a small clearing he’d spotted close to the downed aircraft and landed. It was just big enough for us to fit into. The first thing I noticed was the NVA bunker opening not ten feet from my door. I drew my .38 and pointed it at that opening, expecting someone to open fire at any moment. The downed crew was struggling to get the miniguns off the front of the Cobra when they began taking small-arms fire.

Specialist Grossman opened with the M60 machine gun, shooting at nothing specific but in the direction of the enemy fire, as did Specialist Leonard, our door gunner. I cocked my .38 and waited. As soon as the downed pilots got the miniguns off the downed Cobra, they ran to our aircraft and Mr. Driscoll pulled power to get us out of there as both gunners were firing and I emptied my .38 at the bamboo. Worthless weapon. The downed pilots thanked us profusely for saving their butts. As they occupied the other side of the Chicken Pen, their CO came over that night and bought drinks for us at his club since we no longer had one. He invited Major Anthony, who declined to drink with us but made sure we didn’t fly the next day.

A few months later, I came in from my flight and lying on my bed were orders for an Air Medal with “V.” The downed crew had put our crew in for the award. There was nothing our CO could do about it, but instead of presenting the awards to us in front of the entire company, he simply put them on our beds, or at least had the orderly room clerk do it. He did that as well for the crew chief and door gunner’s awards. The man held grudges. His last words to anyone when he departed the unit after his six months were something to the effect of he wouldn’t have us around to ruin his career. I think he may have done that on his own.

Lou left us in late April to go back to the States. He was headed to Fort Rucker to be an instructor. He had been in the unit for a year, and it was time. We also were losing several other pilots whose time was up. Replacements were coming in, and there were enough of them that I was no longer considered a newbie. Included in the replacements were both warrant officers and RLOs. These RLOs, however, were different. They were all new pilots and hadn’t served previous tours in Vietnam. They struck me as leaders.

Our new XO was a special breath of fresh air, exercising common sense that had been absent before. A new assistant maintenance officer arrived as well, and I was glad to see him. He was a staff sergeant when he joined us that first day at flight school. Dee could always be counted on and would prove to be a wonderful assistant maintenance officer.