Chapter 30
Back in the Saddle Again, February 1970

T he flight back to Nam was a repeat of my first trip, almost. I stopped at Mom and Pop Michel’s house and spent a day dropping off uniforms and getting my jungle fatigues and boots out. Pop drove me down to Fort Lewis as he had done a year ago to send Bill and me off the first time. They were excited because Bill had extended as well and was coming home in a few days. Checking in at the terminal, I was placed on a flight that was leaving in a couple of hours, so I got comfortable. Two brand-new pilots came up and started picking my brain. They ended up picking my brain for the next fourteen hours, all the way to Nam. Upon landing, the first thing we did was brush our teeth. Some things don’t change. The next morning I was back at the airport and started hitching rides that eventually got me back to Lai Khe. Walking into the club in the early afternoon, I got a beer and joined some of the pilots that were there, some old guys and a couple of newbies that had arrived while I was gone.

“Hey, I read in a paper back in D.C. that an aircraft went down. Was it one of ours?” No one said anything, but everyone looked uncomfortable. Finally one spoke up.

“Yeah, it was one of us.” That was all he would say.

“Well, who was it? Did the crew get out? Everyone okay?”

“It was your aircraft, One-Nine. No one got out.”

“What the…! What happened?” I asked, in total shock.

“They were on a resupply over a hover hole. The gooks opened fire on them on their third pass, and they crashed into the trees. Grunts said they made each of their three approaches over the same ground. They had five new replacements on board. The grunts got to the aircraft and were shooting gooks in the cabin and cockpit.”

“Who was the crew?”

“It was Ash as AC, and a newbie, Taylor. Your crew chief, Linam, and Dietrich were on board too. Sorry,” they told me. I didn’t know the copilot, who had arrived the day after I’d left to go home. The AC, like all our guys, was a good man. He had just received a Dear John letter from his wife, telling him she was getting a divorce. I guessed she didn’t need to now. I raised my glass, and they joined me. “To absent comrades.”

“Hey, while you were gone, word came down that we’re being awarded the Valorous Unit Award,” Mike stated.

“No shit. What for?” I asked, pulling on my beer.

“Well, it was for that lift back in March that got all shot up. Evidently the Lobo Company commander put us in for it.”

“Great, something else to hang on a uniform,” I said.

The next day, I was back on the board for missions with a new aircraft—well, new to me—and a new crew. My crew chief was Specialist Lovelace from Louisville, Kentucky. He had curly blond hair and an accent that said “speak Southern,” leaving no doubt about where this boy was from. He was a quiet kid with a dry sense of humor. Kid —he was nineteen and I was twenty-three, an old man. My new door gunner was Specialist Peters. Peters had a temper that I had to get in check more than once as he would flare up at the maintenance people if something wasn’t right on the aircraft. It cost him a summary court-martial once, when I couldn’t intervene quick enough as he went after the maintenance officer, CWO Dee. I was able to get his sentence for the reduction in rank suspended. The three of us quickly gelled, but the first month back was a bit rough.

Quickly, I began to realize that my touch wasn’t what it used to be. The very first day, flying contour over a bamboo field, I hit the lone sprout that was standing ten feet above everyone else. Bam, and the chin bubble was busted out on my side. I was buying beer again. Not a couple of days later, setting down in an LZ, one skid was on a log and I bent the skid. Another case of beer. A week later it was a tail rotor strike. I started to realize that being gone over a month took the fine edge off one’s ability to fly in these conditions. I had a talk with the CO.

“Sir, I’ve been back less than a month and I have to admit I don’t have my touch back. I lost it.”

“Hey, you’ll get it back soon enough. I’ve seen this before. Hell, I was gone for a year and didn’t have the touch I had when I left the first time.”

“Well, sir, can I recommend that when an AC comes back from an extended leave, we put them up with another couple of hours before we put them back to full duty?”

“You can recommend it, but I’ll have to think about it. Right now I need all the ACs we have.”

The unit was continuing to support the brigade operating in the Song Be region and moving slowly towards the abandoned SF camps at Bu Gia Map and Bu Dop. The NVA were getting more active in the area and sliding eastward, resulting in longer flights just to get to the firebases to begin resupply missions. No new pilots had joined the unit, so everyone was flying every day, racking up a hundred and thirty to a hundred and fifty hours a month. And pilots were leaving as their tours came to an end after twelve months. Bill Hess, Mike George and Ralph put in for extensions but were on their extension leaves in February and March. If the unit had to move all its aircraft, some would have to be flown with just one pilot. Some ACs began training crew chiefs how to fly, at least well enough to make a running landing if necessary. Everyone was tired.

“Incoming! ” screamed someone in the hooch. It was night, and I was asleep and dead to the world.

“Dan, wake up. We got incoming!” Someone was shaking me. We had no bunkers as we had when we’d lived in tents. Our hooches were lined on the outside with a sandbag wall about four feet high, so there was really no place to run to. You could lie on the floor, but that was about it, and what good would that do? If a hooch took a direct hit, then your time had come. A hit on the outside next to the hooch would be stopped by the sandbags outside, as the beds were only about two feet off the ground.

“Leave me alone. I’m staying here and sleeping,” I said and rolled over.

As we rolled into early March, the shortage of pilots was taking its toll. The assistant maintenance officer found himself on the board to fly a mission. It was a log mission and he gladly jumped on it. Maintenance officers seldom got a chance to fly combat missions, stuck most of the time working on aircraft, supervising the maintenance or conducting test flights. He was flying with an inexperienced copilot, and they went into the Song Be to fly resupply for an infantry battalion.

“Mayday, mayday! Chicken-man Two-Seven is taking fire,” came over the radio on our company air-to-air frequency. It was the copilot speaking.

“Chicken-man Two-Seven, Chicken-man One-Niner, what is your location?” I asked as I, along with most of our crews, was working the Song Be area.

“One-Niner, I’m ten klicks north of Song Be and heading for the airfield. I need medics standing by,” he responded.

“Two-Seven, so you’re not going down? What’s your damage?” I asked.

“One-Niner, Dee was hit coming out of a PZ and is bleeding bad from his wrist and leg. The crew chief pulled him out of his seat and is stuffing the leg with bandages.”

“Roger. What’s the condition of your aircraft?” I asked again.

“One-Niner, all the gauges are normal. Over.”

“Roger, contact Tower at Song Be and request medics meet you. The medic pad is in front of the tower.”

“Chicken-man Two-Seven, Chicken-man Six, over.” The CO was monitoring the net.

“Chicken-man Six, Two-Seven, over.”

“Two-Seven, I’ll meet you at the pad. How’s he doing?”

“Chicken-man Six, he’s sitting up. Looks pale, but he’s breathing okay and talking.”

“Roger, then let’s clear the net. See you on the pad. Chicken-man Six out.”

The bullet hole in Dee’s wrist was small. The hole in his leg was large due to the fact that his watch was in his leg, carried there by the bullet. Dee came back to the unit after a month in the hospital in Japan. His wounds were sufficient to have him rotated back to the States, but it seemed that while on a pass one night from the hospital at Kishine Barracks, Dee got into a bar fight. He was arrested by the MPs and taken back to the hospital, and it was decided that if he could hold his own in a bar fight, he could go back to Vietnam. I had first met Dee on our first day in Preflight. He was a staff sergeant and had applied for flight school. A very quiet man, but someone always willing to help a fellow cadet. He wasn’t married. Off duty, he stayed to himself.

Our maintenance operation was pretty good, but mistakes should be expected. After all, these were helicopters that really didn’t want to fly and only did so by man’s manipulation of controls. Things would break once the aircraft left the flight line, and that was why a good preflight was necessary before the first flight of the day and any other time the aircraft was shut down. With Dee missing now, we noticed a slowdown in maintenance operations as the remaining maintenance officer, Captain Kempf, and one remaining assistant maintenance officer, WO Bob Young, could only do so much. In addition to aircraft breaking down, pilots were as well.

We needed pilots. The long hours were starting to take their toll on us. For days we were flying twelve to fifteen hours. Leaving the aircraft, our butts were actually sore, and we would wake up in the morning with them still sore and know we had another twelve-hour day ahead of us. The rule of a three-day rest after a hundred and forty hours in the past thirty days was being extended to a hundred and fifty hours, and then a hundred and sixty hours in the last thirty days. Doc was getting involved as pilots reported to sick call and it was apparent that sleep was the remedy. It got to the point that pilots were going to sleep in shifts while flying. Crew chiefs and gunners could sleep while we were flying, waking up just when needed prior to landings, but normally the pilots remained awake. If we were on a long flight, one pilot would catch a few minutes’ sleep while the other flew.

It was a beautiful moonlit night with a full moon. We were flying back from Tay Ninh to Lai Khe, and I told my copilot I was going to catch a few minutes of sleep. This was the same lieutenant who’d shot the aircraft.

“Okay, I have the aircraft,” he said.

“You have the aircraft.” I locked my shoulder harness back so I wouldn’t fall forward into the cyclic and closed my eyes. I was asleep in less than a minute. A feeling was invading my sleep. Something wasn’t right. I opened my eyes but didn’t move. All appeared normal. Slowly I turned my head and looked over at my copilot. His hands were on the controls but his head was tilted forward. Was he looking down at something? Oh shit, his eyes were closed! He was asleep. The crew was asleep in the back. This aircraft was flying with a sleeping crew. I didn’t move but watched him to see what would happen. At first, nothing did. I slowly moved my right hand close to the cyclic in case he might jerk it in his sleep or overreact when he did wake up. We continued to fly straight and level for another fifteen or thirty seconds, and then a slight nose-low attitude began. He must have released some pressure on the cyclic to cause that. As the low nose attitude continued, we began to lose altitude and increase our airspeed. The sounds began to change with each increase in airspeed and decrease in altitude. And with each second, things picked up. Finally he woke with a startled look and began recovering the aircraft, looking over to see if I had noticed.

“Have a good nap there?” I asked.

“Oh shit, I’m sorry, Dan. I don’t know what happened,” he said nervously.

“I got the aircraft,” I said.

“No, I can take it in. I’m really sorry.”

“Hey, I got it. And don’t beat yourself up. We’ve all been flying too much,” I said as I took control of the aircraft.

Tuning the radio to our Flight Operations, I called, “Chicken-man Six, Chicken-man One-Niner, over.”

“One-Niner, Chicken-man Six India, go ahead.”

“Chicken-man Six, could you have Band-Aid Six meet us when we arrive in about thirty mikes? Over.”

With some excitement in his voice, he asked, “One-Niner, do you need an ambulance on standby? Over.”

“Chicken-man Six, that is a negative. Just Band-Aid Six. Over.”

“One-Niner, roger, understood. Wilco.”

“Chicken-man One-Niner out.”

Addressing the crew, who were awake now, I said, “Guys, when we land, we’re all going to see Doc. We’re over a hundred and sixty hours for the month. Don’t bullshit him, but we all need some sleep.”

When we landed, not only was Doc—Band-Aid Six—standing there, but so were Major Saunders and the ops officer with the maintenance officer and my flight logs, the copilot’s flight logs and the aircraft log. Major Saunders started the conversation as the aircraft engine and main rotor wound down.

“What’s up, Mr. Cory?” This might not be good. He’d called me Mr. Cory.

“Sir, me and my crew are over a hundred and sixty hours for the past thirty days. We just flew back with all of us, me and the copilot, falling asleep at the same time. Sir, we need some sleep. I’m asking for a couple of days’ downtime.”

He looked away at the ground. I could see his mind spinning. Turning to the Doc, he said, “Doc, look at them and get back to me.”

“Sir, I don’t have to look at them. I can see from just watching them that they’re in sleep deprivation, just like the other crews today.” What? What other crews today?

The ops officer spoke up without being asked.

“Sir, Mr. Cory is over the one hundred and sixty hours for the past thirty days. Only one other pilot has him beat, and he’s now down for a three-day rest. The other two are just behind Mr. Cory. We’re running out of pilots, sir.” I couldn’t tell if he was pleading my case or trying to get me more hours. Then the maintenance officer jumped in, and honestly he looked more tired than us as the assistant maintenance officer hadn’t returned from the hospital.

“Sir, this aircraft has been going hard for the past thirty days. We have an overdue hundred-hour inspection. We really need to ground it for a day or two.” I thought he was supporting me. We were all still standing around the aircraft with the major thinking.

“How much time do you need for the hundred-hour inspection?” he asked the maintenance officer.

“I can get it in tomorrow afternoon and have it back up the day after, sometime in the morning,” the maintenance officer responded.

“Dan, if I give you two days, would that be sufficient?” the CO asked me.

“Sir, if I can have one day just to sleep all day and night, I’ll be good.”

The major asked, “Doc, would that be sufficient?”

“If he gets to bed and stays there undisturbed and gets at least fourteen hours of sleep—no drinking, no reading, no writing letters, but fourteen hours of sleep—then I will clear him,” Doc said, but I could tell he wasn’t happy.

“Dan, get to bed. You and your crew are grounded for the next twenty-four hours. No drinking, no letter writing, no reading. Your crew chief won’t pull the hundred-hour inspection, but maintenance will have someone take care of it.” Addressing the maintenance officer and the ops officer, he added, “I want to see you two in my office with everyone’s flight times and with aircraft status. Thirty minutes.” And he walked off.

“Hey, Doc, what’s going on?” I asked as we gathered our stuff and started to leave the Chicken Pen.

“You’re not the first today to come in and report falling asleep. Three other crews came in earlier and the old man had to ground them. He put each of them down for three days. You just broke the camel’s back. Tomorrow we’ll have some more, I’m sure, coming in and reporting the same thing. We need some downtime for both the crews and the aircraft. Taking only one day, you helped him out, but you need to get to bed.” He walked off, shaking his head.

I climbed into bed and slept for twelve hours. When I woke, everything was strangely quiet. During the night, the CO had gotten with the battalion commander and explained the situation. Battalion ordered us to stand down for forty-eight hours, which would start the clock over on the thirty-day rule. Once the CO got that, he and the XO went around and informed the leadership that everything was to remain quiet in the company area for the next twenty-four hours. The club was closed and no one complained. There were to be no volleyball games, no card playing, and no drinking. Maintenance was working, but it was located at the Chicken Pen, so where the flight crews slept, we couldn’t hear that noise. Maintenance was happy because now they could work on aircraft and get things done without being rushed. This down period made a world of difference in our morale.