Chapter 32
Bad Days Ahead, March 1970

C ommanding officers in Vietnam only served for six months and then were replaced. If you had a good commander, this was unfortunate. We had a great commander in my opinion, but he only had about another month left in the unit. He set high standards and exercised sound judgment and common sense. He never asked us to do what he wouldn’t do. We were flying our asses off, and he was right there with us. You could tell by looking at him, as he was tired too.

The major was a flight leader and flew many missions as Yellow One. Prior to his arrival, only commissioned officers, RLOs, had served as flight leader. Unfortunately we were getting so low on qualified commissioned officers that he had to fly most of the combat assault missions. The unit was down to the CO and the XO, the flight ops officer, and two platoon leaders, of which only one was experienced and flight leader qualified. We still had Lieutenant Dick Weed, who had been promoted to captain but hadn’t made flight leader as of yet and was due to rotate back to the States within a month. Something had to be done. And the CO did it one night at the club.

“Mr. Cory, the CO wants to see all the pilots in the club. Now, sir,” the flight ops clerk said, sticking his head in my room before moving down the hall to tell the other warrants the same thing. I was writing a letter, which I would finish up later. Along with the four or five others, I drifted to the club.

Once everyone was assembled, the major stepped to the front of the room.

“Sorry to get you all up, but we need to discuss something. Battalion says that we’re going to keep flying the six-two flights. We can expect to be putting up at least twelve aircraft a day to meet the needs, with at least an additional five for log missions and ash and trash.”

I could hear the maintenance officer moan and say under his breath, “Shit, that’s seventeen aircraft a day. I’m not sure we can do that.”

“Want to add something to the conversation?” the major asked, looking straight at the maintenance officer.

“No, sir,” the maintenance officer replied, a bit dejected.

“I know this is going to be tough on the maintenance crews, but Division is stepping up the game with more mini-caves to be conducted. You guys have got to help maintenance out and not break anything as well as stay on top of your own aircraft. Preventive maintenance practices will go a long ways.”

“Doc, how are the guys looking?”

“Well, sir, the stand-down did a pretty good job. Almost everyone got a good day’s sleep, and if they only got fourteen to sixteen hours, then that’s sufficient to revive them for a while. Looking at most of them, I believe a lot of them got around twenty-four hours in those two days’ time. Even the crew chiefs look a lot better,” Doc replied.

“Okay, then. The last issue we need to address, then, is flight leaders.”

A small murmur was heard from the warrant officers, and a few chairs shuffled. We all suspected he was going to announce a new flight leader from the RLO pool. In the opinion of the warrant officers and mostly the aircraft commanders, none of the commissioned officers were a good choice for flight leader. A lot of potential, but they were new for the most part, either in their experience level or their time as AC. A couple just did not have the common sense to be a good flight leader.

“Brigade instituted the policy of only the commissioned officers being flight leaders. They are the tactical officers, while you warrants are the technical officers. The commissioned officers should shoulder the responsibility of tactical decisions. However, we’re running out of commissioned officers and there are none inbound for a time. So I’m going to add two new flight leaders tonight. They’ll fly with me for a couple of missions until I can sign them off. Any questions, Mr. Cory, Mr. Roberts?”

We both responded, “No, sir, no questions.” Why would I have any questions?

“Good, then. Mr. Cory, you and I will have three lifts tomorrow and that should about do it. Mr. Roberts, you and I will fly together the day after tomorrow.”

“Sir?” Mr. Roberts responded, looking at me and I at him.

“You two are going to be the next flight leaders. The policy about warrant officers not being flight leaders has changed. You will be our first if you guys want the assignment.” All the warrants in the room were smiling and talking softly. My platoon leader was smiling, and while Captain Weed wasn’t, he didn’t protest, nor did any of the commissioned officers. I never knew if the major had spoken with them before the meeting or not.

“Yes, sir, I’ll take it,” I said.

And the next morning, I was back in the copilot seat, learning to be a flight leader. The major and I went to the brigade TOC, launching an hour ahead of everyone else to talk with the S-3 about the day’s missions. Three combat assault and three extractions were planned. I took the briefing and all the pertinent information we needed. We then took off and flew out to each PZ and LZ, passing by and over at two thousand feet. He talked me through how to judge the size from that altitude so we put maximum number of aircraft into each on the first lift as well as determining the type of formation. He further showed me how to pick checkpoints to be at on the H minus six and H minus two mark. Arriving too early in the LZ wasn’t conducive to morale as the artillery would still be shooting at the H minus two time hack. You didn’t want to cross the H minus two checkpoint until you saw the white smoke, and you didn’t want to be hovering over the H minus two checkpoint waiting for the white smoke. Arrive at the H minus two checkpoint too late and you gave the enemy time to come out of their bunkers and set up to shoot at us. Timing was critical.

The day’s missions mostly went off with success. Some fire was taken on the second insertion, but nothing serious. A bullet hole here, a bullet hole there. Nothing that maintenance couldn’t patch overnight. At the end of the day, we headed back to the Chicken Coop feeling pretty good.

“Okay, you’re ready. You take a mission tomorrow, and I’ll take the other with Mr. Roberts. I’ll see you at the club, and you’re buying,” he said as we shut the aircraft down.

“Yes, sir, and I’ll be happy to buy,” I added. I dropped my gear off in my room and headed over to the club. Mike George was coming out of his room and asked if I’d heard that we had a new pilot come in.

“No, I hadn’t,” I replied.

“Yeah, I guess he’s going to bunk in my room with me. His stuff was on the empty bed,” he added as we walked through the door of the Officers’ Club and bellied up to the bar. I ordered three beers, expecting the CO to come in shortly. As Mike and I were talking, a hand reached around me to the third beer.

“Thanks, you’re finally learning, New Guy,” this guy said. Mike and I both turned to see who this asshole was, talking to two old ACs in such a disrespectful tone. The look on my face told Mike I knew the guy.

“Lou, what the hell are you doing here?” I said as I wrapped both arms around him in a hug.

“Hey, people will talk!” He backed away.

“What are you doing here? Oh, Mike, this is Lou Price, the guy that taught me to fly.”

Shaking Mike’s hand, Lou said, “I got tired of the stateside bullshit at Mother Rucker, so I volunteered for coming back here. Did you miss me?”

“Shit, we missed you. It’s great to see you.” And we started to play “what happened to so and so?” Soon the major came in looking for his beer. He hadn’t met Lou yet.

“Sir, here’s your beer”—I pointed to the beer in Lou’s hand—“and this is Mr. Price, the guy that taught me to fly.”

“Well, Mr. Price, welcome back to the roost, and thanks for nursing my beer in my absence. You’re buying,” the major said while shaking Lou’s hand and smiling. “Good to have experience in new pilots. What have you been doing since you left us?”

“Sir, I was a flight instructor at Mother Rucker. Decided it was safer flying back here, so I dropped my paperwork to come back. I guess they wanted to get rid of me, because it was approved in less than thirty days.”

“Good. You’re familiar with the AO, then, as you’ve only been gone, what, eight or nine months?”

“Actually, it’s been ten, but who’s counting?”

“Okay. What say you take a couple of missions as a copilot to learn the Song Be, Bu Dop, Bu Gia Map area, and then we’ll put you in as an AC? Sound okay to you?”

“That will be fine, sir,” Lou responded, taking a long pull on his beer and ordering another for all of us. Some of the older ACs that were getting ready to rotate home came over and expressed their condolences to Lou for coming back, but all in good humor. He told them what they could expect going to be flight instructors at Mother Rucker or one of the other two locations. He advised them to reconsider extending, but they were married and had other commitments, if they wanted to stay married.