Jocko Podcast - 275: The Relentless Danger From The Air in Vietnam w/ Huey Pilot, Col. Matt Jackson

Episode Date: March 31, 2021

0:00:00 - Opening0:04:03 - Col. Matt Jackson - "Undaunted Valor"3:31:37 - Final thoughts3:37:02 - How to stay on THE PATH.3:53:03 - Closing GratitudeSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 275 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. I have thought about writing this for the past 48 years. As I wrote, I felt it was important to relate to those great soldiers that made this such a great company. We all have a journey in life with many crossroads, curves, and offshoots. The synergistic effect created by individual journey. coming together at this point in time at this location created an organization that truly

stood above the rest the quality of an organization ebbs and flows with the quality of the leadership and the dedication personalities and expertise of the individuals present at a particular time during this time period I witnessed the synergism of the unit only increase further with each past month this story is important so that people know who the helicopter crews were and what they were asked to do and did in 1964 and 65 the army ramped up the warrant officer candidate program to meet the expanding need for helicopter pilots in vietnam between 1965 and 1971 44,000 warrant officer cadets were awarded flight wings Most were high school graduates, and some had some college.

The average age of pilots, crew chiefs, and doorgunners was 20 years old. Badly needed, they were trained quickly and given enormous responsibility to maintain a very complex piece of equipment. Our aircraft were not as sophisticated as the machines today, but the UH1D and the UH1D and the the UH-1-H models were exceptional. Forgiving war courses without which this war could not have been waged. Of the 5,000 UH-1 helicopters that went to Vietnam starting in 1962, over 3,300 were destroyed in combat. This undeclared war also could not have been waged without the young men that supported,

maintained, and crewed these aircraft. Average age of pilots and crews 20 years old. 3,300 out of 5,000 helicopters lost in combat. And that is a little excerpt from the introduction of a book called Undaunted Valor. An assault helicopter unit in Vietnam, 1969 to 1970. The book was written by Kermin. Matt Jackson, who served as a UH-1, also known as the Huey pilot, in the 227th assault helicopter battalion in Vietnam.

And he also continued on in the Army after Vietnam, becoming an infantry officer and eventually commanding a battalion during the first Gulf War and conducting the largest air assault in history with the 101st airborne division. And it is an honor to have Colonel Matt Jackson here with us tonight to discuss his experiences and share his lessons learned. Colonel, thanks for coming on. Thank you, Jockel, for having me. It's pretty awesome to read your book and then be sitting here talking to you.

And before we jump into the book, let's talk about, because the book, the book jumps right into basically you enlisting in the Army. Let's go back a little bit further than that. So you were born in the Navy Yard in Brooklyn and your dad was in the Navy. Yes, yes. I was born. Dad was stationed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1947. He had been on submarines during the Pacific. His first ship was Lexington until it went down. And then he decided to transfer to submarines at that because he felt they were safer than receiving dive bombers. So he was on the Corps. He was on what ship in the Battle of Coral Sea?

The Lexington. And it went down and he got recovered by one of the other vessels? Yeah, he was in the water for about six hours before he got picked up by a destroyer. So then he transferred when he got out, he went back and transferred over to the submarine service. He thought that the submarines would be safer. He didn't like airplanes. Oh, man.

So, yeah, I was born at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. and every three years after that for the rest of my life until I joined the Army, we moved to a different place. Constantly moving around, Dad jumping from one submarine to another, Norfolk, Key West, Naples, Italy, Yokohama, Japan, Cusbe, Oregon. So quite extensive travel as a kid. And your dad was an enlisted guy in the beginning? He started out as enlisted. He was a master chief. I had 19 years in, and then through the LDO program, got promoted.

to a lieutenant J.G. And stayed in until he made lieutenant commander. And he got out in 1973. He was commanding the Navy base in Cusbe, Oregon. And so what was your dad like? I mean, was he going on deployments all the time when you were growing up? What was that like? Yeah, dad was gone a lot.

But in those days, the old diesel subs, they go out for two or three weeks, and then he'd be back in. And mom ruled the roost then. You know, I've been hit with a shoe, a spatula, a belt, the back of her hand. But dad was a disciplinarian. And from a very young age, I was taught that you say, yes, sir, no, sir, yes, ma'am, no man. And don't you dare get caught lying?

There was nothing that made my dad matter than a catchy line. I would get a spanking. Never got beaten, but my little fanny got worn out a couple of times by dad. I learned real quick. But he was a good man, so was mom. And so you're traveling around all these different places. Are you playing sports? What's like, what are your hobbies when you're growing up?

Hunting. Dad taught me to shoot when I was seven years old, and any chance we had, we'd be out on the weekends out hunting someplace, squirrel hunting or deer hunting. That was when we lived in Virginia and Connecticut. In Italy, I learned to play soccer because all my friends were Italians, and I learned to speak very good Italian. You, comma, Maya Hauser.

And that was the way I spoke Italian. But we just played a lot of baseball, softball, kid, typical kid things. Typical kid things. And so what did you do? Where were you when you graduated from high school? I was in Yokohama, Japan. And there I learned to play football because we had to have every high school kid playing

in order to have a team, all the boys playing anyway. And that's where I learned judo. Took judo lessons while I was over at the Kota Khan. And really enjoyed my time in Japan. We were there for two years, and I found it very enjoyable. So then when you graduated high school, was your dad looking at you, ready to throw you out when you turned 18? All right, you could go figure it out now.

Well, dad said the day I graduated, he said, son, you have three choices. You can go to college. You can go to work. Or you can go in the military. But the operative word is, you can go. So two days after I graduated high school, I went back to Oregon. I got a job on a logging crew set in chokers and then went to college for a year. Then the next summer, I shipped out on a merchant oil tanker,

the SS American trader and did two trips to from Okinao to Saudi Arabia on an oil tanker and then came back and did another year of college and it was a pretty worthless year. So what year is this? This is in, let's say I went to college in 65. In 66 I went out on the merchant mariners and then when I came back, 67 was a worthless year. And at the end of 67, dad was coming back from Japan and we had a little discussion about my future. and I was going to go back in the merchant mariners. And he said, if you do that, you'll never go back to college.

And he was right. I wouldn't have. I love the merchant mariners. And I said, okay, I'm going to join the Marine Corps. He said, you join the Marine Corps. They're going to take us both to the hospital, extract my foot from your rear end. So I thought this conversation is going nowhere. You're 0 for 2.

O for 2. And he said, look, you've got a private pilots license. Why don't you go into that Army War and Officer flight program? So the next day I went down, signed up. So you had your private pilots license already? Yeah. What was that? And how come you did that?

Were you just interested in you like flying? Yeah, the first two years I was in high school, we lived in Cous Bay, Oregon. And I got a job working out at the airport refueling airplanes. And instead of getting paid in cash, I got paid in flying lessons. So by doing that, I was able to get my private pilot's license just before we went to Japan. So you like flying, and your dad says your dad knew about this warrant officer program. Did you recognize what was going to happen with this warrant officer program? I mean, in that introduction that I just read, you know, you're talking about.

about the fact that they needed pilots. They needed pilots for a reason. I mean, they were losing them. And did you just think, okay, well, that's a path I'm going to take? I thought, I'm getting out of college. I really didn't think much about, you know, what was happening over there. We'd see it on TV, you know, but no, I just, I was determined I was getting out of college one way or the other. And that was the path to get out of college right then and there.

So I joined up. So this book, Undaunted Valor, there's actually three books that you've written called Undaunted Valor. The first one is this one, an assault helicopter unit in Vietnam. The next one is called Medal of Honor and then Lansan 719. That's volume one, two, and three. So in this book, the way you explain to me or the way that I understand it is that this first book, volume one, you're the lead character. even though the lead character has a different name, Dan Corey. That's, this is your story.

That's correct. And, I mean, it's real. I mean, if you were trying to cover it up, you didn't do a great job because Dan Corey's dad was a master chief who became an officer. Then he grew up in all these different places. And so you didn't do a good. Is there a reason why you said, you know what, I'm going to change my name in this book? It's just because my attorneys said that you want to change your name.

You don't want to use your real name in the book. So that's the reason I come up with Dan Corey. Did you pull Dan Corey out of anyone? Was that a name that meant anything? Corey was a good friend of mine in college. And Dan, I just kind of pulled that one out of the air. Right on. So we're going to jump into this first book here a little bit.

And well, here we go. Okay. First chapter is called It Begins. It says, raising our right hands, we all took the oath of allegiance. Those of us that were flight school wannabes were escorted to a waiting cab that was to take us. To the airport, there were anti-war protesters blocking the front door. So we went out the back through an abandoned storefront. Instead of bands playing as we went off to combat, as our grandfathers had experienced,

we were sneaking out the back door. That's correct. This was back in, let's see, this would have been February of 68. And in Portland, Oregon at that time, as today, they had demonstrators outside the MEP station, all in front of the MEP station. So what they had is the MEP station had a back door that went through an abandoned storefront, and they would take us in and bring us out through that back door so that we didn't have to put up with the protesters around front. Yeah, and you said as your grandparents went off to war, but this is actually your parents, your dad, who went off to war.

Well, my dad and my grandfather. My grandfather was in destroyers in World War I. Served in the Navy back then and went to the big wars. Oh, wow. Fast forward a little bit. You get to boot camp. I'm highlight this one section of boot camp. The hill was a hundred yard dirt and gravel field with a steep slope of 50 feet at one end.

We were lined up by squad and four ranks of ten. On command, we had to crawl to the top of the slope. When I reached the top, my hands, knees, and elbows were raw. For the next three days, we revisited the hill each evening before Chow. On the third day, I was really feeling sorry for myself. Suddenly, I had to come to Jesus moment. Hey, dumbass, you volunteered to be here. You weren't drafted.

You quit college and volunteered for this shit. So stop your crying and suck it up. Yeah, yeah. It was kind of a Friday thing. Now, you as a seal sitting there, you're chuckling because you think, my God, what a bunch of wimps going up a hill. But a bunch of guys that just got, most of them were draftees. And we were in a state of shock because that was the very first day in basic. training. He spent five days in reception station and they treated you so nice and then you get over

to the company and oh my God, the drill sergeants were devouring us. And so we start up this hill and I'm thinking, oh my God, this is, you know, this is killing my knees. It was all stones. Needs are getting torn up. Hands are getting torn up. And on the third day, I had the, you know, premonition came, suck it up. So you're going to boot camp with just everyone, just normal, everyone that's going in the Army. Oh, yeah, yeah. There's no, there's no special treat. because you're going in this warrant officer program. No, no. Basic training was, you were thrown in with everybody.

Draftees, National Guard, reservists, regular Army guys that enlisted, and you all went to Fort Puke, Louisiana. Fast forward a little bit. You get done with basic training. And look, you've got all, this is the thing I always have to make this statement. I'm not reading the whole book. People, if you've got to get the book to get all of it. So when it might sound like it's jumping around,

It is jumping around. I'm just jumping through sections. The stories, you got a bunch of great stories in here. And there are just tons of lessons learned. I'm going to fast forward a little bit. You get done with basic training, and then you go to pre-flight. And you say basic training taught us discipline. Pre-flight is going to teach us attention to detail.

Cadet Brady trade the 1800 briefing. Welcome to pre-flight. I'm a holdover from a previous class. So me and the other cadets were directed to meet you and get you settled in. After tomorrow morning, we're just like you. and in this with you. First formation will be at 0.5.30, and it will be frightening. Our attack officers, our warn officers who finish their flying tours in Vietnam.

Now they're babysitting us instead of being instructor pilots and they're not happy about it. You can expect to get your ass smoked in the morning. Nothing you do will make them happy, so be prepared for it. This is my second time going through this and I'll try to laugh my way through tomorrow morning because it's the only thing to do, he explained. Yeah, that's all you could do. They smoked us that first morning. In fact, they smoked us all the way through pre-flight.

And the big thing at pre-flight, and we didn't realize at the time, was attention to detail. Because the quickest thing that'll get you killed in a helicopter is a broken safety wire or a bolt that's turned and the slippage marks aren't lined up. So that's what they were adamant about there in pre-flight is teaching you attention to detail. How much detail? At the end of the third week, we had to take our belt buckles apart, our brass belt buckles, and clean the inside to get the penicillin out, or they'd be tearing the belt buckles apart.

Your shoes, your low-quarter shoes, you had to be sure and take a black magic marker and go around the outside to cover up any stitching that it turned white. Your uniforms, you had to take black magic marker on your uniforms or your name tags were out and make sure that that thread hadn't turned any white. Toothbrush, you better be sure there's no leftover toothpaste

inside that toothbrush. It was all those kinds of things. that they went through and it paid off. I mean, it really paid off once he got to the flight line. The idea of attention to detail. Yeah, that's a common thing. I mean, I went to Navy boot camp, and I don't think it was as stringent as that.

And Officer Candid School, the same thing. Attention to details is huge, and I remember they have the drill instructors at Officer Candidate School. They walk around with a metal ruler in their pocket, and they're measuring your fold. Did underwear to make sure that they are whatever it was four and three quarters inches by four and three quarter inches Perfect square. That's what it's got to be and if it's out you fail Attention to detail. Ours was

Rold underwear at nine inches. There you go So and they they had the rulers and if they didn't like it you'd come back and that barracks would be torn apart Bids be upside down mattresses upside down everything out of foot lockers and a tack officer would be standing there waiting for you God help you Again, I hate to fast forward through so much good stuff, but I have to. On to flight school, we did get a pay raise coming to flight school as we were promoted from E1 or E2 privates to E5 sergeants. Our pay went from $98 to $225 a month. Almost all extra pay went to two things.

Haircuts and laundry bills. Yep. Every day, you'd spend half a day on the flight line in a flight suit. those gray flight suits over from the 60s at Air Force War, Navy wore an orange one. The other half of the day, you were in fatigues, starch fatigues, and they better not be broken over from yesterday. You'd better be breaking starch every day, and they were starch so bad that you had to work at getting your leg down your pants or your arm down the sleeve.

I mean, it was brutal starch, but by God you had to do that every day, and between haircuts and the laundry bill, there went your pay raise right there. So that lasted, well, and I know you were in the Army until the 90s, but when I came in the Navy and when I got to SEAL team and when I was going through basic SEAL training, the same thing, which is freaking crazy because that is the most pointless thing in the world to have combat uniforms starched. I think it was the Marine Corps.

God bless them was the first service that I saw where they said, look, you don't starch those uniforms. And they started just looking like normal clothes, which was a good thing. I remember when the Army got away from it, I think it was in the mid-70s that, you know, you don't need to start your fatigues anymore. And then definitely when the BDUs came out, it was a big no-known to get those things starched.

So I was glad to see that. I wish the Navy would have known that because I had starched BDUs for the first 10 years of my career. Oh, no. Absolutely. As a matter of fact, my son was going through some of my old year the other day and he was picking up a pair of pants they're freaking 20 or 30 years old and they're still you could put them on inspection ready they had so much dance charging them

uh boom once we completed fleet pre-flight training we entered primary flight training at any one time in 1968 there were 10 flight companies in session you ended up you you get to pick well you i guess you draw what kind of helicopter you're going to fly now you're told okay you You get told. And you get the TH55. Love that aircraft. Looks like a, uh, looks like kind of a dragonfly looking thing. Yeah, it's the, uh, it was bought, the Army bought them right off the shelf from Hughes

aircraft. And it's in the civilian world, it's a Hughes 300. Um, you started the engine up and then you engaged the clutch, which engaged eight rubber bands that started turning the main rotor. And, uh, so we got that going for us. You had that down there. But the thing had a ton of power. And down there in Texas in the summer,

the OH-13s and the 23s, the other two training aircraft, they could barely get off the ground. TH55 would spring off the ground. So it was just a great little aircraft to fly. I loved it. Awesome. About two months into our flight training, we returned from the flight landing we were told to get in-company formation right away.

Once all 275 of us were assembled, as we'd have had about 75 drop out of the class at this point, our company commander came forward and addressed the class. one of our fellow classmates crashed that day and was killed. That was something none of us had considered at this point in our training. His death would not be the last either. Another student and his flight instructor were killed in a mid-air collision with another aircraft flown by someone from another class. How there weren't a lot more merit mid-air collisions always amazed me.

A little bit of a wake-up call. Well, it was. You know, you had roughly around 1,200 aircraft at 8 o'clock in the morning leaving. and coming back in at 11 o'clock, and then leaving again at 1 o'clock, and coming back at 5 o'clock. And most of them are flown by students. So, you know, the students had anywhere from 10 hours to 50 hours, or, let's see, you got a 100 hours total while you're in flight school, early flight school, the first stage there. So you had a lot of many experience out there running around and not that big of an area. And why we didn't have a lot more mid-airs, I have no idea.

The one student, the first student that we lost, he flew into a cloud. And we hadn't had any weather instrument training yet at that point. Well, he went in the cloud, and people that saw him, he came out upside down. He was inverted. And you just don't invert in a helicopter. It doesn't work. So he got killed that way. And then the other one was a student and an instructor, and another aircraft slammed into them.

We lost them there. Those are the only two that I knew about. There were others that did happen in other flight classes. but we were kind of fortunate. We started out with 350. We graduated, I think, 150, somewhere in that neighborhood there. Get done with that. It's on to advance flight training.

This was, I kind of had to, there's a good leadership lesson here that I wanted to jump into. It says, we're approaching the end of our instrument training when we returned to the barracks from the flight line the night prior to the meteorology exam. Mr. Clinton wasn't happy with the condition of the barracks, and had gone on a rampage, aided by a bottle of Jack Daniels. Beds were overturned, wall locker contents were lying on the floor, the fire hose was spraying water, and the contents of everyone's foot lockers were everywhere except in the footlockers. He was on a tirade. One cadet was singled out. Mr. Clinton was berating him.

evidently the cadet was responsible for his five o'clock shadow. Mr. Clinton told the cadet to get into the push-up position. Once there, he placed a razor on the floor in front of him and told him to shave. The cadet looked scared, and I was mad. I had had enough of Mr. Clinton's crap. With all respect for his rank that I could muster, I stepped forward and got in Clinton's face. Sir, you've been drinking and you are drunk. If you do not leave this minute, I am going straight to the company commander and have him resolve this situation.

Now leave, I shouted. There was dead silence. Mr. Clinton just stood there and glared at me with his bloodshot eyes. Everyone was watching. Finally, he laughed, turned and staggered out of the barracks. Everyone, including me, sighed with relief. We spent most of the night getting the barracks back in order, and no one had an opportunity to study for the weather exam.

It showed the next day. The exam was in the morning. When we returned to the barracks after flying in the afternoon, we were immediately informed by the company first sergeant that we were all restricted to the barracks until further notice, and I was to report to the company commander's office. When I arrived, the senior officer from the weather committee was present as well. I was told to sit down.

Cadet Corey, do you know why I have restricted the company and called you here? The company commander asked. Like I was some clairvoyant and I could read his mind. This was the first time I had ever spoken to the man. Again, Dad's words of wisdom came to mind. No, sir, I replied, knowing this wasn't the time to be a smart ass. It appears, Cadet Corey, that most of your class failed. the weather exam. We need to know why, he stated. Oh shit, most of the class, which includes me too.

Again, as class leader, it was my fault. Didn't you study for the exam last night? Asked the weather committee instructor who didn't look happy. Why did I suspect that shit rolled downhill here and it was coming right at me? However, I was seeing a U-turn for this shit storm. No, sir, we did not study last night. We had a party instead. I replied, their eyes bulged. I thought both men were going to drop dead from heart attack. You did what gagged the company commander? You had a party the night before one of the most important exams in this course. Do you realize by having a party and failing that exam,

you could all fail flight school and be sent to infantry immediately? Yes, sir, I replied and let them stew on this revelation. Now the weather instructor had a grin on his face as he turned to the company commander. Well, I guess the problem wasn't with the instruction, but with the discipline of these cadets. I was beginning to see what was going on here. Somewhere above their level, the shit had hit the fan, and someone high up was looking for,

somewhere to lay the blame. The Army needed helicopter pilots at this point had spent considerable money training 80 cadets. The Army couldn't afford to wash out 80 cadets at one time. The company commander wasn't looking too good right about now. Cadet Corey, why in the hell would you have a party the night before a major exam? Sir, we had no choice. I answered sheepishly. I was beginning to enjoy this. I'd been around the military long enough to know when people were to stay to panic over something that had gone terribly wrong. Oh, dad, you taught me well. What the hell do you mean you had no choice the company commander. Sir, when we returned from flight line last night,

Mr. Clinton had torn apart the barracks to include turning on the fire hose and told us to get the mess cleaned up before morning. We had a barracks cleaning party to get it squared away, and that took until midnight. Lights out was at 2,200, but we worked on stuff until dark until we had it taken care of. Only the married men had a chance to study last night. You're dismissed, cadet, Corey, and there you go.

So you then up, you go to the company commander, then you end up with a battalion commander. And the school commandant finally. And the school commandant finally, you end up all assembled. The battalion commander comes out. I'm Lieutenant Colonel Barlow, your battalion commander. I have not met most of you and normally do not meet cadets until graduation. However, because of this incident, I have met some of you and thought I should meet all of you.

What you have experienced is not typical of the treatment of cadets. Changes have been made. The first being that you have a new company commander, Major Kidder will be your company commander for the remainder of your training. Mr. Clinton and Sergeant First Class, moron, will no longer be your tax either. Major Kidder, and he turns it over. To back up a little bit, our class got a bad rap the very first day we showed up. Me and another guy, we had flown into Savannah the night before.

So we had a 1,200-hour report. Him and I got there at about 11. So we reported on time. The rest of the guys, they all flew in on a flight that was supposed to land at 8 o'clock in the morning. but didn't because of the weather. So they all showed up an hour late. So that set Clinton off. And for eight weeks, we never got a pass to get off the base.

Where every other class had blanket passes on the weekends. And so Clinton and the man had a drinking problem, and this wasn't the first incident with him, but this is the one that broke the camel's back. When he went through that, that weather exam, as I said in the book, you couldn't afford to flunk 79 guys right now. Somebody was going to go ballistic over this.

So it worked its way up and thank God, and we got to the brigade commander's office, and they asked me, they said, why do you think Mr. Clinton did that? And I said, well, sir, because he was drunk. Well, the three of them looked at me. Like, do you know what you just said? You accuse an officer of this?

Well, I was a little bit older than most cadets. I joined the Army. I was 21 the day I came in. and all the other classmates, they were 19, 20-year-olds. And being around the military all my life, I had an idea how things worked. So I was going to play my Trump card, and that's where I played the Trump card, was with the brigade commander. Over the next couple of days, they called in, every day they called in three guys,

and they'd asked them the same questions, and everybody backed my comments up. So we got Mr. Clinton, got rid of Mr. Clinton, got rid of, Sergeant Moron, and I use the name Sergeant Moron. I never heard the guy ever speak. He had tattoos covering him everywhere before tattoos were popular. And so I don't know anything about the man outside of. He never said anything, so I figured it was a moron. But then after that, we went into our advanced training.

Huey transition was the following Monday morning, and things went along really well after that with the unit. Made you kid him, he was a great guy. How did you like that Huey when you started flying it? Oh, I loved it. I still love the Huey to this day. The Huey is a fantastic aircraft. Had plenty of power.

Even the Delta models had plenty of power. They were forgiving. They were a dream to fly. And they still are. Isn't it crazy? Well, I guess it's not too crazy. I mean, I joined the Navy in 1990, and we still had Hueys,

and there's still Hueys right now? The Army's put all layers in museums. What about the Marine Corps? The Marine Corps has got a different Huey. They got a big beefed up one. Okay. muscular things. It's twin engines.

I'm not sure if it's got four rotor blades or just two, but they've got a beefed-up Huey. That's much bigger than the Army's ever wore. So it's great aircraft. I mean, why we wouldn't still be using them today? I don't know. I mean, we've got the Blackhawks now. They're way bigger.

I mean, they're way smaller than a Black Hawk, though. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's like tiny. We could get six combat troops besides the crew, crew four aboard, and had power to, you know, to do things and stuff like that. The Black Hawk, when we assaulted into Iraq back during Desert Storm, there was 15

guys in my aircraft with me. And my RTO is my, and I had one squad of infantrymen with me when we went in. So much more power, much more, much faster aircraft. And it was an aircraft. The Black Hawk, I was on the test bed for it. They were designed in case we went into war with Iran. And that's, that's really what we were looking at is for an aircraft. They could get the altitude, the mountainous mountain, two to around Iran to replace the Huey. And the Black Hawk was the choice over it. There was two. There was a Boeing, put a proposal up for the U-Tas,

and then Sikorsky put a proposal up for the U-TAS. It was called U-TAS at that time, utility tactical transport system. And Sikorsky is the one that won. And it seems like when you look at the Huey, it's like a freaking 1969 muscle car, just in terms of, hey, that's the engine. There's, you know, you see the aircraft now, the helicopters. There's so many computer parts, too.

It's like when you open up the hood of a car nowadays, you don't know what the hell's in there, right? It's all, you can't fix any of it with a wrench. Well, you look at the Huey. Who's the guy crew in the Huey? The guy was 19 years old, maybe 20, and he was the crew chief. And what those kids did with those engines was just amazing. They'd work on them.

And, you know, I was a pilot. and the most dangerous thing you could do is let the pilot up there around the engine. My crew chief wouldn't dare do that. But these kids, they really maintain those things well. And what they couldn't do at the operator level, at the crew chief level, they went into the maintenance level, which is right there with our unit. And they were all 19 and 20-year-olds doing the sheet metal work and the electronics. I took a bullet through the wiring bundle one day.

And the wiring bundle was about that thick, and it was maybe 35, 40 white wires in there. And I saw a kid sit down and sit there and put each one of those wires back properly to each one of them to get the communications and the electronics all working. To me, it was a bunch of spaghetti. Jack. So let's fast forward a little bit. Let's get to Vietnam.

The flight from Fort Lewis, Washington to Vietnam was, 14 hours with a two-hour stop at Yokoda Air Force Base outside of Tokyo, Japan. The plane was a commercial airliner contracted by the government. Most Air Force transport aircraft were carrying cargo and not passengers. We arrived in Cameroon Bay, Vietnam, and the dead of night. Jumping forward a little bit, you get to where you're going. A Jeep came to, and look, in order to get there, I got to bypass all the, a bunch of good stuff. Get the book.

A Jeep came to stop in front of me with a hatless. Captain driving. You, Mr. Corey? Yes, sir. I snapped through attention and saluted. And saluted. Shit, you're trying to get me shot. Damn sniper sees you doing that. I'm going to be the one that's going to get shot. Don't you have, 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's no snipers here. Just thought I'd scare the crap out of you. I'm Captain Goodnight. The operations officer for our Mary Band. Welcome to the chicken coop. The chicken coop is the company location, and this here is the parking area, and is the chicken pen. Our call sign is chicken man. Chicken man? That's our call sign, I responded. That ought to instill the 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 Chicken Man call sign, and it's pretty much stuck. So now it's the unofficial call sign for the unit. I was starting to like this Chicken Man call sign now. You got to understand Warren officers back then. Again, they're all 19-year-olds, somewhere 18, 20-year-olds, and it's the 60s.

So, you know, once you got out of flight school, your hair regulation kind of slipped, and you're trying to grow a mustache when you don't have any hair to grow a mustache. And what are they going to do to you? Bend your dog tags and send you to Vietnam? You're already there. So, warrant officers were kind of a rebellious bunch to the Army. We had the Warren Officer Protection Association that, you know, if something wasn't going right in the unit, all the warrants would get together and bitch about it.

But so when they came up with this name, Drumstick, everybody did, you know, thought, oh, my God, what a stupid name. And then the Chicken Man series started on AFVN. And then it stuck. And even after they changed the name Drumstick officially. Mm-hmm. Bok, bach, bach, chicken man. We still kept the chicken man call sign.

We never gave it up. And like on the front of the book there, it's got a picture of the aircraft with the chicken on the nose. And we never took the chickens off the nose. Awesome. So you're going through kind of in-doc, learning what's going on there. And finally we get to this. How much flying are we getting, I asked? Every newbie asked 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 12 to 15 hour day ahead of you. Some days you'll get 20 hours in before you shut the engine down. Normally when you get 140 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. He's going to show you where you can set up housekeeping. Lou Price was probably absolutely one of the best helicopter. pilots they ever knew. Lou was 21 years old. His first mission in Vietnam was about six, about eight months before I got there. And it was into the Oshah Valley. He flew in and he walked out because his aircraft landed upside down and he had to punch his way through the greenhouse bubble. They were shot down going in and the aircraft rolled. Lou, he left after the year. And in the book, as you see, he came back about eight months later. He said,

Vietnam was a hell of a lot safer. They'd be an instructor at flight school. And Lou stayed for the next year. And he had been discharged from the army and was still flying in Vietnam. They had to get a Marine escort, I mean, a NPS court to come and get him and take him back. And it was because the first Cav Division had left, all of our personnel records had left. And so they didn't know how much time anybody had left in the unit. So Lou just, he was enjoying it. He was flying his beer drinking, flying his helicopter drinking his beer, had nothing better to do. So Lou just stayed and finally they had bringing MPs up to get him out of there. Lou, he let out. And last I heard Lou had been a financial advisor to a major corporation before he passed away. But he was a great pilot.

Awesome. You did note in here that there was a, the latest Led Zeppelin song was playing on a reel to read real tape player oh yeah he's wild I was talking to this so I have a son who's 18 years old and he listens to Metallica so but when I was thinking about this the first Led Zeppelin album came out in like 1968 I was born in 1971 and and and when I grew up led Zeppelin seemed really old right they seem so old I mean I love Led Zeppelin but they seemed like they were way before my time well my son was born in 2002 the first Metallica album came out in 1983. That's old.

So like way before. He's way older than Metallica. He's much further away from Metallica's beginning than I was from Led Zeppelin's opening, you know? It's crazy how that time goes by. But you guys were there in the thick of it, listening to some Zeppelin. Has your son ever heard of God of Davida? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

He can play it on guitar. I still play it around the house. My wife looks at me and she goes, oh, we're going to have one of those moments. This is always a good thing to do here. You just kind of talk about some of the characters. 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, or as you call them, real live officers or RL.L. 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 Ringknockers. 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 29 draftees and most were doorgunners who had volunteers.

to extend for door gunner duty to cut their draft time short or to 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 use 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 the crews that the crews in the unit were just they're fantastic kids the door gunners they they most of those guys In fact, I think just about every one of them was an infantry guy who volunteered to come and serve as a door gunner, and they were an essential part of the aircraft. Not only do they take care of the guns on the aircraft, they also assisted the crew chief in cleaning the aircraft and running the engine and stuff like that. The pilots, as I said, you know, college dropouts, most of us, or the old guys. And the old guys, they were, we tried to give them the easy missions, but they never took them. They stepped right up to the plate like everybody else. fortunately we only lost two or three guys in my time there that were married men my roommate Dave Hanna and two other guys that I knew real well that we lost but

both of them were married guys the crew chiefs all of those guys had gone they had enlisted four crew chief duty and they had gone to the maintenance course and came back over really a great bunch of guys I still keep in touch with several of them. Commissioned officers, the RLOs, the real live officers, as us Warren officers referred to them, most of them were pretty good guys. We had one or two that were less than stellar, let me put it that way, but most of them were really, really pretty good. Our maintenance officer was fantastic, and I still communicate with him quite frequently. The operations officer, I talked to him a lot, he was good. Even our previous operations officer who left the day I got there, Howard Burbank,

he kind of heads up our reunions and everything's a great guy. So most of the officers were really fantastic and easy to work with. In the unit, aircraft commander didn't make a difference what your rank was. You had to earn the seat to be an aircraft commander, and it took four months of flying time and a vote of confidence by all of the existing aircraft commanders before you got that honor. didn't make a difference if you're a warrant officer or if you were an RLO. If you didn't cut the mustard, you didn't get in the left seat. And they held that pretty steady through my entire time there. And it was good.

There was a lot of respect for aircraft commanders. Everybody understood how it worked. If you were an RLO, you're going to be in the right seat until you get voted to be in the left seat. And it worked well. As you're kind of learning the ropes of what's going on there, you're talking to a guy, Sergeant First Class, Robert, and like an ops guy. I guess you guys called him pops.

Good man. He lays some stuff out for you. What are most of the missions that we fly? I asked, sir, it's a bit of everything. You may start the day off flying ash and trash resupply for a battalion, followed by being part of a 6-2 combat assault, followed by flying Knight Hunter Killer or Chuck Chuck. Chuck, I asked, command and control.

A battalion commander will jump aboard with his staff, usually a fire support officer and fly around the circle, flying a circle around a unit in contact while the battalion commander directs artillery fire. Boring as hell for you generally. What's a 6-2, I asked? A 6-2 is a flight of six hughies and two cobras. The cobras will come from our Delta Company on the other side of the chicken pen. They refer to their area as the snake pit.

And Hunter Killer, that's a fun one, three aircraft. A cobra flying at about 1,000 feet, a hughy full of flares flying at about 1,000 feet, following the cobra and a Huey flying between the ground and 500 feet, nice and slow with lights on so Charlie can see you and shoot at you. The low bird is equipped with a 50 caliber machine gun, replacing one of the M60 guns and a searchlight with a low angle, with a low light intensity night vision scope on top is mounted in the cargo door. If the low bird sees something or get shot at,

the cobra rolls hot on it and the flare aircraft starts dropping flare so the cobra can see targets. Want some more coffee? Yes, please. How do you get our, how do you get, how do you get missions? During the night and generally before 200 hours, the maintenance officer will tell us how many birds we can put up for the next day. We pass that to battalion. Sometimes around 0,200, battalion starts sending the missions to us.

Captain Goodnight comes in about 0,400 and assigns the pilots and the missions, and we start waking everyone up. Generally, we get the birds in the air at first light. Most of the birds aren't instrument rated, so that can be a problem in the monsoon. season, which will begin in about three months. When do I get to fly? I know what you're thinking, and that's good, but enjoy sitting on the ground for as long as you can because once you're cleared, you'll get all the flying you want and then some. Yeah, you did get all the flying you want and then some.

That was one thing that was interesting to me, and I guess I kind of knew it, but not this clearly. You guys did everything, whether it was logistics runs, whether it was supporting assaults, you were doing everything. You did everything. The only thing you didn't do is operate as a gun. ship because we weren't equipped to be a gunship. There was aircraft specifically for that, but everything else. And Medevac, it wasn't common for the slicks to fly Medevac missions unless

it was really an emergency. And why is that? Well, we weren't equipped with medics or any medical supplies on board. We had little first aid kits and that was about it. So they would try to get the medevac birds to come in and take care of them. Now, they had Medevac birds and dust off. Dostovat, MEDAVAC birds were part of the first cavalry division and the 101st, Airborne Division. They were equipped with guns, had the big red cross on the side, but they had guns on board. Dostov had the red cross on the side, but they had no guns, and they were part of the 44th Medical Brigade. So that was the difference between the two, when people hear the term Dostov from Medevac, well, which one was which. Well, that was the difference between them.

The only time I ever flew Medevac is when I was actually supporting a ground unit with a log mission, and they got hit at the same time. And I came back in, and they threw on the bunch of guys that were wounded, and I flew them out. But that was about it for a Medevac mission. The missions we didn't like that Medevac wouldn't fly is pulling the bodies out. Medevac wouldn't touch a body. We had to fly those out, so we did those. But everything else, we did it all.

Resupply, C&C, 9100 killer. I love 9100 killer. I'd fly the low bird. I didn't want to fly that flare bird one bit. Isn't the low bird the one that's the bait? Yeah. And you like that one? I like that one.

The flare bird, he just orbits around up there. He's getting bored. And the bad thing is he's carrying 21 million power candles. Oh. Yeah, these huge, huge flares. He don't want to take a tracer around. He takes a tracer round. That bird's burning.

And in fact, they carried them in 55-gallon drums out on the skids that were held on by straps so that they did take around. They would take the machetes and cut those straps and try to drop all that stuff right away. So I never wanted to fly the flare bird. The low bird, I love flying the low bird. That was fun. Bate. Bate.

Fast forward a little bit. Sleep came quick and I dreamt of pleasant things as I hadn't been in country they're long enough to have bad dreams. As I slumbered, I began to dream about the jet I heard coming in for landing on our air strip. It was getting louder and louder. Holy shit Jets can't land here I was on the floor of our tent with everyone else when the rocket

impacted behind our tent followed by a second impacting the VIP landing pad behind the majors tent Incoming I heard is I grabbed my flack jacket and my helmet I was half running half crawling to the bunker in my boxer shorts When another rocket impacted with the flash spraying shrapnel diving through the door of the bunker I plowed into someone in total darkness of the bunker and got shoved to the other side hey watch it man someone said anyone seen the new guy I recognized as Lou's voice. Over here, Lou, I answered. This is your first rocket attack new guy? He asked. Well, yeah, I've only been here of two days. Is this common? I asked. Yep, almost nightly. And since this is your first, you get to buy the beer. Be sure the refrigerator stock tomorrow morning when we come back. In the darkness, the sounds of laughter could be heard over the sounds of impacting rockets and secondary explosions. Anytime you did something for the first time,

you had to buy a case of beer. Case of beer. And that was the cost of learning. So I bought a lot of beer just like everybody else those first couple of months. Yeah. Yeah, those 122 rockets, they weren't accurate. But boy, they would sure wake you up and just, you know, create havoc for your evening. They were always trying to shoot at the runway or at the chicken coop snake pit area. And every once in a while, we lost an aircraft to want to slam in there. The mortars, they were accurate, and we did not like getting the mortar rounds in.

and you may bring it up later on, but yeah, the mortars, the barber, our barber was the one that was registering the mortar rounds on us. Well, case of beer, so yeah, that was, I don't know, I don't know when that, I don't know where that came from, but when I got the SEAL teams, same thing. Oh, there's your first time jumping? Cool, case of beer. Oh, your first time doing a fast up? Cool, case of beer. Oh, your first time, you know, first time shooting an MP5, yep, oh, case of beer. So they got their beer out of us, that's for sure.

In the air at last. Now you're flying and you get the aircraft turned over to you. Okay, Dan, your turn. Oh, wow, it was Dan and Tony now because you're on a first name basis. I have the aircraft, Tony. You have the aircraft. He responded indicating he recognized I had positive control of the aircraft. With my left hand on the collective, right hand on the cyclic, my whole hand, I

started coming up on the power. The aircraft broke ground. Oh, shit! screamed the door gunner. We're going to die! Whailed the crew chief, and I was shitting my pants. All right, you two, knock it off. Tony said to the crew, they were laughing their asses off. Oh, sure, can't we screw with the new guy?

Yeah, they did that to me. Of course, they did it to every new guy too. So, like I said, the crew chiefs and doorgunners, there were a bunch of jokesters. And if they could jerky chain, they'd jerky chain. All in good fun, though. You talk about doing combat auto rotations. Loved it.

So explain the auto rotation and then what gets different on the combat auto rotation. Okay. In flight school, they teach you how to do the standard Army issue auto rotation. 1,000 feet approaching the runway, chop the throttle, pull the nose back to a 60-knott air speed, put the collective down completely, let the aircraft fall, 75 feet from the ground. You flare the aircraft and pop up.

the collective. As the aircraft continues to settle, you level the skids and come in with the rest of the power to set it down on the ground. Just love doing auto rotations. So the purpose of an auto rotation is you have something wrong with your aircraft. Yeah, the engine quits. The engine quits. And you can land an aircraft, you can land a helicopter safely, even without an engine.

Yeah. It's basically the momentum of the helicopter blades. That's right. They're just spinning and they keep spinning because they've been spinning really fast. And then as you come down, Does the air keep them spinning as you come down? Keeps them spinning. In fact, when you execute that flare, you've got to pop that collective

or you're going to get an overspeed on your rotor head. So you pop the collective, and that keeps from the rotor speed. Going out, you want to keep your rotor in the green at 6,600 RPM. And, no, correction, at 335 RPM engines at 66. So you keep it at 345. When you flare, you're going to go well above that 345. So you pop that collective. and then that lets you settle the aircraft down,

and then when you get about four feet off the ground, you come in with the rest of it as you level the skids. Easy set down. You don't want to try to parachute out of a helicopter with no engine. You might get beat up on the blades. So nobody wears a parachute to exit a helicopter in an emergency. A combat auto rotation, there's a thing in the book called the Dead Zone,

and pilots have to know the Dead Zone. There's a certain area that if you don't have air speed and altitude, air speed or altitude, you're going to die. You want to have airspeed or you want to have altitude. If you can have both, you're better off. But you have to keep one of those two. The combat auto rotations, especially the low-level one, you'd come in at tree-top level at 90 knots airspeed

and chop the throttle right then. And just start your flare. And just as the aircraft comes over, where you want to touch down, you keep the flare going, keep the flare going, keep the flare going, and pull the power in and set it down. I love doing low-level rotations. They were so much fun.

Then you get the advanced stage. You do the 180 auto-rotation. 1,000 feet, chop the throttle, take the aircraft, turn it in a tight turn and come down. Or what I was taught by a guy that was a test pilot at Bell helicopter, 1,000 feet, chop the throttle, zero the air speed. Do a pedal turn, punch the nose straight to the ground, build up your rotor RPM, and just do a normal touchdown. And you can do that at 362.

And a 360 save me one time. Are you, so like how many times, when you start trying to do the combat auto-rotation, how many times do you try this before you've got it? About three or four times. You do enough auto-rotations in flight school that you've got the basics for an auto-rotation down pat, and you go up with an experienced pilot,

and they'll run you through a couple of times, and you'll have no problem. then again, too, once you become an AC, you can do auto rotations whenever you want. You don't have to worry about an instructor pilot sitting next to you, and we would do that. We would go out and when we were coming back at night after a mission, let's do an auto rotation. Let's go shoot some auto rotations. So you practice those things constantly when you're coming back in. But now today, they don't even teach touchdown auto rotations, I don't think.

Why is that? I have no idea. What do you do if you lose power? think they teach them the auto rotation, but they make them put the power in before they gets the ground and set it down. But I had heard that they don't teach touchdowns anymore. They don't let them take them all the way to the ground. How much does an HH60 cost? Oh, God.

How much does a Huey cost? A Huey right now, you can get by a Huey for about $500,000. What about NOM? What about in this time period? Oh, in this time period, I think there are $250, $250,000. And, I mean, what's your best guess on a Black Hawk? Probably somewhere in the neighborhood of about 8 or 900,000. Really?

That's just a guess. Yeah. Oh, that's way cheaper than I thought. I'm going to have to check that one out. Yeah, I'm not sure. Roger. Seems like the Huey was way, way, way cheaper. Oh, it is.

There's nothing sophisticated about Huey. I mean, engine was simple, the L-13 engine, a great engine. But nothing, no complicated computer, electronics in it. You had just standard flight instruments and none of it was computerized, no computer chips. Very simple aircraft to work on and a simple aircraft to fly. And it was an amazing aircraft to fly. It would take so many hits that, and it still keep going. The biggest I saw was a friend of mine, Al Hess, Bill Hess. He got hit and I covered it in one of the books, I forget which one it's covered in. He had 107 bullet.

bullet holes in his aircraft, one of which was a 50 caliber round that went through the frame right above the pilot's head. In fact, one of our Canadian lieutenants, he had gotten shot in the groin and it leaned forward. And when he did, that 50 caliber round hit the post. And if he hadn't to lean forward, he would have hit him in the head. But yeah, but he had 107 rounds in that aircraft and the aircraft still flew. another thing that you do over there is the combat takeoff yes so what's the combat takeoff all about okay a nice a nice flight school type helicopter takeoff is you come to a three foot hover you pull your power you drop your nose and you climb out at a nice rate of climb combat helicopter takeoff

you pull that power in and you shove that nose over at the same time and so you're coming out of there like a bat out of hell it's no this three foot hover stay and then go, it is push, roll the nose over, give it full power and get out of there as quick as you can. And the first couple of times you do it for a new guy, it scares you because you think you're going to hit the rotor blades on the ground. You roll it over so far. But how much clearance do you have? Oh, you got your front rotor blades. Six or seven feet, easy.

No factor. Yeah, it's no factor. Check. But when you're sitting there and you're normally looking at, you know, it's sitting up there 15 feet. And then all of a sudden it's six feet off the ground. You go, oh, help. Scared the crap out of you. You say here, Dan, or you're getting advised, Dan, don't fly without a map.

And know where you are at all times on that map. If you go down, you aren't going to have a lot of time to figure that out. This was another cool thing is you guys were just doing land now the whole time. Yes. You're not looking at any kind of instrument to know where you are. I mean, I guess other than your compass. You had a DB, NDB, non-directional beacon. There was one in Tainan.

We had one at like. and I believe there was one up at Song Bay. And if you had to do an instrument approach, you're going to do an NDB approach or a GCA approach. But that was it. So you really need to know where you were at all times and have a good idea where you were. Were you flying in a small enough area

that you got to know everything just really easily? From Lichay up to Tain Inn, it was probably 80, 90 miles. From Tainin across along the board, it was probably another 100 miles, and then back down to Lycai was probably another 80 miles. So that was about the area you're working in. So you had a bunch of geographical references there.

There's that road. There's that mountain. There's that whatever. There's the river. There's a bridge. In fact, the funny thing was, three core, the area we flew on. It was pretty flat, the vegetation-wise.

But at Tainan, there was a mountain there that looked like an extinct volcano. It wasn't, but it's just this big tit sticking up. And at Song Bay was another one sitting there. So if you could see those two, you knew exactly where you were at. And then there's Thunder Road that went up the middle. So you had a pretty good idea where you were at all times. You're on a mission. You're out there.

Fast forward a little bit. You're still learning. As we made a pass over the intended landing point, Mr. Leak went into education mode. Okay, the smoke tells us almost no wind, so that's not going to be a factor. The trees on the south side look lower than the north side. The units on the south side as well, so we'll make final approach over the south side. Never make your approach the same twice in a row if you can help it. Always make the approach from a different angle each time,

turning into final at the last minute if you can. You make the approach the same each time, and Charlie will fire your ass up. Got it, got it. Yes. The big LZs, you had a lot of options. Where it came critical was when you got into a smaller LZ or a hoverhole that you're going to have to resupply at.

If you came in the same way three times in a row, Charlie's probably going to smoke you on the third time. You always tried to come in a different way, a different angle. You had to keep in mind, where it's the lowest approach path I can use, especially if you had a heavy aircraft. Where's the wind blowing? I want to come into the wind,

and I want to come in on the lowest path. So a lot of times that would dictate that maybe the final turn would be the same. But you want to come in from the left side, you want to come in from the right side. If you could, you'd come in from into the, you come in with the wind and then do a pedal turn, although that seldom very happened.

So you just did not want to map the same approach, the same path every time. When I was home on leave, after my year there, somebody was using my aircraft, went into a hoverhole the same way three times, and the third time Charlie got them. And we lost the aircraft, lost the crew, and lost everybody on board.

You know, as you mentioned, the weight of the aircraft, Well, one thing that I really got an appreciation for, and I noticed that, you know, when I would get out of helicopters, you could see, you know, the helicopter would move a little bit depending on what kind of helicopter it was. But, you know, when you drive a car, if you put 500 pounds, if you put 200, 300, 400 pounds into a car, you don't really notice it. You have to put a lot of weight into a car before you notice it takes a little longer to break. You know, maybe if you're, if you throw a bunch of, you know, 2,000 pounds of bricks into the back. of your pickup truck, you notice that. But the Huey, you guys could notice the weight, you know, three, 400 pounds is a lot different and you have to be, it's like you guys were so attuned to those aircraft.

The weight and balance, you know, if we were at a hover and there was 300 pounds off to one side, you're going to notice that. You noticed it, especially if guys started jumping out of the aircraft, you'd notice the rocking in it. A lot of times going into an LZ for the first time on a resupply, I would try to try to, you to take 30 water cans. That gave me a good size load for that trip. It also gave me a load light enough that I could see how the aircraft was handling based on the wind conditions and the approach. There was one time I got known LZ. I only had 10 water cans on. That's how bad that

however hole was. But most of the time, 30 water cans was good. And then going back the second time, you know, if I could take more than 30 water cans and some ammo, we'd throw that on as well. But you always had to be careful. And the crew chief was really the guy responsible for this. watching where the weight and balance was at, making sure that he ain't putting too much weight up forward to the pilots, trying to keep it all back and back center around the transmission well in the center of the aircraft. Another little section here,

sort of about what life was like over there for you guys. It was obvious that the rear echelon lived a lot better than those closest to the front action. We lived good as aviators, certainly much better than the grunts, but these rear echelon mothers, remps, as we called them, were living the life. there was always had been and always would be some animosity between those on the front lines and those in the rear. Those in the rear areas enjoyed levels of comfort only imagined by those on the front.

Clean sheets, hot chow, good boots, and movies were just some of the perks besides never getting shot at and all the while bitching how tough they had it because of the paper cuts they received. History shows General Eisenhower wanted Paris to be an R&R center for the frontline troops. just after it was liberated, 150,000 rems took up residents and he could do nothing to dislodge them. Some things never change.

And they still haven't changed to this day. During Desert Storm, I was out there with my battalion and we're wearing jungle boots. We used super glue to club causes the holes up on the side to keep the sand out. And it got to the point we were using duct tape to hold the boots together because they were just getting torn apart in the Flint.

And up shows some rips from the back end. and they've all got brand new desert boots. We never got desert boots the whole time we were there. We were frontline infantry. So it hasn't changed and it never will change. You're always going to have that argument. A perfect example is you look at the movie, Glory, about the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment,

and what was their big complaint? Boots. It hasn't changed. We're still arguing about boots in the military. I have a leadership consulting company, the name of the leadership consulting consulting company is Eschalon Front.

And there's a very specific reason why we have that because we wanted people to know like we're talking about what leadership is like from the front, on the front lines, not what it's like in the rear with the gear. That's right. Well, we used to say nothing's too good for the infantry, so the infantry gets nothing.

Check. Next section's called reality sets in. That evening, this is fast forwarding, that evening we were in our tent discussing that day's activities. The assistant maintenance officer came in looking for a beer. Hey John, how's it going? I asked. Give me a beer and I'll tell you how it's going. One of the other pilots opened the refrigerator and handed him a cold one. We have 13 of our 21 aircraft shot to shit. Two have got to be evacuated back to the states. They're shot up so bad, 251 and 228. Of the remaining 11, we have an estimated 3,000 hours of work ahead of us to get them into flying condition.

Tomorrow we'll have a total of six aircraft that we can put into the air, as I already had two in for periodic inspections. The first of those shot up today will be up the day after tomorrow, and that's 740, as I only only need 24 hours of maintenance to solve that one. I can tell you that maintenance platoon is not going to get any sleep for a few days. I silently thank God I wasn't a maintenance officer. again just pointing out that the teamwork that it took to keep these birds flying was immense immense team work to keep them up it was incumbent upon the pilots to make sure that we weren't

messing the aircraft up with with tree strikes on rotor blades or tail rotor strikes on on bushes that that was a bad factor that happened not paying attention you bend the skids on a stump or you punch a hole in the bottom of the aircraft on a stump so it was incumbent upon the flight crews first of all, make sure you don't screw the aircraft up. Because the maintenance guys, when we got in situations, they had more than enough work to keep them busy. Another kind of interesting thing here. At this time, we had no standardized markings on the noses of our aircraft.

The pilot's doors had a green triangle with a lightning bolt through the triangle, but that was all. Across the nose of each, the aircraft commanders and crews generally put their individual pet name on the nose. Iron butterfly, green lantern, devil's advocate, and hard. luck to name a few. We had a really good, we had a really good nose artist, Sergeant Scovel, who was kept busy. Some units had a bit more discipline and had a standard emblem on the noses of the aircraft, which you guys eventually got the chicken. We eventually got the chicken. Mike

Scoville, he is now a famous artist in Southwest America. He's out there and he still does a great artwork. I've got a couple of his pieces. And he keeps busy with that. But at that time, our unit had an assortment of nose art and it's got it's got changed there's a great book that a guy named john Brennan just published his second one and it's nose art of aircraft and it covers all a lot of units that had nose art on them both of my birds are in there what'd you have on your birds well the first one had the chicken and then i had hard luck so what was that what was the nose art for hard luck uh it was the calf patch with the chicken in the middle of it got it and then hard luck written across the top.

I'll send you a picture of it. That's awesome. This is another interesting thing, and this is, I was going to bring this up earlier as you were talking about why it's so important to have confidence in the aircraft commander. As Lou is bringing us into position as Chalk 6, he asked, how much formation time do you have? Just where we got in flight school in a couple hours the other day, I replied without looking in his direction. Don't tell me this is your first combat assault.

Okay, I won't, but it is. Oh, I see it's going to be a long day. He took a breath. Okay, formation flying here isn't like flight school. He said as he moved closer to the right side of Chalk 5. In Mother Rucker, which is where you guys go to flight school, in Mother Rucker, they wanted two rotor blade widths between aircraft. Here we fly at one to one half rotor from the other. He was going for the half rotor distance and my pucker factor was starting to suck the seat up my ass.

I looked back at Chalk 7. Oh, shit. he's going for half rotor distance as well. Lou was calmly smoking his cigarette and continuing to lecture while he held the cyclic in his hand, index, and middle fingers. The one thing you don't want to do is overwrap rotor blades. Oh, trust me, that ain't happened. Okay, you got it, he said.

I responded, I got it. And I wished I hadn't. Immediately we started sliding back to a two rotor blade distance. Chalk 7 called us. Hey, Chalk 6. Did the new guy just take it? Great. Now the entire formation knew I had it.

Yeah, and he's shitting in his pants. Now, that wasn't true, but it wasn't far from the truth. Okay, let's close it back up and get with the formation. I pulled in some more power and eased that aircraft forward. Good, now just hold it there, Lou said, and I immediately started drifting back. No, get back up there. Yeah, formation flying. To be truthful, I didn't like formation flying.

I didn't like it in flight school. I don't even like reading about it. I wanted to be, I really wanted to be a dust off pilot because dust off pilots didn't fly formation. So that made me happy. And then they said, no, you're going to a lift me. And I went, oh, hell, I'm going to have to learn how to fly formations. I hate formations. So it was not easy for me to get in there with Lou and fly formations.

But he is such a good pilot and such a good calm instructor. And it may have been because he usually drank a six-pack in the morning before he got in the aircraft. I don't know. But anyway, he was really good and really set me to ease. And probably after about five hours, I could get in there. be comfortable flying at one road of blade out. And in the book I go through about how he taught me about, you know, how to judge your distance, how to judge where you're going to be, how to keep yourself out of trouble in LZs and stuff.

Really a really a good pilot. But, yeah, that half road a blade, that's scared to live a jeezus out of me. You have a section here. Fast forward a little bit. You're talking about it's a good conversation, as you know, I tend to bring things back to leadership and there's a good conversation you have about leadership in here. And it starts where you're talking about the current company commander that you had at this time. Yeah.

And the question is, have you ever seen him in the cockpit or on the flight line or out of his tent? When you do, please let us know. It'll be a first, said Mr. Tolliver. The other seconded that comment. How come I asked. The CEO is on his third tour over here. His first was as an advisor in the early 60s and his second was in 65 as an aviation. as an aviator. Pretty rough assignment. He took a couple hits in the aircraft and on his body. He's

paid his dues. He only has another couple of months in command and then he'll probably move up to battalion or brigade staff. He's all right. He just doesn't care to fly anymore, responded Mr. Tolliver. Well, what makes a good flight leader, I asked as I opened another beer for myself and others. Mr. Reynolds fielded that question. He had been in the unit for about seven months and was considering extending but not for our unit. No one seemed to do that. Extending your tour was a rare occasion in Vietnam, even in those units that appeared to have high morale and good leadership. A good flight leader must be a good pilot, must first be a good pilot and know his aircraft, know what its limitations are and how far he can stretch them. He must be a good aircraft commander taking care

of his aircraft and his crew. Just because we're officers doesn't mean we can't help the crew take care of the aircraft. Did you notice when Captain Bullock landed? The first thing he did was leave the aircraft to his crew and beat feet to the club for a beer instead of stay behind and help them sweep it out and post-flight it? No, he left that to Hess, his co-pilot for today,

and the crew. Self-centered bastard. Just because he's an RLO, he thinks he's too good to get his hands dirty. Do you think he helped Phil Sandbags to build the bunker? Not him or any of the RLOs for that matter. Jameson stood there that day supervised while everyone else did the digging and stacking okay Reynolds that's enough venting interjected mr. Tolliver besides being a good pilot and aircraft commander a flight

leader must plan coordinate and anticipate the mission once he gets his brief from the ground commander he needs to do a recon flight over the LZ or PZ he needs to judge how many aircraft will fit in and what formation will work so we're not doing last minute dick dance like we did today but look never did a recon and that's why why we were dick dancing in the kill zone. Once he's done his recon, he needs to coordinate with the ground commander on what formation will be

so they can plan accordingly. He needs to coordinate with the attack helicopters if it's going to be an insertion. He needs to coordinate with the aircraft commanders and let us know what's what. And he needs to anticipate what all can go wrong and have a plan for that as well, be it an aircraft breaking down before the mission

or ground fire on the LZ or PZ. Yes. Aircraft commander and leadership was so important. I found out recently that the commander that we had before the current command I talked about in there

was worse than the current company commander. And the current company commander, he just was not interested in being the company commander or exercising leadership. Leadership in the unit was from the RLOs.

It was from our operations officer and one of the platoon leaders. One of the other platoon leaders who I mentioned in there did not exercise leadership and very seldom did you ever see him exercise leadership and it was pretty much up to the operations officer and this one other platoon leader that that really took things by the horn they were the flight leaders and really guided us pretty much that's one of the reasons nobody ever re-up for the

unit um the morale in the unit wasn't that good at the time it was it was good with the warren officers and and the crew chiefs and stuff but as far as a unit cohesion goes it was lacking the you mentioned something in there about the flight leaders. If you had a flight leader that was screwed up, everybody's lives were going to be in trouble. And on this one mission there that Bullock was the flight leader, we got a bunch of aircraft shot up. That was March 6th.

And I think we went in with something like seven aircraft. One broke down before we got there. The other six went in, and the LZ had to go in two, two, and two. And the NVA were sitting there waiting for us. If we ran it against NVA, we were going to be in trouble. VC didn't worry about them. They couldn't shoot for shit. Sorry.

But they couldn't hit their ass with both hands. But the NVA knew how to shoot at a helicopter, and they did a good job of shooting at them. But the leadership was important, and it just was lacking when I first got there. Yeah, that scenario that I skipped over, it's real obvious. You know, when you look at it,

you're thinking, okay, how long is going to take us to put two birds at a time, multiple lifts in a row, before the enemy goes, okay, well, we'll wait for them, and we'll hit them next time they come in here. Yeah, a lot of times they'd let you in on the first lift. And then the second lift, that's when they'd open up on you, or the third lift. Usually if it was an extraction, you could expect the third lift coming out to take fire.

Last position you wanted was number six in a six-ship lift coming out of a two-ship L-Z because you were going to catch every bit of it. They're just waiting for you. And if they could knock an aircraft down, then what happens is, They've got a wrench thrown in everything. Everybody's got to come back in. You've got to pile on. And you better have a plan ready for it.

If you don't have a plan ready for it, there's a crew going to get killed. And even you're talking about the contingency of, hey, one of our aircraft might go down before we even take off. That's right. Maintenance problem if you don't have some kind of contingency. And that's another thing that we'll get into. But the idea, so you have the aircraft commander,

who's obviously in charge of their singular aircraft, but then you've got the flight lead that's leading the whole operation, that's in charge of it overall. And that's the person that has to account for all these different things to replace. That's right. Usually he would go out, the flight leader would go out about an hour before everybody else and get the coordination with the ground commander done, the artillery, etc. Go out and do his recon of the LZ, make sure he knew what formation was going to finish. Make sure the ground commander knew what formation he needed to have his troops in to pick up

and he knew what formation you were going to drop them off because that would make a difference in his ground assault plan. So all that coordination had to get done. You had to have a flight leader that was on his toes to do that kind of stuff. Initially, when I got there, only the RLOs could be flight leaders. Warren officers. We were technical officers, not tactical officers. So, warrant officers weren't allowed to be flight leaders when I first got there. Here's a mission that we hadn't talked about yet.

What's a sniffer mission? I asked. This machine picks up ammonia, which bodies give off, in this heat in the form of perspiration. When the machine gives off a reading of max, the operator will call out max mark, which means he has a large group giving off a lot of perspiration and we should engage.

First problem is not only do humans give off ammonia, but so do monkeys. So we'll probably be shooting a lot of monkeys. Second problem is, in order for this to work, we'll be flying at tree top level at 60 knots. The two cobras from El Lobo will be, 1,000 feet and following us and we'll engage if we call for fire or are taking fire. Bob informed me. You're shitting me, right? We're going to fly at tree top at only 60 knots. I shit you not, Bob said with a

grin. So that's an interesting one. Yeah, the sniffer missions were, they were interesting. The first time I took a hit in the aircraft, we were flying along and the guy ran out Max Mark Mark and about that time of Claymore on the top of the tree went off. And like a shotgun blast. hit the front of the aircraft. So, but I am sure that more monkeys died than NVA from the Sniffer missions. Tell you the truth. It was, now here's something that you mentioned before.

Fast forward a little bit. Mike and I walked back to the aircraft and saw that I had a light load of ammo. Morning missions usually meant picking up empty water and myrite cans from the night before and taking ammo in for the day ahead. As we started the aircraft, Dave asked, Have you done any hoverholes yet? Just around Long Bean, which I understand isn't much compared to this area, I replied. He says back, you're about to experience the scariest thing about flying in Vietnam.

Yes, yes. So talk to us about, talk to us about hover holes. Over holes. Longbin, the vegetation around Longbin was the biggest trees were only about 30 feet, well scattered out. You had some brush and stuff like that. So it was pretty open terrain. you could find an LZ pretty easily, nothing to it. Up along the Cambodian border, Song Bay region that we flew in a great deal.

There it was different. There it was triple canopy jungle. The trees were about 300 feet high, and it was packed. There was no LZs. To get an LZ, you either had a bomb crater from an airstrike, or they would bring in a daisy cutter, a 15,000-pound bomb that had chains welded around the outside of the casing, and they drop it from a Crayer, C-130 on a parachute, and it had a probe on the end of it, and it would come down.

When that probe hit the ground, that thing would go off, and it would make a nice one-ship helicopter LZ. It would clean out every tree, every stump, everything. Just beautiful. But most of the time, you didn't get that. You got the bomb crater from a B-502 strike to go down in. And so when you come into that thing, here you are. You got to load on board, 30 water cans.

You come in that thing, you're looking for the wind. You want to land into the wind, turn into the wind, and you start down. You're at a hover and you're hovering down 300 feet. The eyes in the back are the crew chief and door gunner, and they're telling you, bring your tail right, bring your tail left, drop down, stop, come right, come left, start down, stop, move your tail to the left. And you worked your way down through those trees to get to the bottom at hole. There were times I would look up through the greenhouse window and I couldn't see the sky.

These kids would wander, make us come down. We'd slide around, drop down among the tree limb, slide back down underneath that tree limb, and start back down. Turn the tail boom, slide down some more. And it takes all the eyes, all eight eyeballs in that aircraft to bring that aircraft down into those holes. Are you working with the same aircrew all the time? Yes.

Well, the only person that wasn't the same would be the right-seat pilot. Aircraft commanders flew left-seat. Right-seat pilots flew the, they were the new guy. And we rotated new guys through the aircraft commanders. But it'd be me, my crew chief, and my doorgunner would be always the same. And that's the full loadout. Co-pilot, pilot, co-pilot, doorgunner and crew chief. Yeah.

So you know exactly when this guy says left a little bit. You know what that means? Yeah, in fact, they would have to say, Mr. Jackson, come left. Your other left. So every once while I screw up. Oh, okay, got to come the other way. Yeah, that sounds freaking scary. You're having some chow and Captain Bullock.

And what's Captain Bullock's position? He was one of the platoon leaders. Okay, so he's one of the platoon leaders, and he's got, he's doing some introductions. He says, this is Lieutenant Weed, he said, indicating the new pilot. Lieutenant Weed was tall and lanky with long, blonde hair reminding me of a California surfer, which he claimed he was during his introduction. We didn't pay much attention until someone asked him for his first. name Richard was his response Lou couldn't let that one go looking at the four of us he

said probably loud enough to be heard by the group lieutenant Dick Weed weed we couldn't keep it in all three of us were in hysterics Lou maintained a straight face standing up and turning to Lieutenant Dick Weed to introduce himself welcome sir on Lou Price heading back to the States in a month he said and left the mess hall lieutenant Dick weed was in Vietnam on his first tour and he would prove to be a cocky guy if he wasn't in charge of something he tried to make himself in charge and more than one occasion was put in his place by a flight leader or an aircraft commander. He arrived the unit before I made aircraft commander so I was fortunate enough never have to fly with him. Yeah. He was one of those lieutenants that thought because he was a

lieutenant, he would be in charge of the aircraft. It took him a while to realize that no, you don't get to be in charge of the aircraft until you're voted charge of the aircraft. So we had many, many times with Lieutenant Dick Weed. the night hunter killer missions you already you already kind of briefed what those were and that you preferred to be the bait oh yeah yeah i'd much rather be the bait they were they were good missions a lot of times you flew them down the rivers so you'd be flying along and and one of the reasons you liked it because you knew if you had an engine failure you'd be better off going into the river than you wouldn't into the jungle so we always flew it right along the edge of the tree line there

But you'd fly along. It was interesting. You were looking for something. You weren't just borne a hole in the sky like the cobra and the flare ship war. You had the same crew all the time. Usually the guys that were on the searchlight and the starlight scope, that was usually somebody from the supply room or one of the kids out of maintenance that wanted to go out and do something besides his normal job.

So they would jump up and volunteer for that. The night hunter killer mission, that crew got that mission for a month. So when everybody else was out flying in the daytime, we'd be sleeping. And when they came back in, that's when we were going back out. So you got to work with the, usually the same units, and you got to know the brigade staff at the, you know, the second brigade in the areas that you're working. You got a good relationship with them that, that carried over once you were back on day shift with these guys. Did you feel like safer because you're flying at night and it's hard to see a helicopter at night? Or was it? A little bit, a little bit,

but then again, too, you know, you're out there trying to get shot at. We flew at the pilot's doors open, off, took those off the aircraft. Why is that? Because each one of the pilots we carry an M79 grenade launch on his lap. Check. And we'd fire it out the door if we needed to. And it was just kind of nice to be able to flick out there. Couldn't fly the doors off during the day for some reason.

But we like flying it at night like that. And an example there, you talked about three times. So you got the 50 cow on the back. you got, what, a cobra gunship as well with all their munitions, but you guys had to make sure you had those M79 just in case. That's right. We had a 50 on one side of 60 on the other and the two M79s in the laps. Hell yeah.

The one time we got in trouble, and it was one of the cases where we almost flew the mission three times the same way. We were coming back. We'd flown twice up in Song Bay on the river. Flew it the first night one way, flew at the second night the same way. The third night thought, let's change up. So we came around and we flew it in the opposite direction. We're coming down and the cobra starts screaming at me. You're taking fire.

And my crew chief, he looked behind us and he said, yes, sir, we're taking 51 fire from behind us. You can tell it's 51 because it looks like a flaming basketball coming up at you. And the cobra starts to roll hot and another 51 opens up in front of me. and then a third 51 opened up on the other side of the river, and that's the way they would do it. They'd set up 3.51s and try to catch you in the middle of the cone, and they were set up perfect if I've been coming from the other direction. I'd have been right caught between two of them easily.

But as it was, one gun was out of position, the flare ship dropped his flares, and then we spotted all three of them, and the cobra went to work at my crew chief, which was our company commander at that time, flying his first night hunter mission. He was on the phone calling the artillery up, so. The next day they went out and found what the results were. And then the mission went to another unit. I warned them about that.

They did the same thing I did. And the third day, they got fire. And they were ready with the artillery. And the next day, they went out and picked up, policed up all three guns and about 21 bodies. Are you getting shot at the 51 cow? Is that green tracer coming at you? Yes.

See, that's the weird thing. I've talked about this with some other guys that were in Vietnam. For us, everyone has red tracer now. Yeah. So you just, it's different. We don't have that distinguishing characteristic of green tracers. Green tracers, and they look like flaming basketballs at night. In daytime, it looked like a bit, you know, flaming hardball.

But at night, that was a basketball coming up. You just, oh, my God. There was no doubt in your mind. What was shooting at you? Little leadership here. Major Anthony, so you get a new. a new company commander. 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 said, 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'll be unmerciful upon you. Yeah, I heard that 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 a mandatory, 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. And he did not prove us wrong. He was really afraid that we were going to ruin his career. And his last comments when he finally gave up command was, well, I don't have you guys to ruin my career anymore. So I never saw him fly a combat mission. He'd fly the ashen trash going down to Saigon, the PX and stuff like that. He moved his tent because we were living in tents at that time. He moved his tent out to the flight line, and he would sit there in a chair,

and when it was time for you to launch, he'd check your times off. If you launched late, you're going to hear about it that night when you got back in. But he was very much fearful of his career, and I'm sure that his career probably ended disastrously for him, I hope.

On April 16, 1969, I was flying with Mr. Driscoll, returning from a long day in quality, I say that right yep in Kwan Loy area flying resupply of one of the infantry battalions it was late in the afternoon the sun was sitting we were monitoring monitoring the four radios when we heard the May Day call May Day May Day Lobo one three is going down mr. Driscoll a cobra just went to 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 10-foot-high bamboo and put the aircraft over on its side. He was on top of an NVA bunker complex. Quickly, Mr. Driscoll took 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 10 feet from my door. I drew my 38 caliber pistol and pointed at the opening expecting someone to open fire at any moment. The downed crew was struggling to get the mini guns 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 downpilots got the mini guns off the down 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 down 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 air crew had put in our crew 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 the the Doorkunners Awards. The man held grudges. His last words to anyone when he departed the unit after six months was 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. His leadership style. When he first got there, that first night, and I put this in the book, he came into the club, which we had a big GP medium tense where our club was at. And he came in and he asked, he says, how many, who's flound? tomorrow. Well, a bunch of the guys raised their hand. He said, gentlemen, no drinking 24 hours before you fly. And everybody's going, wait a minute. We fly every day. And that was his point. Army policy was you would not drink 24 hours before you fly or smoke within 50 feet of the aircraft.

Well, warrant officers to us, it meant you didn't smoke 24 hours before you flew or drink within 50 feet of the aircraft. But he didn't go along with that. So he shut the club down. And That way there, he could say, if somebody crashed, he could say, hey, it's my policy. They violated my policy because they drank the night before. So they couldn't blame him. That's the way he was. Well, the COBRA company commander, he invited us over, so we went over there. Our company commander wouldn't go.

He made sure we didn't fly the next day. But, yeah, it's just the way that man was. Okay, well, I'm glad that you had a horrible leader, but damn, going into that LZ landing on top of an NVA bunker, complex grabbing those guys. It must have been mayhem. Well, you had no choice. I mean, you don't leave somebody behind. And that's kind of one of our models was you don't leave people behind. You saw the cobra go down. We didn't know it was a bunker complex until we got on the ground there with them. And I look over and I see this opening there and I've got this worthless pistol that you couldn't hit a thing with. But that's what you do. And we did that many times

over is that you go into some place that because you had a crew down, you go in and you get the crew out. Do your aircraft take any hits on that one? No, we didn't take any hits on that one. No, that's just what you're doing. No time to think about it. No, no time to think about it. If you thought about it, you would have never become a helicopter pilot to start with.

You know, I had a guy by the name of Dean Ladd, who was a Marine Corps officer in World War II, and he was going into Tarawa. and he'd already been into a couple other islands. I mean, he was a, he'd just combat, combat, combat. Now he's going into Tarawa. And, you know, there's shelling and there's machine gun fire. And I asked him, I said, so when you are getting out, this is as they realize at Tarawa, you know, they hit the coral reefs. Now they've got to walk 800 yards and there's freaking Japanese machine gun fire coming.

I said, you know, when you realize you're going to have to walk, were you thinking, I might get shot or whatever? he's like, no, that that wouldn't happen to me. It will happen to somebody else. And that's pretty much what everybody says. Like it might happen. And he ended up getting shot. He ended up getting gut shot and somehow survived. But the attitude of like, well, look,

it's going to be dangerous for other people, but not for me. I think the helicopter pilots, for a large extent, had that same attitude. You know, hey, we hate to see an aircraft go down. It's going to be somebody go down, but it's not going to be me. And you just didn't think about that happening to you. If you did, you probably wouldn't. have finished the mission.

Yeah, I was going to say maybe you get a guy like your earlier company commander who had deployed already, who had done a tour over there, and he had seen combat taking hits to his body and to his aircraft, and eventually he realizes, oh, this, I'm not quite as good as maybe you're not as lucky as I think I am, and I'm just going to sit back here. Yeah, and I'm not invincible. And I can see that what happened with an older guy like that. But young guys, and that's the reason they have young guys as helicopter pilots and crew chiefs that young guys just don't have any fear.

Maybe we're not smart enough to have fear. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Fast forward a little bit. Throughout the spring and summer of 1969, enemy forces attacked firebases along the border. Their tactics were always the same.

Waiting until after midnight, the enemy would commence their attack with a mortar and rocket barrage in concert with sappers attempting to penetrate the wire, followed by infantry waves attempting to penetrate the perimeter. LZ Grant was a favorite. target of these attacks several times between February and May, LZ Grant experienced major attacks. The first in February saw the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Gorvad, killed when a round

hit the talk. He was seriously wounded but refused to leave the battle. The enemy managed to penetrate the perimeter wire and fighting was fierce to include artillery lowering the tubes and firing point blank into the charging enemy with anti-personnel shot. Blue Max gunships were called in and engaged the follow-on enemy as well as pursuing those attempting to retreat. In May, L. Z. Grant was under attack again. Simultaneously, Kwan Loy, LZ Jamie, and LZ Phyllis also came under ground assaults that night. The enemy wanted the first cavalry division out of three-core region, which was not going to happen. Yeah, they started stepping up the fight back then and hitting those three LZs at the same time. That had everybody up and scrambling. We got

pulled out in the middle of the night to start flying resupply in there. And you had to be careful when you took the resupply in because you're trying to go in there, but where the NVA at around that wire. So you're looking to see where most of the shootings at, and you come in, most of the time, you come in fast and low and kick out. And just, that's the way the grunts want. If they didn't want to have to run out there to grab ammo or grab your aircraft. But then as daylight came out, then you'd start going in there and start getting more of the resupply in, bringing reinforcements in. I talked about we did one night combat assault that we brought reinforcements in, and we put them about two clicks out. And they were catching the NVA as the NVA were trying to get back to Cambodia.

But, yeah, they started picking up and hitting those fire bases pretty hard. Fast forward a little bit. We had a new commander arrive in August who was a major improvement, Major Robert Saunders. Am I saying that right? Saunders? He was a leader, and we recognized it almost immediately. One of his first actions was to allow us to hire Hooch Maids. previous commanders wouldn't hear of it.

So we cleaned our own tents. Now we had hooch maids that would come over from the village and clean out our rooms, do our laundry and shine our boots. In an effort to raise morale, Major Saunders directed that one hooch would be turned into a club for the enlisted members of the unit. There wasn't another empty hooch available, so he directed that the officers should build our own club. We had an engineer RLO pilot, and he drew up a design for, the commander's approval. With a design, we then began a scavenger hunt for building material, and before long, we had an officers club.

The brigade, the engineer brigade headquarters poured a concrete floor for us and returned for some flight time for their projects. Yeah, yeah. The about time Sanders got there, we moved out of the GP medium tents and moved to the other side of the chicken coop, or the other side of the chicken pen, and took over some wood buildings that were hooches. And that's when Saunders said, okay, you can have hoot. maids now. But he said, I'll tell you right now, better not be any sex going on with the hooch

mates. And so the guys were, they were pretty adamant about watching that, that there would be no boom boom girls. And that increased morale significantly right there. But then he said, okay, there's an empty hooch. That's your EM club. Officers, if you want one, you build it yourself. And we did. The engineer officer, he drew up the plans for it. We started scavenging and scavenging stuff up. I seen to remember a palette of tin coming flying in one day on the bottom of a helicopter being

delivered. But it was a great little club. They had a stone bar that we were located in a rubber tree plantation. Taboo cutting down a rubber tree. You didn't dare cut down a rubber tree. In fact, you couldn't even run military operations in the

plantations, rubber tree plantations. So we built the bar out of stone. and it went from the wall to a tree in the middle of the club. I mean, it was a nice-looking bar. You got done at that thing? You got any pictures of it? Oh, I wish I did. I don't.

But we had this big tree growing up through the middle of the roof. And so we built our club, and it was sheet metal on the outside, a tin roof. We had a big cargo parachute that we requisitioned one day, spread out over the top of it for extra shave. We got two of those parachutes. We put one over the enlisted club as well. So the guys could sit outside and enjoy themselves outside. It was a nice club. And we used to have, the pilots would be over there.

And then a lot of the other pilots from other units or the engineer battalion brigade, their headquarters guys would come over and the Medevac nurses would come over. So it was a pretty nice little place. So this is what, what do we call the club? Just the club? The chicken coop? What do we call it? Yeah, just call it the chicken house.

The chicken house. We had a chicken. Our mascot was a rooster. For a dollar, you could buy the rooster a shot of scotch. Rooster would not drink beer. But it would drink scotch? He drinks scotch. And that was it.

You'd buy a shot of scotch for a dollar from Sam, our barmaid, and she'd set it down for him, and the rooster would walk over, and he'd sit there and drink that scotch. Now, about two of those, that rooster couldn't walk anymore. But it was funny as hell watching that rooster. What was the rooster's name? Rooster. The seals at Seal Team 2 during Vietnam had a monkey that they brought home from Vietnam. Oh, my God.

And they had it on the quarter deck, and it was like the most arnery, evil monkey. The monkey's name was Jocko. You read the part in our book about the monkey, didn't you? What about it? Oh, one of our pilots. Peter. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. When he took it in the aircraft? Yeah, he took it in the aircraft. The guy is a, he's a right seat pilot and they had, in Vietnam, they had these monkeys. They were gibbon monkeys. They get pretty damn big. Well, he bought one of them, and it was kind of small, and he brought it out to the aircraft. Thank God it was not the aircraft commander of that day. So the monkey's sitting there and the monkey's jumping on his seat and he jump over to the aircraft commander's seat and then he climb up on the first aid kit behind the aircraft commander

and scurrieve on over and first aid kit. Troops jump on board going for a combat assault and they think this is funny watching the monkey run back and forth. Two minutes out, Coburs roll hot, one minute out, the doorgunners open up. And when they opened up, that monkey opened up with his bowels and his piss all over the pilot, all over the aircraft commander, scream at his head. I find the aircraft man had reached up and grabbed him by the neck and about 200 feet up, tossed that monkey out the window. I don't know if he learned out of skydive, but that monkey was gone, but nobody would go near that crew that day. They stunk so bad. Yeah, like I said, I'm fast-forwarded through a bunch of stuff. There's some stories in here you've

got to read for sure. That's one of them. The other one, I was thinking that the monkeys, and I'm not going to cover it today, but the guys are calling in that they're being attacked, they're surrounded and all this stuff, and you guys got over top and said, you're surrounded by monkeys. We didn't tell them it was monkeys. We didn't want to bust the chops. It was a brand new patrol leader. It was a Lerz team out there, so we just went ahead.

Okay, yeah, we engaged the monkeys and they were able to E&E out of the area. But when we got back in the brigade talk, I said, hey, what the report you get? on the enemy situation out there might not quite be true. Jack. Next up, Ralph was a good aircraft commander, a quiet man. He was the youngest pilot in the outfit as he joined the Army right out of high school. He was not a drinker and spent his evenings working on college correspondence courses. His mission for that day was flying C&C for the division's engineer battalion commander.

The engineer battalion commander wanted to fly out to where his engineers were working on various projects in the AO to see their progress. Not unreasonable as they were scattered all over the AO improving roads, building a school and supporting projects on the various firebases. The day started off normal and they were visiting the various locations. However, just after lunch, things changed. The colonel wanted to go on a recon of some areas. Ralph agreed to fly those areas and proceeded to fly between Kwan Loy and Song Bay. The colonel was focused on looking for clearings. Finally, he asked Ralph to take them down and land in one. Ralph asked for the frequency and call sign of the unit in the clearing so he could contact them prior to landing, especially as

he didn't see anyone in the clearing. The colonel came up with an excuse for why he couldn't provide the information and told Ralph just to land. Ralph insisted on a call sign and frequency before he'd take the aircraft down. The colonel became irate, but when he accused Ralph of being a coward, that was when things exploded. Ralph reached up and disconnected his helmet from the intercom system took the controls from the co-pilot and headed back to Camp Gorvad. The colonel was livid. Ralph didn't care. Didn't care.

Reaching Camp Corvad. Am I saying his name aren't Corvad? Govad. And that's named after the battalion commander that was killed during that assault. Ralph landed at the engineering pad and told the colonel politely but firmly to get out of his aircraft. He then called our battalion headquarters on the radio, which was being monitored by almost every pilot from the battalion and told them that he had just tossed engineer six out of his aircraft and was returning to base. To say the least, shit was about to hit the fan.

Making that call on the radio alerted every aircraft on the frequency as to what it happened. However, someone saw Ralph's position in this and nothing came of it, at least on for Ralph. Yeah. You talk about egos. And the engineer had an ego. And he was out to make a name for himself in the division. He was a fairly new guy. And he would do that.

He tried to get an aircraft to go down into a clearing without anybody being in the clearing to protect them. Ralph was smart enough to say no. Calling Ralph a coward, bad mistake. Ralph had already had a silver star at this point and a distinguished flying cross. This engineer battalion commander did that to my roommate, and my roommate flew into the clearing.

They never came out. The NVA were waiting for him, and everybody was killed. So Ralph did absolutely the right thing with this guy because of his ego wanting to impress everybody. Yeah. You talk about that here exactly what happened. This is fast forward a little bit. When I returned from my mission that evening, Major Saunders approached my aircraft as I was shutting down. Mr. Corey, a word please, he said, as Posey opened my door.

The major was standing in front of my aircraft and hadn't approached me. Yes, sir. I unstrapped, climbed out and came over to him. It's Mr. Corey now instead of Dan, what did I do? wrong. Let's walk. Mr. Cooper, he called over his shoulder addressing my co-pilot. Sir, would you grab Dan's gear and put it in his room, please? Yes, sir. He called back with a question to look on his face. We walked halfway back to the chicken coop with nothing said between us, but were angling towards his hooch. Finally, he said, Dan, I have some bad news. Dave and Y.A.

were shot down today. I'm afraid the entire crew was killed. Y.A. was Dave's co-pilot for the day and fairly new to the unit. I felt like I had just been gut-punched. What happened, sir? As best as anyone could tell, while supposedly flying from Kwanloy to Boudaup, the engineer colonel had again gone on a recon and convinced Dave to land in a clearing.

A scout team happened to find the aircraft sitting there. It was obvious that someone had landed the aircraft before the enemy opened fire with some heavy weapons as the only damage to the aircraft was in the cockpit and transmission and none in the engine or belly. The skids indicated a normal landing. Dave and Y.A. was still strapped in their seats, and Sergeant Alford, the doorgunner, was in his as well. The crew chief, however, was found about 100 yards from the downed aircraft. It appeared that

Specialist Collins fought as empty 556 shell casings were around him, but not a weapon. The aircraft was booby-trapped. The colonel and his staff were dead in the back of it. There had been no friendly soldiers at the location. Damn, that son of a bitch has gotten more aircraft shot up than anyone. Damn his sorry ass and now he's gotten people killed at least his sorry ass was one of them bastard Major Sanders just let me rant while he opened a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Johnny Walker scotch filling two glasses he handed one to me and raised his own to absent comrades to Dave Y a Alford and Collins a few days later I was sitting in my room writing a letter when my new roommate Owey Richie came in from flying he looked troubled

as he grabbed a beer and tossed his flight gear on the bed. What's up, Richie? I asked. Just a bad day. Saw my first crash and it was not pretty, he said, finishing off the first beer and opening the second. What happened? Was it one of ours, I asked? No, it was a Charlie Company bird, and one of the pilots was in my fight class.

I'd just been talking to him before we launched, and now him and his crew are dead. Hit a tree. Damn, were you under fire? No, we were coming out of an LZ, which we had been in four times already, and the blade on the right side hit a tree at about 75 feet. Rotor blade just came apart and they crashed and burned. No one got out.

Damn, sorry Owen. Who are the pilots? Let's see, Warren Officer Thomas Brown was in flight school with me. Warn Officer Dennis Varney was the AC. Specialist Marcyne Shelby was the door gunner and the crew chief was specialist Robert Lazarus. I just met them not an hour before when I went over to talk to Tom. opening another beer for myself,

I raised it and tapped Richie's beer in a toast to absent comrades. A few nights later, our platoon leader came walking down the hall. The CEO wants to see everyone in the club, he said. We all started heading that way. The CEO did not look happy. Gentlemen, take a seat after you get a beer. He didn't have to say that twice.

After everyone was seated and holding a cold one, the major raised his beer to absent comrades. The look of shock and dread was on everyone's face. We all stood and raised our drinks to absent comrades. We all repeated and chugged our beers still wondering who'd we lost. Motioning us to sit down, the major looked over everyone before he started to speak. Charlie Company lost a crew last night. They were on a night mission out of LZ buttons and ran into bad weather. At about zero, 200 hours, they attempted to take off in the fog. The grunts on the perimeter said they had all their lights on so they could see them

in the soup. The aircraft got to about 200 feet, and then it crossed the perimeter wire. As it crossed the perimeter wire, it appeared to roll 90 degrees and crashed into the trees on the perimeter. The whole crew was lost. Yeah, that period of time, we started losing crews. And we knew a lot of the crews in the other units because we flew a lot together. A lot of times they'd have maybe a unit could put four birds up for a lift, and you'd get tagged to put two of your birds with them. So you got to know the other crews and the other pilots as well. But this period of time when Saunders got there,

that's when we started losing a lot of birds. And it kept right on up for the rest of the time I was there. The night birds, the Huey had minimum instruments for weather flying. And if the guys didn't practice their weather flying, they were rusty at it. And trying to pull off in the fog, that sounds like what happened there. He just wasn't on his instruments that tight,

and he lost control of the aircraft. hitting a tree that happened frequently in fact my last mission one of my last missions one of our birds hit a tree at about 75 feet up and we got one guy out

we didn't think he would make it but last summer I had lunch with him at the congressional golf club in Washington D.C. And he pulled through he was in a coma for six weeks but he looks good he said from neck down

he said I'm one big scar but from the face up he looked John looked pretty good So the thing is, and I think a lot of times people don't understand. I mean, when this stuff is happening, the war goes on. Oh, yeah. It's like, okay, we still have a mission to do. We're still going to get the birds spun up.

We're still going to go out and do our job. Yeah. You've got to put it behind you. At that time, I don't know how it wasn't other units, but at that time in our unit, we never did have a memorial service when somebody was lost. Just before I left, we had a guy that we all loved dearly, crew chief, and we were on a combat assault, and he got shot in the armpit. Well, the chicken plate didn't cover the armpit, and he died. We had a memorial service for him, but anybody else we lost,

the memorial service was get drunk in the club that night. So a lot of us just didn't have any any good thoughts about when we left there. So it was good to see, good to have a drunk fest anyway with the guys. Fast forward a little bit. my crew and I arrived at the aircraft and conducted our pre-flight. Good morning, Posey. How should you look? I asked my crew chief. All good Mr. C, he answered as he closed the engine, cowling. Quillan, how's the guns and ammo? I asked my gunner. Fresh cans of ammo this morning, Mr. Curry, we're good. Mr. Corey, we're good.

He responded. I climbed up and looked over the rotor head while my co-pilot for the day, Warren Officer Ron Fender did the walk-around inspection and tail rotor. All appeared to be good. We strapped in, started the engine, and waited. ready to assume the mission if called upon. Hey, one-niner, 27 is down. Assume his mission and contact Badger 6 when you reach Kwan Loy for further instructions. Flight operator instructed. Roger, three India, one-niner has it.

I started pulling power. Okay, guys, coming out. About this time I saw Chip Rumble, Chicken Man 2-7, along with his co-pilot, Warren Officer McCartney, waving to me and running over. I set the aircraft back down. Jumping on the skid next to my door, Chip asked, Hey, Dan, I'm low-time pilot for the month. Let me take the mission.

He had just returned from a seven-day R&R trip to Hawaii and hadn't flown much for the past month. You got it, I said, as Ron and I unstrapped and climbed out, turning over the aircraft to Chip and McCartney. We watched as they hovered out of the chicken pen and onto the runway. We were walking back to flight operations when they started down the runway and disappeared behind the trees. Reaching flight operations, we went in.

Sergeant First Class Robinson, and was crying. He saw us and immediately got a shocked look on his face. Oh my God, who's flying your aircraft? He asked. I told him, why?

What's the problem? They got off the runway and were climbing out when the rotor head came off. They're all dead. Yeah. I was stunned and suddenly sick to my stomach. Outside, I threw up. Ron dropped through his knees and stared at the ground. I went back to my room and just sat on my bed.

30 minutes later, Major Saunders stopped by. You okay, Dan? He asked, I don't know, sir. I checked that head and it all looked good. What happened? I don't know, but the accident investigation board will figure it out. You just take it easy. He left, but about an hour later, he was back.

Dan, I hate to ask you, but can you take a mission? It seems Lieutenant Weed is too upset to fly his mission and has brought back his aircraft. Lieutenant Weed was close to chip, the aircraft commander. Yes, sir, I got it. I picked up my gear. I'll walk out with you. I want you to see, I want to see just how upset he is. The Major and I walked together to the flight line.

We didn't say much as there wasn't a lot to say. I didn't expect what came at me. As soon as Lieutenant Weed saw me, he threw his helmet on the ground and came at me. You son of a bitch, Corey, this is your damn fault. Major Saunders stepped between us. Lieutenant, stop right there. Get your shit and go to your room. Not another word.

Do you hear me? Now go. Turning to me, the CO said, Dan, forget this and get on with the mission. This wasn't over, however. That night at the club, Lieutenant Weed proceeded to loudly bowed mouth me. I let it go as he was a lieutenant and I was just a warrant, but I finally had enough. Hey, Lieutenant Dickweed, with all due respect for your rank, go to hell. I knew using his full name as modified by the Warren officers would piss him off, and it did.

With that, he was up and headed straight for me. I was off my barstool and eager to get it on with him, looking forward to hurting him. I was not a brawler, but could hold my own in a fight. Just before he got to me, Captain Armstrong, a platoon leader stepped behind him and jerked him off his feet. Don't you dare move, Lieutenant Captain Armstrong was an infantry officer of considerable size. very tall and very muscular. He was a no-nonsense man. Mr. Corey, I think you should retire for the night.

Now, he told me, yes, sir, and I departed back to my room in the warrant officer's hooch. After any aircraft accident, an accident investigation is held. My co-pilot was interviewed, as were the assistant maintenance officer and myself. The crash site was examined as well. The rotorhead was flown to a general aviation support facility at Vung 2 and examined. The results were posted and indicated that the rotor head had not come off, but had failed. The rotor head that had been put on the aircraft the night before was a rebuilt one. During the rebuilding, the bolt holes for the bolts that held the pitch change horn had been cleaned and resized one millimeter.

However, the same original bolt sizes were installed upon the USS N.S. Corpus Christi, a floating aircraft overhaul facility. Those original bolts were one millimeter too small. Between the test flight and the takeoff, the bolts holding pitch change horn had failed due to the stress, and the result was a loss of control over the blades, making the aircraft unstable in flight. The investigation board found that there was no way to the assistant maintenance officer or I could have found the problem as the bolts hadn't twisted out, but it simply and instantly torn out. The bolts were never found But the condition of the bolt holes told the story Easy for them to say

But this would haunt me every day I couldn't help but think that it was something I should have caught on the pre-flight It could have been me and my co-pilot We had come that close Yeah that that incident has haunted me for a long time I lost Posey I lost Quinn And it was that close that That we almost

bought the farm. The maintenance officer had flown the bird the night before after they put the rotor head on it and all seemed well and then we got out there on the morning and looked at it and I did the rotorhead. The safety wires were all in place, the slippage marks were all lined up and everything looked good. And but when Chip went out, he pulled full power when he came off the end of the runway and those four bolts that hold that pitch change horn on, they just blew out. And they said when they, maintenance officer told me, he said when we took it down to Vung Town,

they looked in there, they could see where the threads had just been ripped apart. They hadn't been screwed out. They just were the bolts exploded out of there. So we lost the crew, lost the aircraft. Talk about some other missions that you did. You talk about doing some SIOPS missions. Which. Yeah, they didn't like me to do Siams missions.

Why is that? Well, I did that one Syops mission, and, you know, it was just after David died. It was just after Chip McCartney, we killed. And they say, okay, you're going to go out there and fly this Cyops mission. Okay, so they put these big loud speakers in the side of the aircraft. And this Vietnamese captain jumps in, and they say, okay, we want you to go out to this crossroads. So we fly out to this crossroads. We're at 2,500 feet.

We're flying around. This guy's in the back of the aircraft, you know, sing-song Vietnamese language. For Chewoy's, right? Yeah, for Chewoy's. trying to get the North Vietnamese to surrender. So my crew chief, Lovellace at that time, he looks down. He says, hey, Mr. Corey, there's a bunch of guys down here in the bamboo. They're digging trenches right alongside the intersection.

I said, yeah. So I look over there. I thought, well, shit, there they are. NVA down there. And I turned to the American, the sergeant, and I said, hey, you think those guys can hear from us being up here 2,500 feet? Wouldn't you like us to go down a little lower? He goes, Mr. Corey, nobody will fly at 1,500. Fifteen hundred.

I said, yeah, I'll take it at 1,500. So as I'm lowering the aircraft down to 1,500 flying this orbit around these North Vietnamese guys down. I turned to my copay and said, get Song Bay artillery on the line. He calls up Song Bay Artie and says, fire mission, standby. Gives them the cordonist, everything we get down there. Sure enough, NVA starts shooting up at us. So I said, we're taking fire. And he says, yeah, we are, Mr. Bridges, you need to go back up.

I said, no, we need to get a little further out. So I've just moved out a little bit further. Well, that's what I called the artillery in on them. And the Vietnamese captain in the back, he just went ballistic. I mean, you know, they're supposed to surrender. And I said, well, if he talks at them now, they're going to be more willing to surrender after we hit him with some artillery. We put about 12 rounds in there on top of these guys.

And after that, the Vietnamese guy didn't want to argue with anymore, but he took us back in the American captain in charge of the SOAPS program. He came up and he says, we're going to have to scratch this mission off as a failure. And I said, well, yeah. I said, hey, you know, they started shooting first, and I was protecting my crew and your crew as well. So he just kind of laughed at me. He tapped me on the shoulder. He says, yeah, I got it.

I understand. I hated soaps missions. This was crazy. Your dad was still in the Navy at this time. Yeah. And he's now an officer, and he's in freaking Saigon. Yeah, yeah. He was living well.

He was one of the rems. He was one of the rems in Saigon. Well deserved. I mean, after he fought World War II and was on submarines, I got no real problem with him, enjoyance of time in Saigon. So I went and asked the company commander. I said, hey, sir, this is Sanders still.

I said, and he was, Sanders was getting towards the end of his tour. So I said, hey, my dad's in Saigon. Could he come up and fly three days with me or something like that? And I thought Sanders would say, you know, really not. Hell no. But he said, sure, bring him up. Okay, we'll bring him up.

So dad came up, and I picked him up in Saigon. He jumped in the front seat. Before you get there, when you were in Saigon, I know you went to an officer's club with him. Oh, yeah. And they come to kick you out. Well, as you're going into the officers club, you see like a bunch of nice pistols hanging up on the wall.

And you're thinking, well, unskeared. Yeah, unskeared. No one's watching them. And you're thinking, well, that doesn't seem very smart. Yeah. So then you sit down, having some lunch with your dad. They kicked us out. They kick you out because you're not a field grade officer,

which is a major lieutenant commander above. So they kick you out on your way. out some of those weapons with you. So you end up with a nice, instead of that 38 caliber pistol, that wasn't very effective. You end up with a 45, a nice 1911, I'm sure. Now, that's not quite the right way. Let's just say that when I got back to light K, I had a brand new 45, okay? So your dad ends up freaking coming up.

How old your dad at this point? Uh, dad's probably about 43, 44, maybe. Oh, okay. He's in the game. Oh, yeah, he's in the game. He's in the game. I think he was, he was about 50 when he retired from the Navy, and this was three years before he retired from the Navy, so he's in his late 40s.

Okay. So he came up and... What was he doing? What was he, some kind of a liaison or something? No, no. He was in J6 at MacV Head Corps, Communications. And I guess I can say it now. It's not classified anymore.

but he was working on the communications plan for the repatriation of POWs. Got it. Is what he was doing at the time. So he came up to Lichay and spent about three days with it. Flew as my crew chief. No, he flew as my door gunner. He gave my crew chief some time off. But he did good.

He had to have his ass chewed a little bit. Yeah, so tell us about the first gunfighting gun, and that's a good one. Yeah, we're flying along there. And he's working the LZs, and he's doing good, clearing this in, clearing us out, stuff like that. So we got the troops on board. Troops all get on the aircraft. And Dad's uniform was the same as ours, fatigues.

And he had his major's, his lieutenant commander's leaf on, you know, which is just a little smaller than the Army Major Leaf. The grunts are back there in the back. And all of a sudden, somebody starts pulling on my collar. I look over there, there's grunts pulling my collar. He goes, hey, sir, what's your rank? I said, I'm a W-2. Why?

And he goes, damn, did that major back there screw up since he's your door gunner? So then I told him, no, it's my dad. He's flying with us. So they thought that was pretty cool. So we'd go in on this combat assault. We were in chock five or six position. And we're going in in a staggered right formation. So you've got one aircraft in front of you and you got one off the side. Six minutes out, the artillery goes in. The artillery cuts off at two minutes out. The cobra's roll hot. One minute out, door gunners open fire. And right away, we start seeing green tracers. And I hear my crew chief's gun firing, but I don't hear my dad's. and I said, Dad, open fire. Nothing. And I'm thinking, oh, shit, he's been hit. And I'd turn over my shoulder and look. He's standing on the skids.

He's got his monkey harness on and he's taking pictures out in front. I got on the intercom. I said, Dad, get your ass in here and get on that goddamn gun. So he gets on the gun. Well, we got back. We had a discussion about crew chief duties of a doorgunner on the air car.

And he wrote my mother and he says, you know, I've had a lot of Ashtuns in my Navy career, but that's the worst one I've ever had. And he took it. I would give him credit. He took it quite well. And he came back and flew with us about three or four times.

That's crazy. I like this conversation you had with your dad. He says, he says, I noticed one thing different about those Air Force pilots from you guys. Air Force pilots seem to be outgoing and always in a positive mood versus you guys, who always seem withdrawn impensive, he explained. And then you replied,

Dad, an Air Force pilot is that way because he's flying a machine that wants to fly, and if left alone, we'll generally fly quite well on its own. In addition, compared to a helicopter, an airplane has very few moving parts that can cause a serious malfunction. On the other hand, helicopter pilots fly a machine

that does not want to fly and only does so by the interactions of the pilot to balance four forces all opposed to each other, plus a helicopter has a lot of moving parts, any of which breaking can and does cause a major disaster. Helicopter pilots are moody because we know something is going to break if it hasn't done so already. That's right. That gave the old man something to think about. Yeah, Dad had flown with one of the things he did when he came up there to like,

we had a OV10 squadron that flew out of there, the Broncos, and we got him a ride and won. And he went out and flew with them. He flew with a captain rider, an Australian. captain as an exchange officer. And he thought that was pretty cool out there flying with those guys. And so when he came back in that night, that's when this conversation came up about, you know, the fighter pilots, they're just jovial and happy and et cetera. And you guys, you're all kind of moody and down in the dumps. I said, yeah, and that's why, you know, we fly something that doesn't want to fly. Harry Reasoner about 1973 wrote a great article about helicopter pilots and

helicopters and it's it's kind of long that same line is what uh what dad and i's conversation was yeah well it's like you said a a plane you can you can let go of the stick and it'll kind of just cruise for a while yeah it'll fly itself but a helicopter is not that's not happening no no that's not happening that's not happening uh they have now uh helicopters that do have an autopilot on them but in those days you let go of those controls in a hughy now no telling where she's going to go Fast forward a little bit. You eventually get orders and you're going to go to Fort Ord, which to you sounds great because it's up by Monterey and you start thinking, oh, I'm going to California. I'm going to be, yeah, it's going to be awesome.

And then you start asking people about what the deal is and you start hearing that it's actually horrible to be there. It's expensive as hell. And the high school kids are driving around in Jags and Mercedes and you're going to barely scrape by. It won't be able to afford anything as a warrant officer. And so you figure out, okay, I'm going to try and get my orders changed. And you go talk to your CEO and you say, hey, can I get my orders changed? He's like, no, I can't do it. You think I'm magic?

And then he says, now wait one. There is a way you can change your orders. Now I was excited. There is how you can extend for six months and stay in Nam. He was grinning. Did he have something to do with my RFO? I wondered. Sir, you're kidding.

Hell, I've already had my cherry busted, had a door gunner wounded, had hydraulic failure. and a compressor stall. Add to that, over 1,300 hours of flying here. I didn't mention the aircraft had gone down with the pitch change horn failure, the one I'd almost ridden in. He knew that was on the scorecard

without me mentioning it. Yeah, you've racked up some time, but that's only, but that's the only choice you have. Think about it. And he headed to the bar. Yes. Yeah.

And I really thought at the time, I thought, well, hey, he can just change my order. It's not a problem. But no, it wasn't. But him and the, and the platoon leader

Lieutenant Bochamp or Captain Beauchamp they had probably already worked this out ahead of time I'm thinking they didn't have anything to do with me getting orders to Ord

but putting the idea on my head to extend and up to this time we had not had guys extending at least for our unit and so when I said okay yeah I'll extend

I'm thinking I'll go to a Medevac unit which is what you kind of wanted to do because you don't have to fly in formation yeah because I didn't have to fly in formation it. But then boat chomp.

So they get you to extend. Yeah, they get you to extend. Yeah, you go to Medivac unit. It'll be in the rear with the gear, you know, and you'll just have to fly medevac. And you'll just have to fly the medevacs. And you'll be nurses there in the whole nine yards. So you agree. It seems like a good idea.

You're not going to get it ord. You can go back to someplace. Once you get orders, you'll go back to someplace better than Ord. And so you get that extension. Yep. And then you guys go out. You do some drinking. And now you guys are drinking hard.

I'm going to the book. After about an hour of this, the company, about a hour of people feeding you drinks. The company clerk came up to me in the officers club and asked me to sign some papers. What's this for? I asked with a slight slur and blurry eyes. I was becoming as drunk as our rooster who frequented the club each night and was fed Scots. The damn rooster would not drink beer, expensive taste. Oh, it's just some paperwork I need your signature for on the extension, he said, and I signed it without another thought.

I thought I had submitted everything. As he left, the RLOs excused themselves, slapping each other on the back and laughing their asses off. Two nights later I found out what was so funny. The Major wanted all the pilots in the club for a meeting. And then he goes in there and he announces that I'm happy to announce one of our chickens has decided to stay in the coop. Mr. Corey has graciously modified his extension to remain with us instead of going to a Medivac unit. Thank you, Dan. That's what happened.

Oh, yeah. They got you drunk and you signed papers to stay on. I did. And then right after that he announced, well, who's a lot? the new instructor pilot. And one of the pilots asked him that, and he just kind of grinned and he looked around. He goes, Mr. Corey is the new instructor pilot. So tell us about the instructor duties. Yeah, the instructor duties, the unit instructor pilot, and your job was to, when a new pilot showed up in the unit, they flew with you. Their first orientation flight would be with you, and then frequently they

would fly with you then. Well, Major decided that since I was going to take my extension leave in about a month and a half. He wanted me to fly with new pilots only. So a new pilot would come in, and we had two come in right away almost. Mr. I forget the one gentleman's name. The other one was Dumas. But I would fly with one on one day and fly with the other one the other day and vice and versa. The days they weren't flying with me, they'd be flying with another AC. But it was my job to teach them combat flight, combat autortations, combat takeoffs, how to get in a hoverhole, those sorts of things. And you're still doing your normal mission. Oh, yeah, well, you just have to fly with the new guys.

Yeah, yeah. You just, you fly the normal missions. Just now you've got really new guys flying with your right seat. On May 4th, 1969, two aircraft from our sister company, company B joined a formation with a second aircraft in a right echelon to the first. The second aircraft attempted to pass the first aircraft on his right side. There was a miscommunication between the two aircraft resulting in a mid-air collision. All crew members on both aircraft were killed. Yeah.

Yeah, when you flew formation, you flew it by SOP. But if you were going to do something outside of the normal formation flying, like trying to pass somebody on the opposite side, you had to be sure and communicate with them so that everybody understand what you're going to do. And evidently, there was a lack of communications with these two guys, and one flew right into the other. You know, you had to worry about getting shot at. You had to worry about the aircraft maintenance failure,

and you had to worry about somebody flying into you. Yeah. I was telling you earlier that pilot was never really my kind of thing. Like I have no desire to be a pilot. That's like a couple of the reasons right there. I don't like relying on some big machine with a bunch of parts that I don't understand. That's going to keep me alive and keep my friends alive. I don't like that.

It was just a matter of trusting each other. Yeah. I trusted 100% the guys in our unit that I flew with. 90% the guys in other units I didn't fly with. But you had that trust and bond built up amongst you. You all went to the same flight school. You all understood about what the different formations were. And so you didn't do anything radical.

And even when we would fly, you know, our company would fly with their company. Because we all flew by an SOP, we had a system. We understood the system. And so things were relatively safe. It's when somebody would go do something like this that's out of the ordinary that people got. killed. Yeah, and this is because everyone's relying on each other so much, I mean, it's similar in the SEAL teams.

If somebody, if somebody's outside, if the job is outside their capability, like, it's a non-starter. That's why I like, what I like what you guys had with the, with the AC, in order to be an aircraft commander, you had to get the thumbs up from the other ACs. There's a standard there that you can't compromise because it's truly putting everyone else at risk. That's right. Everybody.

Fast forward a little bit. Coming around the end of the valley, I climbed up the ridge and popped up looking south right down the runway. This is just out on another freaking mission, which you're doing all the time. There's a sniffer mission. On the left, specialist Linman started shooting. The sniffer team let loose with a 40 millimeter round. Under the bamboo canopy on the edge of the runway was a regular village of NVA soldiers lying around. Some were in uniform, some lying in hammocks, some cooking chow.

Tables were made out of bamboo as were chairs. They were totally surprised as were we. And this is their, they're occupying an abandoned airfield. Yeah. So that's why you see an airfield and there's NVA right there. Lobo on my left in the bamboo fire, I screamed as I increased power and airspeed rapidly, staying low to the ground. I had never seen so many enemy soldiers before. As soon as I spoke, 2.75 inch rockets were slamming into the bamboo and as NVA troops ran and dove for cover.

Lobo was firing ripple effect, automatically launching 28 rockets with just, Just one pull the trigger and punching the target. Then his mini gun opened on the tree line on my left as we were hauling ass down the runway. As we cleared the abandoned SF camp and runway, we stayed low level until we were confident we could climb to altitude and not get hit by a 51-cal machine gun. But something wasn't right and in the feel of the aircraft. The cyclic felt stiff and was getting stiffer. Mr. Corey, we have a problem. The housing for the push-pull tube is shot away and each time you move the cyclic control, it's binding the rods.

Can you fix it? I was surprised at how calm I sounded when I was shitting bricks here. No, sir, I could hold up the tubes, but then I would be flying the aircraft from here, he said. Well, what do you suggest? Slowly descend and find a clear area that we can do a running landing into. You might be able to raise the nose, but it would be a one-time move, not to be countered by attempting to lower the nose. Okay, I can do this. Running landings were practiced, and the further south I flew, the better terrain for this. A runway would be nice, but the closest was Song Bay. and it was laid out east to west, whereas I was flying north to south. That ain't going to work. Guys start looking for an open area. What about the road? Bruce said. He was now on his third cigarette since I had taken the controls. Damn, he better save a couple for me, I thought.

In the distance, we could see a straight stretch, but the trees were close and the sides were lined with bamboo. It's going to have to do. I want everyone up forward and seatbelts on. Linman make sure everyone is strapped in tight. As I got to tree top level with the road under the chin bubble, I used. started easing up on the nose up slowly the air speed began to bleed off 80 knots 70 knots 60 knots And our speed continued to drop we were slapping the tops of bamboo stocks now 20 knots Bamboo stocks were breaking off and I could feel the main rotor buffeting as we hit thicker vegetation

I just didn't want to know what kind of vegetation at this point just don't let us hit a hardwood tree trunk and rip the rotor head off At 20 knots the skids touch the ground and we're sliding along steering with the pedals to maintain a straight line. Broken bamboo was whirling about as if it was in a tornado. As the aircraft came to a stop, I was shutting the engine down while Lindman and Dietrich had the guns in hand with belts of ammo in their arms, and we were unassing the aircraft as Mike landed right behind me. He didn't worry about tree limbs. One look at my rotor blades told him that I'd cleared out everything for him as if a giant lawnmower had passed over the bamboo field. As Mike flew us back to Song Bay, Dietrich had asked the question that I knew was coming.

Hey, Mr. Sinky, was that your first time shot down? Bruce walked into it. Yeah, I've only been in country a couple months. Thank you, sir. You're buying the beer tonight. I considered it. I considered if I should speak up as well as it was my first. Then Mike spoke up.

Hey, Mr. Corey, that's your first too, isn't it? There will be lots of free beer tonight, guys. I started a protest, but to no avail. Yep, yep, yep, yep. They took a, we took one round. It's all it hit us, but it. hit right on the housing for the push-pull tube for the cyclic. So every time I moved that psychic, I can feel it's starting to bind up.

I didn't dare try to move it left or right because I did not want the aircraft in a turn. And so I just kept moving it forward and back. Finally, we just found a straight stretch of road and said, okay, let's go down the road. And we practiced running landings all the time. So that was no big deal. I was just worried that I wasn't going to get that nose far enough back up to slow the aircraft down. Last thing I wanted was be doing 60 knots sliding down that road on my skids. So making sure we had enough room to ease that nose up and keep that aircraft from sliding too fast.

But, yeah, Mike saw us go down. He heard the May Day. Lobo put out a May Day for me as well. And they got in. Four hours later, Schnook came in and picked the aircraft up and flew it back to Likahe. Yeah, that's what's crazy. These helicopters, you get shot down and you just leave the bird and then a C.H. 47 would come in, strap on to the thing, and take it home.

Well, what would happen is that a bird would go down and first of the ninth calf, they always had a rapid reaction force. It's called their blues. And they would fly in that rapid reaction force into where the aircraft was if it was salvageable. Set security? Yeah, set security. And then they'd hook the aircraft up to a CH 47, and 47 would pull the aircraft out and fly it back to its own base.

And that's all they did with this one. They replaced the rotor blades. They replaced the bell housing on the bottom, and that was it. two days later that bird was back up and flying again. Now when you, did you get that, do you stay in your own bird like all the time? Are you always flying the same bird?

Yes, unless it's down for maintenance for some reason. So then you get some other random bird, are all the birds a little bit different? Yeah, they were pretty much laid out the same. I mean, there were a little corpse about them,

but nothing that you'd really notice. We had, we had outboard motors, right, for our zodiac boats. Yeah. And they, even though they're all from the same company, and they're all supposed to, like, we had names for them, you know. And they would all be just a little bit different.

Temperamental? Temperamental. Like, there's one I remember is called Frankenstein. You know, it was like the one that was, it was all, it looked like it would never run, but it was the most reliable. But you, but for you, you didn't care if you got a different bird other than hard luck. Yeah, yeah, I didn't care. We'd fly anything.

What you didn't like, though, is you got a different crew chief. You always got a different crew chief and a different gunner Because the crew chief and gunner always stayed with their aircraft If the aircraft was down for maintenance They were down for maintenance as well Helping them get the aircraft ready So that's the only thing I didn't like about Is I had to learn different crew chiefs and different gunners

But otherwise, yeah, the aircraft were pretty much the same Are you, so you're flying This is analog flying, right? I mean, this is you're moving the stick And it's moving a piece of whatever cable That's moving something It's moving a tube It's moving a tube, but that's what it is.

So is a Black Hawk the same thing? Is a Black Hawk? Is it analog like that where you're actually moving a gear somewhere or moving a cable or moving a tube? I think so. I'm not sure about the Black Hawk. But on the Huey, it was always tubes. The only place you had cables was back in the back and the tail boom and it was a cable, two

cables, two or four, I can't remember. I think it was two cables that ran down the tail boom. back to the tail rotor. But for the cyclic, the collective, and the pedals initially, those were all push-pull tubes, they were called. But it's all mechanical. It's all mechanical. It's all mechanical.

There's no, is there anything like power steering? The only thing that was at was the governor. The fuel on the Huey that was controlled, the throttle was controlled by a governor. So once you started the aircraft up, you brought the throttle up all the way, and the governor would stop it at 6,600 RPM on the engine. and you had a governor control switch. If that went out, then you had to fly the aircraft manually. And you learned how to fly it manually with the TH55 in flight school.

But on the Huey, that was really sensitive with that trying to fly that thing with the manual control on the throttle. But that's the only thing that was automatic, so to speak, on the Huey was that throttle control. Man, these are some like durable beasts. Oh, they were. The Huey, the cobra gun ship. the old Charlie model gunships, they were just great. I mean, Bell helicopter built a great aircraft for us. And it did well.

The Hughes built the OH6, which you see those with the MH6s now in Task Force 160th. The OH6, guys loved to fly that thing because if it got shot down, it would crash, the rotor had come off, the tail boom, come off, and it rolled like an egg. and so guys really they they didn't mind well they did mind getting shot down and crashing but their survivability rate was really good in the oh h6 all right um going back to the book here you take some leave and and while you're on leave you know you go to where you go to dc baltimore area dc yeah yeah mom was going to college at the university of maryland um and then you know you spend some time with Mary. Is that right? Yeah. Spend some time with Mary, get to know her, and then...

Let me give you some background on Mary. What's here about Mary? I met Mary. Dad was stationed in Morocco. Your dad. My dad. And 67. Yeah. And I went back to Morocco for Christmas of 67. met Mary one night in church. In Morocco. In Morocco there. What was her parents doing? They were stationed at the same Navy base. It was a communications base.

So she's another Navy brat? Navy brat. And the base is no longer there. It was at City Aia, outside of Kenetra. But I met her at church. We went out for a ride my dad's MG the next day. And that was it. And then a year later, just before I went to Vietnam, I came back and met her parents,

saw her parents and everything, but she'd already gone back to the States. And so when I came back from Vietnam the first time, damn, you go all the way to Morocco and Mary ain't there. Yeah, Mary ain't there. And so I came back to the States and mom said, hey, why don't you go down and see the Simmons? And I said, yeah, we used to live in Virginia Beach

with the devastation on the Cobbler, SS 344. So I thought, yeah, that'd be kind of cool. I had to go back and see Norfolk. So I went down there and met her, and we got kind of hooked up then. and that was that was while you were on leave yeah that's why I was on my extension leave got it so that's you know kind of a mission accomplished there yeah yeah state side mission accomplished you you come back from leave and you you mentioned that you were ready to go back from leave

you were ready to go back yeah I was ready to get back I just I was climbing the walls a little bit um you get back there hey I read in the paper in DC that an aircraft went down. Was it one of ours? No one said anything, but everyone looked uncomfortable. Finally, someone 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? What the, what happened? I asked. I was in total shock. They were on a resupply over a hoverhole. The gooks opened fire on them on their third pass and they crashed into the trees. Grunt said that 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, Linman. Linum. Is that how you say his name? Linum.

Linum. And Dietrich were on board too. Sorry, they told me. I didn't know the co-pilot who had arrived the day after I'd left to go home. The AC, like all our guys, was a good mind. man. He had just received a dear John letter from his wife telling him she was getting a divorce. I guess she didn't need to know. I guess she didn't need to now. I raised my glass and they joined me to absent comrades. So the guys Linum and Dietrich who you just went through that, was that called

a crash landing? What you did? Yeah. Yeah. You went through that crash landing. You go home and both those guys get killed. Yeah. And the thing that struck me was that here I'm in Washington, D.C. I'm reading the paper in the morning and it's talking about this helicopter shut down 100 miles north of Saigon. I'm thinking, what's so unusual about that? I mean, helicopters getting shut down all the time in Vietnam. And it just kind of struck me odd that that would be there. And then I get there and I find out it was my own aircraft. There's a chapter in here called Stand Down and it really points out the importance of crew rest. You guys were run ragged. I mean, you go through one point where you, you're in a helicopter flying. You wake up.

Yeah. And you see that the person, well, I guess it's the lead pilot, the co-pilot is also asleep. Yeah. And the crew is asleep. Yeah, that happened. We had a policy. It got to the point where, you know, earlier you said in the book, you know, if you had 140 hours, you got a couple of days down. I was pushing over 160 hours.

And it got to the point where most of the pilots were the same boat. We were short of pilots. We were training our crew chiefs to fly the aircraft because it was getting that desperate. it. So what we did was if we were flying a long leg, one pilot would sleep, the other would stay awake. And so that's what we were doing. Well, he was flying. We were coming back at night, beautiful night to fly. And I told us, I said, I'm going to catch some sleep. He said, okay, so I closed my eyes and right away fell asleep. Well, something told me to wake up. And I kind of woke up and looked around. And it may have been one of the first indications of a problem is a change in sound in the aircraft.

you know if suddenly the engine's quiet you know you got a problem but there was just you really listened to sound in the aircraft and that would that would tell you something's wrong a whistling sound you just got a bullet through the rotor blades so something just woke me up and I just sat there and just kind of looked around everything looked great and I looked over at him and I thought I wonder what he's looking at and his head was down and then I realized he's asleep and we just sat there and the aircraft was flying along perfect and then she just and I suspect what happened is that he probably just let a little pressure off his hand and the cyclic just eased forward a bit because the nose started dropping. We started picking up speed and pick up speed sounds going to change and

the aircraft started vibrating and then he woke up and looked over at me and I went you had a nice nap so yeah we got back in that night and the medical officer came out and they they stood the whole unit down because I was the third aircraft to come in that day and the other two aircraft came in and pilots both declared that's it we're done so the medical officer came out when the company commander came out and they grounded the whole unit you guys end up getting a valorous unit award yes yes we got a valis uniform for the action on 6 March 69 um here's another thing that happens uh you're in for a briefing mr corey 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 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. So you alluded to that earlier where the real life officers were the only ones that could be flight leads. And now, like you were saying, you're so under man that they open it up. And you and one other guy get to be the first warrant officer flight leads.

Yes, they changed the policy because we're just, we were so short of officers. We didn't have any experienced officers that were ready to take over flight lead positions. So the company commander, he went to the brigade commander and said, hey, We got to start letting the experience warrants. You know, he said, I got, I got two warrants that are over, over 12 months in the unit. And these guys know what they're doing. You got to, you got to open the policy up. And the brigade commander, Colonel Suchek, really a good guy.

He said, absolutely, open it up. You said you were training some of the crew chiefs to become pilots. Did any of them ever make that transition while you were in Vietnam? Oh, yeah. They could, they could, they could, we would train them sufficiently to land the aircraft, not hover, or running landing. But we always felt that if somebody got shot, if both pilots got wounded, somebody's going to have to bring this bird back. So we were trained the crew chiefs to do running landings.

My crew chief was pretty darn good at it. And one crew chief, I think it was Grossman. He came back and went to flight school and graduated from flight school and came back to Nama as a pilot. Here we go, another mission. And look, I'm covering a tiny percentage of this book and just trying to figure out which one of these freaking crazy missions to highlight. I just it's like throwing it's like a roll of the dice to pick one they're all they're all nuts here's one at h minus one the doorgunners open fire concentrating on the tree line as we touched down the grunt started off the aircraft that was when a sledgehammer hit the side of the aircraft one two times and then i lost count the engine started winding down the rotor r peter's started dropping as the engine RPM went to zero we're taking fire screamed peters it was on his side of the aircraft and it was concentrated on our engine his gun

was ripping through ammunition. Get out. I yelled. And we began unassing the aircraft. Chalk 2 was leading the rest of the flight out. We were now on the ground with the grunts. Peters was on his M60 machine gun and I told him to get down. No need for him to sit in the gunner's position and be a target. To his credit, he did and took his gun with him, dragging ammo as well. Specialist Love Lace was doing the same. The cobras were coming in around for a second pass and using the remaining rockets and 40 millimeter ammo that they had. Rattler 6 was on the ground next to me and began calling for artillery support. As the second flight

came into view, the artillery silence and the anti-aircraft gun that had worked us over, as well as the small arms fire that was coming from the trees. We remained in the LZ until the third lift and jumped on an aircraft to get out. Already the battalion commander had notified brigade that an aircraft was down in the LZ.

A recovery team was getting ready to come and get the aircraft and fly it back under our CH-47. A new engine would be installed that night and that aircraft would be flying in the morning, Hopefully. Flying back, love lace turned to me. Damn, Mr. Corey, you're psychic with your feelings.

And that's something I kind of skipped over. You have a whole chapter that's called psychic. So you had some kind of whatever, six cents about, I don't think things are going to go well. I, the first time I happened, I went out to the aircraft one day and just didn't have a good feeling. Got shot up bad that day. and it happened a second time. Third time I came out to the aircraft, I asked Love Lace, I said,

hey, how's the aircraft today? He goes, you got your feeling, don't you? And I kind of lied, and I finally said, yeah, it's going to be okay, guys. I just got a strange feeling. That strange feeling hit me six times. And it just, I would go out to the aircraft and I would just have this feeling of dread for that day,

and lo and behold, we'd get hit. And I just think I'm a believer in the supernatural, and my patron saint is Saint, Padre Pio and I just think Padre Pio was watching over me. He blessed me when I was a little kid and I think he was just watching over me saying, hey, be careful. Okay. Well, I was going to ask you like what, I appreciate you, St. Pio, but just letting me know that I'm going to get shot up.

I need a little bit more than that. Just let me know it's not going to hit me. Yeah. So six times you had that feeling. Yeah. And each time you had that feeling. We got living daylight shot out of us. Didn't lose anybody.

Did you ever have the feeling and it didn't happen? Yeah, yeah. See, I had a guy, I had a guy named Johnny and the great guy, but man, every time we rolled out, he thought we were all going to die. Every time he'd go, he smoked, chain smoked, and he said, he go, tonight's tonight, sir, I can feel it. This one, you ready? You ready? Because it's coming. Every night.

It didn't matter what we were doing. We could go to the logistics run. I got a bad feeling about this one, boss, this is coming. You like, you like this, Jacco? You like where this is going? I'm like, okay. So I had to take that in Australia. I didn't have St. Peel.

I had St. Johnny tells me we're all going to die. And you know what? That guy went out on every single mission. And as a matter of fact, this is on my first deployment to Iraq. And my senior enlisted advisor said, hey, man, you got to get Johnny out of here, man. Get him on the first. Because, you know, it takes a couple weeks to get everyone flown home.

And I said, uh, I said, hey, you got to, you know, talk to Johnny. Get him on that first bird out of here, man. He's going to, you know, he's, he's, he's losing it. And I go, he's not going to want to leave. And he goes, he goes, you need to, you need to get him on a plane. And I said, I'm not going to put him on a plane. He's not going to want to leave. And he goes, well, just ask him.

And I go, all right, fine, I'll ask him. So I go up to Johnny one day and I said, uh, I said, hey, Johnny, you know, the first, first planes are heading home, uh, you want to be, you want me to get your seat on that plane. He goes, fuck you. I was like, Roger that, just checking. And sure enough, he was all the last bird home, you know, like he was, he was paranoid, but he was doing his job and didn't want to go home. We had a, we had a warrant officer that come into the unit, and he flew, made aircraft commander,

and never flew a combat mission after that as aircraft commander. He would take the aircraft out, and within 30 minutes, you know he'd be coming back in complaining about something wrong with the aircraft. And finally, they made him an assistant ops officer. officer and he served as assistant ops officer, but he never flew a combat mission again. Yeah, bad feeling. Yeah, he just, I would say he had a yellow streak. He didn't have bad feeling. He had a yellow streak. But yeah, well, that was the difference. Johnny had that bad feeling all time, but no yellow streak there. He was ready to rock and roll. Another one. On April 30th,

Arvin forces, along with some U.S. forces, crossed Parrot's beak into Cambodia. The Arvin forces consisted of 12 infantry battalions and three ranger battalions. The U.S. elements consisted of a brigade from the 25th Infantry Division, Tropic Lightning, and two squadrons of armed cavalry. Operation Rock Crusher was on. So here, this is the first major operation going into Cambodia. Because, of course, the SOG guys were going in there. Oh, they were in there all the time.

All the time. on May 1st, 1970 at 0710 hours, Company C, 227th, AHB, inserted an Arvin Airborne Rifle Company to secure a landing zone just across the border inside Cambodia. Once the landing zone was secured 605 millimeter howitzers and 355 millimeter howitzers, which would support additional insertions throughout the area of operations were brought in by CH-47 helicopters. Later that day, the 2nd Battalion 7th Cavary was inserted into landing. Zaneing zone X-ray marking the first American ground troops from the first cavalry division to enter Cambodia. Throughout the day, First Battalion 9th Cavalry flew reconnaissance missions, while elements of the 227th and 229th helicopter battalion provided lift support to Arvin Grunts and the 28th Assault Support Helicopter Battalion provided CH-47 heavy lift capability for the movement of artillery and other heavy equipment.

invasion of Cambodia Didn't know what was coming The night before I got called into the company Commander's office Me and Reynolds And a couple of the platoon leaders And he said

He poured eight drinks Scotch We're all sitting there looking at each other Like what the hell is this And wait how many of there was you? There was about eight of us in the room So one per guy Yeah one per guy

Maintenance officer Patoon leader flight leader leaves. And he said, gentlemen, I can't tell you where we're going, but we got a big lift tomorrow. And the maintenance officer had been real stingy about letting us take an aircraft. And he turned to the maintenance officer. He says, what's availability tomorrow? Maintenance officer said, sir, we got 21 out of 21. He says, good. And he turned to me and he says, you're chalk two tomorrow. If I go down, you take the flight in. I'm thinking, what the hell? He turned to Reynolds and he says, if Corey goes down, you take the flight in.

Okay, sir. He says, now I want you to get every one of your pilots and your crew chiefs up, and I want every aircraft pre-flighted tonight. I want maintenance to know right away if an aircraft's got a problem. But we're cranking 21 aircraft tomorrow morning. So the next morning we got up, all the birds cranked up, the boss, the CEO. He led the assault.

We went up to a stage field, and we're sitting there with our 21 aircraft, and here came Bravo Company. 21 and Charlie Company with their 21 and then 10 C.H. 47s and we had all of the loboes. That was 20 aircraft. And we had 20 aircraft and Blue Max. And we're sitting there going, what in the hell? We've never seen this many. The battalion commander shows up. He takes map board. He throws the canvas over the map board and says, gentlemen, we're invading Cambodia. The crew chiefs, crew chiefs and dorganis all got up and left and went back and started cleaning guns and cleaning ammo right away. And we did. We picked up an Arvin force and we flew tree top level.

The battalion commander was at 3,000 feet. He was navigating, telling Chalk 1, what his heading was, etc. And directing the artillery and the cobras. And we flew at about, oh, maybe 200 feet above the trees and punched across the border. As we went across the border, there was a road parallel at the border, looked down. There's a guy, NVA, and they're a cat. khaki uniforms, as far as you could see down the road, both sides of the roads, sling arms, and they're just standing there kind of shocked that all these aircraft are passing over them, went in, hit the landing zone, picked up, didn't take any fire going in. We thought, oh, this is great. It took a lot of fire coming back out across that road, but that was the

first day of the Cambodian invasion. We did three assaults that day, putting Vietnamese soldiers in. So it was a big day. Then things got hot the next day. Next day, the NVA were waiting for the helicopters, and we start taking a lot of hits the next days. It's kind of crazy. I always kind of joke about Hollywood. And in Hollywood, you know, they show like the platoon's about to go in and the commander shows up right as the birds are spinning, says, all right, gents, here's where you're going and here's the mission.

And I was talking about how unrealistic that is. But that's what you guys did. Well, yeah, kind of. In fact, I'm glad you brought that up because I've got two screenwriters and a producer right now. and the screenwriters are taking the three, they're taking two books, the first two books, and they're writing a screenplay.

And one of the things I've told them, I says, look, guys, I do not want this to be typical Hollywood. And they're good guys. Rich Graff, who starred in Making the Mob, New York. He played Lucky Luciano in that. And a guy named Rocky Carledge, and Rocky owns Ghost Walker Productions. And then my producer is Amy Soto,

and she's worked with John Malkovich, Mel Gibson, several of these guys. So there's a good crew. But I told them, I said, I do not want this to be a typical Hollywood movie. And I've given them a list of movies to watch. This is good ones. And this is terrible. I don't want these terrible ones.

So we've had some lively discussions about what will be in this movie and not in this movie. But yeah, Hollywood just makes it look kind of odd. But when you have an SOP, you're not. you can say, all right, this is what we're going to do, and here's how we're going to do it. And you don't take a lot of discussion with it. And some of that works out pretty well. It worked out well. For me, for one exercise where I found out my LZ, the Op4 Reserve was sitting on my LZ.

And I grabbed the flight leaders, grabbed the company commander, sat down, pulled the poncho over our heads, turned the flashlight on, said, okay, here's your new LZs. Any questions? No, let's go. So you can do that stuff if you have a system and if you have a good working procedure. But, yeah, some of the stuff that Hollywood puts out is just, ugh. Here's one. May Day, May Day, Dragon Breath, 2, 3 is bailing out and going down. Vicinity, and there's the grid coordinates.

You all are in the air, watch the parachute go down. So there's a guy bailing out of one of these. He's at Ford Air Observer. So what's he in an OVE 10? He was in, yeah, no, what was that twin-tailed Cessna? They had a push-pull. Yeah, yeah, I don't remember the nomenclature on it, but it was, it wasn't the OV-10, but he was in one of those when he went down.

So this guy punches out of his aircraft, and you guys are on this operation. Looking, watching this parachute go down, you know, tracking as it goes into the jungle, you're flying, you're looking for it, and here we go. as Captain Beauchamp slid the aircraft over the pilot. Sergeant West informed him, sir, the pilot appears to be out cold. He's just hanging there. Hanging in the tree there. Okay, we have to get him quick, Captain Beauchamp said,

surveying the ground for a place to land. There wasn't one. As the vegetation wasn't dense, but the trees were 30 feet high and close enough together that they didn't offer a clearing big enough to land in. West had already climbed into the cabin area and was preparing a 200-foot repel rope that was maintained in the aircraft. Sir, I can get him. And with that, he dropped the rope and was prepared, preparing to go down.

Okay, but, and West was gone. He'd forgotten to put gloves on and his hands were paying for that mistake. How am I going to get him out? He said more to himself than anyone particular. Jameson, you keep an eye on him and keep him covered. Captain Beauchamp said to the door gunner, dropping the 70 feet or so, West sprinted to the pilot, who is still unconscious and hanging in the tree only a few feet off the ground.

Small tufts of grass and dirt were being kicked up around West as small arms fire was directed in his direction Damn parachute release won't release son of a bitch. Damn it Come on West screamed hoping the pilot would wake and give him some assistance. He did not Got to get a knife pausing at a low crouch West waited a moment before he sprinted back to the aircraft Which was still at a hover engaging the NVA position as he ran West made a cutting motion hoping the gunner or co-pilot would recognize the signal and drop a knife they did picking up the knife West didn't hesitate to sprint back to the hanging pilot cut him free and throw him over his shoulder just then an RPG round slammed into the tree the pilot had been hanging in with the pilot over

his shoulder in a fireman carry position West ran for the aircraft and the dangling rope grabbing the rope he wrapped it around the pilot and himself and motioned for the aircraft to take off. West didn't have time to tie a knot, but only had the rope wrapped around himself in the pilot. Because of his rope burned hands, West couldn't climb the rope, but prayed he could hold on long enough to get safely back to ground. As the aircraft climbed out and built up some speed, small arms fire continued. Captain Beauchamp didn't fly, couldn't fly with any speed as the drag on West and the pilot would be too great and pull them off the rope. West was dangling about 70 feet below the aircraft, which was flying over the jungle at two to 300 feet.

Helicopter crews did not have parachutes. As West cleared the trees, Captain Beauchamp nosed the aircraft over and began picking up speed all the while praying West didn't fall. Everyone was well aware that if they had an engine failure or any other emergency, West and the pilot wouldn't survive. Arriving over a clearing, Captain Beauchamp lowered the aircraft to place West and the pilot on the ground and then the aircraft. This was an unsecured clearing, only about 1,500 meters from where they picked up the pilot.

Detaching the rope, West and Jameson quickly loaded the pilot into the aircraft and departed for LZ Center, where the unconscious pilot was quickly transferred to a METAVAC aircraft that had been requested. West resumed his duties as crew chief. West went on to receive, he was put in for the Medal of Honor. It was downgraded to the Distinguished Service Cross, and he spent 20 years in the Army, retired as a command sergeant major, at Fort Eustace, Virginia. Yeah, that's a crazy story. And the crazy stories just kind of continue.

They just kind of continue throughout this book. Just incredible heroics on every page. You end up getting commissioned. You end up getting commissioned. Now, do they commission you as an infantry officer while you're there? or does that, is that orders that you get that you have to wait for? No, no, I got commissioned while I was there as an infantry officer. Battlefield commission, basically.

Totally surprised the living daylights out of me. You know, what had happened, I got, I was getting calls that morning. I got a call for somebody saying, hey, Mr. Corey, understand you're going to a battalion. I said, what are you talking about? I'm not going to the battalion. Yeah, it's, understand you're going out to battalion. I'm thinking, that's impossible. I extended to stay in the unit.

Well, a little while later, my platoon leader, Beauchamp jumps up on my skids as I'm getting refueled and he taps me on the show. He says, Dan, I hate to see you leave. You know, send the good missions to us when you get up there on battalion staff. I'm thinking, oh, cribe. My tune leader is saying this might be true. Throughout the day, I keep getting radio calls. Hey, Dan, sorry to see you leave, humma, hama.

So that night I get to the, you know, I get back in. I'm really dejected. I'm feeling down. I throw my gear in the room. I'm going to go over to the bar and get a beer. Company commander walks in. He says, hey, everybody get a beer. I need your attention.

So I'm thinking, oh, crap. So he gets in, he says, hey, I got good news and I got bad news. He said, the first good news, first bad news, okay? He says, Corey, come up here. So I'll go up there and he says, you all know Corey's been with us now? What, 16 months, Dan? I said, yeah, it's been about that, sir. And he says, you know, everybody's flown with him.

You've done a great job, humma, hama. But it's time for you to leave. So we're going to miss you, Dan, but we know you'll go forth and do great things for us. congratulations so I go back up and get on my bar stool I'm sitting there and he says now we but the good news is we got a new new guy it's arriving it's got about 1600 hours of flying time and a lot of experience and that's what we need guys are a lot of experience here in the unit let's welcome the new guy lieutenant Corey and I'm sitting here at the bar and I'm not facing him facing the barmaid I'm going lieutenant Corey that dude's got the same last name as me I wonder

where the hell he's from I turned around and everybody's looking at me and the old man looks at me and he says come up here lieutenant Corey and so I thought wait a minute they're talking about me so I get up and walk up there and he congratulated me and somebody had put me in for a direct commission of first lieutenant so I was the first lieutenant in the infantry now is there no such thing is it how can you're not a first lieutenant pilot is that is that not a thing well see at that time we didn't have an aviation branch the army had uh they had all the other branches, but we didn't have an aviation branch. And there were some politics involved with that with the Air Force. And they did not form the aviation branch in the Army until about 1985.

And at that time, you had a choice. If you were an infantry officer, if you were another branch, you could decide if you're going to go to the aviation branch or retain the branch that you were in. And I retained the infantry branch because I lost the retina on my left eye just before that. So I wouldn't have been able to fly anyway. So I just stayed in the infantry. So back to the book a little bit, I mean, so you get this commission, you're still conducting all kinds of missions. I'm jumping through all kinds of missions. You're starting to get short, meaning you're close to heading home. Yep.

Picking it up here. I was in the Chalk 2 position, and it just cleared the trees and was really paying no attention to Chalk 3, who attempted to fly between two trees and caught a rotor blade on one. Yeah. To everyone's horror, the aircraft slowly rolled to the right, where the damage rotor blade made contact with the ground. When it did, the rotor blades began to disintegrate with pieces flying everywhere. Soldiers in the back began falling out of the aircraft, and they were the fortunate ones as the aircraft was now descending toward the ground. As the right side impacted, the transmission was ripped from its mounts and tore through the cargo compartment. As the aircraft came to a stop, the engine was still running, now at ever-increasing RPM, as there was no road. to turn or transmission connected, fuel began to spill across the engine. At this time, the aircraft were not equipped with self-sealing fuel cells that would prevent a major fire. The aircraft began to burn and burn rapidly.

As Bill had been waiting for chalk three and four to take off, he was only light on his skids when the accident happened. His crew chief, door gunner, and captain head immediately jumped out and ran to pull people out of the aircraft. soldiers on the ground also moved forward to assist. Lightning, and that was a call sign of one of the guys, was attempting to climb out but was dazed and having difficulty. Moving quickly to assist Lightning, Captain Head was having difficulty as well as the fire was now in the cockpit and spreading rapidly.

The co-pilot was consumed in the flames, as was the crew chief. The gunner could not be seen as he was under the aircraft, having occupied the right side of the aircraft that day. Finally, lightning was extracted from the wreckage and fire. Yeah, yeah. And that's the story that you told earlier. Yeah, lightning. His name is John Copenhaver, a great guy. And his nickname was Lightning because John just always kind of walk kind of slow.

Tid of talked a little on the slow side, but we all loved him dearly. And he was really a great platoon leader as well. But yeah, they hit this tree. And I was always worried about John and this particular right-seat pilot flying together. There had been an incident the month before with them flying together, and they lay down on some stumps. And there was just something about this right-seat pilot that the day I met him, I looked at him and said, this kid's not going to make it. There was nothing about him to tell me he wasn't competent. He was a halfway decent pilot.

He was a nice guy, but there was just something about it that told me he ain't going to make it. And so they had that first accident, him and John, and I was kind of concerned about them flying together again. But I didn't make flight assignments, so there's nothing I could do about it. And then they had this happen and hit the tree. And we got John out. We didn't get anybody else out. And John spent six weeks in a coma. And but he's doing quite well today.

He lives in Maryland, Rockport, Maryland, I think it is, but he's doing well. You say no one was in good spirits that evening, everyone in both. the officers club and enlisted man's club wasn't a sober mood. It heard even more when we were informed that the division commander's aircraft was missing and presumed crash. My good friend, Bill, do you say Michael? Michael, Michael, was the pilot. The division commander was Major General Casey, very much like division commander. Very good guy. Casey was a super, he had been the division, assistant division commander, and then moved up, took over as division commander, hadn't hadn't been a division committee very long, but he was a guy that was always out there with us.

You'd be in an LZ, or you get back to a refuel point, and there at a case you'd be, and he'd be talking to you like, okay, how to go, what problems you got? How's the aircraft running? Maintenance working okay. He was concerned. He was what everybody considered a good leader, and we were all very much down. We found that they crashed into a mountaintop in bad weather. Then this happens.

Lieutenant Corey, sir, you got your orders. You're going home. You're to report to Division Rear no later than tomorrow. We have a bird waiting for you at 1,400 a day to take you to Ben Hoa. What? What are you talking about? Sir, you are to report to Division Rear Casualty Assistance Office. You best get packing fast.

It suddenly dawned on me. Bill's parents had requested that I bring Bill's remains home. Yeah, I was close with his family. I stayed there before I went to Vietnam. And then when I came home and leave, and before I went back again, I stayed with his mom and dad. Great people up there. They lived in Monroe, Washington, outside of Snohomish.

He had a little brother that had just gotten into the Air Force Academy. Bill was really proud of Norm, and this happened, and they had me be the escort officer to bring Bill home. You say arriving at the funeral home, this is after you get back, arriving at the funeral home, I made sure Bill was settled in for the night. And then I was taking to Bill's parents' house in Monroe, Washington, mom and pop wanted me to stay with them as they considered me family. Two other couples were there with mom and pop when I arrived.

After putting my bags away in the upstairs bedroom, I came into the dining room where they were all seated. Dan, what are you drinking? Pop asked. I wasn't much of a drinker except beer, but took a scotch on the rocks. When I sat down, Mom placed her hand on mine and asked what happened. He was a VIP pilot. She was a tough woman, but I could see from the puffy eyes that she had been crying. I tried to explain as calmly in as much detail as I could what had happened. Bad weather, bad maps.

But I didn't have the heart to say that the generals probably flying the aircraft. Generals could fly but not in weather. And on top of that, Bill wasn't instrument-rated either, but could handle the aircraft in weather conditions. Then the hard part came. Bill's in the casket, but I advised that it be a closed casket ceremony, I said, before taking a sip of scotch. Why is that? asked Pop. Well, there was an explosion and fire. His body is in a plastic bag under a glass case.

On the glass case is his uniform with all his decorations. The glass case is held down by 300 screws. Opening the lid is easy, but not the glass case. The rest of the evening was spent telling good stories of Bill from flight school and our one mission in Vietnam together. Between drinks and teary eyes, we got through the night. The day of the funeral came and Bill's sister Judy arrived early

with her husband and children to cook breakfast the ride to church was quiet and we all sat together in the front of the church. It was packed as Monroe was a small town and everyone knew the Michaels. The preacher stood and gave the eulogy praising the work Bill had done in the community and for the nation.

He said that Bill was not afraid of death but loved life. few helicopter crews in Vietnam were afraid of death it was part of the job but they all loved life they were some of this nation's finest when the preacher finished six army pallbearers came forward hoisted bill's casket and solemnly moved outside to the hearse at the grave site i lowered my salute and accepted the flag from the commander of the burial detail executing a smart about face i walked over to mom thinking that this was one strong woman as I saw no tears. Standing in front of her, I knelt and said, on behalf of a grateful nation, I present this flag. That was what I had been instructed to say, but in my heart I had my doubts about this being a grateful nation.

Standing slowly, I came to attention and again raised a slow salute. In the distance, the command for the firing squad could be heard. and three volleys of seven rounds each caused many to jump as the 21 gun salute was fired. On the last volley of the three, the distant sound of taps was heard. No one held back tears at this point. I slowly lowered my salute, turned and walked to the side. My officials' duties concluded. As many started to leave, I came back, put my arms around mom,

and wept just like every other human there. And I weep to this day. Yeah, that was kind of a hard period for me going through the funeral with them. I picked Norm up at the airport from the Air Force Academy. They gave him leave, emergency leave, and he was home for that. And he struggled his first year through that academy because of this. But he got through just fine. He became a C-141 pilot.

And he went to work for the airlines, and he's retired from that now. So he's doing well. We stay in touch. And Mom and Poppet, they've passed away at this point. But Bill was a great guy. We got the chance to fly together one time. Had a kick day that day. Picked him up.

He'd never flown a combat mission. You know, flying VIPs around, that's all he ever did. So I picked him up, went out to a fire basin. They had a battalion commander out there. He was crazy as hell. Had a big red bow on the back of his helmet. I never asked him why that was there. But we get there and he says, hey, how do you feel about dropping bombs?

I said, sir, we're really not equipped to drop bombs. He goes, yeah, you're equipped to drop these bombs. He said, how do you feel about it? I said, well, yeah, we'll do it. So we get out to the aircraft and they got this box that's on one end of it's sitting on the floor and the other ends up on stands. And in this box, he's got about 6 81 millimeter mortar rounds with aerial bombs. confuses in the nose and tape tied around the tails.

And so what we did is we flew along 2,000 feet, and we went over these four crossing points on the river. And as the crossing point came up through the pedals, I would say, mark, mark, and they'd open the door on that box, and these mortar rounds would fall out at 2,000 feet. And it was just like a bombing run. And we did this about four or five times that day. And Bill thought, you guys are crazy. this is great stuff. And then we did a log mission that he'd never done before.

He'd never been down in a hook. How accurate were the orders? Oh, it was darn accurate. It was really pretty darn good accuracy. Kind of surprise to living days. But the battalion commander said, he says, I don't have any more is in this range, but I want the NVA to think

that we've got guys pretty close to them. So that's the reason we were doing that. And we did one combat assault, and Bill just, he was excited when the day was, we flew about 10 hours that day. But yeah, he really enjoyed that day. And it wasn't two months later that he crashed up there. So now you're home from Vietnam.

Yep. And you're now going to become an infantry officer. You talked about your retina. When did that happen? That happened in 83. Oh, okay. So you still could fly, but you still have to become an infantry officer? Is that how it works?

Yeah, I was an infantry officer. So I got home and went to Fort Benning, attended the infantry officer base of course. Went to Fort Lewis, Washington, took command of an infantry company up there. And then we formed the 9th Infantry Division up that had been stood down in Vietnam, but they stood it back up while I was there. So I was there as the aviation officer for the first brigade. So I was back to flying again.

Then I went to Fort Benning for the advance course. Then went to Alaska. Are they taking you with your combat experience and throwing you sort of in leadership position in these? Oh, yeah, yes. Company commanders. I got to Alaska and they made me the operations officer for the east. Air Cavs Squadron. So I was up there for that for a year. And then on a Friday night, I got a phone call saying, you need to report to Anchorage on Monday morning. We just relieved a company commander

of the airborne company. You're going to take command of the airborne company. Why do you get relieved? I didn't ask that question. Jack, so you roll in and take, so now you're company commander? Company commander of one of the airborne companies in Alaska. How did you like grunt work? Oh, I loved it. I loved grunt work. I enjoyed flying, but I honestly one day was thinking when I was flying, you know, I'm really a glorified Greyhound bus driver. And I saw all the things that was to do in the Army, and I wanted to do other things besides fly that helicopter. So when they said you're going to be an infantry officer, I had no complaints about that, and I loved grunt work. Commanding that airborne company in Alaska, people go, well, it's 30 below zero.

You're going to jump out of an airplane? Heck, yeah, let's jump. So I did that and then... So what year is it now? What year is this? That was 78. I was commanding the airborne company. 79, they made me the operations officer for the infantry battalion.

How was the post-Vietnam years in the Army? Terrible. Absolutely terrible. We didn't have any ammunition to train with. In fact, the soldiers, they would charge up a hill in a training exercise and they'd go, bang, bang, bang, 13 cents. Bang, bang, bang, 13 cents, because that was the cost of training rounds. 13 cents a round, but we didn't even have training rounds. It was really pretty bad in the Army.

We went through a period from 70 to 75 where we were rifting captains, and that just killed the morale in the captain's ranks. I was in the advanced course in 73. There at Fort Benning, we had 10, 200-man classrooms on one side of the building, 10, 200-man-in classrooms on the other side of the building, all full. All of them, infantry captains back from Vietnam. And on one day, they walked in, and from being a 200-man class,

every one of those rooms went down to be in 140-man class. Those captains were pulled out. They told you have 90 days to get out, or you can avert to being a sergeant, one of the other. Wow. So, and they did that for four years. So that really ruined the morale in the captain's ranks. So, no, it was not, the early years after Vietnam were not good years in the Army.

One more question about Vietnam. This is a question I bring up, and you already talked about it, but you said most of the guys that you had, most of the crew chiefs, most of the, most of the support people that weren't flying, they were people that had volunteered. Was it, was it, if you were going to be a door, could you be just assigned a door gun, or was those all those people, volunteers. Doorgunners were volunteers. May they have been drafted and then they volunteered for a dog? That's what a lot of them were. They were drafted into the infantry. They did a tour in the infantry and then they volunteered to come be a door gunner. Got it.

Could you tell the difference between someone that was a drafty and someone that was a lifer? No. You really couldn't. The guys that were drafted and people said, oh, they had bad attitudes. I never saw it. They all had a good attitude. They were all in this together. Now, what did happen, guys that were drafted, and they came back from Namath, they still had a year left, they would send them to Germany. And theirs where the problems were all at in Germany. They had some big-time morale problems there. What are you going to do?

Send me back to Vietnam, bend my dog tags. It got to the point in Germany in the early 70s where the duty officers were armed with 45s. Yeah. They had one incident over there where a duty officer was stuffed in a wall locker, throwing out a second-story window. Yeah, the morale in Germany in the early 70s was not good at all. But in Vietnam, you very seldom saw a problem. I had one problem once in the aircraft where an E6 just refused to go to the field. Last I saw of him, the MPs had him, and they were driving away with him.

But that was it. So now we're in the 70s, bring us back to time, and just morale is horrible. It's tough, especially in the officer's court because of all the rifts going on. doesn't know he's going to have a job next month or not. What are they basing it on? How do you know if you're going to get rifted or not? You don't. It's not performance.

It's just numbers. It's, I would like to think it was based upon your efficiency reports. But we had a guy in my class had Distinguished Service Cross. They rifted him. What? Yep. Yeah.

All of us said the same thing. How in the hell did he get rifted? I mean, he's got the Distinguished Service Cross. This is in 73, and he got rifted. One of the guys that I work with, within 75, Charlie had, he had silver stars, a couple of silver stars, Purple Heart, a couple of distinguished flying crosses, got rifted. He's now, he got out and he became the, I think the eastern manager for Michelin Tires. But you didn't know. It was supposed to be best

on efficiency reports. And I think at some point in time, they just said, all these guys have got great efficiency reports. We just got to have numbers now. And if you're a reserve officer, Up until 75, you were definitely in the hunt to get rifted. Regular Army officers didn't face that. The next Rift, 76, regular Army officers were in that boat too. So, yeah, it's just, it got bad. So you're just keeping your fingers crossed, basically. Yep, yep.

I hope to God the Army never has to go through that again. Do you know off the top of your head how much smaller the Army got from 1970 to 1978? No, I don't. I don't. It's just a massive downsizing. Massive downsizing. I can tell you this. Today, you could take all the 11 Bravo infantrymen in the Army and put them in RFK Stadium

and you still have empty seats. So the Army is not nearly as big as it used to be. No, not even close. Not even close. That's crazy. Today we rely a lot on the National Guard and the Army Reserve and they've really stepped up. They stepped up in Desert Storm. And a lot of the animosity that existed in the 70s between the active Army and the Army and

and the Army Guard and the Army Reserves, a lot of that disappeared, thank God, during Desert Storm. Well, I worked with the National Guard all the time in Iraq, and they were freaking awesome. Yeah. They were outstanding, outstanding professionals. Yep, they've stepped up and done a great job. I was the aviation advisor from Maryland for two years,

and we had an aviation maintenance company that was fantastic. We took them down to Bragg every year. Fort Bragg always wanted these guys come down and work on the aircraft for them. They're just really super. So. So this time, you're continuing kind of up through the ranks. You do your company commander tour.

What comes after that? Company commander. Then I was an instructor at the Army Commandant General Staff College. I was a tactics instructor. And then I got tagged, kicking and screaming, to go to Germany as an exchange officer in the German army for two years, teaching tactics, interoperability issues with German forces. Then came back, went to Fort Campbell. and, in fact, we got a phone call in the middle of the night, and a guy called me, and he said, this is the personnel officer for the 101st Airborne Division.

How quick can you get here? And I said, sir, I can be there in five days. He said, start packing stuff. You'll be here in five days. I turned around on my wife and said, start getting stuff off the wall. It's where being transferred back to the States in five days. She started to laugh at me. 20 minutes later, the phone rang, and it was my boss.

He says, you are a relief from that assignment. Get the four Campbell as fast as you can. was that all about? There was something coming down and they needed me to be there to be the brigade executive officer for the for the second brigade. Did you know someone there? Was it one of your friends or something? Didn't know anybody. Just random. Just random. Branch pulled my hat name out of the hat and said get the Fort Campbell. And so what was your role then? I was the executive officer for the brigade, second brigade. Okay. And then I was at for two years and then I went over and took command of a third battalion 3-27th infantry for two years and had that during

desert storm so tell us about desert storm uh it got boring tell you the truth sitting sitting out there in the desert you know we've i i had the task force at west point training the cadets for the summer and uh my ex-o was sitting there he's reading the sunday newspaper and he says hey you know this what the heck's going on with iraq and kuwait so we read that and i said you know billy if they go into kuwait we're going to go to war. And I think it was two weeks later. It was in the Wall Street, it was in the New York Times. And two weeks later, we got the call, and I turned to Billy, and I said, let's get out of here.

So right away, we got the West Point staff. We planned out what we had to get done that week to get out of there. So when we got the call on a Friday night to get out of West Point, we were gone the next morning. And got back to Campbell, had three weeks back at Campbell before we'd shipped out to Iraq or out to Saudi Arabia. Well, if Saddam had attacked, we in the 82nd would have been speed bumps. And thank God he didn't attack. But we went up and sat about 60 miles from the border, and we had a defensive position set up there. And that's where we sat from August to February, January to January.

Oh, man, good times. Oh, yeah, sitting out there in the middle of the desert, you know. At least you were there in time for summer. Yeah, yeah. In August. Well, it made us appreciate when February, January rolled around. When you were now freezing.

Yeah, we were freezing at night. But yeah, we sat up there and just ran tactical exercises like we would back in the States. You know, it was different because we'd always trained in forests and woods and stuff like that. But we got up there and we said, all right, we're in a new environment. Let's learn how to do this new environment. So we spent a lot of time learning desert techniques, studying up on what the desert rats had done in World War II. Looking at some stuff that we've received from SAS about desert operations. And just started practicing that stuff.

And the kids did great. The soldiers did fantastic. And then the war kicks off. And did I get that right when I opened up? There was the largest airborne assault ever. It was the largest air mobile assault. Air mobile assault, sorry. Yeah, air assault ever.

And for people that don't know, air assault is with helicopters, airborne is with parachutes. Yeah. So it was the largest air. So what the hell did that look like? Oh, it was. You know, I talked about in the book about we had 60s Hueys and, You know, 10 schnooks and all those cobras, well, this made that look small because these were all Blackhawks. And Blackhawks.

Do you have any idea how many? I think, let's see, we probably had close to 80 Blackhawks. And 80 Blackhawks all taking off at the same time. And we took off from several different locations and then joined up in the air and flew in for this thing. And I am sure that the Iraqis that we flew over just kind of, oops. Oops. Because we got in there and there were four or five positions that were set up that we went into right away and took over. And what we did is we set up a big perimeter out there.

So we did you, you guys flew into Iraq? Oh yeah. Yeah. And then you hit the ground and your your mission tasking was to secure some positions? Our mission tasking was to secure this big area that right away they started flying in fuel blivets. and we were securing, for lack of a better term, a giant gas station for the Cobras. And the Apaches, the Apaches were flying out of there going after the Iraqi tanks and stuff. So we sat there for, my battalion sat there for two days doing that.

And then we flew out and went with another brigade to another location and secured that for the gas station. I was in a state of shock, though. We got to that second location. We were engaged in some Iraqis, and my S3 came up and said, sir, ceasefire. I said, what are you talking about? It's ceasefire. We're in the middle of contact here.

Sir, cease fire. It's where it came down from brigade. We have to cease fire. I said, you go back and call brigade for clarification on that. I'm not cease firing right now. Somebody's shooting at us. And he came back, he said, cease fire. So we were shocked after four days, this thing's over with.

And all the troops said this. Oh, it was a ceasefire because the war was over. Yeah, yeah. And all the troops said the same thing. We're going to be back here. sir we're going to what why are we doing we're going to be back here someday we can't stop now and we did that was that take any casualties i had one soldier dislocated shoulder that was it we'll take it yeah yeah in fact it was kind of kind of unique because when i when i took command of the battalion

my training guidance i gave it to the battalion and i said that in conclusion we will go forth we We'll win the last battle of the next war, and we will win the entire war, and we will bring everybody home. I didn't realize I was going to bring everybody home alive, but I was happy to do that, so that worked that good. When you were getting ready during that August to whenever the invasion kicked off, did you, were you thinking it could be a major battle and major casualties? So I came in the Navy in 1990, and I remember they were saying on the news, there's going to be

40,000 casualties in the first 48 hours. Yes. In fact, our operational plans, my last objective was the airport at Baghdad. We had planned it out that far as where we were going to go. And so when we got the word to stop after four days, we're going, what in the world has gone on? I have heard, because right now, I'll put a shameless plug in, I'm writing another three-book series on Desert Storm.

And I have found out my research. that one of the reasons that we stopped was because Turkey did not want us to overthrow Saddam because Saddam they felt was the only one to keep the Kurds in check. And Turkey said, don't go to Iraq. And then Schwarzkopf's guidance was kick him out of Kuwait. He didn't have any guidance supposedly to go after him in Iraq. So that's one of the reasons we stopped. But, yeah, we thought we were going to go all the way to Baghdad. Very disappointed that we didn't. Yeah, well, so what did you do after that? What was the next move?

The next move was to an Army headquarters that was worth those headquarters in the Army, and I did two years there after I got promoted, and then they said, sir, your next time is the Pentagon, and I said, I'll take the option, thank you very much. So I went ahead and retired, 93. And now you have two sons? Yes, two sons, both boys. Yeah, they're sons, they're boys.

certainly. Jay, he joined the Marine Corps Reserves while I was commanding, when I first got commanded my battalion, and I came home from a field exercise that just kicked my butt. I walked in the house and my lovely wife, Mary, is standing there and she got her arms crossed, and she said, guess what your son did? I'm thinking, my son, yeah. As far as I know, it's our son. I know that deal. So, Jay, what did you do? and he goes, Semperify. I went, you join the Marine Corps? He said, Dad, Dad, I joined the Marine Corps Reserves.

He just, he was in college. And he says, I'm just tired of going to school. I'm going to go in the reserves. I'll drop out of school one semester. I'll do my two weeks in the summer, one weekend each month. And, you know, I just wanted a break. So I said, okay, that sounds good. Mary's standing there.

And she goes, well, what if they have to go to war? and I said, Mary, the Marine Corps Reserve hasn't gone to war since Korea and nothing's going to happen. There you go. There you go. Eight them words. Thanksgiving Day, I'm standing on the Iraqi Saudi border and my brigade commander flies in. He goes, hey, you call home lately? And I said, yes, sir. There's a phone booth behind every sand dune out there. No, I haven't called home since we got here. He said, well, you need to call home when we get you back to Eagle. And I said, what's happening? He says, your son's unit got activated.

he's on his way. So three days before the air war started, I got chance to go down to where the Marines were at and I got to spend the day with him. I'm sitting there as we're leaving, and I'm looking at him and I'm going, damn, he's just a little kid. So I got back and I was talking to my brigade commander, Tom Hill,

and he says, damn, Jay just looked like a little kid. Tom reached over and tapped me on late and he says, every one of your troops is just one of those little kids. And I got, damn, he's right. I'm the oldest guy in Epitaph. He's right. They're all a bunch of kids. But Jay came through fine and then came back at a two-year RTC commission or RTC scholarship and came in the Army as an armor officer. And now he's in 06 in NATO headquarters in Brussels. Chris, he did the same thing, quit college, joined the Army.

I got a phone call from a recruiter one night and saying, hey, I got your son here. We're going to sign him up for four years. And I said, no, you're not. You're going to sign him up for two. And And Chris wound up back in my brigade, the first brigade of the 101st, and the scout platoon, got out, went to college, came back in on an ROTC commission infantry, and he just retired two years ago as a lieutenant colonel. And he got, he was in the infantry, and then he got over into strategic intelligence. A good friend of ours, Lieutenant General Friedovich, an SF guy, taught Chris going into Strat Intel.

And Chris has done a lot of work in that arena. there with you guys and some other people. So he just retired a couple years ago. It's back in the Pentagon doing the same job, back in the same office. So he can't wait to get out of there and come down to Florida. And what did you do after you retired? Two days after I retired, I started as a real estate appraiser. A friend of ours had an appraisal company and found out I was retiring and said, why don't you come do this. So I went up there and saw what it was about and thought, yeah, I don't have to work for the government. It's back in the town that we want to live in. makes a decent wage, so why not?

So went back up there, spent two years as an apprentice doing that, and then took my exams, passed those, and just kept doing real estate appraising for 20 years or so. And then at what point did you decide you were going to write the books?

We came down here in 20, or down here, we came to Florida, 2016. That's when I finally said, okay, I'm fully retired. Sailed my boat down from Tennessee, sailed it over, and my wife had a problem come up.

She couldn't get on the boat anymore. We had a 36-foot sailboat. So I thought, okay, I'm going to sell the sailboat. She can't get on it. We're not going to, can't do cruising. I was doing boat deliveries from Panama and Mexico, but she never went on those. But anyway, so suddenly I didn't have anything to do.

And we went down to the DAV, because to see about this retina. And we're talking to the guy, and he said, something about Vietnam. And I broke down. I mean, big time. And he said, have you ever been evaluated for PTSD? And I said, no.

He said, we're getting you evaluated. And they sent me over to the VA for an evaluation. I had always thought, and I hate to say this, but I always thought PTSD was a bunch of bull. I thought it was just a sham. And I'm sitting there with him and my wife and I'm crying. And they took me over there and I got evaluated and they put me in a 16-week program with a psychiatrist. And for about eight weeks, we spent one day a week, me crying and working through this thing.

So one of the things he suggested, he says, you know, why don't you write everything down that happened? to while you were in Vietnam. So I said, all right. So I started writing the first book. And at first I started to write it as an autobiography. And I thought, well, hell, nobody's going to read this. So I'll make it a novel. So I wrote it as a novel. And went to a reunion in 2019 of our unit. It's the first time I'd ever been to one. So I took the book with me and presented it there. And the guys loved it. And they said, well, what about this? What about what about this? what about this? Why didn't you include this? So I wrote the second book and did that and put that out there. And it's had great reviews. And then guys started calling me, hey, you know, we were in Lomsom 719, the biggest battle that Army Aviation has ever been in.

Why don't you write a book about that? So I wrote the second book or the third book and put that out. And now they've come back and said, well, we love the third book, but we want more of the wife's side as to what wives are going through. This battle's going on. They're hearing about it. So right now I'm drafting out a fourth book that'll be coming out sometime after I get this series that I'm working on now about Desert Storm. Anyone who kind of guided you through the writing process? There's a guy named James Rosen. And James Rutan, a couple of books, a couple.

He's got a bunch out there. And he wrote one interview with a terrorist. He was an interrogator, and he wrote that. And he wrote a couple of books. My mommy has PTSD. My daddy has PTSD. And he wrote those, and I read one of his boats. He's got a series called Rigged.

And I read that. And I wrote him, sent him an email saying, hey, I really enjoyed reading your books. Well, come to find out, he lives around the corner from me. And he called me up. He said, let's go to Buffalo Wings. We went to Buffalo Wings. And he's been kind of my mentor guiding me through on how to write the process of how to get published. And we published on Amazon.

It fixed me up with a great editor. She's really good. I drive her crazy. So he's been kind of guiding me along. And then I got this while here about we need to make a movie. And we're working right now on that with the two screenwriters and my producer. Any idea when that's going to come to fruition? Well, we're hoping to have the screenplay done by the end of the summer.

And the producer is putting together the package that we're going to start taking to the studios. I'm just hoping that I'll still be alive when we get it on the screen. You know, it takes, it's about a three to four year process I'm finding that to get a movie made. Yeah. No, I think that's a minimum. Yeah. And it can, the other weird thing about movies are you can, you can sell a screenplay tomorrow for millions of dollars and it can never get made. Yeah.

Yeah. You can just sit and someone, someone buys it from you and it just sits there. And that's the way it is sometimes. I would rather have it made than make a million dollars. And I know people are going to go. Yeah, right. I think our story is important enough that it needs to get out there. I've already talked to a couple of organizations. What money we make on this, a lot of it is going to get donated back to Army Aviation Association, the Wings of Liberty Museum at Fort Campbell, the American Huey Chapter 365. I mean, these are outfits that have been helping me out and stuff like that.

So that's our intent is to get a lot of this money donated back to those that helped us. Well, that's awesome. Look, we've been going for over three hours right now. I, well, I kind of, we should probably wrap this thing up. For people to find you online, I know you have, you have Matt Jackson Books.com. Is that the main place to find you? They can find us at www. Matt Jackson Books.com.

We're on Facebook, Matt Jackson. We're on Facebook Undaunted Valor. And very soon we are going to have a website for the movie. The Gal's effect, she sent me an email yesterday and I got to see her on Saturday. And we will have that coming out pretty soon. The books are all for sale on Amazon. That's who we work with for publishing and stuff. Yeah, and we'll have those linked up so people can just,

we have a thing on our website called Books from the podcast. We'll have all these on there so people can click right in and get the books. Echo. Yes. Do you have anything? I do. Okay. See, now we get to the real part of the air.

He seemed awful quiet over him. Okay, what's going through his mind? Okay, so when you started working with the screenwriters, right? And you were like, hey, these movies don't follow this, you know, BS, but these movies you sort of can. What were the movies that you kind of can? like that had some integrity with their presentation. Hacksaw Ridge. That's great.

One of the best ones is Hamburger Hill. I thought that was a pretty good production that they needed to focus on. One of the ones I said no to was, what was the Clint East one, where he's a Marine? Oh, heartbreak. Heartbreak.

Heartbreak Ridge. No, no, no, no. 1917, I thought was pretty good. Those are the three big ones that I've focused these guys on looking at. What about saving private Ryan? Oh, saving private Ryan's definitely. Good, right? Yeah, that's a great one.

All right, what about Apocalypse now? Absolutely not. What about Platoon? Batoon's a good one. Oh, okay, all right. Baton's a good one. You've never seen Platoon. You never have.

I tell you what. He was reprimanded. But you haven't seen Cobra, so. I haven't seen Cobra either. Of course. Yeah, when you guys watch Cooper, then. Yeah. You add it to your list.

Baton was one of the first good ones that came out. You know, Apocalypse Now came out. Yeah, because that came out in 75. Yeah, 75, and that was such, I don't want to say the word on the air, but absolutely not. I nearly threw up watching that. In fact, I never watched the whole thing. I watched bits and pieces here and there, and just that told me I didn't want to see this thing. But Baton came out, and it was pretty darn realistic.

I love the part where in Hamburger Hill, where they make them brush them, their teeth as soon as they arrived happened to us in Vietnam as soon as we got off the airplane we had to brush our teeth so you know stuff like that was pretty realistic to what was going on where apocalypse now was blowing smoke well when the joke that I forget who it was they played a joke and you said hey don't salute me that was that was our operations officer when I got there yeah okay so that's from a scene from Forrest Gump by the way yeah yeah yeah like don't salute me yeah except for he says it for real.

He's not joking. He's being serious. Yeah. And Forrest Kump was made way after, so that's interesting. Yeah. You know, I wonder if there's some sort of a through line or something. Well, I don't know. I'll call Tom Hanks up and asking me that question.

We had Gary Seneese on the podcast. He gave us a pretty good briefing on him. He definitely asked it. I like Gary's. You know, you cannot not like Gary Seneas. Great guy. Huge supporter. Huge supporter of the military and of America.

sir you got anything else you want to add no no you guys have i hope i answered all your questions just getting warmed up i would tell you of the three books people ask me this okay you wrote three books which one's the best in my opinion lomson 719's the best uh people that have read that have called me up and they said i'm crying i've read this thing it's intense and i will warn you right now if you thought the combat scenes and the first one were intense that one that one there is just unbelievable. It is absolutely unbelievable what those guys went through in flying that operation. I just can't say enough about it. The bravery, the determination, the dedication, the loyalty, the courage. Well, you know what would be awesome is if you've got any friends or you

know anyone that was there and they want to come on here and talk about it and talk us through the book, that'd be awesome. How many would you like to have at one time? I'll have them all at some point. You know, anyone wants to come on. That's what this podcast is for. I will, I will, I know the guy in particular that I will call him up and ask him to Phil come talk to you about it because he was in an integral part. He was part of the Comincheros. And they did a great job.

Of course, every one of the units, the blue dolphins, the Robin Hoods that were at Lycaid with us, one up there, they all just amazing what they did and how they did it. And, you know, when you go into a battle and you lose in 45 days, 600 aircraft, 1,100 crew members, and you still accomplish the mission. It's just unbelievable what they went through. But, yeah, I will call one guy in particular and see if he'll come out and sit down with you. Open invite to anybody you send me. The chair is waiting for them. It'd be an honor to have them on, and it's, you know, you're talking about it's incredible what they did.

But as far as I can tell, as far as I know. What you all did over there. It was incredible. And, well, thanks for joining us today. And more important, thanks for your incredible service and your incredible sacrifice. And we won't forget. We will not let it. We will, we will not forget what you all did.

And we will not forget your brothers that did not come home. Well, thank you very much, Chaco, for having me and for those thoughts. Thanks for joining us, sir. Thank you. And with that, Colonel Matt, Jackson has left the building and we are here echo Charles yes sir another guest another another another example of how much more we can do as human beings yeah something to think something for us to think about because we should want to do more right so yeah in our lives

we should want to get better and be better. Check. Any suggestions on how we do that? Yeah, plenty. But the part where, you know how when he was talking about, I forget the term, how they got a lower and they got to, you know, when you go through the jungle with the helicopter, I probably felt that part.

It was making me kind of nervous, like, imagining it. There's not a lot of times when I read stuff, and actually I didn't read those sections, because it was a lot of dialogue, and the dialogue would be like hold left, pull left tail, and, you know, just like this dialogue going back and forth. I didn't think I could do the dialogue justice. Yeah.

So I just asked him to kind of describe what it was like. But yeah, crazy, crazy stuff. The whole thing. Just the fact that those helicopters are basically like a 1968 VW bug. Man. Like they got an engine. They got a steering wheel. Just rolling.

You know, there's not a lot of, there's no computer. computers in those things. Yeah, just completely manually being maneuvered through space. And he made a good point, too, that, like, you kind of don't think about when he compared it to airplanes. Where it's like, bro, the helicopter is all you. The airplane, a lot of time, you can sort of let it cruise, you know? Yeah.

Where the helicopter is like, man, you. Can't wait to tell that to Dave Burke. Good deal, day, you know? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Either way. All right, cool. Yes.

We're all improving. I mean, hopefully. We're on the path. I'm on the path. I used to say maybe one way we could try and improve is seeing how quickly we could get through certain tasks.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, like efficient. Yeah, efficiency, getting more efficient as opposed to rushing it because we don't want to rush nothing. Or do we, I don't know, am I wrong? Should we rush it? I'm thinking we could probably move more of quickly. More efficiently.

I get it. I know you think that there's a bunch of people that are listening. They're not. They're not listening. They shot it off. They heard Colonel Jackson left the building. Like, oh, cool.

Let me get back 70 minutes of my time right now because I can just press stop on this podcast. All right. All right. Okay. I got you. I got you. Hey, look, we're all on the path. We may need some help.

How about that? We'll supplement ourselves with supplementation from Jocko. See that right there? That whole sentence did not need to exist. It exists. And it has massive value, first off. Okay. I'm just saying, look, hey, look, if I'm about to give you some help,

how not, how not fun am I when I'm, like, got stuff to do? Should I declare that I am here to help if you need help? Okay. Or could use help. I'm just saying. You know what you should do? You should tell us what we need to know. Okay.

All right. I'm over here trying, but you're over here, you know, being you. See, that's the thing. I bring this on myself. Yes. I should just be totally silent. Yeah. Well.

Okay. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know about all that. Okay. How can we help ourselves, Zako? Through supplementation. Jocko fuel.

You got problems with your joints or you don't want to ever worry about your joints anymore. Take super cruel oil and joint warfare. Boom. You want vitamin D3 supplementation, which is good for all aspects of health. If you care about that, which we do because we're on the path. Boom, Jocko is that as well. Also, you want some additional protein. We got milk and it tastes good.

How about that? It's true. Put a banana in there. That's what I did sometimes. Also, we got discipline and discipline go, which are at its core. I like the fact that I tell you to hurry and I tell you that everybody already knows all this. And you still tell this stuff to me like I'm hearing it for the first time. Well, you're looking at me like hearing it for the first time.

Yeah. Some of us either didn't hear it or it's cool to get a reminder. Okay. You see what I'm saying? Yep. All right. Everyone's reminded. Good stuff.

Yeah. Supplementation. Look, hey, get the discipline go. I was going to go into this earlier off air. But the, so if you drink energy drinks. Yep. Tradition. I don't care if you get the sugar-free one.

But it's like at a certain point, usually after the first one, if you tolerate, if you're even into it, after the first one, you're like, I can't do these anymore. At least for a day. Your body knows and it tells your mind, this is not good. That is the point right there. Yep. Yeah, it's like your body knows. Yep, your body knows that there's something wrong.

With this one, jaco, discipline, go. It, it, your body still knows. Your body knows it's good. Yeah. Your body says, hey, I can use a little bit more of that. So, bro, if you're listening to a four-hour Vietnam pilot scenario, bro, those things just keep rolling with a smile. I'll tell you that.

Yeah. Hey, if you want to get any of this stuff and you want to get it shipped to your house for free, go to Jocco Fuel. And then what you can do is subscribe. If you subscribe to it, it'll come to your house for free, anything that you want in this category of supplementation. You can also get the drinks at Wawa. You can also get the whole line at vitamin shop. jacofield.com.

Get some. Also, origin USA.com. You can get the stuff there as well. Also, jiu-jitsu stuff. When we're doing our jiu-jitsu, we want some new stuff, a new ghee. Just face it, we could have, with Colonel Jackson, we could have gone down. He's trained at the Kodokon, Judo. We could have gone down that.

Well, that's a two-hour, three-hour podcast. We didn't even get there yet. Because when that guy was coming, when, when Lieutenant Dickweed was coming at him. Sure, Dick Wheed. Right? That guy was about to get judo tossed right on his head. So that's what I'm talking about. So, Jiu-Jitsu, sorry.

But yeah, Origin USA, I'm saying if you, you know, you want to get some new jujitsu stuff, boom, that's where you Get it. All made in America, by the way. I say, by the way, but it's a huge deal. Here's the thing, though. Let's say you need stuff beyond just jujitsu stuff. Like, you got your jiu-jitsu stuff handled. You got the gie.

You got the rash guard. You still might need to go to the grocery store. You can't wear the ghee to the grocery store. What you can't wear is American-made jeans. Yep. Not to mention what you can make it as American-made boots. It's true. You can get it all there.

Yep. And don't think 100% work, industrial, like, It's that, but let's face it. There's some, I know you don't like the word fashion, but there's some fashion in there. Leave it to Pete Roberts. There's some function there. Okay, yeah, Pete Roberts bleeds over in some, some scenarios.

Put it this way. He added a significant amount of aesthetic value to both, by the way, jeans and boots. I don't agree. You just can't see that kind of stuff. No, it's just functional. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I said, like I said, you can't really see that kind of stuff. But nonetheless, it is there.

So, yes, Origin USA, that's the spot to get these items. Also, Jocko is the store So called Jocco Store This is where you can get your t-shirts That's say discipline equals freedom Good, deaf core Take the high ground Hardcore recondos

Hardcore recondos I like when somebody comes onto Twitter Or the gram and says You should make a shirt that says Back to the book Or you should make a shirt that says Discipline equals freedom Or you should make whatever right

Yeah And I go go jocco store.com Yeah It's already there Yeah I'm not saying we've thought of every shirt By any stretch No

But there's a bunch of shirts there Speaking of thinking of every shirt. So we've expanded into a subscription scenario. And this is where we can experiment, for lack of a better term, with all other ideas for shirts. Every idea. Pretty much. What's this thing called?

The shirt locker. See, that's a good name. What did you originally call it? I forget. That was a long time ago. I forget. You're trying to block that from your mind? Like I said, it's a good little deal.

It's fun. Check that one out. Again, jocco store.com. If you like something, you know, get something. You can also subscribe to this podcast. There's not just this podcast. Also, there's Jocko unraveling, myself and Daryl Cooper of Martyrmaid fame. Is he famous from Martyr Made?

Yes. In my mind, he is. You can check out Jocco unraveling. We're talking about a bunch of different things, historical things, and how they tie into what's going on right now. We've got the grounded podcast. We've got Warrior Kid Podcasts. Have some new episodes up there.

you can also check us out at the jaco underground.com jaco underground.com. This is, look, it's a, what do they call it? Paywall. I always say firewall. You correct me and say paywall. What's the difference? Firewall is a security thing. It has nothing to do with paying or anything.

So we have a thing that you can pay. It costs $8.18 a month. It's basically you're supporting this podcast. You're supporting all these podcasts that we're doing. and also we have a contingency plan in case we get removed for whatever reason or if we hear that other platforms are injecting advertisements into our podcast. We don't like that. I don't like that. I don't want to have Colonel Matt Jackson talking about flying a mission to Vietnam and have somebody edit in a freaking advertisement. So we don't want that.

We don't want that. So that's why we made jocco underground.com. We also put a little additional podcast on there just to say thanks. So we appreciate. If you're helping us out there, you're helping us remain free. So go to jocco underground.com if you want to help out there. We also have a YouTube channel. A YouTube channel because Echo Charles is a YouTuber.

Technically you're the YouTuber. Technically, so you know, hey man, cool. Get it. Charles is a YouTuber and he wants you to subscribe to his YouTube channel where he posts YouTube videos. First, okay, first off, the YouTube channel is called Jocko podcast and doesn't have Echo in there at all, ever, pretty much, maybe in some of the titles. Yes. What's the difference between a YouTuber and somebody that's posting YouTube videos? I don't think there is one.

Yes, there is. Well, I don't know. I guess if you go super. YouTube. YouTube. No, YouTuber is that that's their primary occupation is to be on YouTube. But then again, even that. Yeah, that is it, I think, as far as I know.

There's some really legit YouTubers out there that make freaking awesome stuff and post it. Yeah, fully. There's also a lot of YouTubers out there. It's hard to throw them in that same bucket with the awesome. Yeah. The awesomeness. So I think you're more in the bucket of like, you know. Wait.

All right, what's the next section? I'm not a YouTube. Anyway, all right, cool, good. I mean, you're a YouTuber. I'm a YouTuber. No, that's not our primary. So technically we're not YouTubers. We have a YouTube channel.

And it is, yeah, I think it's legitimate. Okay. So check that out if you want. Also, Psychological Warfare is an album that Jocko made. We made of Jocko telling you how to get through moments of weakness. I was actually telling you. Yeah, telling me. Now it's everybody.

Not everybody that wants to do. Because we all have them from time to time. So you'm saying. But yeah, you can get that anywhere where you get MP3s, whether it be Amazon, Google, play. Boom. That's where you can get them. Also. Also, you want a visual representation?

You want things to hang on your wall, basically. Yeah, fully. Go to flipsidecanvas.com. My brother Dakota Meyer, he's got a company Made in America, making cool stuff to hang on your wall, which is legit. A bunch of books. We've got a bunch of books. We got the books that we talked about today.

The book we talked about today primarily was undaunted valor and assault helicopter unit in Vietnam. There's also Volume 2 Medal of Honor and Volume 3, which Matt Jackson, Colonel Jackson said, was the best of the three about long. Lamb's song in 17, 718, largest air battle. Final Spin. I have a novel coming out myself, and it's a story. It's a book. It's a poem.

It's a new form of writing. Am I allowed to do that? We don't know. Yeah. I don't know if I'm allowed to do it, but I did it. It's a story. If you want to get final spin, if you want that first to dish, Boy, that first a dish is going to be legit.

All right. If you want the first a dish, order it because guess what the publisher's thinking? The publisher's like, well, you know, Jaco, you, you mostly write books about leadership. So, you know, what's this thing over here? They're not going to print enough. They're not going to print enough. And then it'll come out and you'll be mad because you've got the third a dish. Brutal.

Shame. Just shame. Leadership strategy and tactics field manual. The code, the evaluation of protocols, discipline equals freedom, field manual. Way of the Warrior. Kid one, two, three, and four, Mikey and the Dragons, about face. This is getting to be a long list, isn't it?

Yes, sir, it is. And then the original books, Extreme Ownership and the dichotomy of leadership that I wrote with my brother, Laif Babin. Also, we have Eschlon Front, which is our leadership consulting company. We solve problems through leadership. Go to Eshlonfront.com if you want us to help

inside your company. We have EF Online, which is online training for leadership. You can get your whole organization into the game. Go to eFonline.com for that. Muster our leadership events. We are executing. We didn't execute in 2020.

There was the virus and whatnot. We were about to execute one in 2020, and guess what happened? I got the virus. I got it. I had Ms. Rona. And so when I had Ms. Rona, I couldn't go spread it to everybody.

So we didn't execute any in 2021. We are 100% executing in 2020. 21. Orlando, May 25th and 26, Phoenix, August 17th and 18th, and Las Vegas, October 28th and 29th. Go to Extreme Ownership.com. Everything that we've done has sold out.

These are going to sell out too, especially because we got a little less people for social distancing and whatnot. So less seats, so they're going to sell out. If you want to come, go to Extreme Ownership.com, ASAP. We have EF Battlefield, which is us for this particular one. The next one we've got up is us walking the battlefield at Gettysburg.

This is a small number of people attending, very small. It's like 35 people. So if you want to come, go to eslamfront.com slash events. You can sign up for that, or you can sign up for the FTX. We do combat missions, simulated combat missions, to teach leadership. Awesome stuff. If you want to help service members active and retired, if you want to help their families. If you want to help Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom.

Mom and Lee, she's got a charity organization. And if you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org. And if you want any more, I mean, if you just feel like you need more of my protracted pontifications, or you need more of echoes confounding catechisms, you can find us on the inner webs, on Twitter. on the gram or on that Facebook. Echoes at Echo Charles and I am at Jocco Willink. And thanks once again to Colonel Matt Jackson for joining us and for writing these books, but most important for his service to America.

And we will not forget the fallen soldiers of the 227th assault helicopter battalion. Freedom is not free. And thanks to all the other men and women out there in uniform who are always on watch and ready to protect and defend our way of life. And that includes not only the military but also police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service. And all the other first responders, thank you for protecting and defending us as well. and to everyone else remember the price that was paid for our freedom. And in the book, Undaunted Valor, there's a part that I did not read today. This is where Dan Corey and his team fly to an outstation to pick up some bodies of two soldiers that were killed in action.

And then they arrive on scene. and the two fallen servicemen wrapped in ponchos are loaded onto the old Huey warbird. And Dan Corey whispers a prayer that he had written. He says, may they soar with the angels on wings of eagles. May they watch over those they loved and those who love them. may they rest in peace until we gather for the final formation. Amen. And that's all I've got for tonight. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.