ed the area around An Khe, secure being a very loose term, but we were responsible for base security, so we stood guard each night besides flying missions during the day. Some guys were really jumpy about being on guard at night. When we first got there, the only thing between us and Charlie was a single strand of barbed wire and those 101st guys. We got mortared that first night, and about every other night after that. The infantry had to string concertina wire around the entire perimeter along with the engineers once everyone got there, and that took some time. Over time, sandbag bunkers were built and slit trenches dug so when we got a mortar or rocket attack, we had someplace to go,” Kanardy added, “You just had to be sure you knew what slit trench you were getting into, the empty one for mortar attacks and not the full one for shitting in.” At this point he had the full attention of the younger soldiers. As the rain was still coming down, most of the maintenance guys that had some work outside were inside mesmerized by his story. The coffeepot was empty.
“Remember the mule?” Stevens asked.
“What mule?” asked Barry, looking for another story as opposed to an opportunity to go out in the rain and work.
Smiling, Kanardy looked up at the roof. “The colonel, don’t remember his name, put a mule on the Boxer. The mule’s name was Maggie. She was a beautiful white mule. The colonel says we’re Cav and therefore where we go, our mule goes. Well, Maggie is loaded aboard the Boxer, but no one remembered to bring hay or oats or anything. Before we got to Qui Nhon, we were at sea for four weeks. Maggie was about starved. We were bringing apples, carrots and anything else we thought she would eat just to keep her alive. Maggie was so happy to be back on the ground, but then what do you feed her? They don’t grow wheat or oats in Vietnam. Finally one night, some dumbass on guard got jumpy and shot the mule dead. So what does the colonel do? He arranges for the Air Force to fly in another mule, but this time arrangements were made to keep a supply of oats coming.”
“Where’s that mule now?” asked Barry.
“Shit, I don’t know. Not here,” Kanardy said.
“Hey, do you remember the shoot-out at Bear Cat?” Stevens asked with a bit of a laugh.
“Do I? It was two of my guys,” Kanardy answered.
“Shoot-out! What happened?” Kelly asked.
“We got to Bear Cat and that was the first time in a long time that the boys could go to a club that had females. Two of my guys take a fancy to this one Vietnamese chick and get into a fight in the club. Club manager tosses their asses out. What do they do? They come back to the company area and are still going at it over this chick they’re never going to see again. Things just continue to heat up and they continue to drink. Finally, it all comes to a head. Next thing we know, they’ve both strapped on pistols and are facing each other just like in a Gary Cooper cowboy movie. There they stand, thirty feet apart, half-drunk, shouting obscenities at each other and then…BAM BAM! They drew and shot at each other,” Kanardy explained.
“Holy shit,” Leitzen said as everyone else laughed. “No shit?”
“God’s honest truth,” Kanardy said. “One guy is shot in the leg, the other is winged. The CO is pissed but doesn’t want it to go up to higher as they’re both pretty good kids. Doc patches them up. The CO makes the guy with the clean leg wound his driver. The other guy was due to rotate home soon, so the CO just let him finish his tour with nothing but a royal ass chewing to both of them.”
Staff Sergeant Stevens was now deep in the reminiscing mode. “We had this one crazy dude back in sixty-five. Held the record for the most court-martials in his short career. His name was Frank Spade.”
“What did he do,” asked Barry.
“What didn’t he do would be a better question,” Dickson answered. “He volunteers to fly one day as a door gunner on a CH-47. They fly out to pull a rescue of a downed crew. They’re flying a CH-47 because it has the ladder that they can drop. Arriving over the downed Huey, they drop the ladder, and Spade and the crew chief climbed down to this downed Huey. Spade and the crew chief started carrying the pilots up. They return to the Huey and get the gunner and crew chief and bring them up. Then Spade has to go back down to retrieve this general that was a passenger with a broken back. Spade can see the damn backbone sticking through the guy’s shirt. The VC are moving towards the crash site, but Spade goes back down and gets the general who was in a lot of pain and really can’t do anything to help himself. Spade puts his belt around the general to hold him and grabs the ladder. Now the VC are getting close, so Spade tosses a grenade into the Huey and it blows big-time. The CH-47 takes off with Spade hanging on to the ladder and the general hanging on to Spade. Finally the CH-47 gets over a rice paddy and lands. You all know how the Vietnamese fertilize their rice paddies with human shit. Well, Spade lands right in a pile of it. He smells like shit when they finally get to a hospital.”
“Damn, he should have gotten a medal for that,” Leitzen said.
“Yeah, should’ve… but he blows it a couple of days later. Him and myself take a deuce-and-a-half truck to the supply depot in Nah Trang to get a load of sandbags. On the way, they pick up about half a case of Bami Ba and are sipping suds going down the road.14 Spade has one of the new M16s and decides he wants to try it out, so what does he do? Shoots a damn water buffalo for shits and grins. Some Korean general sees him do it and starts giving him crap about it. The general was in a jeep right behind us. So what does Spade do? He shoots the tires out of the Korean general’s vehicle! Before they get back to the company, the general is there and raising holy hell. Another court-martial. I was damn lucky Spade kept his mouth shut about the beer or I may have been court-martialed too.”15
“Don’t you people have something to do?” Mr. DeAngelo, the assistant maintenance officer from Alpha Company, had just walked in, looking to see where everyone was. “If you can’t find something to do, I’ll find it for you.” Mr. DeAngelo was a prior service NCO, who went on to attend warrant officer candidate flight school, so he knew all the tricks for getting out of work. There was no pulling the wool over his eyes. With that, the crowd started to break up, those with outside work reluctantly putting on rain jackets that for the most part were ineffective in the monsoon deluge.
Chapter 10
Learning to Fly
“I’ve been thinking,” Mike George said, dragging up a chair in the club and opening a soda.
“Really, did it hurt? What about?” Ritchie replied.
“Our crews fly every day with us, and right now when God decides that our time is up, automatically the crew’s time is up. Not fair. I know Cory taught Lovelace to make a running landing if both pilots were hit and if he could get into the seat quick enough—which, considering that both pilots are seldom taken out, except in the case of Hanna and Tittle, a crew chief or gunner should be able to get to the seat. If they know how to do a running landing, then they may just make it. They don’t need to know how to hover but certainly make a running landing,” Mike expounded thoughtfully.
“You’re a bit late thinking that, Mike,” Lou interjected. “Back in sixty-seven, we taught our crew chiefs to make running landings. I taught Jenkins when I first got him as my crew chief three months ago.”
“Does the CO know about it?” Mike asked.
“Plausible deniability. No, he doesn’t, and I’m not saying anything to him.”
Ritchie and Mike looked at each other. It was obvious the wheels were turning, but nothing was said. As Ritchie was getting ready to head home in a week, he would not be training any crew chiefs. He was on orders to Mother Rucker to be a flight instructor with a January 1 report date.
The next day as Mike walked out to his aircraft with Mr. Reid, his copilot for that day, he informed him of what he was about to do. Reid had a couple of hours under his belt, having taken his orientation check ride a few days earlier after arriving in the unit with Dorsey.
“We have a rather easy day scheduled for today, flying a psyops mission out of Bu Gia Map. Shouldn’t be more than a couple o
f hours. If we get released early, I’m going to put Kelly, our crew chief, in the right seat and start teaching him how to fly. You got a problem with that?”