An Assault Helicopter Unit in Vietnam (Undaunted Valor 1)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other small stuff began to appear as well.

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

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

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

“Yes, sir, we did.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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