An Assault Helicopter Unit in Vietnam (Undaunted Valor 1)

“Sir, I was seeing stuff up there on Night Hunter and thought it would be worth a look.”

“And was it?” he asked.

“I think so, sir. You’ve got a major concentration up there just relaxing.”

“I do too. Three,” he said, meaning the S-3 operations officer, “let’s get an air strike up there and see if we can’t get a LRRS team in that area. Thanks, Mr. Cory. You have a ride home?”

“Yes, sir.”

With that, my crew and I climbed into Mike’s aircraft and went home. Feelings would not leave me.

Chapter 28

Psychic

When one extended for an additional six months in-country, a free thirty-day leave was granted, to include a plane ticket to wherever in the world you wanted to go. Most guys that extended chose to go back to the States, but some went to Europe. Mom was a student at the University of Maryland in College Park. I thought I would just go home and hang with her for the duration of my leave. I would be leaving on my birthday in January, and the CO asked me to get one more pilot signed off as aircraft commander. I had three days before I was to leave. The night before, I had spoken with Roy about the upcoming mission.

“Roy, you good for tomorrow? I asked that we get a log mission and possibly an air assault as well.”

“Yeah, I’m good.” Roy was a man of few words, or maybe just a typical helicopter pilot, always brooding because you knew something was going to happen.

“We’ll be taking my aircraft, and Specialist Linam is the crew chief if you want to go over anything with him tonight.”

“Did maintenance get it back up today?”

“Yeah, they replaced the push-pull housing, two bolts, patched the hole, replaced the blades. That was all they had to do. Pretty amazing that one bullet could have done so much damage. I’m going to turn in.” And I headed for my hooch.

As usual, at 0500 hours, the ops clerk came and woke me up. Something wasn’t right. I had that feeling of a weight on my shoulders. I shrugged it off as just being tired. I met Roy in Flight Ops, where we got the mission brief and headed for the aircraft. Specialist Linam was already there waiting for us along with Specialist Underwood. Seemed Private Diedrich was on sick call that morning, so Specialist Underwood was filling in for him. Underwood was a good kid who I had flown with on a couple of occasions over the past six months.

“Hey, guys, Mr. Blevins is the aircraft commander on this one today. It’s his AC check ride. I’ll be flying right seat. What he says goes today.” I was pretty confident in Roy, so I was looking forward to a day of not being in charge for a change.

Mounting the guns, Specialist Underwood asked, “How you feeling today, Mr. Cory?”

“I feel good,” I lied. “Why?”

“Well, sir, no disrespect meant, but word is that you’re psychic—that you get these feelings and then your aircraft takes hits, li

ke the other day and the day Johnson was hit.”

“Well, to be truthful, I do have some feelings about today, but hey…” And I left it at that.

Linam and Underwood exchanged looks and started brushing off their guns again as Roy conducted and supervised the preflight. Once all was ready, we strapped in and headed north to Song Be. On the flight up, I quizzed Roy on flight procedures and what-if situations. He was nailing the answers, as I had known he would. I would have really been surprised if I’d tripped him up on anything and really wasn’t trying to do that. He was a solid pilot.

When we reached Song Be, we refueled the aircraft and Roy went into the TOC and got with the S-3 air for a mission brief, as we were scheduled to work for the brigade, which meant we would be resupplying a couple of units. One was a Vietnamese airborne brigade that had recently been attached to the division and was operating in the area.

The S-3 air saw me walk in and asked, “Mr. Cory, they have you back in the air already?” He had been in the TOC when my ship was downed.

“Morning, sir. Yeah, and my aircraft is back up flying. Had to replace the blades, but that was about it. Mr. Blevins is aircraft commander today. I’m just along for the ride.”

“I thought you were going home soon.”

“I am. Three days and a wakeup, but I’ll be back. I extended for another six months,” I added.

“You’re nuts!” And the S-3 air turned to Roy and commenced the brief.

Back at the aircraft, Roy laid the mission out to the crew.

“We’re going to this firebase on the Song Be River to pick up an American advisor and a Vietnamese officer and fly east to this location, where the Vietnamese airborne unit is setting up a firebase. From there, we’ll be doing some resupply missions. Any questions?”