“Damn, I’d like to stay around and get tough working on the Golf Course,” said Connors as he walked in the crowded warrants’ tent. “But our new old man is sending me out tomorrow morning with good old Mason.”
“Great.” I looked up as I cleaned my new Smith & Wesson .38. “Who else is going?” I slid the flashy, long barreled, wooden-gripped revolver back into the black hip holster. They had issued these cowboy weapons after we turned in our .45 automatics the day before. Great new toys for the pilots.
“It’s a joint effort. Our company’s sending four ships. Me and you, Nate and Resler, Wendall and Barber, Hall and Marston.” Everybody looked up from tending to his .38. Connors ambled over to Hall. “Damn. It looks like you guys are getting ready for the O.K. Corral.”
“You got it wrong, partner,” Hall said as he twirled the cylinder of his pistol. He snapped it shut and took aim with both hands at the tent pole. “This isn’t the O.K. Corral. It’s the Gee Whiz Jungle. Gunfight at the Gee Whiz Jungle.” Hall winked and took a healthy swig from his canteen cup.
The mission we had been assigned to was simple: an early-morning flight over the An Khe pass toward Qui Nhon; a left turn up between two skinny ridges into Vinh Thanh Valley, known to us as Happy Valley; drop off the patrols and then go back to an LZ near the pass and laager (stand by). The grunts would call for a pickup. The Cav had been sending out patrols like this since we’d been here. This just happened to be the first one that we were part of.
The troopers assembled on row three of the Golf Course. Each group of ten men had been assigned to an aircraft number. The troopers watched us as though we might sneak away while we did our preflight inspections.
For the occasion of my first mission, I had on my cleanest fatigues, a flak vest, my new .38 in its hip holster, and a pair of real flying gloves. We didn’t have chest protectors because they hadn’t arrived yet. I reached inside the cockpit of the Huey and connected my helmet to the radio cord, hung it on the overhead hook, and stepped back to follow Connors’s preflight.
“Too many dumb bastards have killed themselves by not knowing or caring about preflight. Everything I show you today, I want you to do every day you fly.” I nodded. We stood next to the cargo deck on the left side of the helicopter. “First, check the green book.” He did. “Plenty of people have missed a big red X that the crew chief put on the first page. You might miss what he’s logged. Remember this is the crew chief’s ship, and he’s the mechanic. You’re just checking his work, so first check what he thinks is the status of the ship.” Connors flipped the book shut and stashed it in its pocket at the rear of the center console. Then he squatted down next to the ship. “Everybody knows you’re supposed to drain some fuel before the first flight, to get the water condensation out.” He pointed under the belly of the Huey. “But I bet half these bastards around here never do.” I got down on hands and knees and reached the fuel-drain valve and pushed it to let a few ounces of fuel pour out onto the ground. I didn’t see any water drops.
Connors continued the preflight, showing me what he considered important and felt was often overlooked. He understood the machine thoroughly and had the perfect disposition for an IP. We checked the tail rotor. I undid the rotor tie-down strap and removed it. We came to the right side after the walk-around, and Connors crawled up the side of the aircraft using the concealed foot holes between the pilot’s door and the cargo door. I joined him. The roof deck of the Huey is flat, so you can walk around to check the rotor hub, the mast, the transmission mounts, and the control rods. He pointed out safety wires on parts of the swash plate, the push-pull tubes, the stabilizer bars, and the control dampers. We carefully inspected the Jesus nut at the top of the mast, which held the whole works in the air. “Everybody checks the Jesus nut, but nobody looks for hairline cracks in these blade-root laminations,” said Connors. “What difference does it make if the Jesus nut holds when the blade splits and breaks off?” I nodded.
We climbed into the cockpit to face the morning sun. Stress patterns spiderwebbed brightly in the plastic canopy. A boy called Red, the crew chief for this ship, helped me strap in on the right side. The sun poured in, heating us up quickly. Dark stains grew up from my waist, and I could feel sweat dripping around my concealed derringer. That idea was not going to last long. I put my sunglasses on. Connors watched from the left seat in the classical disinterested-instructor-pilot-who-is-really-watching-like-a-hawk pose. His arms were folded across his flak vest, his head pointed to the front, but his eyes darted over to see what I was doing. I ran through the cockpit check from memory and looked outside to the lead ship, parked two ships over on our right. After a couple more minutes of sweating, I saw the flight leader, in a ship from the Snakes, whirl his hand as the crank-up signal. The starter whined, the rotors moved slowly, then the turbine caught. The rotors blurred overhead, and we were ready to go. I clicked in the intercom and asked the crew chief and the gunner if they were ready. Answering clicks said they were. “Don’t forget to have them check the doors,” Connors said. I nodded and asked the two men to check if the pins that held the two sliding doors fully open were in place. They were. Without the pins, the doors could jump out of their tracks and blow off in the wind.
Soon sixteen slicks and four gunships were ready on row three. The troopers waited nearby for us to hover out of our parking slots.
The flight leader assigned each group of four ships—each squad—a color as a call sign, always in the same color order: Yellow, White, Orange, Red. Within the squad we got a number that referred to our position in the formation. Connors and I were Orange Four. Each ship called out its color and number in turn. When the sequence got to our squad, I heard “Orange One.” Marston.
“Orange Two.” Wendall.
“Orange Three.” Nate.
I called, “Orange Four.” The Red flight called in after us. We picked up to a hover, moved out, and parked in a long string down the middle of row three.
The troopers—or, as I had been corrected by Connors, the grunts—jumped on board. They wore jungle fatigues and bristled with bandoliers of ammunition, M-16 rifles, M-79 grenade launchers, hand grenades, and canteens. They carried little else, because they were Cav troopers and would be resupplied constantly by us. Three of them squeezed between the crew chief and the gunner on the long bench across the cargo deck, three more on the deck in front of them, and four more in the two pockets. Ten grunts.
“How did they get the name ‘grunt’?” I asked while they scrambled aboard.
“That’s the IQ of a trooper,” Connors said.
“I hope they can’t hear that.”
“Don’t worry, Mason. We’re all grunts in the Cav. Didn’t you join the army voluntarily?”
“Yes.”
“I rest my case.”
Red Four called the flight leader and told him the sixteen slicks were loaded. Yellow One rogered and moments later made a sluggish takeoff. The ships followed in close sequence. When Orange One, Marston and Hall, nosed over on takeoff, I began to ease in the power to get the Huey light on the skids. The nose came up lightly and she shifted a little. I corrected the drift and waited, still light. When Nate and Resler got off, I was right behind them, feeling sluggish with the weight of the grunts. Yellow One climbed slowly over the trees north of the camp, holding his speed down to 60 knots while we closed up in the familiar V formation. As we closed, he made a slow turn to the right toward the An Khe pass. As fourth ship, I joined the left wing of the V formed by the other three ships, making it a heavy-left formation.