We flew east to Happy Valley at 3000 feet. I was always happy to be flying high. Even higher would have been fine with me. Very few pilots were killed by staying away from the ground. We had eight grunts in the back. A crew chief and gunner in the pockets behind them manned the two machine guns on the new pylon mounts. About five miles from our intended LZ, the flight leader, Major Williams, radioed the sixteen ships to descend to treetop level for the final run. As we began our dive, smoke drifted up from the jungle ahead of us. There had been a thorough prestrike by the air force and by our own gunships.
Up to this point in the mission, Daisy had been flying. As we leveled out for the low-level run, Daisy said over the intercom, “You got it.” I took the controls. I remember feeling complimented that he would let me take control at the most critical part of the flight.
The flight was really moving. Using the speed gained in the dive, the whole gaggle flashed through the treetops at more than 110 knots. I concentrated on the reference points and on keeping one or two rotor diameters away from the other ship. At the same time, I let us down into the trees as close as possible for cover. I had to read the ship to my right constantly to avoid it when it swerved left and right to miss the smaller trees.
We were about a minute away from touchdown when the gunships started firing. Some of the guys were now reporting taking rounds. The rule was that on the actual approach into the LZ, and in any circumstances where the crew was under fire, both pilots were supposed to be on the controls. This procedure was to ensure control of the aircraft if the one who was flying got zapped. Daisy didn’t do this. As we got within thirty seconds of our landing and the lead ships were reporting taking hits, Daisy started to hunch down in the armored seat.
I had my hands full, but other than hitting one frond on a coconut tree, I was doing okay. From the corner of my eye, I saw Daisy moving. I risked a quick glance. He gave me a weak smile and hiked his chest protector up to his nose. He had one of the few pieces of chest armor in the company. He had worked his body down in the seat so that his ass rested on the front edge. This brought his head down almost low enough for his chest armor to hide his face. He could not fly from this position. Seeing my aircraft commander ducking for cover brought me to a new level of fear.
“Preacher flight, flare!” crackled in my phones. I pulled back on the cyclic and reduced collective to flare, and looked frantically ahead, trying to see over the nose of the Huey to get my first glimpse of the still-unseen LZ. My tail rotor spun just a few feet from the ground. I saw some bushes ahead, and I pushed the right pedal to swing the rotor away. Steeply, noses high, the whole flight rapidly decelerated for the landing.
Luckily for us, the fire at the back of the LZ was lighter. A couple of pilots up front had already been wounded. The grunts jumped out even before the skids touched the ground. I looked over, and Daisy was still under cover. I was going nuts. The LZ was riddled with sniper fire. Sand kicked up in front of me. Daisy stayed low even while I cleared the last trees on the way out. As I climbed higher, hit reports decreased, and by the time we had climbed to about 1500 feet, they stopped.
As the flight leveled off, Daisy said, “I got it,” and took control of the helicopter, just as though nothing had happened. I felt like punching my head to make sure I was still there.
I sat limply in my sweat-drenched fatigues and tried to figure out what to do. Call Williams and tell him I have a chickenshit on board? I leaned forward a little and turned to look at Daisy. Actually, I stared. He glanced over for a second, calmly. Who was crazy here? He outranked me; he was the aircraft commander, with years of experience. He had been flying daily with the other guys, and now he looked as calm as a clam. Yet I knew he had done what he had done.
Finally I said, “What happens if I get hit while you’re in that position?”
“I’ll have time.” When I turned to look at him, he wouldn’t look back.
I flew two more sorties with Daisy, back to the same area. Each time, he went through the same routine of passing the ship to me and ducking for cover behind his chest protector.
“How can that jerk be an aircraft commander?” I glared at Farris.
“Hey, Bob, jerk is a strong word.” Farris looked uncomfortable as we talked in his tent after the mission.
“He endangered everybody in our ship and in the rest of the formation. Even I can tell a coward when I see one.” Farris could see I was agitated. Maybe I was so angry because I had been just as afraid as Daisy.
“Yes, well, he’s better than no pilot at all,” said Farris.
After a long discussion with Farris, it became clear that Daisy was just one of the circumstances of war that I would have to accept. As a new warrant, though, I ended the discussion pretty firmly.
“I will never fly with him again,” I said.
“Okay,” said Farris, “you never will.”
And that was that. No action was taken against Daisy.
“What did you expect, a firing squad?” Connors remarked as we stood in the chow line that night.
“No,” I said. “But maybe they could ground him and put it on his record.”
“Look Bob, everybody in the company knows he’s a coward. Even he knows he’s a coward. The only people who will fly with him are the new guys like you, who don’t know any better,” said Connors.
“Well, I’m not flying with him anymore.”
“Now, that,” another voice interrupted, “is going to shake him up, Mason.” It was John Hall. He had been standing behind Connors, listening to our conversation. “What you have to do,” he continued, “is teach him a lesson.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ll have to kill him,” said Hall.
“Why are you making fun of me?” I looked at him seriously. “I really think something should be done, like grounding him, or putting him in the operations tent with his own kind.”
John looked at me quizzically. “My, my,” he said. “Are you accusing the operation twins of being,” he paused to look around and continued in a whisper, “of being chickenshit cowards, too?”
Connors started laughing. Owens and White, from the operations tent, never flew in the assaults. The rumor was that they were logging combat time, though, for medals.
Hall continued, “If that’s the case, Mason, it’s going to be messy.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, how do you expect to eliminate all three of them without making a mess?” Hall grinned madly for a second and took a giant swig from his canteen full of Scotch—his trademark.
We laagered at Lima in the drizzling rain. Most of the crews in the twenty-four ships sat in their seats, though Nate had left his, beside mine, to visit around. The village looked distorted through the raindrops on the Plexiglas. The air was hot and still and humid. The rain brought no relief. Behind me the crew chief cleaned his weapon and the gunner slept. The ship beside me was the lead ship, and the Colonel had walked up beside it to talk to our CO, Williams. We had been here two hours. Waiting.
“Sir, I bet you never saw a .45 like this before.” The crew chief, Sergeant LaRoe, leaned up between the seats and thrust his gun toward me.
“Looks pretty much like a .45 to me,” I said. LaRoe was not a regular crew chief; he was a maintenance supervisor getting some flying time.
“That’s what it looks like, sir, but it’s my private weapon, not an army issue. I’ve made some modifications to it.”