When they announced that we must turn in all our underwear to have it dyed olive green, and that we were to paint our flight helmets the same color, we knew the time was near. On July 28 I heard President Johnson announce on television, “We will stand in Vietnam,” and “I have today ordered to Vietnam the Air Mobile Division.” A tingle of fear mixed with excitement came over me. The games were over. Life was getting very serious for helicopter pilots.
The next day, in a moment of grim rationality, I bought a double-barrel derringer as a secret, last-ditch weapon.
My sister, Susan, was up from Florida to pick up Patience and Jack. I was feeling very cheated. I hadn’t got a chance to live even one month as a normal human with my wife and son. Now I was going away for a year, or maybe forever. Patience and Jack had lived five months in a sweaty room in Texas, four months in a trailer in Alabama, a month in an empty apartment in Virginia, and now another month in another trailer in Georgia. I felt I had not provided very well for them, and now, to top it off, I was leaving.
To make it even worse, I wasn’t a believer. Now that I was interested enough to read about it, I thought the Vietnamese ought to be able to decide what kind of government they wanted, just like we had. If they wanted to be Communists, then they ought to be. They probably wouldn’t like Communism; but, then, everybody has to make his own mistakes. If democratic capitalism was better for them, then they’d fight for it.
Probably my feeling that the Vietnam war was a crock was spawned by my fear of dying young. It was a revelation, political or not, that came too late. I was going. I owed the army three years of service for teaching me to fly helicopters. And there you had it.
I held Jack, and together we smiled at the camera. Patience snapped the shutter. We all got in the car and drove to the fort. While soldiers piled duffel bags into buses, I held Patience, and she cried. I watched, numb, as my sister, my wife, and my son got into the car and drove away. In the parking lot, surrounded by hundreds of green-clothed men milling around Greyhound buses, I felt very lonely.
We drove from Columbus to Mobile to board the USNS Croatan. It took four aircraft carriers, six troop carriers, and seven cargo ships to move the entire division to the other side of the world. An advance party of a thousand men was being flown over to meet us at our highlands campsite near the village of An Khe.
We boarded. I wrestled my enormous flight bag through the turns of the dark passageways. The heavy bag tore the button off. the front of my uniform as I stepped through the hatchways. The air was still and musty; the steel walls were scaly with rust. I came out onto a deck that was under the overhanging flight deck. I pulled the bag over to the hatchway, trying to figure how to get it down without breaking anything.
“Throw it down, Chief,” the warrant at the bottom of the ladder yelled. He was standing on the deck where we would be quartered.
“This bag?” I said.
“Yeah, sure, throw it down to me. You can’t carry it down.”
“This bag weighs as much as I do.”
“Look, Chief, you want to cause a traffic jam? Throw it down to me.”
As I tossed the bag down the ladder well, the warrant stepped back. The bag crashed on the steel deck.
“I thought you were going to catch it.”
“Did I say that?” grinned the warrant. “That’s your bunk over there. Have a nice trip.”
2. An August Cruise
We do not want an expanding struggle with consequences that no one can foresee, nor will we bluster or bully or flaunt our power. But we will not surrender and we will not retreat.
August 1965
On the crowded ship I finally met all the members of my company. During the month of hectic packing and training at Fort Benning, I barely knew who they were.
I was in Company B, 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion, one of two such battalions in the 1st Cav. Our company commander was Maj. John Fields, who would be replaced a couple of months after we got to Vietnam. Fields was well liked, but I would never know him well. My platoon leader was Capt. Robert Shaker, a black man, tall and skinny and very professional, which is to say a hardass. My squad leader and the man I would deal with the most was Capt. Dan Farris, a squarish, sturdy man with a built-in smile. He was military, but maintained his sanity nevertheless.
“Goddamn it, Connors, you just hit my eye with your elbow,” growled Len Riker, a tall, skinny CW-2.
“Sorry, Len. This fucking Mae West almost had me then.”
While we waited for Ensign Wall and Colonel Dogwell to inspect the lifeboat drill, Connors would wrestle endlessly with his preserver. If the wait lasted a half hour, that’s how long he took to put it on. Besides being the company’s IP, Pat Connors was our resident clown.
“There.” He slipped his shoulder under the strap and straightened suddenly, only to fall against his friend Banjo Bates. “Oops. Sorry, miss.”
“Watch it, Connors. I’m in no mood for your horsing around.” Banjo folded his arms across the front of his Mae West, scowling, not looking at Connors. Bates almost always looked pissed off, except when Connors got to him, like he was doing now. Connors kept grinning at Banjo, not put off by stern looks.
“This is fucking crazy,” Banjo said angrily. “Not only do I have to go through this stupid boat drill every other day to prove I can wear a life preserver; I have to put up with a genuine asshole like you, Connors.” He turned and had to smile at Connors’s grinning face.
“At ease,” said Shaker. Farris and the other squad leader called at ease. “Okay, roll call.” Shaker read the names.
I still didn’t know most of the men in my platoon by name. In the other platoon I knew Wendall, the camera nut, and his friend Barber, along with the model-maker, Captain Morris, and his buddy, CW-2 Decker.
“Daisy.”
“Here.” Capt. Don Daisy loved political arguments and played a lot of chess.
“Farris.” Capt. Dan Farris. I liked him from the beginning.
“Gotler.” CW-2 Frank Gotler, a soft-spoken man with a slight German accent who claimed to have flown for a short time in the Luftwaffe.
“Kaiser.” CW-2 Bill Kaiser. He was short, with quick, darting eyes, and very aggressive. He took no shit from anybody, gambled constantly, and won most of the time. Had he been assigned to fly gunships instead of slicks I think he would have been a real killer.
“Leese.” CW-3 Ron Leese. He was the highest-ranking warrant in our platoon, the rough equivalent of a captain. Leese was frail-looking, almost elfin, and very experienced in combat flying, having flown gliders in the Pacific and fighters in Korea. He often talked quietly with Gotler. He was new to the Cav. He had taken a leave of absence from his white-collar job to fly in Vietnam. Next to Connors, he was the best pilot in our company, certainly the most experienced in combat.
“Mason.” WO-1 Bob Mason. Me. Brand new to the unit, just out of flight school, with 250 hours of flying time. I was five ten, 140 pounds, and wore my brown hair daringly longer than the others. I had high cheekbones and squinty eyes. I was attempting to cope.
“Nate.” Another CW-2. He smoked a pipe constantly and had a voice much deeper than his light build would lead you to expect.
“Resler.” WO-1 Gary Resler. Another guy new to the Cav and to army aviation.
“Riker.”