Interview with Kjell T. Tollefsen, Vietnam War veteran. CCSU Veterans History Project

where did you serve began going to basic twenty-two for Polk Louisiana and spring early summer of 1966 and then went to for Walters Texas for the first half of flight school helicopter flight school and then on to Fort Rucker Alabama for the second half of the flight training and then graduated from there went on to form up with unit at Fort Benning Georgia and then moved on a ship to Vietnam as a complete unit I think was November of 1967 we arrived in Vietnam as a unit and Kanto which was down in the Delta and then were immediately dispersed and nowhere the pilots were to other units because they wanted to have pilots that weren't all fresh to Vietnam they actually wanted numbers that would be dispersed where the game is what they had experience in country experience so I was sent off to a unit called the 188 assault helicopter company in doubt yang which was out near the Cambodian border and three Corps and they were also known as the black widows that was the callsign let's go back to the very beginning in the military were you drafted or did you enlist I joined Clinton Connecticut and why did you join probably my desire to serve the country at the time was a little unusual most people were trying to avoid serving my family had moved from Norway when I was very young two-and-a-half mother or father had gone through a World War 2 in Oslo Norway where I was born dad had been in the Kingsguard prior to the war breaking out the Nazis came in and occupied the country for five years dad was part of the resistance force served underground in a 10-person unit for the five years and then escaped very near the end of the war to Sweden when they were discovered as the owner so after that he was befriended by a US soldier that had gone to help out in Norway during the reconstruction after the war and they sponsored our family to come to the United States and we ended up living in Madison briefly and then into Clinton and that's where I grew up and just that since I guess of growing up that this country had a lot to have offered our family and the fact that there are a lot of very bad people in the world doing bad things and my family I've experienced that I felt a lot to serve our country at the time so do you remember the day of joining no should I remember asking - joy - then some what had indicated in town actually I'd always wanted to fly and as a young man I wanted to be an astronaut probably didn't have the in flight for it I felt or the money because we're a fairly poor family and today's standards when I grew up but happy so I heard about through a used to hang out at a little airport grizzled Airport in Madison and one of the piles there was a TWA pilot and he had a private little Cessna of pipe recover something and he take me up for a flight every once in a while and he indicated to me that there was a flight program available in the army there right out of high school for the first time ever they were alive love in high school students not college graduates to have an opportunity if you can pass a written and physical battery of tests to get into flight school however the chance for flight school with no guarantee it graduated from flight school but you we have a two-year obligation if you didn't so I joined right then no you go to Vietnam eventually because at that time they needed helicopter pilots in volumes and to Vietnam so absolutely yeah and actually wanted that to be the case yeah I wonder what the heck I done yeah in Fort Polk Louisiana is to consider the nickname was the armpit of the south so being in the swampland coming from Connecticut wasn't what I expected but it was yeah it's part of what you get used to very quickly and the discipline was severe but I was physically fit and didn't have a really difficult time with it and then went off to flight school from there which again the first day there I thought what the heck am i doing support Polk Louisiana that's basic training I forget I think it was eight weeks if I remember right something around that it was the basic skills of the military just how to act as a person in the military discipline basically using a rifle you know the normal the basic infantry stuff do you learn early on and survival but no Doping learned or much but very hot has sweated a lot was glad to get out of there there were two for Walters Texas which is where the first phase of flight school was well you became a Warrant Officer Candidate at that point so is the equivalent of becoming a young officer candidate at the same time we were learning to fly helicopters for months at Fort Walters no both half-a-day Beach and actually the first 30 days was pretty intense just on officer training and they were basically trying to mentally either break you or make you into their mold they weren't going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars of their time making you a pilot unless you could handle the rigors with all of that and they yeah there's a lot of pressure obviously and you had aircraft command when you got out of there in a very difficult situation so I wanted to be sure you could stand that psychological pressure early on so there's a lot of really difficult psychological pressure during that training for the first month if you made it through that first phase and they take the washout rate at that point was something like 40% in the first phases of flight school so 60% to survive that rigor then became cannabis then to go into the flight training aspect of it for the following three months they were little helicopters called h13 which are a little low wage 13s a little bubble they look like little fish bubbles on the front of a thing we would have seen them years and years ago but they used them actually in the Korean War they became the primary flight trainer in your first phase of flight training pretty basic aircraft good-good aircraft but and not easy to fly with good trainers and you were linked with a flight instructor early on transferred for the final phase the combat phase and the more sophisticated aircraft at Fort Rucker Alabama are you cker and how long were you there five months the total training for flight training was nine months more sophisticated advanced flight training and basically aircraft control but also then there was a combat level of that as well at some points it direct combat training to what they do in a flight situation in combat I was a latter part of that phase you also learn basic instrument flying in case you had found yourself in inclement weather and couldn't see where your don't need at least enough knowledge to get out of it so not to the standard you have today for you know an airline pilot that's really enough to get you out of difficult situations and weapons training no these are these are no use uh-1 Iroquois no you H ones that's why they call you ease uh-1 kind of looks like you II so and this was the nickname of those aircraft we were I was assigned to go to Fort Benning Georgia or I formed up with a to become part of an entirely new unit that was being formed to do some additional training and getting ready to send all those aircraft in the entire unit to Vietnam as a brand new unit as part of the build up and that would have been during 67 1967 that former part of the fun experience there during the cub and I can't remember how many months it was there but call it three or four months they were filming on that location was also part of the training area for airborne and Special Forces and they had a mock Vietnam village there and they filmed the movie Green Beret with John Wayne in it and I can't remember the other gentleman now that the guy that used to be in another movie anyway so we ended up flying all of the flight scenes and in the Green Beret movie so somewhere in one of those helicopters I'm in the movie some of a famous movie star as well but and when we had lunch with John Wayne sitting on logs out in this camp and it was really he was quite a gentleman nice guy from there we flew the aircraft out to California put him on an aircraft carrier I don't remember I wish I did but I don't same as what I ended up with it was an assault helicopter company which was comprised of 16 two platoons eight helicopters each so there be eight helicopters and in two platoons each sixteen helicopters we can consider slick or troop-carrying aircraft and then one flight of a platoon of eight helicopter gunships and that unit actually happened to have the first Cobras which were the new gunships coming out at the time so we got a little flight time and all of those I primarily flew slicks at that time and that one command and control aircraft so that was it the gunship platoon as well so we actually had 25 aircraft including three platoons of eight plus one command and control ship 25 aircraft were then shuttled we flew them actually all the way over Texas the long southern Luton ended up in San Francisco we put them on the aircraft carriers and then we flew back to Georgia and then deployed back out to get on a troop carrying ship about a week later said goodbye the family and took off from San Francisco on a troop carrying ship which took us through the Philippines and then to just that just packing up things back at Fort Benning and saying goodbye to you that time I was recently married so I'm saying goodbye to family and leaving them behind and then flying out to California again heading off to be a complex ship 67 yeah it would have been sometime probably I'm guessing September October of 67 and the ship's name but we went over our was an old world war 2 Liberty ship that was we commissioned so it was this old Walker SS Walker that I remember it's funny how you remember some things or not we did we stopped in the Philippines for two nights trashed the officer's club or kicked back onto the ship we all had to pay 50 bucks just something for reparation of the damage we did but probably gonna throw us out I mean kind of the service set the young crazy playlist going to Vietnam and then we went in the additional so it was so many days to get the total trip took about 14 days anyway member yeah except there's a bunch of crazy young pilots on ya who's all pilots on board that took ship at most part some crew members but mostly pilots yeah then we ended up and I don't remember where we went into originally but we ended up there and then immediately we met up as the unit and can't tell which was in the Delta area yeah I don't remember yes guess the rest part can't oh yeah southern is a delta anyway for core Vietnam and then within a week of that I was transferred and dispersed into the unit where I ended up which was the 188 assault helicopter company out of doubt yang at the time with the black widows which was known to be kind of a unusual and difficult and talented unit so I was kind of excited and frightened all at the same time yeah when you arrived they were yep about the same time we were that's part of the forming up we were getting the aircraft unpacked doing all the basic things and we weren't up and running yet at that point and then I was transferred up Kanto but I never flew in Kanto because the aircraft for flight ready yet [Music] doubt doubt yang tau TI en G and all of you you know I was the only pilot from Leonardo originally began with they dispersed all of us in different units in Vietnam and for the most part kept a core number of people in the original unit dispersed the rest of us not at the time so when you went there you joined this new unit the 188 assault helicopter yeah actually you're assigned at that parties are a new pilot and country even though you think you're a highly skilled you begin to realize on the first mission that you don't know much yet can like being a new driver at 60 and thinking you're good until you get out there and run at the situation so you fly as a co-pilot with another aircraft commander until you get to a skill level where they feel you're safe enough or if enough pilots are lost and they need to throw you into the command C to earlier they do which was off in the case but so I flew with another aircraft commander and it varied depending on who was available that day until you get to the point of you're proficient took about for me I think it was about four to six weeks and then I had my own aircraft assigned at that point yes but again the different the difference between men and World War two and even Iraq and Afghanistan and now you went over we happen to go over as a unit which was unusual but you typically would go over individually be assigned to a unit so I might arrive in November of 67 but somebody else may have arrived two months earlier they leave two months earlier than you so you've never really rotated out as a unit you arrived as individuals got assigned to a unit that had other individuals that would come and go at different times done I didn't arrive with anyone I knew and I didn't leave with anyone else either I just kind of left on my own schedule as well eventually okay if that was the base at the time it was in our total Michelin rubber plantation very close to the Cambodian border kind of west of Saigon almost done I came boarding border near another area called Taemin which is another fairly large base nearby we'd fly that whole border area and across the border eventually move north but for that first period of time I was there yeah it was it's almost overwhelming early on there's a lot happening the first mission I was on we were we always took fire for the most part but where it was a fairly aggressive unit they went through some very difficult area so the first time on short final when you're doing a final part of the approach into a landing zone with a bunch of other aircraft around you is fire going on there's a lot of radio chatter going on and you got troops on board that are getting off and you bring the troops in for a battle and then getting out quickly again and all that's almost overwhelming early on because you're not used to that much activity happening he had three radios going off at the same time the gunfire returning for our troops getting off and the aircraft commander I was with was just comms could be because he'd been doing this for awhile so and you become that way after we become very accustomed to all of that that was routine but the first missions were if they were frightening as much as almost overwhelming there was a lot of a lot of stuff going on oh yeah well fur are you in order was not all units were this thing was depending on where you were working at what part of the country but ours was a fairly heavily involved direct combat support unit yes on occasion I fill in on a gunship or rarely so yes 99% of the time I was a slick pilot slicks did everything they did a lot of things they did anything that could carry munitions you know support materials lunch resupplying to the field coups dropping troops into a combat situation so delivering them to combat met evacuations medical evacuations as needed anytime pulling them back out so you're delivering things people pulling out bodies okay from the field wounded delivering supplies ammunition support out to the tube so you were basically supplying what they needed on the ground at the Battlefront and you just shuttle back and forth the aircraft at about an hour and a half fuel supply so you can make depending on the length of trip out to the battlefield and back to a refueling point and they varied where you were you'd have to just judge that and then we fuel while you were running so you do a hot refuel so you didn't shut the aircraft down so you basically put the nozzle in and the jet engine is running right next to the turbine engine is warming it with hot gases and hope for the best and we fuel and then go right back out again you never shut down and you do that for up to 10 13 hours a day so the total time I had for a direct combat flight time again I was about 1100 hours of combat time world war two after fifty hours they would send pilots back home as an example after fifteen eleven hundred so Vietnam was misunderstood on flight hours that were flown and stuff and I wasn't the one that flew the most I was probably fairly high in number but I was certainly probably more than I did would you fly every day every day there was a mission yeah you have to take technically you were supposed to take a break I think you were you can only fly and I can't remember that I'm gonna call it 25 days in a month and then you had to take a break of two days then you can start flying again so it was a interval you have to go and then you have to be relieved but we just cheated on that so it didn't matter just lie on the records a little bit and they you have to fly at the flight and never the pilots and get a mission to fly so you fly it will you add that base before you move I don't remember the exact date we were at some point we were told we were moving north whoever there certainly through January February where I've been the Aragon November of 67 was there until probably the February at some point I'm guessing maybe really March and then we were told we're moving north we didn't know where and pack everything up so we pack all the aircraft up and loader everything on and started flying north and we kept flying north and we kept flying north and we kept flying north up along the coast and we ended up very close to the Demilitarized Zone and landed him basically an open rice paddy area north of way which was the old provincial city in I Corps so we're about 10 kilometers further north of that on a route and we just landed there and set a base for the night basically and then developer 2 became landing zone sally was called so as LZ sally is where I end up spinning our unit in a couple of ground forces or arriving by truck so we were the first units there basically we were one of the first units to create that became a base yeah grew a little bit beyond that yeah yeah the north and well Laos at that point was becoming very active in the A Shau Valley which was nearby a famous place called casein which was a difficult battlefield was not far from there and all of those needed supplying and the same work we had done down south down south we had traveled with we were assigned to a 5th Special Forces unit B team called B 36 for a good deal of the time in an equivalent unit up north also was working Khe Sanh and it allows so our type of mission going over the border was very similar so we were doing that work as well as lots of other assignments during the course of times just a need for more aircraft support in the northern region at that time so that's what was sent there I guess and what we had aircraft who were called each 13 models hadn't they were called and this I may be often this or L thirteens but they were the and basically had a stronger into a more powerful engine than they previous you ease and we were one of the first units to have those so they used us because we could operate in more difficult situations if we had to hover item you know and pull up troops exactly the same just that you wouldn't even tell the difference from the outside except they the horsepower of the the force coming out of the turbine engine was great for so you could lift more capacity you could hover at a higher load level as an example so you can go into more difficult situations than he could with in other ones we were assigned to the special units on occasion because we could really operate more efficiently with them and carry them out if they had to be extracted in the difficult situation you had more capacity into the because of the temperature and humidity in Vietnam it's hard to describe from an engineering standpoint aircraft can lift less and a more humid hot environment the air is not as dense as cold air basically so who are operating in Alaska if you lift more weight with an aircraft than if we're on Vietnam and a hot climate so depending on how difficult and moist the day was you might be able to pull out six American troops or ten Vietnamese smaller people you know the friendly South Vietnamese troops so the higher the horsepower on the aircraft the more good pull out of a given situation so it was safer so we had into a medical evacuation or a quick extraction of a special forces unit aircraft with more power or beneficial so I assume that's why we were assigned to be in that area now we got to LZ Sally first night we slept on the open basically but the second night we put up tents and they were just large tents large army tents big olive drab ugly things and I forget how many of us lived in each one I don't think it was ten of us in each tent and that was a third floor we stole some now we've commandeer wooden ammo cases or something eventually built kind of a makeshift floor which was you know underneath might be dirt but at least we had wood I could rats would look underneath there in that base but I'd say that was once you use mosquito netting over you made little frames over your cot they lived in and goo mosquito netting over so that the rats wouldn't climb into the tent at night and then over your body so but it was pretty basic living but not as bad as the troops in the field or you know in the absolute worst situation so we had a good compared to people who supporting during the day the remainder of the time I left so if I was there and again I'm not accurate on times but if it was February of 68 call it until I left in November of 68 so whatever that period of time was so the lion's share of my time was spent in the north Oh lots of missions out of LZ Sally we had we supported the A Shau Valley pretty heavily I was shot down there one time on a mission I was shot just a short final took a lot of fire ended up rolling the aircraft onto its side along a tree line we're extracted by the other unit that was coming in the other flight crews were coming in behind us who were really pulled out pretty quickly on that one and it wasn't a severe crash the one I had before that was a more severe incident where we're supporting a Special Forces team and that's part actually a chapter in a book now which is kind of captured yeah that was probably one of the more difficult times we were assigned to a special forces unit this be 30 16 that was operating out of a let's call taenia East you know the city obtained in and they'd been formed with the commander named Bo grits and special forces commander and they were called the Green Berets back and now it's called special ops one of the same highly-trained guys and direct combat and they were we were flying teams of them and typically will vary but typically there will be six Special Forces guys and six Cambodian mercenaries which were working with them as part of the indigenous force that was going back into Cambodia we're flying out obtained and East going closer to the border and then kind of leapfrogging from there into Cambodia and they were on a mission to capture intelligence information so we dropped them off very very early in the morning some was barely up and you go out with four aircraft typically two empty two loaded with it who's I just talked about six and six and he'd weave around so that you can tell where helicopters were there's just a lot of noise over the treetops so there'd be a weaving pattern going on the lead ship would be basically directed and by a command and control aircraft there will be at some high right to the gate Air Force aircraft would be very high you couldn't see them they'd say you're coming up on the landing zone or you know a clique at what clique would be a kilometer you know you're 50 meters out of you whatever you know 500 meters worth you mean they direct you into it landing someone first aircraft would drop into the landing zone drop off the six people they had with them which was what you were carrying almost very very little white at that point in the morning the second aircraft was empty but we were weaving behind would see were the first one to dump them and it would over fly the same spot where I saw the first one where people would over fly the second the ship that was already on the ground would pop up behind it what this is doing you got two ships now still coming behind that and over this first probably over a quarter of a mile between each other at that point and what you're doing is spreading a lot of noise because helicopters a noisy over a very large area so the bad guys couldn't hear where you were dropping the troops off they just heard a lot of noise so just the technique games to drop safely drop off these teams to be going and then be undetected third ship would see the second ship Papa the first ship which is now popping up behind the second one you would drop into the same spot that it just so came come out I've dropped it's six people off fourth ship would be empty weaving around and over fly that and you'd pop up behind that [Music] one of those missions I was carrying troops another aircraft with good friend George Jones was commanding another aircraft with a co-pilot ah it's myself another pilot and then the other aircraft with two pilots in it we're involved we dropped them off early in the morning as I described came back sat down we fuel we're waiting typically we'd wait all day or whatever and you get a call it could be the next that you get a call from the Special Forces units saying we need extraction so they done whatever they were looking to do up and we didn't always know what that was capture someone if they could capture documents they were also looking for POWs camps our soldiers were captured because those of roving and hidden all over that area as well these temporary cages and we had been called and said that they needed extraction and they were under heavy fire but it only been like an hour and a half since we had dropped him off so we didn't know at the time what we had dropped him off in the middle of a battalion size force of NVA and that were in Cambodia and at the time to regress a little bit here but we weren't allowed technically to be and I shouldn't say this on camera we weren't allowed to be in here weekend it seemed good enough years no Johnston's then President Johnson is great wisdom at the time had decided that we shouldn't be for political reasons in Cambodia because he was taking heat so the official word was we weren't in Cambodia so we were operating under a special community of the Special Operations Group the special forces under command and being told to fly in there and drop them off but technically we weren't over the border oh we were so any case we were over there and these guys who gotten into a very difficult situation very quickly they already had two other Special Forces guys were killed they had numerous wounded and were asking for extraction so we're now going back into the same little hole in the middle of a jungle that we've been in earlier there was only one way to approach it because of just the constraints of the jungle around it so myself we were in the second aircraft first aircraft went in we had to go in and then come back out the same way we came in was the only way we could do it so we went in and started taking fire maybe I don't know thousand yards out we started taking apart all over end up landing came to a hover we didn't even land and a bunch of Special Forces guys bunch there were only probably total because we had two different runs than they were earlier probably twenty troops in there total including the Cambodian mercenaries they came out where they're wounded throw them and threw them and a couple of the I think I had two ki A's and two wound over thrown into my ship I forget what the other ship picked up and then we picked up to a harbor and the guys who were still there were under heavy fire they just dumped they didn't want to stand up to get in themselves we were pretty much fully loaded capacity we turned around and started going back up the same way and about the time we got airborne enough the helicopters have to get up a certain speed before they get really good left is called transitional weapon we got to the point of being able to get some extra lift audibly got above the treeline of the jungle foliage around us and we took a hit alarm started going off - bored we had lost we were losing basically engine oil is what it was telling us so we had the option of turning on and going back into the same place which didn't seem very inviting at the time or continuing to fly and the command and control ship way up wherever they were was saying there's an opening further into Cambodia about klick away a kilometer away had this heading and you should be able to break into it the engine was started the Seas as we were getting closer and closer to that and we're barely treetops at that point and we knew we weren't probably gonna make it the engines cut out just as we reached the opening it was a large field of elephant grass and we basically were able to do and not a very pretty uncontrolled crash but semi controlled and the ship rolled on its side once over and then ended up on its side completely on the side and we got out managed to we always met to the right front of the aircraft it had a crash so you know where to see where they had every one so we were three of us were there but the fourth guy wasn't there and we went back into my crew chief abend and she was the gunner he had been trapped under the aircraft his head had been pinned under the aircraft basically with his helmet on and his arms and legs were flailing around I'm standing I'm looking now down to the compartment where he is and so we jumped out of there and tried to get him out we couldn't get him out of his pen the other aircraft trying the other troops now won't do guys got out so all the Special Forces guys got out of the other aircraft set up a perimeter for us these guys are one guy had a belly wound wait to see part of his intestines hang out is now setting up a perimeter for us no one left we ended up getting eventually realizing his helmet strap was what was holding his head under the aircraft so I got a knife that we carry and we've some of Neath their engines cut that and then we basically ripped his his body out from underneath there and out of the helmet and was able to get the crew chief out about 20 minutes after trying everything we could rocking the aircraft trying to lift it with the other aircraft the bad guys now the command control ship is telling us the NVA are closing in on where we are and get out of it and the special forces guys were engaging them at the perimeter we had the the two wounded guys which helps set up the one guy was describing decided to set up a perimeter for us rather than being evacuated on the other ship they wouldn't leave we all had some well there were other aircraft because we always had the two empty ones for exactly that situation he always had the possibility so we had enough backup aircraft to come in they weren't right there but they came in very quickly after that my wingman came and the one that was the first ship into the LZ the guys he had taken out got off the healthier ones healthier wounded and they left the kis on the ground for the temporary period of time but then we all say they're trying to get the one remaining guy who was pinned alpha underneath the aircraft and we wouldn't leave in the command and control ship some general great wisdom for Colonel was yelling at us to get out of there leaving behind nobody we leave behind so we couldn't get the Air Force was there were jets in the distance at the border knowing we were in trouble but they couldn't get approval to come across the border to get as far as support but we had some other unit Helicon I can't remember who else was we had some gunships from another unit they showed up that said they held of a to go order basically and came over and started putting down some suppressive fires we had enough time to get the guy out where we tore zero in half because here was torn in half pointing but we broke his collarbone literally by pulling on it to get him off on the aircraft and he stayed with us all the time he wore a sling for about a month and refused to get out of the unit so it's a little different than what I would consider some presidential candidates who got a bruise and get Purple Hearts guys didn't get him back in that time so we won't mention names but in any case it was a different kind of a unit we were evacuated out we went back the guys in the first ship that rescued us out of there and took us all back Jonesy was shot down the other the person who rescued us got shot down in the LZ going back and to try to get the rest of the guys out there you had an even worse there shot down in the LZ the crew chief had basically received an RPG inside of his face and body was me he survived eventually but severely severely impaired and in winter and the copilot was shot in the head he also survived that was one of the more difficult days we lost it went on for more than that it was a number of missions like that over the next few days we lost the Special Forces guys lost an awful lot of people in this special unit as we did over that period of time and that was probably the more intense period down the Cambodian border and then it had a reproduced itself up north and Laos and Khe Sanh and some of the other areas of their national valley so now the second time you were shot down was up north if I recall off-camera you told me that he was shot down three times yeah the other come was less dramatic it was on a mission down by there was a like in remember exactly where it was but it was on the shoreline it was near a beach area and we had we see fire and lost transmission fluid basically which was more critical than it's nice to have the thing spinning above you so if you lose the transmission you're gonna freeze the rotor system the engine you can live without you can auto rotate kind of depending on how high you are but you can't live without the transmission and we're losing transmission fluid so we had to put it down on a beach area in a bag not a pleasant area but it wasn't a rollover type incident like the other two and then we ended up getting an f4 phantom who was returning from North Vietnam on a bombing run provided cover for us and just kept making low passes then we got rescued by another units who came and picked us up on that one and then they are left at the ship out eventually so that was less than that for any injuries we just took a shot to the transmission so can you explain yeah I was among other things my aircraft was equipped they started a it was fairly new there were only two ships in country like this I think we developed both of them that engineers did somewhere back here and then had them outfitted and Vietnam they were called smoke ships and they basically put a large bladder of low viscosity oil under the back kind of bench see but they're these little fabric seats they're sitting on the back of the compartment in the open area and that would then be pumped to ring a little metal ring with little perforations in it right at the exhaust of the turbine engine they were driven by turbines the helicopters were and oil we pumped into that hot exhaust gas and would instantly turn into a big cloud of smoke white smoke probably 10 times the size of the aircraft and the purpose was that we would fly in advance of an insertion of troops and if we knew they were potentially or we knew there actually were and the air or VC along a tree line or somewhere along a perimeter and we're having to land troops in the middle of a field that would be exposed to those guys firing directly at them our mission was if we were flying the smoke ship mission at that point which we did most of the time I flew smoky a lot you'd make a very low-level high-speed we're on a long virtually on top of where the bad guys were right in front of them and dropped this layer of smoke right on the ground so you'd be treetops at ground level at 120 knots nothing more fun than flying fast and furious for a helicopter pilots I remember we were young you know I've been crazy stuff smoke billowing out the back of the aircraft and guns blazing on both sides and you'd have two gunships supporting on either side laying Rockets down for you so that you'd be putting suppressive fires yeah bombs blowing up on both sides of you on the VC in the nba's shooting at you but not very accurately because you were going so quickly and you've laid this layer of smoke down which we then provide a visual barrier between you and the troops that were being landed right after that so as you're making you're one of the gunships is supporting you know you're having the tube ships coming right in let's see how this looks and becoming it will break into an open field adjacent to that dropping the tube sauce and other bad guys couldn't get a clear a business a shot at the people getting off the aircraft so it was a fun mission because it was fast and furious and lots of stuff going on as hard as that is to believe but we took we virtually took fire or hits every time we flew that mission that was a but we were lucky and then at some level yeah but I think part of it was they the VC and the MBA probably thought we were crashing it was a billowing smoke out of this aircraft I think it caught on after a while but early on I'm sure they thought what's it happening and we take hits in the aircraft but it was always toward the tail boom somewhere because they couldn't lead us correctly we're going to just equipped with a little additional implement stuff in it so we had the bladder was always sitting there even when we did regular medevacs and stuff it's that they were always empty always yeah we didn't always put oil in there because it took weight up that you'd like to use for troop caring's who might carry with nothing in it but it had the capability of doing it would usually they run it with oil in that black or not depending on what mission we had so we might unload the oil if we wanted to have extra capacity for lift sure just like in World War two we had nose art or door art they call this obviously the old bombers from World War two with the names on it paintings on it we had the same thing Piatt Nam yeah we were John Wayne just like everyone else so we paint her on and you got to name your own aircraft and you got it my nickname because I was Norwegian was troll like the troll though and I carried a troll doll with me actually it was Kristen a little hippie outfit that I'd carry and put on the dash my wife at the time had sent it over with me so it was kind of a it was kind of a lucky charm as well and was little rubber troll doll pretty good size actually I still have it must remember to give you that and it's sat on the dash with us on every mission so on the door I had painted troll on the nose of the aircraft where the Black Widow insignia was I put smoky and made that a hand painted as well so it was a smoky aircraft but it was on the troll ship which was my ship and there were other ships called summer wine and those won't call Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds but the LSD were the bigger letters and that so from the music of the time and you know your name was also troll it wasn't actually it was Black Widow four or five that was it was my call number actually as which is so black wood or four or five was my callsign away other people if he got into a situation where they had to identify as a really you theme i'ts a troll or can you identify a Norwegian dollie you know or something or a dolly and it was always cold if you had ways of being able to say something that somebody would know you were the good person down there not the bad person so if you got shot down it's an example and you were hiding on the tree line or you know you want to be able to talk to somebody in the air and they'd have to tell you on the emergency radio you know whether it's really or is it some bad guy pretending is you know didn't happen to be honest but so you might call yourself Tolbert wearily unless they were goofing around with you tole was on the back of my helmet as well the name told him no because again because we rotated in and out at different times you might have some assign so I had number one replacement might come in or if you lost one I mean I never knock on wood I had some injured but I never I never lost remember we I was lucky to have one that lasted longer than most so probably I'd say I probably had four or five different people and you typically had a crew of two pilot copilot it's a two pilots up front and then you take a crack commander and pilot and then you had the gunner and crew chief which maintained the aircraft when they were on the ground as well as flying with you each had an m60 machine gun on either side so they were good Gunners basically air in the air he also helped load the load the people and try to keep anyone that was medically involved alive until we get him back to a medevac station so the other kind of a all-purpose person in the pack and they maintain the aircraft through amazing guys till we fluid now your your position was pilot were you at all prostrate only only to the extent that you know you were all trained in medical emergencies and at some point I can remember one time having to crawl back there and get the control to the other pilot we had a guy we had crew chief who's trying to control bleeding on one guy we had a second wounded soldier that had a leg that had been blown off or a part of it was gone part was still kind of hanging there and he was bleeding pretty profusely and we this guy couldn't do both we didn't carry really any really serious medical supplies on board we weren't a medevac ship but if you were called in you know somebody from the ground he caught a radio call and said we have a guy that's down we need a medevac whoever was closest went and it wasn't the Red Cross ship that you see oftentimes more of the medevacs were typically done by just whoever was the closest so we dive in and pick them up and this time we couldn't say they couldn't stop the bleeding so I got out of my seat went back and just held the leg close for the bleeder closed until we could get to the medevac and lit one pilot landed so you did yeah to the extent you could I can't say we were medically trained but something's pouring blood out you know where to push on you know and pinch it this gate the vein was right there so I just clamp it off with my fingers but it was unusual though you would typically just flying the aircraft and doing that I was awarded two Distinguished Flying crosses one was relative to the experience that I explained uh by doubting in Cambodia but because we weren't allowed to be in Cambodia that miraculously didn't show up on the final records when they left which is fine but I had the metal on I have a photo of myself being given the medals that's good enough it doesn't matter the second Distinguished Flying Cross was given to me on our mission outside of way which was the old provincial city again and the northern part of Vietnam were flying a mission there and it was in kind of a wet lens area and there was a kind of flutter Grice period patty area that high tide around is kind of a brackish area low depth of water right around way and we discovered that there were a lot of sand pansy and what had happened was that there was a large force coming down from North Vietnam on sand pans looking like they were fishermen basically and they kind of migrated into this lower area and we thought was unusual I had a colonel with me that day just wanted to go and look at our troop concentration he had heard about or something so it's basically just we were going out to take an eyeball all was going on we were flying and we started flying that flight and started taking fire all of a sudden one of the fools in the same pan decided he was going to take a shot at us and that and led to us returning fire and then a bunch of the people and jumping out of the sand pans into the water trying to hide under the water which was only about three feet deep at most sometimes only 250 trying to grab reeds to breathe like you've heard about I'm sure and so they're breathing through we'd sort of gasping for air every once in a while come to the surface and water is absolutely crystal clear and you're flying over top of it so we're engaging them hiding in the water some are now into kind of a land area shooting at us and as it was us by ourselves basically and we waited that went on that battle went on for pretty the better part of an hour somehow we had to break it off because of the fuel requirement we'd had to go refuel but by that time we're waiting for reinforcements so they came and they there was two Navy huge hovercrafts were nearby monster 1 and monster - they told him had big painted faces on him I remember I thought I don't know a lot about it said they became the ones they have arrived on the scene first so they were capturing these guys we were forced into the surface and out of the bushes and the colonel kept yelling at me that we needed to get away of the minute we started taking fire of course Mike of course desire at that point is to return fire so we so we started coming back rather than getting out of there we actually turned and started we engaging and taking on the enemy rather than running from them and we did multiple runs and the colonel was going berserk in the back he'd never been in a battle on just wanted to get out of there and we just I'm the aircraft commander he's not in command when we're in the air so we just turned his weight off basically I think he later awarded himself a medal as well though but I don't know so that was the second Distinguished Flying Cross and I to be honest it was it was an unusual event but I'm not sure a rose to the level of many many missions that you flew there were more involved in that and much more dangerous than the being pulling but the was the ones sometimes in Vietnam it was where you were and who saw it that gave you the medal more you know the ones you really felt he did something we used to supply a leper village that the South Vietnamese wouldn't I felt better about going that would be humanitarian standpoint then but you didn't get anything for that but you know we weren't always doing bad things you know what people might perceive as bad things leprosy it was something that affliction there that was really I mean they segregated that population I they forced up to kind of a smaller and it wasn't even amount there was a tall hill outside of way and the Vietnamese wouldn't go there that give them food or supplies or anything so they were kind of self-sufficient and trying to grow their own rice but you know they really weren't surviving well so we would fly in there with supplies when we had left and we just dropped in and dropped off the mill but there were pretty disfigure the population was that lived there but that's they were ostracized and sent to the top of the hill basically if you had leprosy but there were a lot of good things that happened and we take care of other village situations if we had to help but we live in the middle of nowhere the fire support base they lived on basically LZ sally was out in the middle of nowhere nobody asked you a few questions about daily life dramatically how did you stay in touch with family letters so you'd get letters sent and they were delivered on a fairly regular basis more so in doubt hang was a road network there was still fairly active and Saigon was nearby which was one of the main resupply hours and they become more regularly but we received mail and packages you know care packages stuff like chocolate which would just be melty gooey mess when you receive it but the person sending it but it was a cool idea yeah or Cheez Whiz one time was sent with the cap and broken off and her to fill the inside of the case and that was sitting in in the hot weather for time but there was it was it was always good to get something you know cookies from home packages whatever says about the only way there was no other way it wasn't like now where you can do something in Armed Forces Radio I think that's what it was called whatever was out of Saigon in Danang actually you could listen the FT tune in the radio for the local hits which was kind of unusual giving a combat situation of listening to you know down south it was fine it was typical you know there they had an actual kitchen set up so you'd actually go on each other that's all yeah they were wooden frames with a tent top in doubt in but there was a mess hall which was a formal building there and cooks that were assigned to us he had you know the typical army chat which wasn't great but not terrible it was okay when we went north which was where I spend most of the time I was only see where I found a cave and he'd have canisters of stuff that would be brought in and eventually we had a small mess hall there but not the same it wasn't the same as it's down south but again it's it was fine pretty much yeah sometimes you get a larger meal depending on if you'd stopped somewhere if you were in a larger maybe stops and was a medevac yet an opportunity to get out refuel and grab something and sauna so there were days when you give you something else we cook some of our own stuff on occasion one guy was to tell you his name was Walker fact I was emailing him a while back saying it was my memoir he said he hadn't remembered it but once a month we fly his missions and he was Italian wasn't done on his mother's side but his name was Walker anyway was his last name and he was a pretty good cook so we make we'd get a hold of pasta which kept okay there and whatever we get to make up a sauce and he'd make up you know his mother was in pepperoni which would last in the mail and he'd make up a batch of pasta in a big metal I can put that over a fire and open fire had pasta nights though we ate pretty well and we've you know we commandeer and trade for things like steaks and lobsters down with the big officers clubs down in vinay or Saigon depending where where we trade you know any kind of memorabilia wouldn't be automatic to us where I could VC flags or we might get from whatever else 8k forty sevens or some unusual weapons check on weapons when we go in and trade him to the Air Force guys we're flying it every day with we supplies from the United States basically so they were bringing in you know lobsters steaks which we never saw all kinds of booze that we couldn't get ahold of so anything we could trade for and then we bring back that and share it over the rest of the days and we had a little makeshift bar on the tent which was consider our officer's club the widows web was called that was the first one is doubting then we ended up with a formal tent that was just dedicated tent by itself for the office Co but it was just a temp with the dirt floor and that we actually had a barmaid in as well and whatever we could get for booze and beer and we had a thing called a famous drink only two are even called a thunderclap those kind of initiation thing almost like a fraternity thing would have been it was a large beaker like a chemistry beaker we got in somewhere and you take a shot of whatever happened to be behind the bar gin vodka whatever it didn't matter shot or two of everything in there and top it off with beer and then you had to try to chug this entire thing and then of course you get up drunk and fly the next day and if you can't we kept two body bags rubber body bags and the officers dead and if you get drunk enough where you just fell down and collapsed they zip you up on a body bag it had six handles on it and they carry you back to your little tent and throw you on the ground and leave you there so if you woke up in the morning and it was very dark and smell like rubber and hopefully not vomit but you did sometimes you treat your finger and pull it pull the zipper down and crawl out of the body bag go out flying again well the dock we had a flight surgeon assigned to us and Doc Hanna and Doc Parker down low there they had something had sweet pills he put on the counter every morning the hangover pills and we don't think that's weaker than those what it was probably an upper and something else but we take three pills and slugga whatever we had around and go flying and it worked so doc Parker and Doc Hanna kept us alive kind of yeah for the most part because we resupplied the troops in the field we would always tend to maybe keep a stick of c-4 explosives to ourselves and give me a case we always had enough we carry each one of the aircraft least the ones that I flew in our you know we carried enough the ammunition and odd weaponry on board that belonged to us only that if we felt we got shot down we could probably hold somebody off for at least you know a half a day before we'd run out of something so that was the fear of he got shot now he's very typical to have an aircraft catch fire probably over half the time an aircraft catch fire of a crash because he had big fuel bladders jet fuel hot engine and all three of mine that didn't happen thank God but I could have put any case is any worried about the ammunition exploding afterwards but I carried an old m2 carbine and those worried about that and over under which was an m16 with a grenade launcher underneath it enough ammunition to feed all of that a couple of blocks of c4 with detonators and kept that in kind of your bag you could run out the door with if you had to if you were down so now we have plenty of supplies in plenty of food I don't want to sound macho because it always sounds this way in John Wayne is but you didn't really get so accustomed to that environment believe it or not of flying at that level in that intensity day after day not the first couple of weeks but after you get used to it the you almost became I'm sure if he had a monitor on us our heart rate went up in the adrenaline was rushing but it was more of a funs the wrong word it was you lived on the adrenaline it almost became part of what you look forward to oddly enough looking back on it so if he weren't in an intense mission you always wanted the hottest missions we didn't want the safe ones at some point the longer you were there the better you became at what you did so you want to be part of these you felt if somebody else want with less experience perhaps they wouldn't make it so you wanted to be part of that action so I know they were what we used to call pucker factor so there was you know there were times that you're you know you were a little cheeks might have been a little tight going into the LZ and you're taking fire but it wasn't it wasn't fear on the level that you might think you have fear you almost the custom then military did an excellent job of training you in flight school and combat training and when he got there that you process information before you react to it so you take everything and then you react very quickly you know but you're not taking and doing what are these startled reactions he'd never had that I know it was yeah that and the experience is the ongoing you almost become your own trainer at some point you can become so pragmatic if you look at some of the or listen to some of the footage of any kind of pilot this military training that might then become an astronaut as an example so they you know during the Columbia mission some of the flavor recordings that they had from that they seem almost calm or Apollo 13 and they were approached to us because they they're trained not to react to the situation only react to the data that you're getting so I'm stretching it a little bit and you certainly react on some level but you compared to a normal person in civilian life you tend to be able to take information in very quickly process it and then make the correct decision startled reaction doesn't help the troll doll that was it just the good old troll doll well we used to say we had a little saying when we were particularly more a really drunk and it became a problem at some point this will be a there's a little sacrilegious but we were kidding at the same time well we always said if there's a God he has a sense of humor so had he did what she did or whatever it is that because they didn't take us down which they could have pretty easily but we would go out to the aircraft before we get and we say give them a G give them a know give them a D let's go kill them God and then we get in aircraft if we get in and fly and it was all in jest but kind of comedy and making fun or virtually anything the most severe situations became one of the only and I don't think you realized that at the time but it became obviously was this now knowing as an adult and having gone way beyond that and through some therapies you end up realizing that that was just your method of being able to survive so a lot of it became survivable mechanism in your mind you know you had to have some fun it was very much like as I described the earlier being watching a mash show you know they're very gruesome things that happen in the mash TV show but the humor was the part that you really enjoyed and it could have been very dark humor but it was still humor and we never celebrated we never lingered with death we lose a pilot oftentimes a guy would fly you fly out on missions pilot crew chief wouldn't come back at the end of the day but you never knew what happened to him they may have been taken away as a wounded soldier may have been dead you might know that you wouldn't know if the other person survived and if they did die you didn't get that closure on that at the end of the day you're back at the Oscars 10:00 again drinking thunderclaps as best you can and you might host one to them that's its last time you talked about this last time you deal with it and then that's the stuff that you bury which is probably not a smart thing but it's the only thing you can do at the time so you deal with a reality or faced with at that moment every single mission it became a nikon if i miss walking out the guys will bring it out to me it became almost like everybody blip that was lucky John I mean I walked away from three pretty serious accidents and patrols will may have it's at home with me now yep I'll have to bring it in outside of drinking there was there wasn't much to do at LZ Sally there were no females there so there wasn't any entertainment or dancing like you see at the USO shows we just didn't have that we didn't allow him on base we didn't allow any Vietnamese on base so we know what we refer to as hooch Mae it's a lot of times in more developed areas and bases you would actually have Vietnamese that would come out and help clean and do laundry stuff we did all our selves we didn't allow anybody and we didn't trust it because you didn't know who to trust so it was only the the guys that you live with on this base it was an artillery unit there there was a small combat unit there as well there was a maintenance unit that was the flight unit was there as well so there wasn't much to entertain yourself with one occasion if you stopped somewhere he had a football it was a big field and it was safe my play you know it some ketchup football or something take target practice sometimes off the perimeter things in the distance but there wasn't you drank a lot that was about he socialized he flew I mean you flew ten hours a day oh you were out in the field if you weren't in the air you were sitting waiting to be called to going to be as they be 1013 hours any combat game drinkin get up the next morning do it all over again the hero cheer was a it was actually taken out of one of the crashed aircraft it was one of the flight seats out of the aircraft and we put it in the officers tent this floored tent and we painted a helmet the flight helmet red and put hero honor and then she got caught in the officers tent at night when you were drunk telling anything that might be considered a war story which we didn't do because that felt like bragging we talked about anything else we couldn't tell war stories you had to sit in the hero chair and drink a thunderclap first of all so you just got sillier and sillier if you wouldn't tell the war story they thought you said Sidney hero's chair of you think you're a hero tell them so he didn't do that much but I do have a picture of myself pretty drunk sitting in the girls chair so I must have been talking about something I shouldn't have been but I don't recall what no now we would cover for Bob Hope one time but we didn't get to see it we were just covering perimeter to be sure no bad guys would coming in one time that was down south was coochie it was a kind of a main base kind of halfway between Saigon where we were stationed we did though and I take that back we ended up going down this is an interesting story actually but it's in that manuscript they gave you the unit history we ended up doc Parker was a young surgeon that was assigned to us at the time her doctor there's our flight surgeon when we were doubting played the guitar he had a lot of folk music and stuff and so we'd sing we had a few of us had an okay voice and there were probably half a dozen of us that would sing songs or whatever and then they went out or noticed from battalion headquarters that the USO is going to be there with a bunch of generals and they were looking I don't know if he knew it at the time I guess we did that they I don't recall if we knew this at the time we perform but they were looking for people who could come a perform almost like a talent show at coochie again this battalion headquarters here which is why I came to mind when yes but coochie at this officers gathering over there's dignitary thing it turned out that they were looking for the winning group from Vietnam was going to be going back to the States to perform in The Ed Sullivan Show so we went down and we were a little irreverent we smelled and we had to hide one of our one of the guys that sang with us was wasn't an officer and he can't get into an officer's club down there without being an officer so we had to dress him in one of our outfits pretend to use the officer I forget his name Miller I think but he's one of the crew chiefs or whatever create a great voice so he knows the drummer for a member right so in it we went down there we sang I don't know Naruto some of them said there was current stuff and I think we even sang Peter Paul and Mary song just to piss off the generals does that recall you know whatever it was but then we won the competition which kind of ticked them off at that level but we didn't want to take the prize to go to the next level because we had business to do back where we were so we took off but we got a trophy that we took back with us so that was our only thing I flew I don't know if we would have won that I think that we were just from that thing and then you might have competed with other units so I guess the potential to got there we didn't yes but so we weren't invited yet that's all when we gave it up we had other things to do they were more important but it was fun going down there but we smell we weren't like the normal group that got there that a lot of units actually were stationed and very nice built up barracks and they had officer's club so we're in the middle of nowhere we smelled like monkey poop from the monkey to fluid man the monkey was I can't tell you the real name of that on camera but anyway we had a monkey we had a pet monkey that live I don't know I had no clue we ended up with this monkey he was a tree monkey about that tall and they would fly with me he flew with a couple of guys who flew a lot of the time with me and we had him on a leash when he was in the aircraft but enough LeSueur if you go anywhere inside the aircraft he wanted to but he'd always sit on my shoulder at some point he loved knowing what was going on there very inquisitive we had flak jackets on and they they he would poop basically this green and yellow poof on my which so it's smell it was disgusting but we were disgusting and smelled so it was perfect so we just kind of let him try there get crusty whatever but any time we would land when the ue would come in you'd do what they call flair the nose would come up to slow down and there were Plexiglas and bubbles on the bottom of the cockpit so you could look out and see where you were coming to for landing he would come and sit on the the control it was where my hand was on which kind of took an s turn you used that as a seat and they come off my children come down and sit with his back against my hand and look out the tin bubble so he could see where we were landing and then he get back up my shoulder and watch whatever was going on in the back getting on hurt off and he was just absolutely hysterical so we had that in two junkyard dogs that the enemies would eat the dogs if you let them so they always thought so we kept them so we had two dogs and a monkey down and out in for a while the monkey got shot the night before we left by one of our guys he didn't want to suffer the long flight he was a hunter I didn't think that was a nice thing it was a little dangling with that but unfortunately this shot out of a tree tonight before we left anywhere else actually why I had two trips out of Vietnam actually I think about a one was to see my young wife at the time and in Hawaii that was R&R that was for seven days I almost didn't go because I ended up with we got a ringworm a lot which was kind of a skin disease then looked like a ring like a sore on your body but in a ring shape was a para citizen so but I got it about a week before I was leaving I was afraid I wouldn't be able to go so I didn't tell anyone including the flight surgeon so I arrived in Hawaii and had these big well looking things all over me unfortunately sandy ended up with some on her body because they transfer the parasites but at some point but when I got back I shared it with it was doc Hana at the time and he said it was just one pill away from being accurate it was not a hard thing to kill off but I didn't know and so that was one trip that was nice a little difficult going back and then I was sent to the Philippines for a 10-day jungle survival training course which now I'm just remembering now and I don't remember who I want where there's one of the pilot from our unit and then some others from another unit was out of Subic Bay had a very large jungle area just on the outskirts of it and it was held there and they sent you into the jungle with an indigenous guide and the grito guide it was called my guide knew everything about jungle survival basically lived in that area know everything about what to eat and what you couldn't eat and the purpose wasn't escape-and-evasion it was quickly how could you survive if you had to and they said she went to the jungle with your fatigues on and you could buy a machete from this guy which was made out of a leaf spring of a car and it wouldn't handle on it then you'd buy one of those for five bucks in this guy which was his way of being paid basically this guy I think it might have been like six or eight of us the one in the group and he went through for ten days basically surviving on what you could find from bugs to things you wouldn't normally put up to three days of starving which is what they made you do you go until you can survive you and ended up with yes whatever you have to do I think it tastes pretty good at wha you started working around out of time there you start by you take anything as a you know grub or something fine under a rock or under a bark of a tree or something and if it's cushy it looks like it's a certain type that he's telling you is okay to eat based on color and whatever you'd kill it in your fingers need stick it in your right pocket same time you go on finding berries and roots and things it would be more edible you know anything you can there's kind of a dry type thing you put that in your left pocket when you come stop everyone's a lot of rest you try to find a sunny rock or something put the squishy things from a right pocket on the rock to dry out and overtime number stops as the pieces that were dried out enough out of that pocket you pick those out and put them in your left pocket with the nuts and berries so you kind of came up with the traveling trail mix and the theory was that you as you're going through the jungle and you're trying to survive you constantly look for those things so you're constantly adding stuff to your right and left pocket and they're high in protein basically what insects certain insects are but it's tough to ignore and then there's water vines and mica fine neo crayfish and strange things that aren't quite as disgusting and snakes and so you train on all of that over time but you actually do use that traveling trail mix constantly so you start eating on your left pocket you don't taste the bugs it sounds it's a mental thing not that I can share no there's always you harass events that way you know there's the the cheer we did burn down an outhouse one time we used to that was my mistake we had we were stationed at LZ sally early on we had nothing but slit trenches which for your bodily function there weren't any women around remember all you do is you cut a trench a little slit in the ground they call slip trenches then you put a sandbag couple of sandbags on either side one for each cheek basically and that becomes your potty seat basically and that's in the guys in the morning would go out there and sit there well one morning there was a hospital ship that was off the coast I don't know if it was independent or whether it was operated by the Navy but it might have been part of you remember the SS Hope years ago this was one called the SS with Poe's I think it was called but it was a hospital ship that was right off the coast for the more severely involved people that couldn't be handled maybe there were burn victims or something I had facilities that we couldn't leave some time transport people out apparently some of the nurses out there decided that they wanted to see what the real world was like on land so they flew in one morning on this Navy helicopter and landed in the middle of this rice paddy area right where that slit trench was with all these guys lined up the nurses get out in their cute little outfits and whoever was escorting him out this I don't know officer looks over spots us not us and some of this is hearsay because I wasn't there at the moment I was a city at the moment quickly escorted back onto the helicopter flew the back off again the next day we got this very Curt message down to our commander from the general whatever the ran that part of the world is saying you will build formal latrines so we said we don't have anything so you send truckloads of plywood and corrugated metal for the roofs up those we were hog heaven yeah we gots we built these nice six holers that's we hold if we go what they were and then they they had a trap in the back end we're on the backside where you'd slide a half a 55-gallon drum in and because we were at aviation II we had jp4 jet fuel so we've recorded that and to cut the smell and you put half in there he leave half the other kam outside that didn't have anything in it at that point when you get whatever you needed to dispose of at the end of the day there was a latrine duty that some poor sucker got while we were off flying we'd have to pull the barrel out with the stuff in it with some jet fuel in it and burned off in the peel that's how you dispose of it they put a fresh one back under put a little gas in it to cut the smell one morning a new pilot that had just arrived in the unit went out to whoever he had to do and decided to light up a cigarette and threw it and and took down our and and burnt his butt a nice round circle so that was a funny story we didn't we didn't have all of these we had a limited number of latrines again after that but it was pretty funny they were all great I didn't serve with anyone that I disliked anywhere up to command maybe at the within our unit let me clarify that I wasn't fond of some of the higher-ups outside of there like the one that flew with us that they they wanted to get out the water to meddle afterwards you know no absolutely but they were left behind I Lafayette nama left as an individual again I flew out of the name kind of I'm very very short notice didn't have a chance to say goodbye I was actually in an aircraft ready to fly that morning and the clerk came out and said you just got orders we're having somebody switched off with him went back changed left a couple of notes for the guys left everything I belonged is packed of what I had went to the aircraft that was taking me down to Danang which was the nearest big flight area flowing down by a pilot I remember I was it was my aircraft in fact they turned it over to him less than I saw him as he was leaving I said boy this guy's not gonna make it it wasn't a very good natural pilot but he did survive in fact he's flying in Alaska now so I've seen that online so the Internet's a wonderful thing but and then you leave Vietnam that brings just back the thought as you're leaving that's something people can't understand but you weren't happy to leave as odd as that was I mean I felt very it was very quiet when with the 707 though charter flight it wasn't an airline airline it wasn't a military aircraft either picked us up and took us home and it was very quiet when we broke ground there and it felt like you were leaving something behind that you should have finished who also said about the losses but he didn't quite know that yet and it wasn't this I didn't know I ran it's a one guy that was from the original unit that out of coincidence was on that airplane from the original unit before we were dispersed I described I don't know I think was White's it was this thing but even we couldn't talk an awful lot on board we indicated a captain that we had formed up with a fort benning had been killed and he had a wife and kids I remember so guy named Bradley he said he had gotten he was killed early on in the deployment but it was quiet the whole trip and you don't know anyway outside that one just circumstantial thing that I ran into but it was very quiet all the way home and you refueled in Alaska if I remember right there ended up in San Fransisco rive in San Francisco at a reprocessing Center with a I'm still wearing the same kind of clean pair of fatigues that had on this little jungle smell with even though kind of spent hours since you left the unit got the Danang were able to leave so I don't have been awake a lot of hours napping on the airplane long long flight black and then they gave you a voucher to get standby flight back to I was on the East Coast that came from Connecticut so that I had to get from California back to here and they gave you a voucher to go standby not even a fly guaranteed and the people came back kind of apologetically and said you know we're gonna put you on a van we're going to have you out the back and then through the compound and then there's a back gate you can go up because there were protesters out front at that time yelling everything from baby-killer be you name it which wasn't that was our introduction back to this country basically welcome back so we couldn't go out the front door of the processing center we had to go back out the same way they entered us which I guess didn't matter but it just felt odd at the time was a hard thing to kind of rationalize and I probably began and people don't realize I think that became at least for me on a personal level but probably with lots of people became became the reason that he didn't share much no one wanted to talk about it and then I sat at the airport finally got a flight back to New York I had six day would have been November of some time November December maybe and see JFK and they give you a little bit of money I had no money with me it's to get transportation home I all I could do is I got a taxi down to the Port Authority in New York the last trains had already left so I slept on the floor in the Port Authority overnight got on the train in the morning had enough with that to get to New Haven had no money for taxi from the Haven didn't have cell phones back then it was an odd time I don't remember it was early early and one didn't want to be with my parents or my wife up at the time so started walking from New Haven to Clinton it's gonna be a long walk but it was whatever I did not much with me anyway and an older gentleman picked me up I think he's a world war two vet gave me a ride home now that was not your last day yeah I was then I was still I still had an obligation I had a four your total obligation I was only like two and a half into it so I went back for additional training as a flight instructor at Fort Rucker back to the old used to call a mother Rucker as what we is called is as well the big slide training happens we went back to mothership for retraining became a certified business actually an instructor to make more instructor pilots in Europe and it was sent to Nuremberg Germany where I other pilots good pilots to become now instructor pilots they need more instructor pilots in Europe you have to always be recertified every year so I ended up going there and then certifying other pilots become instructors so they can be certified people in country but I also my mission that my primary mission and outside of Nuremberg was on the checklist bokkeum border we flew the Czech border every day 110 kilometers back was the Iron Curtain was still in existence border that way over long streams and between barns and stuff we do a low-level visual inspection that every day looking for the Russians coming the Russians economy and the Russians would fly helicopter on the other side next to us and we wave each other so the question was was it any reason to be there except we were is the good easy mission and I go skiing or we couldn't fly with visual flight rules you have to see what was coming tanks or whatever which wasn't gonna happen we go out flying we get down to you know we finish flying something else I don't think you realized at the time but it was almost like you'd switched the kit you went from the left Vietnam behind him and I drank heavily at the point where if I had any I believed in genetics and alcoholism but any genetic predisposition to alcoholism it would have happened leaving Vietnam but I went from being absolutely falling down drunk virtually every day to every night anyway in some days when we're flying to not drinking much at all I mean I drank beer in Germany unless that but not the same level so it's almost like you were able to switch it bury it all which is what you do you did but you don't realize the time so I was just flying a really easy mission it was a piece of cake and it was lovely environment in Germany so I was there for a year they flew my wife over and car over and all of my belongings I was an officer at that point so you got to live at a nice apartment that they gave you beautiful City Nuremberg was and then I got to the border for a week at a time and then come back and then back out to the border week on week off piece of cake no other command responsibilities and then back to the States and then I had the option of we up in full time to which would have meant another tour in Vietnam which to be honest but my wife was just done pregnant with my oldest daughter the first time I just even me with my limited logic that age said yeah this probably doesn't make sense doing this again I tend to reflect on her part of me wanted to go back a large part of me wanted to and if I think if I was single I probably would have I didn't I took the out at that point and I stayed on as a reserve actually what you do is you become technically discharged and then you reenlist as and we get we commissioned as a reserve officer I stayed on the flying with the National Guard unit out of Groton and so we pair a facility down there I think it's the 1109 that twelve years down there and then I got out with a total number of years 16 years of service but I should have stayed for 20 to get something out of it but at the time I was raising a young family I was going to college Knights took me 11 years to get my bachelor's degree in engineering and I just worked my way through the GI Bill and worked two or three jobs and supported a family took a job as a perhaps man on the factory because I had no nobody need a pilot's there were 500 of us at a time coming out of the service and there were not many helicopters around at that time so so I working at the piano factory I returned and then came here to a not-for-profit after that and the only ones were I'd always hoped that I'd wanted some of the people who can become very close they're your best friends forever whether you ever meet them again I don't think you ever have a bond as close as people do you fly in combat with or serve in combat but there's it's hard to describe not more important but equally important is a spouse even a good spouse and a close spouse I think you have as far as this is to even describe people it's different so I don't mean to compare the two but if you can consider the closest relationship to somebody you love deeply your relationship on an emotional level to the people served in combat with is equally intense but in a much different way but without the internet back then to find these guys that kind of I didn't know if I can keep addresses and address books and we're just wild and crazy young people that time but as the internet became more and more prevalent and I finally went online I realized there was an association called Vietnam helicopter Pilots Association which is now gots massive this eight ten thousand members belong to it now across the country not only pilots with crew members as well I went on there and then found out there's little sub component of that called the black widows which is my unit that had their own little reunion going on once a year somewhere in the country so it didn't go to one of those they didn't feel ready for it about that time I did started having some you know psychological throwbacks to Vietnam and just felt it wasn't quite ready yet for it so I ended up waiting until three or four years ago I went to Washington DC for the first time but I've had some online conversations and letter exchanges with some folks in the unit prior to that so a good friend one of my best friends two friends actually one that's in lives in New York near Teterboro Airport still flies commercial helicopters who is the one that flew the second helicopter the day were shot down everything George Jones Jones II as we knew him everybody had nicknames his aircraft was summer wine so he got shot down that same day and his copilot was the one that got shot in the head captain Doc and Dusty Rhodes was the other pilot that I was with the day I got shot down in Cambodia happened to be living in Saratoga Springs New York always here so we're all within two hours of one another and didn't know we were there and of course the another close friend lives up by Buffalo so since then we because we all got shot down on January 4th of 1968 in Cambodia on that difficult mission we get together once a year and Jonesy was the one that was interviewed for the article in the book or that chapter in that book and he got a hard copy from the from the the person that wrote the book at the time so he brings out with us and we typically meet at West Point at the Thayer Hotel which is right on West Plains campus have a brunch or breakfast or something there are as close as we can get to that day and January 4th every year and we he put in some book and we all sign it and we figure the last person standing ends up with a book so it's kind of our way of dealing with it but we don't talk about it much it's just it's there it's a memory and it's just recognized then we bring spouses if we have them they're teasing me because I haven't had one for the last two times but I'll try to you know find someone to bring along this year even if I have to pay them to pretend they're my spouse and that they keep saying I'm not good enough to get someone to live with me apparently so whatever brotherly luck but they're as close as I have four friends and I see them maybe once twice a year at the most now really not the view of classic VFW I belong to the Vietnam helicopter pilots Association what I described just to let the publication's I've only been to one and that I went down for a showing of the it was a documentary which I could talk to you before this that celebrated the service that the donut Dolly's whichever they were across women that serves I've been to that but I don't belong to an association of that just but it was kind of linked through the Vietnam helicopter pilot Association actually helped fund that event actually so it's very close-knit crew you have a differently than people think and I've been interviewed by a couple of high school kids over the years and they always look at me like I'm weird because I don't think anyone ever thinks this way but out of war you can be bitter about it or you can see what you might have been there for Vietnam is classically considered to be a terrible situation that didn't have value and we shouldn't have been there and I've always felt that not because I need some reason to have been there but I think as in world war two going back to the beginning of my story when my father Nora was occupied by Nazis at a time when the US wasn't even involved in the war not many people realize but the US didn't get involved more war two until very late in the process and the war almost didn't go in the way we would have we joined the war very late and entered through England into d-day and through obviously to Italy and so forth in northern Africa but people do bad things in the world it's I think the ultimate everyone in the military is served including John McCain oh just when they aren't war mongers they're not hoping to have war what they're looking for is in fact less than they hope for is war but they are realistic enough as I am to understand that there are still very bad people out there doing bad things the ultimate goal and our lifetime are the next lifetime or whenever it is is that peace in the world and we all hope them be similar you'd find a Vietnam more times than you can imagine but people don't realize that in that interim period until we can get to that the only goal we should have someone has to do the difficult task of trying to keep the ability for the rest of the world to develop that peace and well there was thought on the saying which people don't think we should were in there I think we should have I think you have to look at there are bad people that would be very bad things North Vietnam was not a nice group of people Chinese were heavily involved with them and trying to defeat the south and then even go further so there's genocide happening I mean I've personally viewed villages where the heads of the elders were cut off the try to intimidate the people and thrown in piles of rice which is why I don't eat rice to try to influence the younger people in that family just rice farmers to go with them and fight against the Americans I mean so they people don't understand the atrocities that were happening by the bad people and the Americans don't have atrocities if it's very very rare that you'll find somebody gets out of control as we do in our normal society people get killed by whack jobs there were some that served currently and have served in the past that might have done terrible things but ninety nine and nine-tenths percent of the people that serve this country do it with a lot of compassion and with absolute I never I never fired until I was fired upon first people don't realize that but there were bad people who do very bad things so I think it the only other thing is I lost any thought that I think that there is a power larger than us in the universe controlling any of what we do here David I can remember distinctly one day flying out of the A Shau Valley after having a horrific scene in my mind and still there and saying if anybody's paying attention they're not doing a very good job of it thinking about the way I was brought up in the Methodist Church of God is looking over us and protecting as well in my view I guess I had to lose all of that pie-in-the-sky thought of it but doesn't mean there wasn't something larger than us but I'm personally probably changed my view of what I can potentially believe and how that operates in our real world don't that's just me and everybody has one thought on that and that's a new people come always stronger need religion to support what they saw so outside of that I believe in a strong military force a strong deterrent and that people do bad things and as they do in public life you know you wouldn't want a thug coming into your school one beating up your kids you do something about an ogre be thugs out in the real world someday maybe we won't have thugs but till then leave it up to the yeah people that want to serve this country and do that for you and hopefully respect him a little more when they come home no I don't think so I think it's tough all the time but thank you for your time it's kind of a unique piece it belonged to the innovate described earlier this Special Forces Green Beret unit which was Special Operations Group it was formed by oak grits and it was kind of an elite group of people this b-36 team in any case to be able to identify one another in a combat situation or in a difficult situation and just because they wanted to be able to identify themselves even if they were drunk in a bar somewhere they had this red white and blue scarf that they had made him yet now it's a little stained but any of us that were part of that unit even as pilots were given one of these and if we're as an example if you were shot down and which we had done and you were on the perimeter and somebody was coming in or they were trying to come and rescue you hi you it wasn't easy in an intense environment to be able to tell whether you're a good guy or a bad guy necessarily so by tying a scarf like this weird light blue scarf around your neck the Special Forces guy would be a part of it nobody else would have that and maybe also when we go out drinking with him at night because the drunken bar so if we take if we picked a fight they'd help us out at the same time because they would support us as much as anyone I think I've never heard of it so I think it was it could have been but I'm not aware of it it was unique certainly to our group and I may be one of the only ones that ever kept one is were able to keep it as I left Vietnam so it was an unusual group I appreciated that group more than a very bright guys real Patriots and

Channel: ccsuvhp

Views: 24,039

Rating: 4.8107257 out of 5

Keywords: Interview, Veteran, Vietnam War, Veterans History Project Of The Library Of Congress American Folklife Center, Central Connecticut State University (Organization)

Id: SUFG9hwvJVc

Length: 93min 28sec (5608 seconds)

Published: Thu May 31 2012