I checked in, dropped off my duffel bag, turned and scanned the room. Forrest Snyder, one of my classmates from Cobra school, stood up as I walked toward him. Forrest was a smart, well-spoken, polite lieutenant, not the image of a flamboyant attack helicopter pilot.
“Hey, Forrest! I’m on the flight leaving in three hours. How ’bout you?”
“Yeah, same flight. It’s kind of ominous, heading out on Pearl Harbor Day.”
“Hadn’t thought about that. Don’t worry. Everything’s good.”
We boarded the plane and sat with Bill Davies, another Army aviator who had managed to smuggle a fifth of Jack Daniel’s on board. We asked the stewardess for three Cokes. When she saw the whiskey, she was quick to bring refills. We drank our fill and passed the bottle around the plane. After it was empty, the flight attendant stuffed it upside down into the magazine rack at the front of the cabin. There was a spontaneous cheer.
In Honolulu, we spent the layover drinking Mai Tais. Back on the plane, I passed out and slept most of the rest of the trip, waking with a hell of a headache when we landed at Tan Son Nhut airbase in South Vietnam’s capital city, Saigon. I survived the bureaucratic processing through the Long Binh replacement center nearby, where the assignment officer had said, “War’s over, son. Not much going on anymore. We need your experience at headquarters, not in the field. Units are standing down, going home.”
“I want to get to a tactical unit that’s still in the fight,” I said. “I’ve trained to fly Cobras in combat. That’s what I want to do. My dad and uncles fought in World War II. I had a cousin in Korea. This may not be much of a war, looks like it’s about over; but it’s the only war we’ve got.”
He stood up and said, “Hang on a minute; let me see.”
When he returned, he said, “Lucky day for you. There’s an attack helicopter company doing special operations work in the Central Highlands.”
“Great!” I said, grinning.
“You depart at 0700 tomorrow morning with another new Cobra pilot, Lieutenant Forrest Snyder. I’m sending you both to the 361st, the Pink Panthers.”
“Forrest’s coming with me? Outstanding!” But I remember thinking, Hope I haven’t gotten him into something I shouldn’t have.
We made it to Camp Holloway in a series of unnerving flights, the first in the belly of a C-130 propeller-driven cargo plane with no seats. We sat strapped to the metal floor with a long piece of two-inch nylon webbing across our laps. We transferred to the back of a CH-47 Chinook, a tandem-rotor medium lift helicopter. At Holloway, we were run out the back ramp like so many cattle.
Map 1. North and South Vietnam
The Army’s airstrip at Camp Holloway, 2,500 feet above sea level, had been carved out of the fields and forests outside Pleiku in the Central Highlands. The camp was dirty and, depending on rain, either dusty or muddy on any given day. Luckily, it was a bit cooler than most of Vietnam because of its elevation. Tin-roofed huts and hangars clustered along both sides of a five-thousand-foot runway constructed of perforated steel planking, or PSP as it was called.
One side of the runway was a regular little town for aircrews and support personnel. The rest was taken up with maintenance hangars, operations shacks, a refueling area, and scores of revetments to protect the parked helicopters. Off a ways was a rearming point and ammo dump. While I was there, the ammo dump was blown up occasionally by rocket or mortar attack. It was always quickly resupplied. The attacks rarely affected combat operations.
On the rust-colored expanse of the base, nothing grew thanks to constant applications of defoliant. A perimeter of earthen berms, pillbox-like fighting positions constructed from sandbags and recycled PSP, and rows of concertina wire surrounded the camp. Guard towers rose above the stretched coils of razor wire. We were an isolated protected enclave, having little contact with the world outside, except for flight missions day and night.
Our crude, tin-roofed sleeping hooches were crammed with stereo tape players, big speakers, small refrigerators, and, most importantly, air conditioners. We had headquarters, mess halls, supply rooms, a medical clinic, a barbershop, and even a small gift shop. U.S. car manufacturers’ representatives clustered around a central store, the PX, ready to help us buy a car at wholesale prices while in Vietnam, to be delivered at home at the end of our tour. We had an officers’ club, too, a necessary place for young men to unwind after flying in the face of death each day.
In addition to the main club, the 361’s small officer’s club, the Stickitt Inn, featured a bar, a few tables, and a hole in one wall so you could dive into a sandbagged bunker during rocket or mortar attacks. We loved it. Camaraderie grew from our flights on SOG’s secret operations. We cemented those bonds at the Stickitt Inn, drinking way too much, telling tall tales, and acting crazy.
Several days after my first combat mission, I was sitting in the Stickitt Inn, drinking and telling war stories with Forrest and a couple of other new pilots. We had flown a few more missions, none as harrowing as the first, which I was recounting.
One of them said, “That must have been a hell of a day. Scary?”
“Not really,” I boasted, but instantly corrected myself. “Yeah, scary as shit, actually,” I admitted. “Scared the fuck out of me. But I did OK. I did it. We do what we’ve been trained to do. No time to think. Just have to do. You know how and you do it.”
I slammed my glass back on the bar. “I survived some hellacious missions on my first tour, too. I was shot up lots, and shot down once.”
Somebody asked, “What happened?”
“Took a thirty-seven-millimeter antiaircraft hit in the right wing attacking a fuel depot hidden under the trees. Classified mission in Laos over the Ho Chi Minh Trail. As I pulled up from a rocket run, wham, the whole right side of the aircraft seemed to explode. We tumbled out of control. The right wing shattered and was on fire. Worked it hard. Got back some ability to fly. Got the fire out. But we were descending fast. Could not hold altitude. I gave the command to eject. The observer went out. I pulled my seat handle right after. I had a very short parachute ride. Got only partial chute deployment before hitting the ground with a thud. We were crashing through the treetops by the time I punched out.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. Then I was nearly captured. I ran through the jungle for forty-five minutes while my wingman put down suppressive fire. That earned me the nickname Lightfoot. Got plucked out of the jungle by an Air Force helicopter from the 20th Special Operations Squadron out of Thailand, call sign Pony Express. Spent some time in the hospital there. Eventually I returned to the unit, back to flight duties. We’d lost fifteen airplanes at that point out of eighteen. Thirty crewmembers shot down. Not many of them ever recovered. I was one of the few. Lousy odds. I was scared then, I’ll tell you. If you don’t get scared in combat, you’re a liar. Or nuts.”
I continued. “Only after a tense mission