A procession occurred during the dedication ceremony that involved the laying of a memorial

wreath. Memorials remember the dead but express the feelings of the living. e pilots, ight
crewmembers, dignitaries, Gold Star families, members of the VHPA, ministers, musicians,
Vietnam veterans and grateful patriotic citizens shared a solemn moment as the wreath
representing the thousands was placed during the monument dedication. Identity of individuals
unknown (Lisa Kirk McAndrew; courtesy VHPA Aviator).
Coming All the Way Home
 is is where the crew chief and door gunner sat when we took o or landed. ey would crawl
out on the pylon and shoot covering re under the helicopter as we banked hard and broke from a
gun or rocket run. e only thing holding them from falling was a webbed “monkey strap.” ey
hand-held and red a 30-caliber machine gun (author photo).
 All photographs courtesy Bill Schmidt unless otherwise noted.
All poems by Fred McCarthy
“A Date with an Old Girlfriend” (in Chapter 20) originally appeared in e VHPA Aviator (May–June
2020) and “A Headstone for ousands,” by Tom Kirk (also in Chapter 20), originally appeared in e
VHPA Aviator (July–August 2018). Both are used by permission.

L C C - -P D
Names: McCarthy, Fred, 1946– author.
Title: Coming all the way home : memoir of an assault helicopter aircra commander in Vietnam /
Fred McCarthy.
Other titles: Memoir of an assault helicopter aircra commander in Vietnam
Description: Je erson, North Carolina : McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2021 | Includes
bibliographical references and index.

Identi ers: LCCN 2021022108 | ISBN 9781476684703 (paperback : acid free paper) ♾
ISBN 9781476643571 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: McCarthy, Fred, 1946- | United States. Army. Assault Helicopter
Company, 175th—Biography. | Helicopter pilots—United States—Biography. |
Helicopter pilots—Vietnam—Biography. | United States. Army—O cers—Biography. | Vietnam War,
1961-1975—Aerial operations, American. | Vietnam War, 1961-1975—
Personal narratives, American. | BISAC: HISTORY / Military / Vietnam War
Classi cation: LCC DS558.8 .M319 2021 | DDC 959.704/34092 [B]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021022108
B L
ISBN (print) 978-1-4766-8470-3
ISBN (ebook) 978-1-4766-4357-1
© 2021 Fred McCarthy. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
Front cover: Guns Up (Joe Kline, Aviation Artist)
Printed in the United States of America

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

Box 611, Je erson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
 Coming All the Way Home
Memoir of an Assault Helicopter Aircra Commander
in Vietnam
F M C

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

Jefferson, North Carolina
 is book is dedicated to the memory of 30 ight crewmembers
who made the ultimate sacri ce for their country, serving with the
U.S. Army’s 121st Assault Helicopter Company at Soc Trang, in the
Mekong Delta IV Corps area, or Da Nang in I Corps during the
Vietnam War. And to those who came home but le an important
part of who they were in Vietnam.
 e Rice Fields Are Burning
It’s early in the new year and the rice elds are burning.
My heart nds a certain yearning to be among friends;
sharing the things we used to share, caring the way we used to
care.
And yet the experience of being here of burning away the child
in me, should strengthen the soil that I might grow with a little bit
more maturity
 Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Military Terminology
Preface

Baptism by Fire

A Family Tradition

Basic Infantry Training

Primary and Advanced Helicopter Flight Training

Welcome to Vietnam!

Ash, Trash, and General Little Minh

Tet 1968: A Turning Point in the War

Combat Assault Reality erapy

Stayin’ Alive in Soc Trang

Sisters, Orphans, POWs, and a Hospital

Helicopter Gunships

Kick the Tire, Light the Fire, and Go

 e Magic Carpet Ride

Lead Gunship Goes Down

Bringing It All Together

Re ecting on Vietnam

Historical Lessons Learned

e Just War eory and Vietnam

Memories, Legacy, Faith

Reunions and Memorials

Appendix: e Men Who Gave eir Lives
Author’s Service History
Bibliography
Index of Terms
 Acknowledgments

Family Appreciation
My deepest appreciation to my understanding and supportive wife,
Shannon; two successful risk-taking sons, Mike and Pat; lovely daughters-
in-law, Megan and Bethany; and very special grandchildren, Milo, Lizah,
and Rowen, for putting up with me and my quirky behavior and for loving
me anyway through it all.

Veteran Appreciation
Jim Lucking—Jim’s personal friendship and mentoring was instrumental
in my completion of ight school, in my success as a slick pilot with the
Tigers, and in my becoming an aircra commander in B model gunships
with the Vikings of the 121st Assault Helicopter Company. We were in the
best company in the U.S. Army, the world-famous Soc Trang Tigers, based
in Soc Trang, Republic of Vietnam, during 1967 and 1968. A part of him has
been with me all of my life in the many leadership roles I have been
privileged to hold as a civilian. I can’t thank him enough for the di erence
he made in the quality of my life.
Paul Woodby—Paul came to the 121st Assault Helicopter Company as an
experienced infantry soldier and path nder and took on the challenging
role of becoming a door gunner with the Vikings. Door gunners hung out
the side of a Huey on a “monkey strap” and red their machine guns under
the aircra as it broke from a gun or rocket run. It was a very dangerous job,
and he did it with skill, courage, and dedication to the mission. We shared
the experience of a night engine failure and an autorotation in a fully loaded
Viking B model Huey gunship on October 18, 1968. A er we were
evacuated by a Dusto medevac helicopter, the aircra was destroyed by the
Viet Cong. We consider ourselves brothers of a di erent mother for life.

Writing, Editing and Publishing Appreciation

 Writing this book has been a ful llment of a life-long dream to recount
one of the most memorable adventures of my life. I appreciate the
inspiration and technical assistance that was so readily available from some
very special people I was fortunate to meet along the way.
I would like to thank the following members of the Vicious Writers’ Circle
on Whidbey Island for their insightful comments at a time when the project
needed direction and honest critique: Dan Pedersen, Chris Spencer, JoAnn
Kane, Candace Allen, Dave Anderson, and Regina Hugo.
I would like to thank Elizabeth (Beth) Hall for her considerable editing
skills and suggestions. She mentored me through a number of substantial
revisions and reorganizations of this book.
I would also like to thank Dylan Lightfoot, editor at McFarland, for his
editing suggestions and input on revision.
 Military Terminology
AC—aircra commander—pilot in command—sits in the right seat
ARVN—Army of the Republic of Vietnam—South Vietnamese soldiers
Ballistic helmet—theoretically capable of de ecting some bullets
Bullet bouncer—bulletproof Kevlar plate to protect the chest
C-rations—1200-calorie meal in a can for use in the eld
Collective—control that adds or takes out pitch in the rotor blades
Combat assault—an operation involving slicks and gunships and a
command and control helicopter to airli troops into a landing zone
CW2—Chief Warrant O cer 2 (Levels WO1, CW2, CW3, CW4)
Cyclic—control stick that comes up between the legs of the pilot for
directional control of the aircra
Deuce and a half—a 2.5-ton truck for carrying supplies or soldiers
EGT–Exhaust Gas Temperature—a temperature gauge of the helicopter’s
turbine engine exhaust
FNG—F---ing New Guy
.45—Colt .45 standard issue Army sidearm (pistol)
Hooches—thatched roof and sides, houses, or storage sheds sometimes
containing weapons and ammunition; also the barracks where we lived
KIA—killed in action
Klick—kilometer—metric measurement =.6214 of a mile—standard for
stating distance to the target or objective in the military, etc.
LZ—landing zone
M60s— exible mounted machine guns fed by linked bullets
Mic—microphone on ight helmet
Monkey strap—webbed strap attaching crewmember to the helicopter when
climbing out on the rocket pods to re their weapons
P38—can opener for opening C-ration cans of food
Pacs—passengers—armed troops in a combat assault
POL—refueling area (Petroleum, Oil, Lubricants)
Pull pitch—pulling up on the collective control that adds pitch in the blades
and causes the helicopter to go up or down
PZ–pick-up zone—where infantry troops are loaded for a mission
RP—reporting point
Short nal— nal approach to landing
Sit rep—situation report—report of what’s happening in an operation
Slicks—troop transport helicopters as opposed to gunships
SOP—Standard Operating Procedure
TAC–Tactical O cer supervises Warrant O cer Candidates
.38—police standard issue pistol issued to pilots to replace the .45
Trim resistance—a control to set the cyclic in a climb. If the pilot lets go of
this control the aircra will climb rather than nose over
V of three—three helicopters ying in a v formation
 Preface
is is a true story of a 21-year-old's one-year transition from
monastic life in a seminary to a U.S. Army helicopter gunship
aircra commander in the Vietnam War. He is motivated by a family
tradition of combat service, a strong sense of patriotism, a love for
aviation, and a desire for adventure. He gets far more than he
bargained for. He shares some exciting ying missions, re ects on
the nature of being a combat pilot, and processes the experience
through his poetry, letters home, and re ective analysis. He takes the
reader through the history and morality of this war and the role of
the combat soldier. is is partially a war story, but more than that, it
straps readers into the armored seat in the cockpit of a helicopter
gunship and lets them have a rst-person experience of how this
adventure de ned a young man’s life. His hope in writing this
memoir is to share with others the intensely personal legacy of war
that comes with the experience. Writing the book involved 50 years
of discernment, reading, and study. In some small way he hopes to
help the reader understand a war experience and perhaps help other
Vietnam veterans and their families also come all the way home.
 Baptism by Fire
I am leaning into the bulletproof armored panel with my le shoulder.
Resting on my lap is a 3/4-inch bullet bouncer that extends up to my neck
to stop bullets that come through the windscreen. e reproof gloves are
pulled tightly over my ngers, and I glance at the time on my watch. e belt
for my side arm is rotated so that my .45 is between my legs to protect the
family jewels. I turn the knob and pull the dark visor of the ballistic helmet
down over my face to protect my eyes. I’m as ready as I can be for my rst
mission as a gunship pilot.
Above my head is a gun sight for ring twin M60 machine guns, mounted
on exible mounts, two on each side of the aircra . Our door gunner and
crew chief rest their feet on the machine gun pylons on the outside of the
cabin area. e crewmembers are locked and loaded and ready to climb out
onto the pylons, secured only by a monkey strap, to shoot under and behind
the aircra as we break from our gun and rocket runs. Looking over the
barrels of their handheld machine guns, they scan the mangroves and canals
below looking for movement and any signs of black-clad Viet Cong.
e cockpit is a uniquely surrealistic world. ere are 100 switches,
gauges, and breakers, etc., that feel like they are an extension of our
extremities. A er many hours in the cockpit we can tell their location by
feel. We let down ve klicks (kilometers) out of the landing zone and are
hauling ass, balls to the wall, at treetop level, pushing 90 knots over a
mangrove tree line leading up to the area of operation. e rotor blades are-
whop-whopping in familiar Huey-style syncopation at this airspeed, and the
whole damn aircra is shaking as the advancing rotors claw the air. I am the
co-pilot in the lead gunship.
e aircra commander is talking on the radio to Tiger Six in the
command and control ship up above us at 1,000 feet, in what we call the
nosebleed section of the theater, circling the area. e commander is asking
him for a sitrep and what it looks like down at treetop level where the
operation is about to unfold. My job is to scan the instruments, have my
ngers on the trigger of the M60s, call out anything I see to the aircra
commander, and be ready to take the controls if necessary. We are ying a
light gun team today consisting of two gunships.
I activate the armament as we descend from altitude. I turn on the ring
systems for both of us up front on the center console. “Guns and rockets are
hot,” I say over the intercom for the bene t of the crew, part of our standard
operating procedure.
e aircra commander in the right seat controls the ring of rockets
with a button on his cyclic control, and he also res the ex guns if
necessary (if the co-pilot is unable) by toggling a switch on the center
console. I am in the le seat with my right hand on the gunsight trigger. I
pull it down in front of me and look out over the glass reticle that is the
gunsight. Every action has a contingency procedure and a back-up plan. e
aircra commander cranks down the friction on the collective to set the
power for low-level ight and sets the trim on the cyclic stick in a climb. e
rationale is if one or both of us up front gets shot, our aircra will climb up
when the cyclic is released, rather than nose over and take out the rest of the
crew.
e aircra commander holds forward pressure on the cyclic pushing
against the trim resistance. e crew feels one with the tired old B model
Huey. e instruments are alive, the gauges are in the green, we are loaded
for bear, and we settle into the shake, rattle and roll rhythm of a helicopter
combat assault mission.
We are low-leveling just above the treetops, following a line of scraggly
nipa palms that hide a canal and lead to the landing zone. We S turn at 85
knots along the tops of the jungle canopy and pop up and over a line of trees
and drop down into the open area of the LZ. We are trying to draw re and
get the Viet Cong to shoot at us so that we can return re and clear the way
for the incoming slicks. Everyone in the aircra is on heightened alert
looking for Cong in the landing zone, suspicious structures, explosives, or
hidden enemy soldiers. We know that sometimes the VC hide caches of
explosives in stacks of straw, huts, or dense foliage, so we shoot a few rockets
into them to see if we can hit pay dirt. It’s like playing the lottery hoping for
a jackpot.
e landing zone is about a klick in diameter, with huts and other
structures, and lots of hidden places for Viet Cong to hide. Ahead I see what
appears to me to be a man in black pajamas crouching beside a bush with a
weapon. Before I know it, we are over him. He raises an AK-47 and unloads
on us. Pop pop pop pop pop. We break right and head for the tree line.
e AC keys the mic and tells our wingman in a low and controlled-
matter-of-fact voice, “21 receiving light automatic weapons re and breaking
right.” We y towards the tree line, turn over it, and parallel the LZ at treetop
level. I crane my neck to look back over my shoulder to see if I can pinpoint
the enemy and his location.
e AC scans the instruments and then the operational area side to side
and says to me, “What the hell were you doing back there? We don’t have the
time to gure out whether a gook in black pajamas with a weapon is our
friend or not. Obviously that guy was not. We’re coming around and you
better grease him if he is still there.” We came around, he was, and I did.
e aircra commander calls our wingman: “22, this is 21. We are
con rming one KIA. Let’s prep this LZ for the slicks.” e door gunner and
crew chief start calling out targets from their respective sides of the
helicopter and ring at the same time. e sound is deafening. Spent bullet
casings bounce around the cabin. I feel something hot on my neck, and it
turns out to be a few spent casings from the crew’s machine guns, their way
to welcome me to my rst gunship mission. We shoot into hooches and tree
lines and re a couple of rockets into haystacks. Our heads are on swivels,
my heart is in my throat, and we are trying to gure out whether this place is
going to blow up in our face when the transports descend down into the
landing zone. None of the hooches or haystacks produces a secondary
explosion. We separate from our wingman, widen our track, break o , and
now y two racetrack patterns 180 degrees out of sync with each other over
the tree lines on either side of the landing zone. We space our aircra out in
an orchestrated dance by going a little wider in the turn so that when one
gunship is rolling in, the other is turning away on the backside of the oval
pattern. ese are our tactics that we have down like clockwork.
A er four of these circuits, we y in low, down the middle of LZ Alpha in
the lead gunship. Our wingman is following in a crazy zigzag pattern about
three football elds behind us. e AC tells the crew chief to get ready to
pop smoke. We come in even lower over the rice paddy, bobbing and
weaving like a saddle bronc rider in a rodeo, and on command the crew
chief pulls the pin and throws out a grenade-sized canister. It hits the
ground, tumbles, and erupts with red smoke that blows to the east over the
landing zone.
Tiger Lead and the eight other slicks at reporting point 5 now have the
directional wind information they need and a targeted landing spot for the
lead aircra in the formation. e D model transports have formed up into
Vs of three, with nine total slicks, each with eight ARVN soldiers in the
formation, and they leave their circling pattern on a westerly heading of 270
degrees for the LZ. “Viking 21, this is Tiger Lead departing RP5, have the
red smoke.” e formation of slicks begins their descent. e trajectory
looks good. ey are now about two klicks out. e formation is tight, the
rotors almost overlapping. e slick drivers have nailed down their sight
pictures and picked spots on the aircra they are referencing, and the crews
are getting psyched for their touchdown in the landing zone. e aerial
dance of the formation manifests itself in a semi-chaotic movement up and
down in the hot and humid 100-degree blast furnace of the dry season in
the Mekong Delta. Every crewmember on each transport ship is feeling an
increased sense of adrenaline and awareness. e crew chief and door
gunner on each slick are hunched over their swivel mounted M60s, looking
for VC and ready to re.
ings are quiet. Too quiet. e last part of our nal approach to
touchdown, when the shit starts hitting the fan. As Tiger Lead touches
down, the radios come alive with calls of “receiving re, taking hits, from the
tree line to the north.” We hear the sound of weapons ring above the static
of the slicks’ radios when the aircra commanders key their mics: “Viking
21, this is Tiger 6, what is going on down there? Are you taking any re?”
“Roger that, sir, we are,” responds CW2 Peterson in a low-pitched drawl.
Popping sounds in the background accompany each radio call.
“Well, how bad is it?”
“Wait one, sir!” is the response.
e next transmission, in another deep, low-pitched voice, comes from
Peterson: “Tiger Lead, this is Viking 21, understand, receiving re from the
north tree line. e Vikings are on it. Call out the re, dump your pacs, and
get the hell out of there.”
e lead transport aircra begins touching down in the rice paddy. In
rapid succession, each ship starts to are as the formation bleeds o airspeed
and slows for touchdown. e formation breaks apart as each aircra
commander moves to an open area away from obstacles like dikes and small
palms and picks his own best spot for touchdown. e troops jump out of
the Hueys and disappear into the tall reeds and rice paddies. Each V of three
is on the ground for only a few seconds. e rotors are spinning, muddy rice
paddy water is spraying up in the air, partially obscuring the windscreen,
and the ARVNs are bent over holding on to their helmets and weapons and
making for cover. Over the mic come the words “Tiger Lead, pulling pitch,”
signaling that the pacs are out of the lead ship. Tiger Lead has waited a few
seconds on the ground for each ship to o oad, and then they are departing
the landing zone.
e crew chiefs and door gunners in the slicks have been pushing the
soldiers of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) o and then
shooting over their heads into the tree line. Each set of three slicks pulls
pitch, angles apart slightly from the others, and accelerates forward with
noses down and airspeed building fast, having jettisoned the weight of the
infantry cargo. On the way out, there are calls of “Tiger 2, taking re” and
“Tiger 5 took a hit from the north tree line.” e last set of three helicopters
is o , and the aircra climb rapidly in a le turn to an altitude of 1,000 feet.
On the way up to altitude, they join in another formation for the trip back to
the pick-up zone (PZ) for another load. No reports of “going down” are
heard, and we in the guns start breathing again.
Sporadic shots are taken at the last couple of slicks, particularly the last
ship, as it departs the LZ, and the rst of ve insertions comes to closure for
the slick drivers. As the “trail” slick (last in formation) climbs to altitude, the
gunships are ring into the tree lines above the ARVN troops, and they stay
on station and make a few more racetrack runs around the LZ.
“Tiger 6, Viking 21.”
“21, this is 6. Go ahead.”
“Sir, the insertion is completed. We are covering the pacs into the tree
lines, light re in the LZ, one KIA.”
We are unloading on the areas where the re was reported, multiple
hooches and suspect areas, and following the inserted troops out of the rice
paddies and into the tree lines. A er about 15 minutes of over ying the area,
the guns low-level out of the operational area and climb up and away from
the landing zone and out over the rice paddies to 1,000 feet for the trip back
to Can o for refueling and rearming. e whole operation in the landing
zone from prep to drop-o takes about 30 minutes.
Four more combat assaults go in to LZ Alpha on this day. e slicks are
standing by at a staging eld in between runs. It’s just a road out in the
middle of nowhere along the crest of a dike line where they are picking up
their ARVN infantry soldiers. Two times during the a ernoon the slicks
come in formation into Can o and refuel. e gunships y on in to Can
o a er each insertion and hover to the POL area for refueling/rearming
on the air eld, and the crew chiefs begin the process of fueling up the thirsty
gunships while the door gunners load up metal boxes of machine gun
ammunition. e aircra commander walks back to check in with his
wingman, and I start pulling the rockets out of the storage area, cranking on
the warheads, and lling the seven tubes on each side with the 2.75-inch
rockets le over from World War II. I am saying a silent Hail Mary each
time I place the rocket body on my knee and crank on the warhead before
loading it in a tube and moving the ring striker to contact ass-end of each
rocket, secretly hoping that one doesn’t blow up in my face.
e smell of jet fuel and gunpowder is intoxicating, and it is hotter than
hell this time of the year. We leave our sweat-stained jungle fatigue shirts
draped on the mesh seats to dry and wear just the black T-shirts that are a
distinct identifying mark of the Vikings from the 121st Assault Helicopter
Company out of Soc Trang.
ere are also other gunships refueling and rearming today. e
Mavericks of the 175th Assault Helicopter Company out of Vinh Long are
turning around their C model re teams as well. eir pilots wear red
neckerchiefs tied around their necks, identifying them as the cowboys they
are. ey are working the war nearby. We are glad we y these tacked
together and tired old B models because they are lighter and more
maneuverable than the newer C models and we can y them right on the
treetops and do steep banked turns without falling out of the sky. e C
model, with its touted 540-rotor system, unloads in a turn and loses altitude,
so the Mavericks y their missions at about 300 feet, where you are, from
our point of view, a sitting duck.
e next four assaults we are involved in that day result in return trips to
LZ Alpha with only sporadic and isolated gun re. It’s the same song, same
dance, next verse, sometimes louder, and sometimes a whole lot worse. e
routines of refueling, rearming, and waiting in between li s are repeated
throughout the day. A er the h operation, the Viking gun team heads east
for home towards our Delta base at Soc Trang.
Five miles out, CW2 Peterson keys the mic: “Soc Trang Tower, this is
Viking 21. Flight of two Vikings ve miles west of Soc Trang for landing.”
“Viking 21, this is Soc Trang Tower, cleared to land.” e gunship team
starts descending in a long base leg and then turns right on a one-mile nal.
“OK, you’ve got the controls. Take her in and land her,” Pete says casually
to me.
I answer: “Roger that, I’ve got the controls.” With my hands taking over
the cyclic and collective and my feet on the pedals, I line the gunship up on
nal approach. In the back of my mind, I know that we have just refueled
and rearmed at Can o and the aircra is heavy and will be di cult to slow
down, but if I are it out too abruptly it may not have enough li to hover
down the runway. e wingman is right behind me. e process of landing
this aircra is a tense balancing act especially for a rst-timer.
We come in over the concertina wire and bunkers at the north end of the
runway at about 80 knots and start a are. e Viking parking revetments
are about one-fourth of the way down the runway. e damn aircra is not
slowing down. It oats and oats and oats about three feet above the
runway, and then we sail on past the revetments for parking. I look over at
Pete as if to say, “Shall we turn around and hover back to the parking
revetment?” and he says, “Go around!”
I’m thinking, “Man, the guys in the back end and the wing ship are
wondering what the hell is going on up here.” So I nose the helicopter over
and climb out straight ahead and look to Pete as if to say, “What next?” and
he says, “Do it again” and keys the mic to acknowledge: “Tower, 21 is on the
go. Close tra c for another approach.”
“21 is cleared as requested!” is the tower’s response. Meanwhile the
wingman behind us hovers over into their sandbagged revetment. We turn
crosswind and downwind and set up for a quarter-mile nal to the
revetment area. is time I come over the wire at 70 knots and start to are
and sail on by the revetments again.
“One more time,” Pete says.
I am dying and sweating bullets and wondering if I can get this sucker
down. It doesn’t help that I can sense the distain of the crew in the back end
for having to turn this return trip into basic landing practice for a new
gunship co-pilot on a long hot day. e third time I start slowing earlier and
bring the gunship to a one-foot hover over the runway. We stop even with
the revetment, turn in and hover over and slide the aircra into position
between the metal 50-gallon drums around the sandbagged revetment. I
lower the collective for a one-two bounce of the skids on the ground and a
collective sigh of relief from the crew. I roll o the throttle, being certain that
the collective is in the full down position and my feet are set on the pedals so
the tail doesn’t rotate into the side of the revetment.
We go through the engine shutdown procedure. It is dead silent in the
cockpit as the aircra commander lls out the maintenance record book. I
am ready to apologize for my miserable display of airmanship. “We’ll talk
about it later,” says Pete. e crew are quite enjoying my uncomfortable
feelings as they tie down the rotor blades. e crew chief, a crusty old salt,
says, “Way to go, babysan.” I am aware that I’ve always looked young for my
age and look about 16 years old when I am 21. I wonder if I am going to get
the heave-ho for this miserable display of questionable ying skills, if this
rst gunship mission was in fact my trial by re. I wonder about my future
in the platoon.
at night in the Tigers’ Den over a beer, Pete takes a drag on his
cigarette, turns towards me and says, “How did you think it went today?”
“My three landings at the end of the day really sucked,” I respond.
“You’ll get the hang of landing these crates. ey’re a lot di erent than
landing a slick. We are dragging them o the runway on takeo and ying
them right on the edge most of the time. You notice how the EGT is o en
right below the red line. at’s because the engines are tired, it’s hot and
humid here, and we are using all of the power we can get just to get them in
the air. ey are heavy to start with, with full fuel, and then we load them
over gross weight with all that ammo and they y like shit. When you are
dragging them down the runway on takeo , sometimes the sparks will y
from the skids scraping the ground, and you will be easing them into
translational li and takeo . And when you come in with ammo and almost
full fuel, they are one heavy mother to stop. e momentum will carry them
all the way down the runway and o the other end if you don’t start slowing
them down as soon as you cross the air eld boundary.”
“You know you did the wrong thing on that operation today by not ring
the rst time at the VC with the AK-47 in black. You could have cost us the
lives of the crew or the loss of our ship. You have to decide if you can do this,
because we are going to be doing this kind of shit almost every single day.”
A er a few beers and when it is clear that the most senior commissioned
o cers have dri ed o to their hooches and only the warrants, lieutenants,
and a captain remain, a song, like spontaneous combustion, explodes from
the remaining warrant o cers and lieutenants.
Oh Soc Trang
(To the Tune of “Sweet Betsy from Pike”)
Oh Soc Trang Oh Soc Trang’s a hell of a place
e organization’s a fucking disgrace
With captains and majors and light colonels too
Who sit on the runway with nothing to do.
ey scream and they holler they yell and they shout
About many things they know nothing about.
For all of the good they ever will be
ey should be shoveling shit on the Isle of Capri.
(As everyone raises their drink for the conclusion)
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamen!

***
I leave the Tigers’ Den and walk back to my hooch past the ight line. e
crew chiefs are up on the cabins of our B models checking for damage and
checking out the rotor systems. e creaky screen door opens and I walk
into a room that has a couple of metal bunks, some stereo equipment from
the PX, some shelves made out of wood, a couple of old metal school-type
lockers, and two rough-made desks and chairs.
Today is a de ning day for me. I put my clothes in a pile. e .45 in the
Western holster, with the silver bullets lined up in the black leather belt on
the chair, looks like it belongs to a cowboy not a pilot. e square .45 doesn’t
t very well in the black leather Western holster or with the cowboy belt
bought in downtown Soc Trang with leather slots all around it for .45 caliber
bullets. I shove it under my bed and lie down on the sweat-stained sheets for
a long restless night of re ection.
On the bunk, I start replaying the tapes in my head from today’s mission.
How could I screw up two of three landings? e crew chief and door
gunner really enjoyed those go-arounds. e sounds outside are a strange
mix of generators and occasional outgoing artillery rounds. ere are some
black bugs on the singular overhead light bulb hanging down in my sparsely
decorated room, and I look at the ra ers above my head and think of the big
rats that are around here. I turn out the solitary light bulb.
My semi-conscious mind replays the combat assaults. ere was chatter
on the radios that added to the cacophony in the cockpit. ere is an
acquired art form to setting the right volumes on each of the
communication radios and the intercom. e aircra commander sets the
tone, and usually the communications are very low-key and mostly business
with the crew, the wingman, the ground troops, the artillery, and the
commanding o cer, directing the mission from overhead. e wingman is
on the same VHF channel and ying a helter-skelter pattern behind us down
on the deck. e crew comes in on the intercom to call out what they see
happening in the LZ.
Tiger Lead is leading the ight of nine slicks and communicates on VHF
and monitors the ground troop commander and the forward observer who
are on FM radio frequencies. e re team leader prior to starting the
insertion of the slicks consults a di erent FM frequency for artillery. And
nally, there is Armed Forces Radio (Good Morning Vietnam) out of Vung
Tau, playing something like “Light My Fire” or “Born to Be Wild” or some
other equally motivational rock and roll inspirational anthem in the
background during our mission. I’m wondering how I will ever keep it all
straight. I will soon learn to listen for each separate transmission and whom
it is coming from on the various radios.
My mind’s racing. I killed somebody today. I actually saw the guy in black
pajamas with an AK-47, he shot at us, and I killed him. How did I do that? I
have got to think about this. I could be doing a lot of this in the Vikings.
I am recalling some of my experiences as a slick driver with the Tigers
starting out as a pilot and then becoming an aircra commander, and the
600 hours of in-country experience I have including multiple combat
assaults, ash-and-trash missions, and ying a Vietnamese general around to
check on his provinces. I have lived through the Tet O ensive of 1968, and
my ying experience includes hauling everything from supplies and
ammunition to animals and soldiers, American and ARVN, in and out of
little outposts, cities, and occasionally another air eld into some far- ung
places in the Mekong Delta. I made aircra commander in slicks and took a
few hits on ash-and-trash missions and combat assaults. As a pilot I even
went through one engine failure with minimal structural damage to the
skids down over the airport at Bac Lieu.
at was fairly exciting in that we were loaded to the roof with anti-tank
weapons. at could have been quite a reworks display if they had cooked
o . But being in guns is going to be a whole di erent ball game.
Mortar attacks are almost a regular occurrence. e VC are sure
interested in killing us every day. Now I am expected to scramble out
through the incoming mortars and get airborne. No more getting under a
bed or heading for a bunker. Tonight I realize what I am in for, and I spend
most of the night thinking about whether this is something I can do. And if
so, how in the hell am I going do it?
Saint Edward’s Seminary feels like it is a long way away, ancient history. I
have trained for a year and always from early on in ight school with the
ultimate goal of being a gunship pilot. Now the time is here. I want to do
this job because it is important, people’s lives are at stake, and I know I can
do this, all of it. I want to be the best gunship pilot I can be.
Gunship ying is a whole new phase of this adventure with new rules and
procedures. Once you are a gunship driver, you are a specialist. You are no
longer doing ash-and-trash ying. You are selected as a member of an elite
platoon. You wear a black T-shirt under your jungle fatigues and a black
beret. You are scrambling out in the night when the mortars are falling and
blowing up the air eld and the base personnel and slick pilots are heading
for the bunkers.
Halfway through that night, I wake up. I decide how I am going to make
sense of this. I gure I will need to have my own ethics, moral code, and
personal code of conduct for being a U.S. Army combat helicopter pilot in B
model Huey gunships in Vietnam. Some of my rationale includes knowing
that in our company area there are not many secrets. We suspect that the
women that clean our hooches, the men who cut our hair, the women who
do our laundry, and those who work in the Tigers’ Den or in the small PX go
home each night to family members who are sympathetic to if not directly
associated with the Viet Cong. Many civilian Vietnamese workers from the
nearby town of Soc Trang, both men and women, work on the air eld, and
each day they walk in through gates past the security screening of the
military police, and at the end of the day they walk out and back down the
road to town and to their homes about a half-mile away.
 (In the spring of 1968 it came out that in fact some personnel who
worked on our base were caught with crudely drawn maps of the base
indicating where the various facilities were located and where the o cers
and enlisted men lived.)
e housekeepers and laundry workers had access to our personal e ects
every day. Some Vietnamese worked in the PX or the Tigers’ Den, our
air eld’s o cers’ club. Some of them walked right by the ight line where
our missions were posted and updated. We joked in the bar that the Viet
Cong seemed to know where our missions were going before we got there.
We didn’t know if this was in fact true. But the more I re ected on it, the
more likely it seemed that it was. I began listing in my head some basic
assumptions for developing my own personal code of conduct. e enemy
probably knows what our game plan is. I logically conclude that it is very
possible they know exactly where we were going on our missions. e VC
are trying each day to shoot down our aircra and kill us. ey regularly
engage our slicks and helicopter gunships with ri es, automatic weapons,
rockets, and mortars. e rumors abound that there is a bounty on
helicopter pilots. Stories circulate of mutilated bodies, of VC and NVA given
extra pay or some other form of recognition for having killed one of us.
I develop a speci c personal plan. If I come into an operational area with
the mission of prepping it for the slicks and I see a VC in black pajamas with
a weapon, he will be history. If I am red upon, I will return re. If I get an
order or request to re because soldiers are in contact, I will re whatever is
necessary or what I am ordered to re to cover the soldiers in their
operation to allow them to make successful contact or for them to get the
hell out of there. If part of the plan for an insertion or pick-up of troops is to
“shoot ’em up” because we know from experience that this is a place where
the enemy is ready for us, then we will dump the whole nine yards on them
and aggressively prep the landing zone. We will do whatever needs to be
done to make the place as safe as possible for the slicks and the ground
troops.
***
I am trying to remember what I learned, if anything, in the seminary
about war. What the hell! I’m a pilot and soldier in the middle of this war. As
far as I know the potential spread of communism is real, and, besides, it’s not
my place to determine this. at’s for someone in a higher pay grade than
me to gure out. I am a helicopter gunship pilot and I will do the best job I
can in this role.
We are de nitely involved in a war. We believe strongly that what we are
doing is right. I believe if I buy the farm, at least I am doing something
worthwhile and necessary. I decide I can do this! is is the job I signed on
to do, and now I am actually doing it. is is the adventure I was looking for.
Maybe it’s a little more than I was expecting, but there’s no turning back
now. is is the most di cult thing I have ever done in my life. I can do this.
I will do this. My fellow ight crewmembers and the troops we are
supporting down in the rice paddies and out in the jungles are counting on
me.
I will take on this responsibility and do the best I can to carry out my
orders and do this di cult work every day I am here. Once I thought this
through and made my decision I approached my new responsibilities with a
deep sense of commitment and responsibility. My goal not only became to
become a skilled helicopter gunship pilot but to one day become a re team
leader in our platoon.
Soc Trang, Vietnam
ursday, May 23, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
… I’m now in the gun platoon. I y le seat and have a gun sight that controls 4 M-60 machine
guns on exible pylon mounts. e man ying right seat res the rockets and does all the ying and
communicating when we go down to tree top level. en I re the machine guns and am there if he
should get hit … a whole new type of ying and the aircra commander has much responsibility
coordinating with transports on combat assaults and with the ground troops when they get in hot
water and need some close re support. It seemed like I knew the game as an aircra commander in
slicks but now I’m on the ground oor again as one of the new pilots in guns. You have to sacri ce a
little to learn a little di erent aspect of this game. Now I will train to become an aircra commander
of a wing ship in a two-ship re team and eventually maybe become a re team leader if it turns out
that I can catch on fast enough and have enough time le in country at that point. ere are a few
more tight situations to deal with and this o ers a much greater challenge I think than slicks did….
So long for now. Will write again soon.
Love,
Your Son, Fred
 A Family Tradition
is book is a story about the Vietnam War. It is also a personal story. I
was there for one year from December 17, 1967, to December 17, 1968. I
was 21 years old when I arrived and turned 22 during my ninth month in-
country. I ew 1,300 hours of missions as a U.S. Army warrant o cer and
helicopter pilot. ey say timing is everything. I had been in-country for
about a month and a half when, on Tuesday, January 30, 1968, the Tet
O ensive started. During the next couple of months, we literally lived in our
helicopters, ying missions whenever we were needed, and sleeping under
them at night.
e purpose of the Tet O ensive from the point of view of the enemy, the
Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese Army regulars (NVA), was to strike
military and civilian command centers in South Vietnam, incite the
population to overturn the Vietnamese government, and end the war in a
single o ensive blow. ey had done something similar successfully before
in their war with the French over colonial oppression at Dien Bien Phu in
1954. Now we were on the receiving end of very aggressive ghting and
vigorous coordinated operations by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese
Army regulars to attack air elds, support installations, cities, towns, and
personnel throughout Vietnam in a uni ed and highly orchestrated
o ensive. ey were out to win the war on our watch.
In this book I will sometimes use names or alternate names of my fellow
pilots and crewmembers for a number of reasons. I didn’t want to leave
anybody out. I didn’t want to say uncomfortable things about people. e
experiences in this book were mine, and others might not have seen them or
felt them this way. I have changed a few names or used only a rst name or
nickname in some of the writing to protect privacy. Every one of us made
mistakes, miscalculations, or questionable decisions at some point in our
tour. Each person makes their own sense of a war, and it is not my place to
project or imply that my thoughts or actions were any better or worse than
anyone else’s. I know I made a number of mistakes in combat. Some were
funny and some were downright stupid, dangerous, and scary. I knew a little
about myself when I was 21, and I had a lot more to learn about life, war,
and myself. I enlisted to be a helicopter pilot expecting to go to Vietnam.
With that enlistment came these experiences.
I was stationed at Soc Trang Army Air eld adjacent to the city of Soc
Trang. e city was formerly named Khang Hung during the Japanese
occupation of Vietnam. Our air eld was located in the IV Corps (southern
sector) area of the country. We supported ARVN companies and the Ninth
Infantry Division. Sometimes we also worked with Special Forces units and
infantry advisors in various outposts. We also supported what was called the
“Brown Water Navy” whose boats patrolled the rivers and streams of the
Mekong Delta. eir own gunships, the Seawolves, were sometimes down
for maintenance or they needed relief. e enemy forces we encountered
were predominantly Viet Cong. Occasionally, like during the Tet O ensive
of 1968, or along the Seven Mountains area by the Cambodian border, we
encountered North Vietnamese Army regulars (NVA) who had come down
the Ho Chi Minh Trail from North Vietnam to support the local Viet Cong.
e stories, poems, and writings in this book are true to the best of my
recollection and ability. I’ve done my best to recall them in as much detail as
possible. I have resisted the temptation to make them more than they were.
We had plenty of daily adventures and experiences so there wasn’t a need to
write ction for a compelling story.
I have to say it was the most exciting adventure of my life. e job I had in
Vietnam involved some things that are di cult to talk about. Many war
veterans prefer not to talk about their combat experiences at all. I respect
their decisions. It is sometimes di cult to share stories with people who
have not been in combat. It has been my experience that people will say that
they want to hear your story. But then you have to hold short of all of the
details because they don’t want to hear that much. I wanted to tell my story
and how I processed it so my family could understand why I have a few
quirky behaviors and with the hope that others might understand what
being in combat was like for me.
I came with excellent training and mental preparedness from the U.S.
Army, but nothing in that training prepared me for the moral dilemmas and
life-and-death decisions that needed to be made to survive and thrive on a
daily basis as a helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War. I was grateful to my
parents, who were both U.S. Army o cers, and for the discipline and
comprehensive education that I received starting at Saint Patrick’s
Elementary School, in Tacoma, Washington, and through the rst semester
of my rst year of college at Saint Edward’s Seminary in Kenmore,
Washington, northeast of Seattle.
During this adventure I made the transition from being a Catholic school
student, altar boy, seminarian, and relatively timid, reserved, and
inexperienced young person to becoming a seasoned, disciplined, and
pro cient combat helicopter pilot. I was a naive and relatively sheltered
young man when I entered the Army. I was a very average student in school
and in fact found most of school to be very boring. When I received the
silver wings of an Army aviator, I naively thought to myself, “I am going to
savor this moment, because it is the last time I may ever graduate from a
school of any kind.”
***
I bought a ring with my class number 67–19, the 19th class of helicopter
pilots to graduate in 1967, that I wear to this day. Little did I know that later
in life I would attend four colleges and universities, obtain a doctorate, and
spend a career as a schoolteacher and a school administrator, school
superintendent, college instructor, author, and the mayor of a city.
If I had been a more diligent student of history during high school, maybe
I would have understood more about the country of Vietnam, its people,
and in particular the history of its people enduring wars and much su ering
over hundreds of years of colonial oppression under the rule of the French
and Japanese. But then again, not much of this information was included in
our old history books because the escalation of the war started quietly and
was so new.
I did bring some core values and a very basic sense of philosophy,
theology, ethics, and moral decision-making to my role as an Army warrant
o cer from my immersion in the classical education I received at Seattle
Prep and Saint Edward’s Seminary. is background was important to me
for processing the experiences and for coming out of them at peace with the
decisions I made, the actions I took, and the part I played in the war.
In addition to ying responsibilities, I was our base’s assistant civic
actions o cer, charged to be a liaison with a hospital, orphanage, and Chieu
Hoi center (POW retraining camp) in the town of Soc Trang. I was also the
editor of the company newsletter called e Tiger’s Tail, assistant public
information o cer, and the awards and decorations o cer. I would write up
recommendations for our commanding o cer to approve and submit for
the achievements of our pilots and helicopter crewmen on various missions.
In the Army, people have multiple assignments, and senior o cers assign
you what they think you can handle and what you are good at. ere is
much more to do to keep an assault helicopter company operational than
just ying missions. Many of us did whatever was needed to get the job
done.
I felt very fortunate to be assigned to the 121st Assault Helicopter
Company. Our company was a high-performance company with quality
leadership and dedicated pilots and support crewmembers. We were proud
of our history and traditions and the fact that others could count on us to
get the job done and do the di cult missions that we were regularly called
on to accomplish. We had great reputation to uphold and did our best to do
this on every assigned mission.
As strange as some people may nd it, for the most part I really enjoyed
my time in the Army and at Soc Trang. It was an experience that was
transformational and de ning for me in terms of becoming an adult. My-
self-image was transformed, and my capacity for leadership in the future
grew signi cantly.
I have a deep, abiding respect and compassion for veterans and especially
for anyone who served in Vietnam. Now that extends to those soldiers who
have served and are serving in the more recent wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. I feel we owe a great debt of gratitude to the soldiers who did
this, honoring the commitments they made and believing their e orts were
helping to preserve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for the citizens
of this great country of ours.
As veterans, many of us care deeply about the people whose lives were
destroyed in the process of ghting this war. ose veterans who lived and
returned to civilian life su ering from their wartime experiences, de ning
events, or series of experiences deserve full access to their VA bene ts and
the health care and mental health counseling.
My thoughts at the time of my own service were that, when it comes to
pulling the trigger, we need to have the most sensitive and rational people
making those kinds of life-and-death decisions. I considered myself to be
that kind of person. e last thing an assault helicopter company needs is a-
trigger-happy whack job on the end of a mini gun that shoots hundreds of
rounds in a few seconds. is may sound sort of crazy in a civilian context.
One of the rst lessons you learn in war is that some things about war don’t
make any sense, especially to the combat soldier.
As I completed my one-year tour of duty in Vietnam I didn’t believe we
were winning the Vietnam War. In many cases it seemed like we won
various battles only to go back into the same areas multiple times and repeat
the same process with similar results.
Early in my education career a er Vietnam, through some very valuable
sta development training called “Human E ectiveness Training,” I learned
some essential skills for “controlling the self-talk” in my head and looking
for “opportunity in every di culty.” I hope we came away as a country more
enlightened about the complexity and atrocity of war and the importance of
not assuming that our ways and beliefs will necessarily work or should be
imposed on other cultures and peoples.
I haven’t really seen our country’s current actions re ect that
understanding … yet. I am optimistic that one day they will. Politicians will
make signi cantly di erent decisions about military action if they have been
personally involved as soldiers in war. Too many of our current politicians
are eager to commit others to going to war but have never been in the
military themselves to know the implications of what they are
recommending.
***
e men and women I ew with and supported were very courageous and
dedicated soldiers. Some of them made the ultimate sacri ce by laying down
their lives in this war. No one can ever take away those acts of courage that
are etched into our minds or the sacri ces that we saw them make on a
regular basis. ey were dedicated, hardworking, and willing to risk their
lives for the mission and for their friends. A number of helicopter pilots who
were with us in Soc Trang, and those who were my friends and ight school
classmates who served in other units, gave their lives in this war.
I don’t know why I have been given the privilege of these additional 50
plus years of living. I am 74 as I nish writing this book. I have had a very
memorable career of public service in education and municipal government
and a very full and rewarding life a er Vietnam. is book will reveal some
things about me that others may not have known while I was active in my
positions in education, municipal government or my church. I ask people to
re ect and realize that war is a very unique and di erent reality experience
from normal life.
e framework for this book came from the letters and poems I wrote
home regularly to family members and that my mother saved. My mother
and father were the real deal. National newscaster Tom Brokaw accurately
described my parents’ generation in his book e Greatest Generation. ey
were very proud of their military service and the part they played in
confronting and defeating the aggression of both Japan’s and Germany’s
leaders in World War II. I felt like in a small way I was continuing the family
tradition of serving in the U.S. Army as an o cer and giving part of my life
for a noble cause.
Mom was an Army nurse, and my dad was a lieutenant colonel in supply
and logistics in the Army. ey met in the jungles of New Guinea. She was
also an artist, a dancer, a writer, an entertainer, and the very best mother
ever to me. She approached life with enthusiasm, creativity, and humor. She
also had dyslexia and struggled to overcome it and its implications for how
she felt about herself, her life, and her writing. She taught me to enjoy life,
laugh loudly and o en, love writing, do arts and cra s projects, and dabble
in the art of painting pictures with words. She had a mother’s sixth sense
that the letters I wrote home would be of signi cant value to me someday,
and so she saved them. I can’t tell her how much that gesture means to me
now because she died on May 20, 2007, at the age of 90. My father died the
previous year, on May 4, 2006, at the age of 92. ey both died with family
members present and were courageous, tough, and lled with faith,
optimism, humor, and hope until the very end.
ere was a sense of awe and amazement in the eyes of my brother and
sisters, spouse and grandchildren, when each of my parents was given a
separate burial with full military honors at Tahoma National Cemetery in
the shadow of Mount Rainier in western Washington. When the disciplined,
polished, and respectful honor guard folded the American ag and
presented it to one of my siblings, and the soldiers collected the spent ri e
shells from the 21-gun salutes and gave them to family members, it was an
experience we will never forget. e funeral director, who was an old
seminary buddy of mine, had tears in his eyes on these occasions. Our
family has done its part in the U.S. military and to a great degree, our lives
and personal character traits were formed by many of our Army experiences
in a combat theater.
I have been deeply privileged to have had my parents, brother and sisters,
and extended family support me throughout my life and in particular when
I was in Vietnam. Someday, my remains and my wife Shannon’s remains will
be placed where my parents are interred at Tahoma National Cemetery in
the State of Washington with a spectacular view of Mount Rainier, and the
circle of my own life will be completed.
***
My brother, John McCarthy, is a risk-taker and survivor in his own right
and someone I admire for his sense of adventure and positive attitude. As a
youngster he overcame hearing issues, which he accommodated and took in
stride for his whole life.
He started out in the shipping department of a major pharmaceutical
company and worked there for 50 years, rising to the position of distribution
centers auditor. His email signature includes the following quote attributed
to Helen Keller: “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” I have
had a few daring adventures along the way as well. Vietnam was certainly at
the top of my list.
I was born on September 24, 1946, in Tacoma, Washington. When I look
at Mom’s picture, through the eyes of a child, I can see how attractive she
was and how much she loved me. I was my parents’ rst child, and a er me
would come three sisters and one brother. Mom had a laugh that would light
up a party and shake the ra ers. Occasionally it was a little embarrassing for
me. She loved a well-made Manhattan, telling jokes, laughing, singing, and
dancing. She was quite a seamstress and creative person and liked to paint
pictures with words as well as with paintbrushes. She braided our dining
room carpet out of colorful rags she had collected. While in the service, she
had some of her poems about military life published in Army Times. Later in
life, her humor and writing talent manifested itself in a funny memoir she
wrote, titled Jungle Rot and Khaki Bloomers. I’m sure she had lots of
admirers in the Army.
As an Army nurse during World War II, she was surrounded by men.
Many of them were infatuated with her because she tended to them, was
frequently laughing, and, as she said later in life, had learned how to do
nursing the high-touch way: she gave backrubs and hugged people and
could make a bed with hospital corners. She grew up in an Army family in
Wycko , New Jersey. Her father, a no-nonsense army captain who worked at
the Port of Hoboken, New Jersey, sent supplies and men o in troop ships.
Her mother tended to her housework, loved gardening, and read the Bible
regularly. A few days a er Mom graduated from high school her father took
her to a school in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and said, “Betty, you are going to be
a nurse.” She didn’t argue with him. Her childhood had been one of
obedience to her father, but also one of playing in the local woods,
swimming in the creek, catching re ies at night in jars, helping her mother
with housework, and looking up to her adventurous and quirky older sister,
Charlotte. Charlotte wrote poetry, as did my mother. Writing was a joy for
them growing up in rural New Jersey. Occasionally she did babysit for a boy
who lived next door and later became the world-famous and well-known
bandleader Nelson Riddle.
We once visited my mom’s family home when I was about 10 years old. I
remember the ight in a four-engine DC 6. I also remember my uncle
having me get into the bucket of his backhoe while he drove it around the
driveway at his home. e screen door on Gramma Itzen’s country cottage
slammed open and closed as we went in and out to play in the yard. I
remember that we sat on the rail fence in her backyard, catching re ies in
jars and watching a thunderstorm that scared the daylights out of us. I can
still see the well-worn wood oors of their weathered home, smell the
owers, and feel the experience of visiting the home where my mother grew
up.
Our family on my father’s side had come out from North Dakota to settle
in Tacoma, Washington. Life in the Dakotas had not been easy. An uncle
had homesteaded in a sod house on the prairie. My father was a serious and
intent person, who worked hard and enjoyed his family. He was an active
Catholic. He loved to have friends over, have a drink, and sing Irish songs.
His own dad died when he was 12 years old, so he had to grow up early. He
and his sister, Bernadette, helped their mother run a couple of movie
theaters in Fargo and Mandan, North Dakota. My dad took the tickets, and
his sister played the piano to accompany the scenes during the silent movies.
When the family moved out West to Tacoma, they all decided to live in
proximity to each other.
Dad graduated from North Dakota State University in electrical
engineering and Army ROTC. When he met my mother in the jungles of
New Guinea during World War II, he had received a war promotion and was
a lieutenant colonel in charge of a supply company. He looked sort of like
General Eisenhower, from a caricature one of his men drew, and had an
understated toughness about him. For a number of years, I thought he was
way too serious most of the time and he wasn’t much fun. I now realize
occasionally I must seem a lot like him.
Our Great Uncle Jim had been the stationmaster of the impressive Union
Paci c train station in Tacoma, Washington. In the early 1950s, train
stations were grand architectural structures and considered the gateway to a
thriving city. Tacoma’s was no exception. e family story was that Great
Uncle Jim had lost a leg under a train as a conductor earlier in life. One of
my other uncles, Pat Howe, was a train engineer. My grandmother worked
in the shipyards during World War II and then lived most of her life with my
Uncle Jerry and his wife, and her daughter, Bernadette, and their family of
three boys. She made the best orange rolls we would enjoy on our Sunday
visits. I had aunts, uncles, and cousins from ve very close families that lived
within about six blocks of each other. My uncle Fred’s son, Fritz, was a good
friend of my dad. ey would hunt jackrabbits together with a 1916
Winchester 22 that my father gave to me. Fritz was a graduate of West Point.
He was an infantry lieutenant and was captured by the Japanese during
World War II. He was on a Japanese POW ship that was bombed by the
Americans and was killed in the attack. I know it must have been a very
di cult experience for my dad to lose his childhood friend and relative this
way. My father was the recipient of the Legion of Merit award for his
wartime service and leadership ability.
I have great memories of growing up in that Tacoma neighborhood as a
young child. ere were many backyard picnics with my cousins, listening
to the older folks talk about some of the hardships they had le in the
Dakotas and their interest in each other’s families. My Uncle Jerry was a
great jokester and enjoyed pulling pranks on everyone. I remember a time
when he and Uncle Fred were comparing salmon just caught in Tacoma’s
Commencement Bay for size and weight. As Uncle Jerry’s tipped the scale,
he got a funny look on his face and then burst out laughing. He had lled
the salmon with lead weights from his tackle box when Uncle Fred wasn’t
looking. He was a talented woodworker, and one Christmas I was given a
gas station model that he had created out of plywood and painted with the
Texaco signs. It was a prized possession during my childhood. Whenever we
needed something in those days we looked rst to family for help. When
teeth were loose, Uncle Jerry had a special pair of chrome pliers, and he
would pull out our loose teeth.
Everyone in each of the families supported each other, and four of the ve
families went to Saint Patrick’s Catholic Church on Sunday. Our families got
together at least once a month at somebody’s house for meals and fun. It was
a great way to grow up, feeling so connected and supported in our extended
family.
***
We moved from Tacoma to Seattle, Washington, in 1953 when I was
seven years old. My father was a partner in the Bearing Sales and Service
Company, and they were expanding and needed his skills in the Seattle area.
My parents bought a grand old brick home in the Magnolia Blu
neighborhood northwest of the downtown area of Seattle.
e house was a two-story red brick home with an un nished basement.
It sat on a raised corner lot on an arterial with a bus stop across the street
and a separate two-car brick garage for our one car.
Mom never got a driver’s license and preferred to ride the bus into
downtown Seattle for her shopping trips. Magnolia is a self-contained
neighborhood separated from the city of Seattle by two concrete bridges. We
attended the local Catholic elementary school four blocks away, played with
other kids in the neighborhood, and wandered all over Magnolia exploring
the many interesting parts of our neighborhood within the city but miles
away because of its geographical separation from the downtown area of
Seattle. Magnolia was a village of a few businesses, churches, parks, tennis
courts, and beautiful views of the water. Fort Lawton, an Army fort, was
located on the northwest side of Magnolia. We enjoyed exploring there but
were always under the watchful eyes of the Army military police. ere were
housing areas, ring ranges, parade grounds, and a movie theater we could
go to with an Army connected friend for 25 cents. We brought our own
popcorn in paper sacks. We went shing for sole and ounder with
sandworms o West Point by the fort when the tide was low, and Mom
would cook the sh when we got home.
ere wasn’t much tra c in Magnolia because it was a residential
neighborhood separated from the city of Seattle. People didn’t come there
generally unless they lived there, were visiting friends, or were just enjoying
a Sunday drive along Magnolia Boulevard. e boulevard was where many
of the architectural jewels of Magnolia were located. Each home had
impressively manicured grounds and spectacular sweeping views of the city,
Puget Sound, ferries, sailboats, container ships, the downtown skyline, and
the world-famous Seattle Space Needle. We lived across a small valley to the
east, on the top of what was called by our parents “mortgage hill.” We had a
nice view of Puget Sound from the upstairs bedroom windows. My brother
and I had a room, and my sisters had their own room as well. Life was
generally very good for me.
A er elementary school, I went to my rst year of high school at Seattle
Prep, at that time an all-boys Jesuit high school, across town. As a freshman,
I played basketball on the second-string team, called the Cubs. My year of
riding the bus across town for high school was an early regular adventure
out of my familiar neighborhood. It included transferring buses in the
downtown area of Seattle and riding to the school located on Capitol Hill. I
got a new coat for school, made of green fake leather. I was the smallest kid
in my entering freshman class.
At Seattle Prep, during my freshman year of high school, the Jesuits
taught us, among other valuable teachings and disciplines, religion. I
remember a life-long guiding principle that I learned early on from the
Jesuits for making sense of the precepts of Catholic Church teaching and for
processing life’s adventures, challenges, and important decisions: “An
informed conscience is the highest form of moral judgment.” is guidepost,
for a re ective teenaged individual, provided a logical rationale for accepting
the contradictions that existed in my mind about war. It also placed an
expectation on me to study and learn and inform my own conscience. It le
the ultimate decision-making up to me. is theology seemed to make sense
to me even at the early age of 15. As I have grown into an adult, my view of
life allows me to be an active participant, who thrives on involvement,
leadership opportunities, and regular spiritual experiences, while taking
exception with a number of formal positions in my Church that don’t pass
the informed conscience test for me.
Somewhere along the line I decided that I wanted to become a priest.
A er my freshman year at Seattle Prep, I transferred to Saint Edward’s
Seminary, a boarding school about 20 miles away from Magnolia on 360-
tree-covered acres on the north shore of Lake Washington. During my time
in school there, I received a comprehensive classical liberal arts education
and additional classes in Gregorian chant, Latin, Greek, and French, as well
as philosophy, religion, theology, science and mathematics. Students also
participated in a rigorous intramural physical education program in the
major sports of football, basketball, baseball, and track. Study, silence,
discipline, re ection, and prayer characterized student life. ese
educational and life experiences were important to me personally back then
and in the later unfolding destiny of my life and the adventures that were in
my future. I was fortunate to have had many good teachers and mentors
among my classmates and the upperclassmen in our school.
Sometimes people ask me what possessed me to go to the seminary. I
have to say that we were raised Catholics and I got to know many sisters and
priests who seemed to enjoy teaching and helping people, and they had a
sense of purpose and dedication in their work. Some were family friends like
Tacoma Dominican Sister Mary James, an educator whom my mother and
father always treated with the utmost respect. She was such a joy- lled
person, and perhaps it was the peace I saw in her eyes and in the priests I
knew that tipped the scales for me. Or maybe it was my rst cousin, Father
Tom Bunnell, a life-long Jesuit, who was such an important part of our
extended family and whom my parents always held in high regard. My
parents never said they wanted me to follow this path, but they were
supportive of my choices nancially and personally and always encouraged
me to do my best at whatever I did.
***
When I joined the Army, I realized fairly early on that I had had a rather
di erent high school experience compared to most of my fellow trainees and
warrant o cer candidates. I believe the education and training I received in
excellent Catholic schools prepared me uniquely for Army life, and also gave
me some basic tools for making the di cult moral and ethical judgments
that are necessary for life in the military. e seminary was a boarding
school, so I was comfortable living with other men and being on my own.
e golden rule values I learned in parochial school are applicable
anywhere, and I had already learned how to get along with quite a few
di erent people.
I believed the war was justi ed when I entered the United States Army
and was involved in it. I came from a family with a long history of decorated
combat service in the U.S. Army. My mother, father, an uncle, and a
grandfather were all U.S. Army o cers. I didn’t really have a clear sense
about what the combat experience would be like when I enlisted in the
Army in December of 1966. I don’t think anyone does. I only knew I loved
ying, I wanted some adventure in my life, and I thought I would be risking
my life for a noble cause.
I arrived in-country in Vietnam at 21 years of age, one month before all
hell broke loose during the Tet O ensive of January 1968. I ew 1,300 hours
of ight missions during my one-year tour. I served with a unit that had a
history of quality combat performance and a record of courageous,
dedicated service. Serving as a Tiger with Soc Trang Tigers as a pilot and
then aircra commander and in the Viking Platoon as a Viking, rst as pilot,
and then as an aircra commander and re team leader, was a special
privilege. Hanoi Hannah called our gunship platoon the “Blue Diamond
Devils of the Delta” for the wrath that our gunships could rain down on the
enemy. As a re team leader, my call sign was “Viking 23.”
In the Vikings we had a very well developed standard operating
procedure that we were taught and that we taught others. is was an
essential piece in our being able to respond and to y our missions in
di cult circumstances, with a high degree of mission success and risk
management.
Jerry Daly, a chief warrant o cer who was just nishing one of his tours
as I arrived in the unit, emphasized this SOP. He had been an Army aviator
since 1959. His ight experience included 4,900 total hours of ight time;
2,100 hours were in helicopter gunships. On March 26, 1967, he was
involved in a joint airmobile assault with multiple assets from two helicopter
companies and the battalion commander. Four helicopters were shot down
in the landing zone. Among those killed was the battalion commander, Col.
Dempsey. Eleven gunships were scrambled from the assault helicopter
companies in the Delta. Chief Warrant O cer Daly commanded a Viking
helicopter modi ed to lay down a smoke screen so the survivors could be
rescued. He joined up with the gunships and made 13 runs laying down
smoke amidst heavy enemy re. e survivors were rescued by a Dusto
medevac helicopter and three slicks. e helicopter took so many hits that
when the mission was accomplished, it was determined to be un yable and
was red Xed from further ight. e losses that day were 142 enemy dead,
42 ARVN dead, 69 ARVN wounded, 12 American wounded, four
Americans dead, and four helicopters destroyed.
He went on to serve multiple tours and was one of the most decorated
U.S. Army helicopter pilots in the Vietnam War. He was a detail person,
disciplined, and known for his courage and knowledge of the inner
workings of the Huey and its armament systems as well as his intuitive sense
of the aircra ’s capabilities. A er the war he became a Catholic priest. Our
lives were in good hands because of his diligence in implementing our
standard operating procedures.
***
A seminary is a school for training young men to be Catholic priests. I
entered Saint Edward’s Seminary in Kenmore, Washington, on the north
end of Lake Washington, northeast of Seattle, in 1961, in my sophomore
year of high school. I spent most of my elementary school years in Catholic
school. I spent my freshman year of high school at Seattle Prep on Capitol
Hill in Seattle, where I bene ted from the academic rigor of the Jesuits.
Among a long list of core values they instilled in me were discipline, hard
work, preparing for my lessons, and a good vocabulary from memorizing 10
vocabulary words a week. As I mentioned earlier, they also taught me to
question authority. Not theirs, however. Discipline was ever-present in the
form of a priest disciplinarian who carried around a piece of rubber hose o
a dishwasher and didn’t hesitate to use it if the student o ense warranted a
good whack.
Catholic school experience is a part of me. I knew priests, sisters, and
brothers whom I admired, and at a very young age I wanted to give my own
life in service to others. I wanted to experience the joy I saw in their faces,
and to live with the simplicity and integrity I saw in their daily lives. Later in
life these simple beliefs would be tested in a number of ways, but they
formed the basis for a later adult set of Catholic beliefs.
In the seminary we lived in a classic old Gothic building. It was made of
brick, stone, and concrete, and conjured up thoughts of celestial grandeur
and clerical signi cance. We lived there for nine months of the year, going
home only occasionally for a weekend pass and at Christmas, Easter, and in
the summer. ere were six grades at Saint Edward’s. ere were four grades
of high school and two grades of college. Each class had about 25 to 30
students in it. ere were about 150 students at Saint Ed’s. It was called the
minor seminary. We had some good teachers and some great teachers, and
they expected and got a lot out of us. Father Farrell, Father Healy, and Father
McManus were all iconic gures in our lives. I always thought they were
looking at me with a bit of a skeptical eye and thinking, “What’s this
McCarthy guy doing here anyway?”
My academic performance was average at best because my mind was
o en on some sports contest, hiking, playing the guitar, or other adventure
when I was not in class. I was a good writer and got good grades for my
written work. In the subject areas of mathematics and science, I was a little
challenged. I had a lot of friends and generally it was a positive experience
for me. Life on the outside was considered by our professors to be too
secular, so the possession of a transistor radio could result in dismissal. We
lived above the rst oor where the classrooms and refectory (dining hall)
were located. e “rule of silence” prevailed above the rst oor, and we
were expected to not talk above the rst oor, where we lived in small dorm-
type rooms with a roommate. We were supposed to use a simpli ed form of
hand signals to indicate what we were asking for in our rooms or at meals
eaten mostly in silence.
About a quarter of a mile away, on the same grounds, was another
building, more modern than Saint Edward’s, that housed the major
seminary. Its name was Saint omas Seminary, and it had students for six
grades also, two years of college and four years of theology. e two
seminaries together involved 12 years of education and culminated with
ordination as a priest. e two schools sat on 360 acres of pristine northwest
timbered lands and trails on the north end of Lake Washington. It was a
dream come true for a boy who loved hiking and the outdoors and the
freedom of being on his own, away from the perceived limits of home life in
the city of Seattle.
We went to school six days a week in the seminary. Saturday was just like
Monday through Friday. We were in regular classes on Saturday. Each day
we had two hours to recreate from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. We always looked
forward to and made the most of that two-hour time frame. Each evening
we had a supervised silent study hall from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. e rule of
silence prevailed during study hall also. A priest would monitor the study
hall and walk up and down the aisles between the desks. We could raise our
hands and whisper questions or ask for permission to walk down the
hallway to the bathroom. Sometimes the supervising priest would surprise a
student who had dozed o at his desk with a whack of a ruler on the desk. It
was for me a place to study, do my homework, and learn who I was and what
I was about.
Everyone was required to play every sport in our school. We had the
ultimate intramural program that was thought out in minute detail by the
priests who organized our school. ere were ve teams with eight strings
on each team. e names of the teams were the Buccaneers, the Crusaders,
the Centurions, the Spartans, and the Vikings. I was a Viking, and that
proved to be a prophetic team name for me in my military future.
A second-year college man led each team. He was the team captain, and a
rst-year college man was the assistant team captain. We played the sports of
football, basketball, baseball, track and eld, and cross-country. Every
student was expected to participate in every sport. e design of the
intramural program was highly motivational. An eighth-string game was
worth a few less points than a rst-string game. e rst-string players were
the equivalent of high school varsity players, and the eighth-string players
were less skilled in sports. e rst-string players went to the other string
level games to cheer them on. I was a rst-string player and a fairly good
athlete. e points for each game and each season were carefully counted
and regularly reported. At the end of the school year the coveted status of
school champions was awarded to the team with the most accumulated
points. We played our hearts out in those games, and everyone’s
participation was valued and appreciated. First-string players mentored-
eighth-string players to get more points for their team. It was an excellent-
peer-mentoring model for students.
 Life in the seminary included spiritual exercises, morti cation (a term I
never did fully understand but it sounded pretty profound) and self-denial.
We went to mass every day and two times on Sunday. e main school
building had four oors, an imposing bell tower, and a basement area with
locker rooms, a baggage storage area, and science classrooms. e rest of the
classrooms were on the rst oor. e halls on the rst oor were lined with
the ordination pictures of past graduating classes of priests going back in
history for the Archdiocese of Seattle to the early years of the 20th century.
We lived on the second, third and fourth oors of the school in small
college dorm-type rooms with a sink, two desks, two bunks, built-in storage,
and a roommate. We were bound by the “rule of silence” like many
monasteries and seminaries, and we were instructed not to speak above the
rst oor. e rules were designed to keep the world at bay.
We ate some of our meals in silence in a large formal dining area called a
“refectory” on the rst oor. Everything at the seminary had a lo y
designation consistent with high expectations for students. Sometimes we
were allowed to talk, but most of the time a student was selected to read
books about the martyrs and saints or some other piece of selected (and
screened by our professors) quality contemporary literature. One of the
more interesting approved books was Pro les in Courage by John F.
Kennedy. I remember an incident when one of our classmates, Larry, was a
reader. As he read from the martyrology (stories of Church martyrs) from
the podium that looked like the rostrum in a cathedral, we heard the names
of some of our fellow students interspersed with the saints’ stories in funny
ways that the professors didn’t pick up on but the students enjoyed
immensely.
e faculty professors sat on a raised platform above the students and
were waited on by older students. It was quite an honor to be a waiter. A er
serving, you got to eat the same food as the professors. We might be served
hamburger or chicken fried steak while they were served sirloin steaks. As
students we learned to be polite, work hard, and play hard to earn the
respect of our fellow students. I learned my place in the hierarchy of Saint
Edward’s Seminary. We all knew that we could leave at any time, but
generally we enjoyed life at the school and most of my classmates stayed
during the years I was there. Sometimes a student would leave in the middle
of the night and we were not told why. In retrospect, it could have been for a
rule violation, for having what was called a “particular friendship” with
another student that was considered unhealthy, or because they just decided
that they no longer wanted to be there.
ere were no choices of classes in the seminary. We all took a healthy
dose of classical education. We took Religion, Latin, Greek, French and
Gregorian Chant, in addition to regular high school courses of Chemistry,
Physics, Science, Mathematics, English, and Social Studies. By the time I
nished high school, I was tired of the isolated academic rigor and was
ready for some sort of adventure out in the “real world,” as we called life on
the outside of the seminary walls. Occasionally we were allowed a half day
o to hike in the woods or to walk to the town of Kenmore about two miles
away with an older student chaperone. One of the great adventures there
included a go-cart racetrack.
I enjoyed the silence and contemplative atmosphere of the seminary, but I
was really ready for some of the adventures I had read about in books. I was
becoming interested in cars and motorcycles and longed to drive and own
them. Also, I was getting interested in what it would be like to be going out
with girls. A student named Jack transferred into the seminary from a
Catholic high school in Seattle during his senior year, and he was a very
engaging character. He had an immaculate, jet-black 1957 Chevy hardtop
that he managed to hide in the woods on the seminary property, and he had
lots of friends in and around Seattle. He was very popular with the girls who
attended an all-girls Catholic high school, many of whom were cheerleaders
for his former all-boys school. When we got the opportunity for some time
o , he introduced us to his friends from the city, and among them were a
number of girls. is was an exciting time for us and opened all sorts of new
doors and experiences for many of us.
I le the seminary halfway through my rst year of college, in January of
1965. It was the time of the semester break, and I just didn’t see going any
further down this path at this time in my life. I went to work part-time for
my father, who had an electrical contracting and appliance repair business in
downtown Seattle. I decided that it was time to pursue some of my goals and
to explore other areas of interest. My rst vehicle while I was still in the
seminary was a red Cushman Super Eagle motor scooter with a large dice
for a shi er. Later I would buy a number of cars I had admired, including a
maroon 1957 Chevrolet convertible and a 1955 Ford hardtop in classic
turquoise and white. I enrolled in Shoreline Community College because my
mom knew someone who worked there. He was the head of the police
academy training program. I had a great deal of respect for police o cers
and the di cult work they did each day but I really wasn’t interested in
becoming one.
I also applied for and was hired to work at Evergreen Washelli Cemetery.
During this time of starting community college on “the outside,” I had a
teacher who encouraged my writing ability. As a result of his mentorship, I
had some poems published in the school literary magazine and even had a
couple of them read by a local radio icon on KIXI Seattle’s Sunday night FM
radio show “Re ections.” e program started with the music “Clair de
Lune,” and then the poetry was read. Some of those poems are included in
this book.
e Vietnam War was in the news. I told my friends I thought a lot about
learning to y. One of them said, “You always talk about doing adventurous
things, but you don’t ever seem to do them.” at was all of the challenge
that I needed. I found out that ying lessons were o ered in Everett,
Washington, and I signed up for ground school and started taking ight
lessons in a Cessna 150. I enjoyed the feeling of ying an airplane and
controlling it in three dimensions. Mathematics seemed to come alive for
the rst time for me when applied to aerodynamics and ight planning. I
soloed a Cessna 150 in 1966 at Paine Field at a ight school called Cal Aero.
My instructor was an interesting fellow named Bill, who was a member of
the widely known Northwest Weyerhaeuser Lumber Company family, and I
believe he ultimately became a bush pilot in Alaska. Soloing was an
extraordinary experience for me. It started me thinking about being a pilot
and maybe even someday ying in the military.
One day I took the bus into downtown Seattle. I had ridden that bus
many times down Second Avenue to the Garment District where I had taken
a job in a jacket factory. Today was di erent. I had seen an Army recruiter’s
storefront on a street named Pike between Second and First avenue, and the
pictures in the windows got me thinking that maybe I could be an Army
helicopter pilot. at would be some adventure! Imagine me being an Army
o cer like my mom and dad had been. It doesn’t get more adventurous than
being a helicopter pilot. I wondered if I could do this and y helicopters in
the Army. Wouldn’t it be something to y and get paid for it in the U.S.
Army? I would probably have to go to Vietnam if I made it through the
program. I sure love ying that Cessna 150. I’ll bet it would be a real thrill to
y a helicopter. Today I am going to go in there and ask them about the
ight school program.
I got o the bus, walked to the recruiter’s o ce, and opened the glass
door. I asked a sergeant working there about the warrant o cer ight
training program. He gave me some Army recruiting materials and an-
aviation-related study booklet and asked me to return in a few days and take
a test called the F.A.S.T. Test. e letters stood for Flight Aptitude Standards
Test. I thought about that test all the way home on the bus. At home I pulled
out my ight time logbook and ight materials bag. I studied the material
and memorized some ight rules from my private pilot ground school
materials as well. A few days later I was ready to give this my best shot.
I went back to the recruiter’s o ce on the scheduled day. e recruiter
greeted me with a rm handshake and picked up a test booklet and a pencil.
An hour or so later I had nished the test, and it was sent o to be scored. I
got a call a week later and was informed that I had passed and that if I
wanted to go into the Army and train to be a helicopter pilot, I could enter
the warrant o cer training program and leave as early as the next week. e
recruiter also told me that if I made it through the training, I would
probably be going to Vietnam.
I went home and told my parents and family members that I was going to
sign up for a great adventure. My dad listened patiently to my enthusiastic
presentation and had one question for me that I still remember. He said,
“You get carsick riding in the back seat of our car on the monthly trips we
take to see the cousins in Tacoma. Are you sure you are ready for this?” I
assured him I was and said I hadn’t gotten sick during the xed-wing ight
instruction and solo so maybe those experiences were behind me.
I gave notice at my work at the jacket factory, put my car up for sale, and
said my goodbyes. e next week I le for basic training at Fort Polk,
Louisiana. I knew if I made it through the training, I was going to Vietnam. I
was a 20-year-old young man looking for adventure. I don’t remember
thinking at all about the fact that I might have to kill someone as a pilot of a
helicopter. I do remember knowing that the war was about saving the world
from Communism. And of course, I had heard President Kennedy’s
challenge: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do
for your country.” at sounded like the kind of challenge I needed in my
life!
Making Choices
It seemed as if a thousand suns lled the sky but yesterday
While I was walking through confusion
on the path so worn away
From far ahead out of the black
came suddenly, a shade of gray.
All the leaves that presently
were held beneath my feet
seemed black and moldy
worthless treasures, too soon to be dead.
e path’s a little clearer now
Most leaves are fading fast
But some still cling to muddy shoes and bog them down till time is past.
 Basic Infantry Training
When I enlisted in the Army, they in-processed us in an old industrial-
looking building on the waterfront in Seattle. We stood in lines while teams
of medical personnel poked and prodded us, weighed us, checked our
height, administered hearing and vision tests, drew blood and urine,
interviewed us, and generally checked out our re exes and balance, etc. A
couple of days later, we showed up at the recruiters’ storefront where the
recruiter swore us in. It was the rst time I raised my hand and pledged
formally to defend my country. e recruiter shook our hands and directed
us to a van out in front for a trip to Seattle-Tacoma Airport.
ey gave us a ticket from Sea-Tac Airport to Houston, Texas, on a
commercial airline. As I recall, there were eight to 10 of us from the
Northwest on that ight. When we got o the plane in Houston, I could
hardly breathe with the humidity there. It felt like the air was stuck in my
throat and I wasn’t going to be able to catch my breath. You could almost cut
it with a knife. ere were lots of young men in the Houston airport looking
like they were going o to serve in the military. It was obviously a hub for
ights across the United States connecting with ights to military training
bases in the South and on the East Coast.
In Houston we boarded a DC-3 for the ight to Fort Polk, Louisiana. is
ight was mostly enlistees. Many had signed up to go to helicopter ight
school a er basic and advanced infantry training. Some of the local
Southern boys called this “Treetop Airlines” because the aircra was a non-
pressurized, propeller-driven, twin-engine workhorse that ew at a little
over 160 miles an hour and at a much lower altitude than the pressurized
airliners of today. e trip from Texas to Louisiana was at less than 10,000
feet and went right through a number of thunderstorms, rain showers, and
clouds along the route. Many of the passengers on that ight got sick, which
was both a humbling and embarrassing episode for young warriors
presuming to be on their way to becoming courageous helicopter pilots in
Vietnam. On the ight down from Seattle to Houston, the air was electric
with rumors and stories of where we were going. Comments ew about like:
“Fort Polk is at the end of the world. Some people call it Fort Puke. We are
going to the toughest place in the U.S. Army for basic training because they
want to nd out if we can hack it or not.” Apparently, this was going to be
the rst step in becoming a helicopter pilot: surviving Fort Polk, Louisiana.
I managed to keep from getting sick, just barely, but I’m glad the ight
didn’t go much longer because it felt like we hit every bump in the air and
opportunity for turbulence between Houston, Texas, and Louisiana. We
wobbled out of the plane looking like sailors coming o a three-day bender
and staggered onto buses for the rest of the trip into the fort. e fort was
old and gray with row upon row of World War II-type barracks that all
looked the same. We rst noticed the manicured grass and red mud gardens
outlined with rocks around the barracks. ere were polished copper pipes
in the bathrooms. Two rows of bunk beds lined each barracks.
As we got o the buses, we were ordered to a parade eld and lined up to
be addressed by a senior post o cer. We were introduced to our company
commander and the drill sergeants who were to be in charge of each
barracks in the company. I had come from the Paci c Northwest, and
neither the neighborhood I grew up in in Seattle nor the seminary I
attended had a great deal of ethnic diversity. e recruits I was now with
were a cross section of America. e military was from the start a new
experience in ethnic and cultural diversity for me. Most of the drill sergeants
were big, tough, very direct, and very mean-looking, and they weren’t
smiling at any of us. And they looked like they ate broken glass for breakfast.
is was not a good sign for what was ahead. ey greeted us with a great
big smile and an over-emphasized “Welcome to Fort Polk, Louisiana” that
sounded like we were going straight to hell, no stopping, do not pass go, no
free passes, no back talk, no changing your mind, and nobody cares what
you think about what’s going to happen to you. In fact, no one cares whether
you live or die here. You signed a piece of paper, took an oath, and this is the
training you are in for. ey were yelling orders and they weren’t waiting for
anybody to mosey along to the next stopping point. ey immediately
taught everyone how to space themselves from the person to the side of
them, in front, and behind, and said we would be marching with our gear
everywhere. First, we would get some clothing issued. en we would go to
our barracks where we would be assigned our living quarters, a metal bunk,
a mattress, a metal stand-up locker, and a wooden footlocker for our
belongings.
e big, tough sergeant said, “Start o on your le foot. When I say
‘forward march,’ your le , right, le … your le , right, le !”
“Le le le , right, le .”
“Now say this a er me in a loud voice,” said the lean, lanky, and
impeccably uniformed sergeant, “and say it all together line by line.”
Dress it right and cover down (Dress it right and cover down)
Forty inches all around (Forty inches all around) Louder!
Am I right or wrong? (You’re RIGHT!)
Am I right or wrong? (You’re RIGHT!)
Sound O (one, two)
Sound O (three, four)
at’s the Fort Polk Boogie ( at’s the Fort Polk Boogie)
What a crazy sound (What a crazy sound)
I Can’t Hear You!

We were marched from the bus o oading area to a gray wooden World War
II barracks and were instructed to stand in formation and told that we
would be greeted by the company commander prior to entering our
assigned barracks. While we were waiting, the drill sergeants taught us how
to stand at attention and how to stand at parade rest. “Attention” consisted of
standing up straight and tall with your ngers curled up slightly and your
thumb along the seam of your pants. Your feet were to be at a 45-degree
angle forming a “V” with the heels of your shoes touching and your feet
forming the sides of the “V.” Your eyes were to be looking straight forward
with your chin in and your chest out.
e position of “Parade Rest” was taken by moving your le leg out about
shoulder width and placing your hands together in the small of your back
with the le -hand palm cupped against your belt and the right hand over
the le . ese two commands would become important to be used in the
presence of the company commander, or any other o cer, and/or a drill
sergeant. “At ease” was another less formal command for parade rest. e
command “fall out” meant you could leave the formation to walk (but
mostly you were expected to run) somewhere, everywhere, anywhere …
particularly when in a company or platoon formation. “Fall out” in practice
was o en given during a break from formation and was o en accompanied
by “Smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em!” is statement had little signi cance for
me other than to signal at least a few minutes of rest without fear of
interruption. Senior Sergeant Bacon, who called us to attention, introduced
Captain Miller, our company commander. e o cers in Training Company
E were Captain Miller, 2nd Lt. Terrible (not kidding), and 2nd Lt. Doczy. Of
course, a lowly trainee would seldom if ever talk to or even see these men.
ere were 222 trainees in Company E, and we were divided into four
platoons.
e sergeants in our Second Platoon were Drill Sergeant Wilder, Drill
Sergeant Scoville, Drill Sergeant Weissbohn, and Drill Sergeant Calderin. I
was in the Second Platoon, Company E, First Battalion, First Training
Brigade. is was a busy time for training recruits, and we had more than
the usual number in each platoon and in our company.
at night we went to dinner in the mess hall. In line, we were told to
stand at attention and advance one person at a time until there was a space
for us in the mess hall to eat. I made the mistake of addressing a lieutenant
supervising the mess hall as “Lieutenant” since I recognized his rank and I
was a sort of gregarious person. At this faux pas, the drill sergeant came
over, got in my face, and came totally unglued. “ is is an o cer. You don’t
even talk to an o cer unless you have a very important reason to do so and
then you call him ‘sir’! Is that clear, trainee? Now drop down here in the
mess hall and give me 25 pushups and don’t you ever make that mistake
again on my watch. If you want something you talk to me, trainee! I am your
drill sergeant. I am the only one here who really loves you. I care about your
sorry ass. Who will you come to with your sorry-ass problems, trainee?
at’s right, your favorite drill sergeant, Sergeant Wilder. I am here to help
you … and you obviously need a lot of help! And I am going to do my best
to give it to you.”
From Fort Polk, Louisiana
Jan 9, 1967
Dear Mom and Dad,
One week out of the way but somehow it seems like a month. We took a physical training test when
we arrived and I did well. ere were obstacle courses and low crawling under barbed wire. I ran the
mile and did calisthenics and marching and running in full packs. Classes we have attended are in
military courtesy, justice, and marching moves. I have the sorest feet in the world and many aches
and pains but I should get toughened up by the end of next week. We were issued an M-14 ri e.
We had a class on dismantling it and were told it would be our most important tool and friend as a
soldier…. I got some shots, eight altogether now, but we are just starting according to what they say.
 I was waiting in mess hall on cadre the other day and addressed Lieutenant as Lieutenant not Sir—
lucky to escape with my hide my ears still ringing from the lesson.
Love,
Your Son, Fred

***
We had worked hard for about a month of training and were beginning to
gel and develop as a hard-charging barracks of recruits. We’d been through
marching with packs, the ri e range, classes on military protocol, regular
inspections of our barracks, learning to eat square meals in the mess hall
with military manners, how to polish the oors to a shine, keep our gear
organized, and shine those brass water pipes under the sinks to a mirror
nish.
e climate in Louisiana was alternately hot and humid and cold and wet.
e “modus operandi” for a hike was that you started out o en in a rain
shower with your rubberized poncho in your pack and were not allowed to
put it on until instructed to do so by your drill instructor. I’m not saying that
our drill instructors were sadistic or unreasonable, but it was fascinating to
us that when the clouds inevitably parted and the sun came out we were
instructed to put on our ponchos. is covering soon turned into a personal
sauna as the sun got brighter and the hike got longer. en as the rain came
again, we would be instructed to put our ponchos back in the pack to return
to hiking in the rain and getting soaked. If someone got fatigued or fell
during the hike, the remaining troops were encouraged to walk right over
him with the drill instructor yelling at them. All of this, we speculated, was
designed to toughen us up and prepare us for the jungles of Vietnam and the
dual seasons of the dry, hot weather and the torrential rains of the monsoon
season.
We learned to play the game. We also learned there was the right way, the
wrong way, and the Army way. Each day was lled with something new to
learn. ere were many chances to push our physical endurance to the limit
and regular opportunities for being caught doing things wrong. We also
found out that when we worked hard together we were able to accomplish
far more than we would ever have chosen to do as individuals. When one
person messed up, everyone paid for the mistake, by doing extra pushups or
running extra distances.
e drill instructors seemed to enjoy their work way too much,
particularly if it involved trainee discomfort. Gradually we saw our
endurance increase and were stretched at every turn to run one more mile
or do 10 more pushups. We gradually got in the best physical shape of our
lives and learned to work together in a way that most of us had never
experienced before.
From Fort Polk, Louisiana
Sunday, January 22, 1967
Dear Mom and Dad,
Just back from 9 o’clock Mass on a cloudy windy Sunday morning. Bivouac took place from
Monday to ursday last week. Temperatures were near freezing and between the mud and the cold
we were all very glad to get back to a warm barracks and clean clothes. We also appreciate the food a
little more a er 4 days of C rations. e nal night of bivouac went through the in ltration course.
is consisted of crawling over logs, under barbed wire, and through thick mud under live machine
gun re 44" o the ground and occasional blasts of TNT from deep sand bagged demolition pits. We
also were trained in close combat methods advancing down range in teams with live ammo on
targets. Well only two weeks to go and we’ll all really be glad when it’s over. No leave or passes are in
sight…. Next Saturday is nal physical tness test then tests on drill, 1st aid, guard duty, and military
courtesy…. Graduation day will be on Friday, February 24th…. Will need to buy 6 more sets of
fatigues because at ight school need a clean starched pair every morning. at should hit me for
about $30 and leave me about $30. Not much new going to show this a ernoon. So long for this
week.
Love,
Your Son,
Fred
One day as we returned to our barracks a er a rather grueling 10-mile
hike, we all took showers and were resting in our bunks a er dinner when a
surprisingly upbeat Sergeant Wilder was praising our e orts on the
challenging hike, singing our praises in relation to the other adjacent
barracks, and suggesting that we might have earned the right to a little social
celebration at a nearby mini PX (post exchange). Of course, we all were-
spring-loaded to believe that we had really earned this little celebration and
enthusiastically agreed that it would be a tting reward for our e orts to go
to the local PX/mini mart for some refreshment. Some of the savvier
members of our unit were a little skeptical that Sergeant Wilder was really
sincere about us earning this reward. However, everyone got into the spirit
and we all walked down the street casually together in small groups for
whatever we were about to experience. It felt strangely civilian and relaxing
to not be marching on post. ere were a few tables outside, and the drill
instructor seemed to know the attractive attendant at the counter from
previous visits.
In Louisiana at the time, young people could drink what was called 3.2
beer if they were 18 years old. Sergeant Wilder encouraged everyone to have
a few beers, and a er our hard day of marching we were more than ready to
do so. He joined in, smiling all the while, though he didn’t attempt to keep
up with the recruits but just nursed his own one beer while most of the
trainees all had three or four each; some even had a few more. Sergeant
Wilder really seemed to enjoy the camaraderie, and a er an hour and a half
it was dark and he led the group back to our barracks to retire for the
evening. ere was lots of talking and good-natured interaction and we had
lights out promptly at 10:00 p.m.
At 3:00 a.m. the next day, the lights came on and Sergeant Wilder had
reverted back to his previous persona. “Everybody up! We are going on a
march!”
Groans arose from many bunks, but the sergeant only became more
animated. We were directed to put on our packs and fall out on the street in
front of the barracks in formation. “Let’s go, move it, move it, move it. Let’s
get going! No laggards here!”
Sergeant Wilder had the same smile on that he had at the mini mart.
“Forward march!” started us out, and a er a block “Double time march!”
took the pace up a couple of notches. Guys started stumbling and then
collapsing from the rigor and the e ects of the previous night’s celebration,
and began falling by the wayside.
“If anyone falls down, I want you to just step over him” was the advice
being shouted at us by our training sergeant. is provided additional
motivation to stay in line. As we completed the approximately ve-mile,-
double-time march, we had lost about 10 percent of the platoon, and some
of those guys lost their cookies along the way. We now knew one reason why
the place was sometimes called “Fort Puke.” “Never trust a drill sergeant
who is smiling” became a mantra for our barracks.
Fort Polk soon became our familiar temporary home. We gradually
learned the ropes, from the initial very short haircut and ill- tting uniforms
to the institutional food and the ever-appropriate military advice: “Never
volunteer!” We learned this in spades through an experience in which we
were asked if any of us had attended college. ose who eagerly raised their
hands found out that a few college boys were needed to peel hundreds of
potatoes and clean out the grease traps at the mess hall.
From Fort Polk, Louisiana
Sunday, January 28, 1967
Dear Mom and Dad,
… took my nal physical tness test this morning and did well. Got another pass for this weekend
but I am staying on post to save money. Graduation is next Friday, then we will probably be held
over for another 8 days until our report date at Fort Wolters on March 4. Really appreciated your last
letter, got it on bivouac. Weather was really cold & wet. Now sun is out and promises to be a clear
but cool day…. Next month and ½ will be concentrated harassment. I will keep you posted but may
be short of time once in a while so excuse me if letters don’t arrive every week.
Love,
Your son, Fred
From Charleston Hotel, Lake Charles, Louisiana
Sunday, February 5, 1967
Dear Mom and Dad,
…I’m on a two-day pass because all of those who quali ed expert or sharpshooter with their
weapon were given the opportunity. I was very worried about qualifying … my practice scores all
week were pretty low. On qualifying day I shot sharpshooter, which is in the middle between
marksman and expert. I was very happy and proud and will get that particular medal at the end of
training.
…I’m in Lake Charles with seven other sharpshooters. e bells in the Church tower just tolled for
8:30 Mass and as I look out the window of our room Lake Charles is a calm, glassy mirror, a very
beautiful sight. Very di erent and some white mansions along the way, interspersed with rolling
plains and green elds all seemed so di erent and refreshing.
Last week … marching at a killing pace 5 miles to the range in full gear then running 2 of the miles
on the way back. Our spirits are high and we have real pride in being in the toughest and the best
company … in the fort since July 1966.
Last night we went to a few bars and had a few beers. Bill got thrown out of one because he was
colored…. Bill took it well, he plays it cool and is so used to it, so we laughed it o and le . Next
week gas chamber and hand to hand combat.
Love,
Your Son,
Fred

***
As we completed our Basic and Advanced Infantry Training and were
looking forward to leaving Fort Polk and going on to Fort Wolters, Texas, for
Warrant O cer Candidate School and primary ight training, our barracks
was informed that we would be in a two-week “holdover” status before our
class of helicopter pilots and warrant o cer candidates would be ready to
begin. Rather than have us just wait around for two weeks in the notorious
bars around Leesville, it was decided by higher authority that we needed to
be productive. We would receive some value-added escape and evasion
training. We also would be harvesting palmetto leaves in the swamps to
create simulated Viet Cong villages for use in the training command at Fort
Polk. Our destination would be Opelousas, Louisiana, where the friendly
wildlife, we were told, consisted of alligators, water moccasins, poisonous
spiders, and armadillos. We would sleep in tents at night and harvest
palmetto during the day to be loaded into trucks and taken back to Fort
Polk.
We rode in the back of deuce-and-a-half trucks under canvas canopies for
the trip through the bayous and swamps of Louisiana to our jungle
destination. When we arrived, we set up camp and an outdoor mess hall and
set about our assigned tasks. About the third day in the swamp, as the
a ernoon turned into evening, a couple of dump trucks arrived and, to
everyone’s pleasant surprise, it turned out that they were loaded with 3.2
beer. e trucks made a circle and backed up; then their beds started rising
up and they unloaded their pallets with cases of beer onto the boggy oor of
the swamp. Eager trainees were given the go-ahead sign by the sergeants in
charge and began opening the cases, and a good time was had by all. A er
everyone was adequately “tuned up,” a few of the local Southern boys
demonstrated their best impression of redneck rodeo by catching and riding
some of the armadillos around the camp area. We must have scared o the
alligators, for none were seen. But as we peeled o the bark from some of the
palm trees there were shouts of excitement when a few water moccasins
were exposed.
In the swamp we were introduced to camping, Army style. A large canvas
tent served as the mess hall, and garbage cans were lled with water and
heated with gas- red stainless steel heaters to scalding hot temperature for
washing the aluminum compartmentalized trays that some of our food was
served in. A latrine area was established with trenches dug and some canvas
screening that developed quite an ambiance before the multi-day
assignment was over. We also had some meals of C-rations, and we learned
to use a P-38 Army-issued can opener to release the contents of each can of
prepared food. We learned that some of the meals were borderline edible
and others were not. Later in Vietnam these meals became a regular part of
our missions and, when heated with a small amount of JP-4 jet fuel drained
into a C-ration can, became epicurean delights, sort of. Our tents seemed to
keep us from the rumored snakes, alligators, and spiders, and the beer tasted
awfully good a er a hard day’s work cutting palmetto fronds in the swamps
of Opelousas, Louisiana. is experience was de nitely a highlight in the-
join-the-Army-see-the-world category.
From Fort Polk, Louisiana
Sunday, February 12, 1967
Dear Dad and Mom,
…glad to hear that you got my letter…. Last week was crammed with training, running to every
class and exercise, night re at targets a er dark, gas chamber (from which my eyes are still
watering), hand to hand combat, lots of “Army drill #1” calisthenics and threw grenades.
Next week will be bivouac. We’re all hoping for good weather…. Everyone is anxious for the next 3
weeks to get over so we can get out of this red mud they call a Fort. We had an orientation the other
night on the Warrant O cer Program. It sounds like 5 months at Ft. Wolters, Texas (60 miles from
Dallas) and 5 at Ft. Rucker, Alabama, with no foreseeable leaves in the near future. A lot of guys in
my company are going to ight school and want to get married and are pretty upset with this no
leave in the future line but I think it will work out for them….
Love,
Your Son, Fred
 Primary and Advanced Helicopter Flight
Training
Fort Wolters was located in the town of Mineral Wells, Texas, about 40
miles west of Fort Worth. An impressive welcome to the adventure of
learning to y helicopters in the U.S. Army greeted us as we entered the
main gate. e archway over the entrance road was guarded on either side
by a helicopter. One was a Hughes TH55 and the other was a Hiller OH23.
ese were the two trainer aircra choices of the Army. We would be
assigned one of these types for the duration of our primary ight training
and would become intimately familiar with its unique characteristics and
challenges.
e program we were about to enter was formally called the WORWAC
program (Warrant O cer Rotary Wing Aviation Course). ere was a
parallel course conducted for commissioned o cers called the ORWAC
course (O cer Rotary Wing Aviation Course). Regular o cers were
accorded additional privileges. Warrant o cer candidates were the
recipients of the dual gi s of mentoring and harassment from TAC o cers,
who were themselves combat veterans.
Fort Wolters had the largest heliport in the world with about 1,200
helicopters located down the main road a ways and south of the fort. Our
company was the First WOC Company. ere were four sections in the
company and ours was A-4. ere were 44 of us in the section. We wore red
baseball-type caps, and our section lead TAC o cer was Mr. M.
From Fort Wolters, Texas
Sunday, March 5, 1967
Dear Mom and Dad,
…before I le Fort Polk, I was put on a three-day detail. We went into the Louisiana swamps in a
place called Opelousas to cut a palm-like plant called palmetto. ey use it in mock VC villages for
advanced infantry training here. I got back tired and dirty, saw a water moccasin poisonous snake
and some armadillos … ever since getting o the bus it’s “candidate this” and “candidate that.” We
eat at attention, with our knife fork and spoon in a special place…. We must ask in a prescribed
 manner to be excused, then they excuse us in a group and in a prescribed manner before we can
leave. We live in a dorm-type set up but our barracks are broken up into cubicles with 2 candidates
to a cubicle. We spit shine the oor with wax and I am very busy keeping my boots and brass in
appropriate order…. We must salute every o cer we meet and greet them appropriately such as “Sir,
Candidate McCarthy, Good Evening Sir.” en we wait for him to return the salute…. We wear brass
on our fatigues and uniforms that says WOC (Warrant O cer Candidate). e chain of command
changes every week, so we could end up as a platoon sergeant or a squad leader at any time.
Everyone must demonstrate leadership when given such authority. All are graded on the ability to
lead. I now have nine full sets of fatigues and am supposed to break starch in fatigues every day.
Love,
Your Son,
Fred

e helicopters for instructional purposes of our company would be TH-

55s that were called the Mattel Messerschmitt. ey looked and sounded
like a high-pitched toy compared to the larger Hueys and Bells. In ight they
sounded like a bee when the rotor was buzzing by in the air at ight RPM.
e length of our training at Fort Wolters was a little over four months. e
rst four weeks were called pre ight and consisted of classroom instruction,
physical training, inspections, study halls, and learning about becoming a
warrant o cer in the United States Army.
e bugle blew each day at 5:00 a.m. and we had to hit the ground
running to get dressed, shaved, showered, prepare our area for display and
fall out of the barracks within about 15 minutes, standing at attention in
front of our TAC o cer. We marched everywhere: to the mess hall, to supply
for uniforms and ight equipment, to the barber for haircuts, and to the
mess hall for meals. e marching started o as forward march but
inevitably changed to “double time … march” which was a sort of shu e/jog
along to the next destination.
We ate our meals in a very regimented fashion designed to build a sense
of team spirit. We went through a line with metal trays extended for the
cooks to put heaping portions of food on them; then we proceeded to a table
where we stood at attention, holding our trays by the next open chair, until
all seats were lled; and then the last arrival would say, “Ready … seats,” and
we would all sit in unison. I recalled that my father had described his
experience in ROTC as having to eat what he called square meals where you
li ed the utensil up in the air vertically and then brought it in to your mouth
horizontally. is was the way we were expected to eat as well. Sitting up
straight with dignity and decorum, we ate our meal and waited until the last
person at the table was nished, and then a command was given—“Ready …
up”—and everyone would rise and then proceed to place our empty trays on
a moving rack going back into the kitchen area for cleaning.
Our living quarters were in concrete block buildings with polished
concrete oors. We were assigned two to a room. Inspections occurred each
morning and evening for most of pre ight. Frequently during the day, we
would come back to the barracks from classes and nd that our belongings
were thrown all over the place and the demerits were listed on a checklist at
our bunk. e items checked each day were our bunks being tight enough to
bounce a coin on them, our brass shined inside and out, our extra boots
shined, our shirts lined up with equal spacing of the hangers, the books
ordered from larger to smaller on our desk, the gear in our locker neatly
arranged, no half-completed letters in the desk drawer, the chair and desk in
a straight line, etc. I believe the TAC o cers watched for certain individuals,
and I ended up being one of them. I ended up accumulating so many
demerits that I went for two months without a weekend o . Most of the
other WOCs in my ight were issued passes at the end of pre ight, while I
marched taxi time by myself in front of the barracks. is consisted of
marching by myself back and forth on the sidewalk adjacent to our barracks
for hours and calling out “about face” at each turn, “forward march” for each
segment, and “halt” at the end of the walkway.
Ultimately, I was called before the company commander for excessive
demerits and asked if I wanted to quit. I said emphatically, “Sir, Candidate
McCarthy, no sir!”
And so the commander said he would give me one more chance and put
me in charge of the ight for marching purposes. is turned out to be my
saving grace. I have a loud voice and liked to call cadence and make up
funny verses, so the men enjoyed marching when I was calling the cadence.
I concluded this must have bothered our TAC o cer at rst because, when
we marched by him dressed impeccably in his chrome helmet, bloused
combat boots, and swagger stick, he would glare at me with a look of disgust
on his face. A er a while it began to look like he was somewhat amused by
the comradery it engendered, and he would seem to acknowledge that it
built up esprit de corps among the men and made the blocks pass quickly as
we made it to our next destination. Of course, he never commented that I
was doing a good job. Positive a rmation wasn’t in his vocabulary as a TAC
o cer at this point in our training. Here are a few examples of the kind of
cadence I would call:
I don’t know about today. Rain is causing some dismay.
When we all get good and wet. Our poncho they’ll let us get.
I don’t know but I’ve been told. Mr. M is really cold.
He enjoys demerit giving. What a way to make a living.
Am I right or wrong? Tell me if I’m wrong!
Sound o one two, sound o three four
cadence count one, two three four, one two, three four.
Let’s all give a great big shout. Let’s all really work it out
Taxi time is so much fun. at’s why we all get a ton
Jody is back home you know. Taking your girl to a show.
He is having a big time. While we’re marching here in line.
Am I right or wrong? Tell me if I’m wrong!
Sound o one two, sound o three four
Cadence count one, two three four, One two, three four.
From Fort Wolters, Texas
Sunday, March 12, 1967
Dear Mom and Dad,
…90 degrees yesterday and hot…. I know it will be hotter than hell this a ernoon. If this is March
I bet this place is a furnace in the Summer. I’ve been going to classes all week long in leadership, map
reading, general qualities of an o cer, military justice and military law. We are up in the morning at
ve and … out in formation a er my bed is made and all my gear is straight in only een minutes.
Classes start at 7:00am to 11:30am then also go from 1:00pm to 4:30pm. A er this we have physical
training for 45 minutes. We go to evening mess and return back to our barracks, and straighten what
we can of our gear and area. en … a one-hour study period at night and another one hour in
silence to work on personal gear. A er all this we work together on the billets for 30 minutes and
lights out is at 10:00pm. e discipline, attention in ranks, and silence, and etiquette at meals are
coming second nature now. We double-time everywhere we go. We have a party at the end of
pre ight in 3 weeks and are all looking forward to it. ey have it in large downtown hotel ballroom
in Mineral Wells and invite girls from the sororities at a girls’ college from nearby Denton, Texas …
the harassment is so we will pay particular attention to the smallest of details because in aviation one
small slip can cost you your life. One candidate sitting across from me at mess had his hand on the
table and the tactical o cer gave him 2 hrs of drill to march on Saturday or Sunday….
Love,
Your son,
Fred

I was the h in our ight to solo the TH55, probably just a uke of
nature, but it was su cient to show that I was serious about completing this
challenging phase and ultimately becoming an Army aviator. Some parts of
ight training were particularly di cult, like learning to hover. When the
instructor rst demonstrates this, it looks so easy. en when he turns the
controls over to you, the aircra quickly gets out of control and is rescued by
the instructor who lets you know in no uncertain terms what an
uncoordinated jerk you are and how you are putting his life at risk each time
he gives you the controls. A er about seven to 10 hours of instruction, the
coordination of the controls, which seems like it will never come, magically
comes together for most people. Some individuals really struggle with this.
It was a point at which some students washed out of the program. So there
was a make-it-or-break-it dimension to learning this primary maneuver.
Another challenging but very important part of helicopter ight training
is to master the autorotation. is is a maneuver associated with a simulated
engine failure. e collective is lowered, and the pitch is reduced in the rotor
blades, and the helicopter descends with the air rushing up through the
blades with the inertia of the rapidly descending aircra keeping the blades
turning. As the helicopter approaches the ground, the pilot ares the aircra
back with a move of the cyclic control and cushions the aircra onto the
ground with the collective control. It all has to be done with great timing
and application of control force, and when done just right results in the
helicopter settling to the ground without power and without damage to its
components. e pulling of pitch has to be timed exactly. Too early and you
would fall the last few feet to the runway. Too late and you would slam into
the runway. Flight instructors really earned their pay teaching this high-
stakes maneuver. I was personally appreciative of the extent of this training
later, as I experienced two engine failures and autorotations in Vietnam.
Our ight training at Fort Wolters was divided into phases. We had one
set of instructors for the rst phase and another for the second. It was
exciting moving from basic controls in ying straight and level to doing
turns, climbs and descents, day ying and night ying, local area and cross-
country ying both dual and solo. One instructor was very high-strung and
uptight, and the other was very laid back and grandfatherly in his
instruction. We wore our ight suits for ight instruction and rode in buses
from the fort either to the main heliport or to a staging eld. While one
group was up ying another would be in the bus or a small building
studying their ight subject lessons. en the candidates who ew out to the
stage eld would adjourn to the bus or building while they were replaced in
the cockpit by the next student. When a student soloed, the bus back to the
fort made a stop at a local hotel that had an outside entrance to the
swimming pool, and there was a ceremonious process that involved
throwing the successful solo student high up in the air and into the pool
a er a raucous countdown to blasto .
Two men had a profound e ect on my success in ight school when I was
in jeopardy and at a particularly teachable moment, and their in uence was
signi cant in my life. One was named Jim Lucking. e other was named
Bob (Jim) McCarthy. Each was an experienced sergeant when accepted into
the Warrant O cer Candidate Program. ey both made a personal choice
to enter the program a er a few years of experience in the Army, had
attained the rank of sergeant, and had backgrounds that included knowing
the ropes and implementing military procedures, discipline, and attention to
detail that only comes with that kind of experience.
I can vividly remember a spring day in the First Warrant O cer
Candidate company barracks of the Red Hats at Fort Wolters when we were
in our concrete block company building with its spit-shined concrete oors
and meticulously clean spartan surroundings. We were reviewing the
previous week’s activities in this rst phase of our training that was called-
pre- ight. is period of time included daily inspections and harassment by
TAC o cers, marching and double timing, calisthenics, and classes on post
procedures and military protocols.
Jim McCarthy led o the questions with, “Mac, how do you think it’s
going?”
My response was, “Not too well! I don’t know why, but this TAC o cer
really has it in for me. I think I am getting more demerits than anyone else
in the barracks.”
Jim Lucking said, “Yes you are. When they get your number, they will ride
your ass and try to throw you out of here. Don’t let them get to you. Would
you like some advice?”
“Yes, I can use all of the help I can get at this point,” I replied.
Jim looked out the window and then began with some questions: “How
many pairs of boots do you have? How many belt buckles? How many sets of
brass? e key is to have a set of spit-shined boots and a highly polished belt
buckle and set of brass insignias … that you never wear! You’re gonna have
to part with some of your money. You get this stu highly shined and set it
aside for display. You take out every one of your uniforms and go over them
with a ne-toothed comb to nd any lanyards [hanging threads] and you cut
or burn them o . If they nd that kind of thing, they will be all over you. If
you have your gear organized and straight, they will not mess with you but
will move on to someone else.”
I had already formed a negative relationship with our TAC o cer, who I
began to believe saw me as young and unaware of the details that were
involved in keeping my uniform and belongings in inspection-ready
condition. is had already resulted in an inordinate number of
accumulating demerits and daily destruction of my area, locker and
belongings by the TAC sta while I was attending class or physical training.
As the days passed fewer bunks or locker areas were disturbed. However,
when we would return to the barracks, my gear and that of a few other
candidates was thrown all over the barracks.
I was painfully aware of the TAC sta ’s dissatisfaction with my
performance since it was reinforced for me on a regular basis in the
following manner. When a TAC o cer came down the hall, we were
expected to brace—this meant standing up against the wall at attention with
feet locked and eyes straight ahead—and in a strong clear voice state, “Sir,
Candidate McCarthy, good a ernoon, sir!”
is was usually for me just the beginning of a painful daily exchange that
was characterized by all sorts of questions that had no right answer. e
TAC o cer would get his face two inches from my face and respond:
“Candidate McCarthy, it sounds like you are very confused. Do you really
believe you can become a warrant o cer and be entrusted with
commanding an expensive helicopter for the U.S. Army?”
Any attempts at apology or explanation had to be preceded by “Sir,
Candidate McCarthy…” and followed by “…Sir, Candidate McCarthy, thank
you, sir.”
Our TAC o cer seemed to get energized by my inevitable mistakes and
stumbling misstatements of the required scripted responses. e TAC o cer
would respond, “Don’t thank me, candidate. Learn to do things right and
pay attention to detail. I don’t know what kind of screening process the
Army has now, but it de nitely failed when you were let in. You are the
sorriest excuse for a warrant o cer candidate that we have ever seen. Our
job is to get rid of people like you before you kill someone because you
haven’t paid attention to the details. We can’t let an idiot be entrusted with
an expensive Army helicopter, can we Candidate McCarthy?”
“Sir, Candidate McCarthy, no sir!” was my reply.
 “Why no, we can’t. So maybe we should throw your sorry ass out of here
right now. Would that be doing you a favor, Candidate McCarthy? Would
you like to be thrown out of here and be an enlisted man for the rest of your
tour?”
“Sir, Candidate McCarthy, no sir, I want to succeed here and learn to be
an Army aviator.”
“ en we will see whether you can hack it, Candidate McCarthy!
You have a long way to go!”
e next day, I was summoned to come into the inner sanctum that was
the o ce of our TAC o cers. ree of them were present. Two were
standing at parade rest. e third was seated behind an o cial-looking desk.
I came in and stood at attention against the back wall and addressed the
head TAC o cer behind the desk. “Sir, Candidate McCarthy, reporting, sir.”
“At ease Candidate McCarthy!” was the unexpected response. “We have
been talking about the sorry state of your military bearing and the many
demerits you have accumulated in the short time you have been here, and
we have come to one conclusion. It’s sink-or-swim time for you. We are
going to give you a chance to prove that you really want to be here and can
cut it here. Do you have any idea what we are talking about Candidate
McCarthy?”
“Sir, Candidate McCarthy, yes sir!”
“Well then, what is it that we are going to do, Candidate McCarthy?”
“Sir, Candidate McCarthy, I don’t know what it is, sir!”
“Well, you are in luck because we are gathered here to tell you the answer
you are looking for. We are going to put you in charge of the whole
company, Candidate McCarthy. You can’t even take care of your own area.
How do you think you will do if you are in charge of the whole damn
company?”
“Sir, Candidate McCarthy, I will lead the company, sir!”
“Well, Candidate McCarthy, that will be a real show. We can’t wait to see
how you screw this one up, and when we do, we are going to throw your
sorry ass out of here. Do you understand what we are saying Candidate
McCarthy?”
“Sir, Candidate McCarthy, yes sir, I understand!”
“Candidate, you are dismissed.”
“Sir, Candidate McCarthy, yes sir!” I saluted, turned about face, and le
the company o cers’ room.
As I walked back to our cubicle I thought to myself, “Well, at least all of
the cards are on the table.” e TAC o cer has not only got my number in
spades but he has also co-opted the other TAC o cers and the leadership
into a joint e ort to push me and see what I can take. is is no time to
buckle under the pressure. Maybe I come across too timid, too disorganized,
not serious enough about keeping my area highly organized, and not
attentive enough to minute details and military protocols. I will show them.
I am going to organize my area and look for every little speck of dust. My
brass and boots will shine enough to see my face in them. All of my clothes
and uniform parts will be folded exactly right and placed on display like I
live in a museum. I will keep a positive attitude, control my voice, lower the
pitch in my voice, and give it right back to them. I know I have made friends
in the company and they will back me up! I have the capability of projecting
a loud voice, and I will use it when I am in front leading the company to
convey to other candidates and the TAC o cers that there is no question
about who is leading the company and what the expectations are for high
performance and compliance. I can do this. Game on!
A Friend
A friend is one who senses things
that also make sense to me.
Who sees the ow of life
and loves its every turn and bending spree.
Who takes the time to hear the words of children
pure and simple, crying for
the seeds of truth.
e lenses that they need to see their place on life’s enormous tree.
In whom I nd a love of life to be
And know he sees it too, in me.
Fort Wolters, Texas
Tuesday, March 21, 1967
Dear Nan,
…I was writing a letter to cousin Jerry but during inspection a TAC o cer found it (We’re not
supposed to have ½ written letters around, either write all at once or tear them up, can’t have
anything ½ done letters lying around. Pretty crazy huh?) I got demerits for it and he wrote all over it
so I just threw it away…. I got a pass from Sat noon till 6 o’clock Easter but I had 11 military letters
to write & lots to study for nal map test. Passed the test today and all is well. Looking forward to
party Friday night & transfer up to the ight line on Saturday. Sent home for some civilian clothes in
a week will be able to wear them if we get passes, which I probably won’t get for a while judging from
my past demerits. ere is always a ray of hope. Weather is in the high 70s and comfortable. e
outlook is for intermittent harassment.
anks again for cookies.
Love,
Your grandson,
Fred
Giving It All
On lightened day of mild degree
My venture led me to the sea
Where at her feet my thoughts owed free
I asked her what she thought of me.
My eyes were down,
her arm drew back
And le a stone half white, half black
Be all of what you try to be
Keep not half back she said to me.
From Fort Wolters, Texas
Easter Sunday, March 26, 1967
Dear Mom and Dad,
It’s Sunday night and I have to study for a map nal test tomorrow…. Last night I saw a show and
had few drinks at the NCO club. We’ve been having nal tests this last week and so far I have done
well enough but tomorrow will be a tough one. e weather has been relatively moderate in temp
but yesterday we had lightening and a hailstorm. I saw Paul Fleming. He is a senior graduating next
week and going on to Alabama. He gave me a few tips and pointers. Only 215 out of 425 originals in
his class made it as far as he has. Don McNeil, Kevin’s friend, strangely enough, lives in the same
barracks as me and seems to be a real nice guy … the same old harassment and getting ridden all of
the time. It bugs a lot of guys but they’re going to have to chain me up and throw me out of here
before I would quit. I just say the hell with it and do what they say…. I should get paid $180 for this
month & might start looking for some transportation. It all depends on what the pass future looks
like and how I progress when we go to the ight line….
Love,
Your Son, Fred
From Fort Wolters, Texas
Sunday, April 16, 1967
Dear Mom and Dad,
…I soloed yesterday number 5 in my ight…. I haven’t had any passes yet because of demerits. In
fact, I’ve been walking taxi time and details every weekend. Our TAC o cer seems to have nailed
me as the proverbial one from every ight and I have had to put up with extra inspections and so
many demerits for dust and improper displays that I have already been before the captain for
excessive demerits and the way it looks I will go before him again this week. I have been made the
squad leader for this week…. With my early solo and, if I do well as squad leader, this will re ect
well on my rating…. A windstorm hit the heliport and totaled out 60 machines, extensively
damaging 150 so our time on the ight line has increased to compensate for the downed aircra ….
In all of the rush I am nding myself more organized and responsible. ings must be done here in
order of importance, and they must be accomplished thoroughly, completely, and quickly. I can
notice a de nite increase in my responsibility and I have always kept a positive attitude and drive so
 these demerit problems ought to come around and things should start falling into place soon.
Love
Your Son,
Fred
Fort Wolters, Texas
Wednesday, May 17, 1967
Dear Mom and Dad,
…now have 50 hours of logged ying time in and I am nally getting a natural feel for the controls
and ear for the right RPM sound from the engine so am beginning to appreciate the green valleys
and far reaching rocky plateaus that dot the at country around here.
Everything takes on a di erent perspective and a feeling of freedom from 2,000’. I got an 85% on
my primary check ride. e weather has been quite moderate in the 80s but a few days approach the
95 mark and gave us a taste of what the summer will have to o er. I have completed courses in
mechanics and aerodynamics, at present classes are concerned with ight planning and course
navigation, using a computer similar to a slide rule and referring back to many hours of map reading
we studied in pre ight. Harassment is an ever-present friend and I got my rst pass in 3 months last
week and looks like I may get another this week if everything goes all right.
So Long For now, Love,
Your Son, Fred
Fort Wolters, Texas
Saturday, May 27, 1967
Dear Mom and Dad,
…I have about an 85% academic average … ight instruction is far from a breeze. A great deal of
coordination is required to y a helicopter, very much more than learning to y a xed wing
airplane. ere are controls in both of your hands and pedals for both feet. We must constantly
divide our attention between about 12 important instruments and the outside area … your
instructor calls you a stupid fool for one hour straight over the intercom and describes how you
almost killed him and yourself on that last time … glad to solo and now can go up and yell at
myself…. I soloed for one hour yesterday.
…there were tornado warnings in all quadrants…. It was not too safe a feeling being up there…. It
started thundering and heavy lightening began. ey turned a red light on in the control tower and
we all came in with no problems. at was quite an adventure. I always have all of you in my prayers.
Two tornadoes touched down between here and Fort Worth last night so maybe we’ll get some
excitement today. I got a $10,000 life insurance policy that was approved and recommended by the
post commander. It covers ying here as well as in Vietnam. Our Tactical O cer said I did a good
job as squad leader so a little pressure is o . When we go out to heliport in buses I get a helicopter
assigned, pre ight it, and y it out to a stage eld about six miles away solo….
Love,
Your Son,
Fred

***
Primary ight training was divided into two phases at Fort Wolters, basic
and advanced. In the basic phase we learned, among other skills, the
maneuvers of straight and level ight, climbs, descents, turns, emergency
procedures, takeo s, landings, autorotations, and hovering. During the
second phase we were taught navigation and landing on various pinnacles,
slopes, and in con ned areas. e Army leased land from farmers and
ranchers around Mineral Wells, outside of the base. ere were three types
of areas designated for three levels of di culty based on the size of the
clearing, terrain type, obstacles, and height of surrounding trees or brush.
Each was marked with one of three tires, which could be seen from the air,
designating its level of di culty. A white tire indicated a low level, and
yellow indicated a moderate level of di culty and required the approval of
the ight instructor to enter solo. e highest level of di culty was marked
with a red tire and required that an instructor pilot be with the student.
ese training areas were important because our instructors knew we
would be ying into very con ned and di cult areas in combat and we
needed to know how to assess the risks and make the safest approaches into
and departures from these types of areas. We did some of these con ned
area landings and takeo s solo and some with an instructor. e procedure
was quite involved. Upon landing into the wind and lined up with the
longest part of the open area, we would secure the helicopter controls, leave
the aircra running and blades turning at low RPM and then jump out to
examine the area. We would pace o the distance of the longest open area by
walking from one end to the other. We were to take a handful of dry grass
and throw it up in the air and note the direction of the wind and then
carefully get back into the helicopter, buckle in our safety harness and go
through a detailed pre-takeo list. is involved making sure all of the
gauges were in the green and the helicopter engine was eased up from idle to
full operating RPM. Next we would bring the helicopter to a three-foot
hover, carefully move it to the downwind part of the con ned area, turn it
around and then take o into the wind, moving from a hover into
translational li with the cyclic control, and climb out of the area by
applying upward force to the collective while keeping the direction of
departure in alignment with the pedals and adding just the right amount of
throttle to compensate for the increased load of a climb on the engine. It was
a delicate balancing act, and the skids would normally just barely clear the
treetops at the departure end of the area. is process was important in that
a heavily loaded helicopter doesn’t just take o straight up in the air. It is
moved forward de ly until the li shi s from a hover into translational li
and forward ight. ese were interesting maneuvers and done with a high
degree of instructor control and oversight to ensure the safety of the pilot
and the aircra . We were taken into a white tire area and the instructor
demonstrated this process. e next lesson involved us going solo into the
same area. We would go with an instructor into a yellow tire area with an
instructor pilot, followed by doing it solo.
When debrie ng this second procedure, I mentioned that I had seen a red
tire area close by and went in and out of it as well, assuming I might get
extra credit. I guess I enjoyed the challenge of this type of ying and didn’t
hear the part about it being dangerous and requiring an instructor with us,
because the instructor, who was already a bit high-strung, leapt out of his
seat and was in my face and on my case once again. He took me aside and
said with a great deal of intensity: “You are in big trouble here. You are not
listening to the directions I give you. I am not talking just for my own health
or entertainment. Is there any question in your mind about what I am telling
you right now? Because if there is we have got a real problem here. If I were
to tell what you have done to the captain you might be grounded and out of
the program. Now get your act together, listen carefully to each and every
directive I give you and don’t ever again do something like this that you are
not cleared to do on a ight lesson. Is that clear, Mr. McCarthy?”
“Yes sir!” was my reply from the position of attention that I found myself
taking.
“Now get back to the table and let’s nish debrie ng con ned area
procedures with the other students. Are there any questions about what I
have told you?”
“No sir!”
I returned to the table, and the other two students in our group were
noticeably silent as our instructor resumed the lesson, but the redness in his
face remained during the debrie ng.
I felt like I was hanging by the proverbial slender thread in the program. I
was hoping against hope that the instructor pilot got enough satisfaction out
of chewing my ass that he would not tell the captain in charge of this class
about my transgression. When I was handed my grade slip I noticed the
other students got A’s and I got my one and only D with “failure to follow
instructions” listed in writing on the checklist. Beyond that I hoped that it
would not get back to the TAC o cers in my section and was relieved that it
did not result in a failing grade for the ight lesson. It did give me a wake-up
call about listening, remembering details, and paying attention to following
the directions of the instructors. I realized this was a high-risk environment
where mistakes or lack of attention could have serious consequences. I know
the instructor was right to stop me in my tracks and come down on me with
a ton of bricks. I was thankful that he didn’t take it to the next level and
advocate a heave-ho higher up the chain of command. ese instructors
were mostly Vietnam veterans, and when they made a point, we listened.
Con ned area training proved useful in the Delta when landing in some
of the small hamlets, soccer elds in the middle of town squares, or very
small openings in the jungle with heavy loads of supplies or people. e
early training was a valued resource.
Fort Wolters, Texas
June 11, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
…I passed my advance standardization ride on Monday with a good score and wound up
academics with about an 85% average on the nal weather test. Weather is an accredited course and
transfers 3 credits to any college…. I am nished with cross-country work and over the next 2 weeks
I will deal with the fundamentals of formation ying…. I will leave for Fort Rucker on 23 July (1967)
and I will forward my new address as soon as I learn what it is…. Dave White, the candidate I came
home at Christmas with, has a new Ford and is driving down. He plans to stop in New Orleans and
it would be very interesting to see that city….
Love
Your Son, Fred

***
Warrant O cer Candidate School was demanding, as was learning to y
a helicopter. As any pilot will tell you, your self-esteem gets all caught up and
confused in ight training. Your personal identity gets wrapped up in
whether you can make it through the military discipline on the one hand
and the rigors of trying to master a machine that seems to defy being
controlled on the other. As candidates we were o en locked in an “us versus
them” relationship with our TAC o cers and our ight instructors. Few of
them seemed interested in our personal self-esteem. It was not uncommon
to get yelled at or beat on the helmet by your ight instructor a er not
performing a maneuver to an instructor’s standard. We all feared the shame
and failure of being removed from the program.
I felt this in a personal way because, as I mentioned before, I looked
young and inexperienced for my age, and I didn’t get the military discipline
part at rst. My area in the barracks was destroyed day a er day during
inspection time by the TAC o cers. is not only discouraged me but also
angered my friends in the company who supported me and helped me learn
to play the game of being organized in my personal e ects in the Army way.
We frequently commiserated once again about the three ways to look at life:
the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way. In a desperate attempt to
get me shaped up or shipped out, I was given command of the company by
the tactical sta o cers. However, the skill that saved my ass was my loud
voice and enjoyment of making up verses for calling cadence while we were
marching.
When anyone learns to y a helicopter, the rst couple of hours a er the
introduction, ying straight and level, turns, climbs and descents through
the air, involves learning how to hover. is activity seems beyond
comprehension, requires the coordinated use of all extremities at once, and
for quite a while seems undoable. en all of a sudden, a er lots of practice
and scaring the shit out of your instructor and yourself, it all starts to t
together for most students. It goes faster for some and takes a lot longer for
others. A good friend, Mike, was struggling with this challenge, and once it
starts to go sideways it can be a real bear to bring it back into your
wheelhouse. Of course, the hatchet that is hanging over your head is that if
you can’t learn to hover, you can’t stay in the program, so it is a high-stakes
phase of the training. Mike was brought in and told he was being set back a
class for more instruction and to master hovering. We all felt terrible for
him. Mike was standing outside his barracks and looking a little down.
Here were the words to the “Jody” we called out as we went by in
formation. His nickname was “Foxy.” I had two nicknames during ight
school: My rst one was “Jingles” because I lost my voice at one point and
sounded like Andy Devine, sidekick of Wild Bill Hickok in the Western
television series. My second one was “Flyer Tuck” because of my seminarian
background, and naturally quite o en it got modi ed to something profane
that sounded similar.
Foxy Foxy Don’t be blue
You’ll be right there with us too
Am I right or wrong? You’re right!
Tell me if I’m wrong! You’re right!
Sound o , one two, Sound o three four
 Cadence count one, two three four,
one two, three four.
Graduating from the primary ight training program at Fort Wolters,
Texas, was quite a milestone accomplishment for me. I had survived the
rigors of discipline, harassment, and military ight instruction. I was
halfway through my ight training program, and my scores and
performance indicated I was doing well and learning to be an Army aviator.
I had demonstrated my leadership ability to our TAC o cers and I had
learned to be better organized in both my personal gear and in approaching
my classroom assignments. I was learning to turn criticism into personal
acknowledgment of performance limitations and to push myself harder to
succeed in each required academic area. I was aware of appropriate military
bearing and proud to be pursuing being a warrant o cer in the U.S. Army. I
carried myself with more assurance and had learned how to inspire
con dence in my peers. ese were remarkable changes for me to achieve in
a four-month time frame.
Graduation from the primary ight program at Fort Wolters was a very
important activity for me. e seminary I had been enrolled in did not have
a formal graduation from high school for a variety of reasons. We did not
receive a paper high school diploma because the program was designed to
include the rst two years of college. At the ight school graduation many
parents, wives, family and friends were in attendance. Our TAC o cers were
present, as were the commander of the fort and a number of his leadership
team in the post theater. We received the silver wings of an Army aviator to
place on our uniform a er an impressive graduation ceremony. I had
ordered a ight school ring that has been a treasured possession all my life.
It was inscribed with my class number 67–19 and the words “Above the
Best,” the motto of Army Aviation. As the program nished, the band and a
chorus played and sang the Army Aviation song. It was one of the proudest
moments of my young life and one I still fondly remember.
“Winged Soldiers”— e Army Aviation Song
We’re winged soldiers
(spoken) I am an American ghting man. An Army aviator serving with the forces that make
our country free. I will never forget my duty, my men, my honor. I will trust in my God, my
country, and my ship.
Winged soldiers are we….
Saber wings will li us when we get the call
 rough the dawn like eagles we will soar
Roll the pitch and throttle. Cyclic to the wall
Listen to the Army eagles roar
We’re winged soldiers
We y above the best
Defenders of the land and the free
From the sky we do or die
And let the angels rest Winged soldiers are we.
Charging through the jungle
Hear our rotors roar
Down from in the valley towards the hill
Fighting aviators out to win the war
Here comes the Army’s escadrille
Rotor blades are turning
Diving towards the re
Screaming in like eagles for the kill
A er our inferno, troopers must admire Eagles of the Army’s escadrille.

***
When we completed the primary phase of our ight training, we
graduated at Fort Wolters, and our next duty assignment was Fort Rucker,
Alabama. We had a few days allocated for us to make travel arrangements to
get there. I went there in a private vehicle with other warrant o cer
candidates who shared expenses for the trip. Along the way we travelled
through a number of Southern towns and spent a couple of days in New
Orleans, Louisiana. ere we were intrigued by the unique ambiance of that
city. In particular we enjoyed the Cajun food, the exotic drinks, the Zydeco
music, the quirky souvenir stores, and the notoriously bawdy behavior of the
locals and tourists on Bourbon Street.
When we arrived at Fort Rucker, it looked a lot like Fort Polk, Louisiana.
e World War II barracks and support service areas all looked like the
familiar vestiges of an old Army fort. is was actually a comfortable feeling
of beginning to feel a t with military life. e di erences were not at rst
readily discernible. e heliport, aircra , outlying practice elds, and level of
sophistication of the instrument and tactical instruction soon consumed the
majority of our focus. It was quite a feeling to be entering a distinctly
di erent second phase of our training. ere was a perceptible air of
seriousness about the purpose of each training session and a sense of getting
very close to the whole reason we had been involved in all this training, to
prepare us to be going into combat in the very near future.
 We learned where the important facilities were located in relation to our
assigned barracks. e PX, the movie theater, and various informal eating
and relaxing areas were accounted for in the post. It was a place where you
could feel safe and secure in your surroundings. We never needed to lock
our possessions up in our barracks or be concerned about things getting
stolen. ere was a code about being in the warrant o cer program that was
very clear about honesty and respect.
Fort Rucker, Alabama
ursday, July 27, 1967
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
…went to New Orleans for 2 days en route here. We saw the French Quarter…. I started taking
instrument training in a Bell TH13 helicopter. We don’t even see the ground for the next 50 hrs
except for entering and leaving the tra c pattern at the heliport. ey lost 2 students and IPs in a -
mid-air last class. Mid airs between helicopters are very rare but traumatic for the remaining
students and instructor pilots. With so many helicopters in the air at one time doing training
exercises, we all had our head on a swivel looking for other aircra …. We wear a hood on our
helmet and our vision is limited by panels to the instrument panel. is kind of ying requires
constant e ort, concentration and crosscheck between about 15 primary and secondary instruments
and gauges. It can be very tiring and fatiguing. e temperature and humidity here are ridiculous. I
long for a cool breeze o Puget Sound back home. We usually come out of the bubble a er 2 hours
soaked with hardly a dry thread on us. Our academic classes cover how the instruments work and
radio navigation aids….
Love,
Your Son,
Fred
Our instrument training was done in a Bell TH13 helicopter. is
helicopter is a popular two-seat helicopter with a clear bubble enclosure
around the pilots and cockpit area and a tail cone that is open tubes and
looks sort of like an Erector Set. It’s the helicopter that you see in old
M*A*S*H television shows. It is a very reliable helicopter and a more stable
platform, and that is why it is used for teaching instrument ying. e sun
in Alabama gets very hot this time of the year and it is over 100 degrees in
the cockpit some a ernoons. We wore a hood most of the time that limited
our vision to the instrument panel, and it was one of the more challenging
phases of our ight training. We would y most of the lesson referencing the
instruments to take o , climb, level o , follow a speci c radial of an
electronic beacon, practice holding patterns, descend, do unusual attitudes,
approaches and even practice engine failures and autorotations with this
vision restriction in place. My instructor for this phase was very forceful and
he enjoyed really turning up the heat and making his students sweat. He was
what we call “a helmet thumper” and didn’t mince words or actions if we got
disoriented or weren’t exactly sure of our position in space. I struggled a bit
with visualizing our position with respect to a speci c radial of a particular
instrument approach but ended up mastering the skills and getting passing
grades in this phase. Each of the beacons was named for a place in Vietnam,
like Bear Cat or Can o. Most pilots struggled to some degree to become
pro cient in this type of ying, but it is essential to master because studies
have shown that if you y a helicopter into a cloud bank and lose visual
reference, a er three to ve minutes most pilots who don’t have instrument
ight training will become disoriented and lose control of the helicopter. We
received a tactical instrument rating upon program completion that was
designed to help you get out of inadvertently ying into the clouds and
getting back out by making a 180-degree turn to return to an area of visual-
ight-rules type weather.
Fort Rucker, Alabama
Tuesday, August 8, 1967
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
…I now have 14 hours of instrument ying. A er staring at these instruments for an hour and half
they seem to jump all over the cockpit. I still have so much to do in academics and in keeping my
uniforms and room in proper order.
Next weekend we are learning physical combat, taking the Physical Training (PT) test. en the
following week we qualify with the 45 pistol and then the M-16 ri e sometime in the future. e
courses are getting involved with complex radar approaches and civilian air tra c control
procedures … picked up 2 books from a civilian instructor for the FAA commercial helicopter
rating. We can take the written test on the day we graduate. It consists of 50 questions, no ight test
required, and if I pass I get a civilian FAA rating as a commercial helicopter pilot. It is the equivalent
of $10,000 of ight time in a civilian helicopter.
We are getting close to why we’re learning all of this and all the goo ng around is pretty well out of
the picture. Even the short weekend from noon Saturday to Sunday might usually nd me getting
display articles, doing laundry, or hitting the books. I guess it doesn’t sound much like me. But we
have to just about live this aviation experience because whatever we learn may save our rear-ends in
the very near future.
Love
Your Son,
Fred
Fort Rucker, Alabama
Wednesday, September 20, 1967
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
Well I passed my advanced instrument check ride … next Monday we will go into the tactics phase
and begin the transition into the turbine powered Hueys … classes are now dealing with the
 functioning and breakdown of the standard turbine engines used in the aircra we will be ying. It’s
more or less of a basic knowledge because it would take too long to run us through the standard
mechanic’s course. e purpose is so that we can recognize and relate possible engine troubles in
certain terms for quick repair adjustment or whatever. ere will be a crew chief in every ship
responsible for keeping it in the air. But they want us to know what’s happening too.
…still the thick humid Southern air that seems to gag you every time you come out of an air-
conditioned classroom. I ew xed wing last weekend for about three hours. Mostly just doing
landings and takeo s and generally just staying in the tra c pattern trying di erent techniques in
crosswinds and getting pro cient. is coming Saturday we will begin various air maneuvers
working towards the commercial xed wing pilot’s license.
I become a senior on Monday. is privilege will last until we graduate. It’s the last rank step in the
candidate program and the nal 2-month period before becoming an o cer.
Love,
Your Son, Fred

***
Few words conjure up a vision that no pilot wants to think about, but
some do. A midair collision occurred during instrument training in the class
before me that cost the lives of two instructors and two students. When
helicopters run into each other in the air the results are almost always
catastrophic in terms of loss of life and aircra . A helicopter is a marvel of
aviation technology. It is a nely balanced gyroscope that ies. It includes-
weight-balanced mechanical equipment, fuel, oil, uids, and personnel and
an engine that powers spinning components, the rotor system and the tail
rotor. Controls are manipulated by the pilot to move it forward, backward,
sideways, up and down. When everything functions as designed the
helicopter can be an extension of the pilot and help the pilot accomplish
both life-saving and life-taking missions.
In ight school during the Vietnam War buildup there were routinely
hundreds of training helicopters in the air at one time. e program of
instruction was articulated down to the nest detail. Tra c patterns were
laid out around Army training heliports and between outlying practice elds
and the heliport. “Roads in the sky” were literally created with the use of
large markers at visual checkpoints on the ground with speci ed altitudes,
airspeeds, and tra c separation to be adhered to when crossing each
marker. e student pilot and instructor practiced regular and required
visual scans and communications prior to turns, climbs, and descents, or
emergency procedures. In spite of all of these precautions, there was the
opportunity for pilot error with devastating results. It was always unsettling
when one of these events occurred whether in training or in combat. I am
reminded of the cautionary maxim that every pilot has in mind when ying:
Flying like the sea is not inherently dangerous. It is, however, very
unforgiving of the least bit of inattention or operator error.
Fort Rucker, Alabama
Sunday, October 8, 1967
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
It’s Sunday morning and I’ve been restricted to the Company area. I neglected to dust my lamp for
3 days in a row and I went before the Major for agrant neglect of my personal gear. He read me
Article 31 and threatened me with an Article 15…. It’s been a long nine months of getting nothing
but harassment, restriction, and ridden in general but two more months isn’t very long and I’ll make
it.
Yesterday morning we had an artillery demonstration…. Four students went up in each Huey and
each took a turn calling re missions in on some targets about 2 miles away. e ring battery
consisted of six howitzers and a ring adjustment team. We were all impressed with the amount of
repower that was put out by the big guns and noted the e ect of di erent types of charges on the
target. It was a very interesting and informative morning.
In ying I am working on pinnacles, con ned areas, ridgelines, and standard maneuvers at the
stage eld. In instrument ying we are learning how to operate the radios in the Huey….
Love,
Your Son,
Fred
Fort Rucker, Alabama
Saturday, October 15, 1967
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
…I guess that fall is here at last. We all welcome the cooler weather though it sometimes presents
some problems to ying. Two nights ago we were ferrying aircra back to the heliport from one of
the outlying tactical elds about 30 mi away. e weather moved down fast and thick fog
enshrouded the control zone. e pilot in command went on instruments and I kept a watch out for
the landing lights. Lightening ashed about us and a steady rain brought the visibility down to
almost O/O … all 25 of the ships made it without incident and the ight commander commended
us on our ability and keeping our cool in the adverse conditions. It was an experience that we all
bene tted from in con dence and appreciation for those 50 grueling hours of instrument training.
During the last week we have been performing various assigned missions. Reconnaissance of
routes, landing zones, navigation, operating with internal loads and external sling loads…. Position
reports must be given precisely on time and at the proper control points. We also were familiarized
with formation ying at night and will get more of that next week.
Next weekend we have escape and evasion training. en the following two weeks we spend most
of the time in the eld on twenty-four-hour alert simulating Viet Nam situations.
Love,
Your Son,
Fred
On the weekends, I began taking more xed-wing lessons at a small
air eld on the outskirts of Fort Rucker in Ozark, Alabama. I had an excellent
instructor. He enjoyed ying and teaching me how to control the little
Cessna 150 airplane. He had been a corporate pilot and was now working
for the Army instructing helicopter pilots at Fort Rucker, and he enjoyed
keeping his certi ed ight instructor ratings for airplanes current as well.
e eld was a very down-home ight operation, with an asphalt runway
that had a few potholes in it and a mom-and-pop type of ight operation
where they knew your name and seemed interested in your ight progress. It
proved to be great for learning rough eld takeo s and crosswind landings.
We had more freedom in our schedules as we got further into our ight
training, especially on the weekends. When others headed to the beach in
Panama City, Florida, or went on family outings if they were married and
their wives had come to visit, I would nd a way to get out to the local
airport and enjoyed taking xed-wing ying lessons.
Students were inevitably short of money and I could always nd someone
willing to lend their old car or motorcycle for a tank full of gas.
I knew by this time that a warrant o cer, a er graduation, could take a
written examination and get a commercial helicopter license from the FAA.
I also wanted to get a commercial xed-wing rating, and that could be done
as well with a written and ight test and it became my goal to obtain these
licenses before I went to Vietnam. I was thinking down the road of possibly
being an airline pilot, if I made it out of Vietnam. When I was home on leave
prior to leaving for Vietnam, I took a checkride in the Seattle area at the
Renton Airport and was awarded a commercial xed-wing crossover license.
Flying was really in my blood, and even on leave home I found time to take
a tour o ered by the FAA of the Air Route Tra c Control Center just
outside of Seattle.
Fort Rucker, Alabama
Friday, October 20, 1967
Dear Mom and Dad
…as my stick-buddy and I were running up the Huey for a pre–take o check, the re detection
warning light came on and you never saw two people shut down a turbine engine and bail out of that
cockpit any faster. It all turned out to be a short in the wiring but it was an experience to say the
least.
I am going out for our tactics brie ng this a ernoon. e call sign of our ight is “Knight” and
looks like a pretty good bunch. We will have 15 hours solo and 10 hours dual in this nal phase. We
will be doing route recons, airmobile assaults, medevacs and similar missions.
I’m looking forward to seeing everyone sometime around anksgiving if all goes well. Current
academics deal with tactical principles and the relationship of various branches in a division. We
have to have a fairly good understanding of the relationship of various units as we will o entimes be
in direct support of the infantry or artillery etc. We are all a little apprehensive about our
assignments but we have been hearing nothing else for 9 months so we are anxious to nd out what
the story really is.
Love,
Your Son
Fred
Fort Rucker, Alabama
Friday, October 27, 1967
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
is week we had classes on how, when, and where to drop aircra ares for the best and most
e ective illumination, computing for winds etc. Another day dealt with new and old radios and
navigation aids for direction nding and voice communications. And today we started a 10-hour
block on the adjustment of artillery re from aircra . is is an important role of Army Aviation in
Vietnam and is quite involved with geometric angles, requesting radio procedures, and the
adjustment of re upon the enemy, the type of re desired for the mission to be accomplished.
Tomorrow will get in another xed wing lesson in the a ernoon. In the morning we have an
inspection in greens and a few lectures on the protocol of being an o cer etc. I should be taking my
advanced instrument check ride next week and hoping to do well. Orders came down for the class 2
ahead of us. 3 went to school for a tandem rotor helicopter (Chinook), 6 got stateside assignments,
and all of the rest went to Vietnam aviation units….
Love,
Your Son,
Fred
Fort Rucker, Alabama
Sunday, November 5, 1967
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
…in the advanced instrument phase of training. Instructors are military recent veterans of
Vietnam, think they own the world and treat us like dirt. Not very enjoyable. e days are very long
and everyone counts the days when the phase will be over and quite reluctantly looks forward to the
next ying period. Have taken up my xed wing lessons and should have my commercial xed wing
rating when I graduate from the school. My instructor for that is a real nice guy who taught basic
instruments and moonlights instructing xed wing time on the side. He used to y a commercial
twin engine for a corporation in upper New York. He has over 9,000 hours in various aircra ….
Next week I qualify with M-16 and hear the 1st in a series of overseas lectures. I got a 92 on my basic
instrument check ride—one of the highest in the class but having a real tough time in advanced.
Two weeks ago went through the gas chamber and quali ed with a 45 caliber pistol also took
physical PT test and did fairly well.
Love,
Your Son
Fred
Seattle, WA
December 1, 1967—
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
 I guess I have never been one for sentimental good-byes so I decided I would write this letter. I
think during this leave we came the closest to getting together, especially so on anksgiving, when
we sang and got along so well. You were most understanding and especially so in regards to use of
the car. I look forward sincerely to Vietnam, naturally with a bit of apprehension, but more for the
wider perspective it will give me on life, and how I can best use my talents in this world.
Dad, I am taking your Legion of Merit medal with me. Nana le it with me at the time of our short
visit. I don’t think I will ever be half the soldier you were just by the nature of my personality,
nevertheless, I will do my best as I did in ight school I will write o en and relate what I can from
my experiences
I don’t have a will. I think it is unnecessary in our family, but should a situation arise, I would like
to see a portion of the money go to Fircrest School or some such cause a er the majority of it goes to
the family. I realize the chance is remote but just in case.
Well to wind it up, please keep this letter within the house and just between you, mom and dad. I
think it would be best that way. I will appreciate your prayers. You will all be in mine as poor and as
infrequent at times that they may be. Take care. I love you all very much and will see you in about a
year, God willing,
Love,
Your Son
Fred
 Welcome to Vietnam!
A er the long ight from the United States that stopped for fuel in Guam
and then proceeded to Vietnam, I remember the tension level in the cabin
rising as they announced we were beginning our descent into Tan Son Nhut
Airport at Saigon. We were letting down into a war zone. Some of us
wouldn’t be coming home from this adventure. Would the plane be shot at
as we descended? What part of Vietnam would we be assigned to? What
would Saigon be like? Would we get to spend any time there before being
sent out to our unit? Where would we be assigned and how dangerous
would the assignment be?
As the plane got lower on approach, the vegetation and military hardware
looked strange and foreboding. We held our breath as we turned nal and
lined up to touch down on the runway. en we were down, and the
humidity of the air hit us as the doors were opened and we deplaned down
the stairway. A er a brie ng for a general welcome, we were divided into
groups of o cers and enlisted men. We rode in a bus that had chain link
fencing on the windows. is, we were told, was to prevent grenades from
being thrown in the windows at us. A er dropping our green canvas gear
bags in the assigned barracks we had some time to wander around Saigon. It
was a busy city of motorbikes, strange sounds and smells, and lots of
attractive young women dressed in colorful áo dàis standing in the
doorways of various restaurants and bars along the streets of the city. ere
was no question about their intentions as they invited us to come into their
bar or restaurant.
Saigon, the Paris of the East. A feast lled with forbidden pleasures and intrigue. Wall-to-wall
people hurrying to their appointments. Scooters and rickshaws competing with each other for
room on the roadway. e smells of garbage and strange aromas of food cooking. Beautiful young
women in the doorways of restaurants and bars beckoning passersby to enter their world. Music
and laughter and fun awaits. Opium dens and prostitution. Marijuana and hashish. e base
ight surgeon’s warnings about who you are with and what might happen to you if you make the
wrong choices. Stately cathedrals, Buddhist monasteries, municipal buildings and people intent
on making the next streetlight. School-aged children in their uniforms with book bags and
lunches walking in groups towards their schools. People lying in the gutter and the overwhelming
stew of human, animal, vegetable, insect, etc., assaulting your senses. Co ee and beignets, strange
menu choices, ashbacks of reading e Orient Express, e African Queen. Where will I be going
tomorrow in my rst assignment? Will I ever get out of this place alive? Isn’t this exciting and the
adventure you were looking for? Or is it?

Saigon was an interesting mix of sights, sounds, and aromas of the Orient.
It was a city of stark contrasts consisting of impressive French colonial
architecture and churches and yet was also well known for gambling dens,
prostitution, and opium. ere were businessmen walking down the streets
in shirts and ties and children playing in the streets who were barefoot and
dressed in rags. Popular American music emanated from the bars along the
main streets. GIs rode in rickshaws pedaled by young men, and women
carried baskets of fruit and vegetables on their heads. e population was
1.5 million in the “Paris of the East.” It seemed like the preferred form of
transportation was a bike or motor scooter. We had drinks and dinner and
enjoyed exchanging pleasantries with the bar girls, but we stopped short of
the o ers for “a real good time.” We returned to our dorm-style transition
bunk area and retired for our rst night’s sleep in Vietnam.
at night something crawled across my face while I slept and I reached
up to grab a cockroach the size of my thumb. is wakeup call convinced
me that we weren’t in Kansas anymore. is was the real deal. We were in
Saigon, and tomorrow we would be leaving the big city for our own
assignments in the combat zone.
A er our night in the barracks at Long Binh, we were briefed about the
four Corps Areas (I, II, III, IV) of South Vietnam and some basic
information about the combat situation and then we were told our
assignments. I was assigned to the 121st Assault Helicopter Company in the
IV Corps area in the Mekong Delta near a town called Soc Trang, about 100
miles south of Saigon.
Helicopters arrived shortly a erward. One of them had a tiger head with
a lightning bolt painted on the cockpit doors, and we loaded up our du el
bags and strapped in the back seats for our rst in-country ride to our newly
assigned base. e aircra li ed o from the helipad and climbed up and
departed south out of the tra c pattern. It was quite a sight to see Saigon
from altitude. I remember seeing temples and rivers leading out to the South
China Sea, palm trees, and roads lled with people and all manner of
vehicles including motor scooters, bicycles, rickshaws, and trucks, travelling
Highway 1 in and out of Saigon. When we got outside of the Long Binh area
and in the country, the scenery changed from urban to rural and most of the
country was wide-open rice paddies as far as we could see.
e Huey blades popped in their iconic syncopated rhythm and then the
nose lowered, the popping got louder, and we started descending at about
100 knots. Before we knew it, we were down on the deck, at about treetop
level, following the highway and ying from side to side in wide S turns and
steeper banked turns for the next 90 miles of the trip. At one point the door
gunners on either side red their weapons into the open and unoccupied
rice paddies below. When we came to a town, village, or temple we would
rise a few feet higher and take a look at the surprised faces of people looking
up at us from the pastoral scenes below. We crossed canals, bridges, small
towns and farms and varied our altitude from ve feet o the rice paddies to
about 25 feet in the air. e scenery we observed included quite a few
Buddhist temples that colorfully stood out in the small towns against the
greenery of the surrounding rice paddies and nipa palm trees. e
countryside was very at, and each rice paddy was bounded by irrigation
ditches and fed by neighboring canals and punctuated by larger rivers brown
with sediment. To our le we could see the sea o in the distance, and to our
right were the faint outlines of the mountains of South Vietnam. is ride
was for the amusement of the crew and to welcome us to the Mekong Delta
IV Corps area of Vietnam. It was de nitely an exciting way to get to our
assigned base. Later, these low-level welcomes were discontinued when re
was taken and a passenger was shot and killed on one of these runs. ere
was a war going on, and adding joyrides to the welcome trip became a thing
of the past in our company.
Night
It’s night. e thick humid air hangs heavy in the sticky room.
I lie awake sweating.
Looking at the stark stucco walls and the shadow of a lizard darting across the ceiling.
e sounds are strange, oriental mixed with the clamor of modern machinery.
I think of a close call today. Of tomorrow
Of how I wish there was a woman here to soothe away the tensions and share the tenderness of her
touch with me.
An outgoing mortar round goes o and I start
More by instinct than desire, and then settle back knowing sleep will not come easily tonight.
Tomorrow I will wake and begin a new day Anxious to meet its new challenges
But tonight, tonight I ask myself “what in the hell am I doing here?”
Soc Trang, Republic of Vietnam
December 25, 1967
Mom, Dad, & Family, Merry Christmas.
I am with the 121st Assault Helicopter Company at Soc Trang in the heart of the Delta. I had my in
country check ride yesterday and will work for about 4 days on supply missions & milk runs before
being ready to go on combat assaults.
e season is dry, the climate is very hot and humid. Our Company has very good facilities, I have
my own room in a tin roofed cement oor building. e air eld here is relatively secure and well-
guarded.
Vietnamese women do our laundry, shine our shoes, and clean our rooms for about $10 a month.
Poverty among the Vietnamese is almost too all-encompassing for words but our money merely
induces in ation and aggravates the problem.
…Flying in the Delta is relatively safe especially from the standpoint of engine failure as there are
many elds in which to land, and much of the ying is in formation so there is usually someone to
pick you up. e company was short-handed and very much overworked and was very glad to
welcome us. ey are a very close-knit group and as usual we will have to prove ourselves to merit
acceptance. I am very fortunate in my assignment and glad to get o my fanny and into the air again.
Love,
Your Son, Fred
2000 Feet Below
A man died 2000 feet below
He went where he was told not to go At least he was supposed to know
He could have been rowing without a care
Not knowing he wasn’t supposed to be there
But he was And so
2000 feet below
A man died and nobody cried I wonder why?
Soc Trang, Republic of Vietnam
Wednesday, January 3, 1968
Dear Dad,
… we are ying very long hours and I never seem to catch the post o ce when it’s open.
ere is lots of action occurring. ey mortared us again two nights ago but there were no serious
injuries. We are going on daily combat assaults li ing ARVN regulars in reactionary moves against a
recent rise in Vietcong activity in the Delta. I have about 60 hours now of in country ight time and
I am learning the ropes well. I’m actually getting a charge out of this and look forward to each day.
Love,
Your Son, Fred
Soc Trang, Vietnam
Tuesday, January 9, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
I had an interesting mission last night. We ew “ re y.” We have an aircra mounted with 7
searchlights in a cluster and a 50 caliber machine gun. With two gunships as escort we go up and
down the canals & roads at night looking for enemy activity a er curfew hours. We got a few tracers
red at us but no signi cant action. We ew from 8pm at night until 6am in the morning … all night
long. I slept in this morning and as I see the mission board I am up for a combat assault early
tomorrow morning so I must get to bed. I got your rst letter. It was real interesting. Please keep
them coming. Everything is ne and time is passing quickly. I am very interested in this type of
ying and couldn’t get this experience anywhere else.
Love,
Your Son, Fred
During my tour as a Tiger I was able to y a number of missions in a transport helicopter that was
called Viking Surprise. It was a regular slick transport helicopter equipped with a high-intensity
cluster of landing lights in the cargo area, M60 machine guns, and at one point a 50-caliber
machine gun. is was an exciting assignment, and I ew on these missions as a Tiger with two
aircra commanders, Frank Ori ci and Hal Duensing. We would cruise the canals around the
area looking for enemy sampan tra c at night and, if we found them, turn on the light and
engage them. If they red back at us or turned out to be in sampans laden with weapons or
explosives, we would call the gunships on air eld standby for some heavy-duty rockets, grenades,
or machine gun re. is helicopter later became Tiger Surprise. In May of 1970 the aircra was
hit with an enemy B-40 rocket and destroyed.

***
Sometimes our assigned mission involved ying out to Navy ships o the
coast or in the rivers of the Delta. In many cases, this involved landing on a
small helipad where through the chin bubble you saw only water. e crew
chief talked the pilot down onto the pad on approach, keeping the tail rotor
and main rotor clear of antennas, etc. on the ship. Takeo s were exciting as
well, especially if the helicopter had a full load of fuel and people or supplies.
e aircra would be li ed to a hover and then nose over to obtain
translational li and o en settled somewhat towards the water before
transitioning to forward ight. is maneuver evoked a feeling we called
“pucker factor” in the pilots as we held our breath hoping that translational
li would occur before we dumped the whole aircra in the drink. It was
worth it, though, since the Navy always seemed to eat better than we did and
it was a special treat to have a steak or ice cream at a meal on board ship.
I also had the opportunity to support the Mobile Riverine Force and Navy
PBRs (Patrol Boat Riverine) and PCFs (Patrol Cra Fast) Swi Boats (when
their own team of gunships, the Seawolves, was down for maintenance and
the Vikings were called to assist). I was impressed that they would venture
up the little canals in a small PBR with a machine gun mounted on the bow.
It seems like they frequently stirred up a rat’s nest and had little room to
turn around or retreat. e crews of the aluminum hulled Swi Boats were
equally courageous. One of the most impressive weapons used for clearing
out areas along the larger rivers was called Zippo. Like its name implied, it
released a stream of ame that scorched the earth for what looked from
above like a football eld to remove places for snipers to hide along the
riverbanks and among the mangrove jungle trees and to discourage them
from engaging passing Navy boats or the sampans of local farmers on the
way to market.
Soc Trang, Vietnam
Wednesday, January 10, 1968
Dear Nana,
…it’s 9:00pm. I’ve been ying since 5:30am taking ARVN troops in on combat assaults. e night
before last I ew the “light ship” with searchlights mounted on it in a cluster. We patrol the canals
and roads for curfew violators from 8:00pm to 6AM in the morning. When we nd them they are
dealt with by a 50-caliber machine gun mounted in the cargo compartment. We drew a few tracers
shot at us but no real action.
Our eld was only mortared once last week Charlie must be taking a rest. Don’t worry Nana. I
really enjoy this ying and wouldn’t have it anyway else. I’m just glad I’m not stuck at a desk
somewhere. I will keep you posted through mom.
Love,
Your Grandson,
Fred

***
Each unit in Vietnam had its own level of expectations, uniform rules,
operating procedures, and military bearing requirements, etc. Sometimes
these changed quite a bit with the change of commanders. Our unit was very
mission-oriented with commonly held expectations for ight operations, but
there were areas where we were given quite a bit of latitude to express
personal identity and preferences. A couple of them were how we decorated
our living areas and the personal weapons we acquired from others during
our tour. Stereo equipment was becoming very popular for listening to the
music of the 1960s, and one of the rst purchases each new pilot or ight
crewmember tried to make included an ampli er/tuner with a name like
Panasonic; a turntable for records, two large speakers in wooden cases,
maybe called Akai or Sansui; and a Teac tape deck for recording everything
from the latest records to the latest mortar attack sounds.
Our aircra had personalized logos that were usually either on the nose
cone or front side doors of each helicopter and speci c to that tail number.
At the beginning of my tour, we were allowed to paint our ight helmets
with various symbols and graphics. ese artistic expressions ran the gamut
from unit logos to cartoon characters, obscene expressions and gestures, to
Playboy bunnies, from the sublime to the ridiculous, based on aviation
history, the creative ideas of the crew chiefs and pilots of our unit, and the
tolerance level of the commanding o cer. Many of the examples of iconic
ones from the Vietnam War feature designs from my own unit, the 121st
Assault Helicopter Company. is artwork o en brought a smile to the
people we ew supplies in to or sometimes gave a sense of ownership and
pride to the crew maintaining the aircra . It seemed to lighten the load and
brighten everyone’s day a little to be working on an aircra named Harvey
with an old, grizzled pilot’s face on the nose or “What, Me Worry?” and a
picture of Alfred E. Newman out front.
Captain Klutz was a cartoon character created by artist Don Martin in 1967, a parody of all of the
superhero comic strip characters of the time. He was forever falling all over himself making
mistakes. He was featured in some editions of Mad magazine and was popular among young
people in the 1960s. e artists in downtown Soc Trang were very good at replicating these
gures, and we weren’t worried about appropriating them for use on our helicopters. What were
they going to do, send us back to Vietnam for copyright infringement? I’m sure Captain Klutz
brought a smile to many faces when he landed to resupply some outpost in the Delta.

I was a Blue Tiger for the rst ve months of my tour, and so I took my
helmet into a local painter in a shop in Soc Trang and had him paint it
metallic blue with our yellow and black Tiger logo on the back that included
a lightning bolt and a red Maltese cross on each side of the helmet.
ere was one Tiger helicopter named a er the movie e Pink Panther,
and so the aircra commander had his helmet painted pink to match the
aircra logo. On a combat assault he took a round above his head in the
aircra and had second thoughts about how much the pink helmet stood
out as a target compared to the olive drab color of our helicopters.
Coincidentally, the introduction of a ballistic olive drab colored
replacement/upgrade helmet occurred system-wide shortly a er the painted
helmet phase. By that time, Tet of 1968 had happened and we were more
than happy to present a lower pro le to the Viet Cong a er getting shot at so
much. e painted helmet phase sort of ran its course over time, and
ultimately the pilots in our unit wore the new olive drab ballistic helmets
that supposedly o ered us more protection.
During my tour we were rst issued a .45 caliber pistol and a brown
leather shoulder harness to wear it across the chest. I went downtown to Soc
Trang and bought a black Western cowboy-type holster with loops all
around the belt for about 20 .45 caliber bullets. e .45 is a powerful pistol,
and the rounds are he y and I’m told will stop a person. I slept with mine
loaded and under my pillow with my clothes on and my pants down around
my ankles when I was rst in-country and we were getting mortared
somewhat frequently. I guess I’m lucky I didn’t have a bad dream and shoot
myself in the night. Halfway through my tour they collected the .45s and
issued us a .38 Police Special. I thought it felt a little lightweight, but it was
considered an improvement by somebody at a higher pay grade than me.
Some of the nose art on our helicopters was whimsical and cartoon-like. Other artwork bordered
on the obscene. Some evoked the camaraderie of the company. is one was a mixture of comic
art and a reminder that the aircra and the armed soldiers that were on her were capable of
devouring the enemy. ere is a fear that is instilled in the enemy when the word “cannibal” is
mentioned. I’m sure that the creators of this nose art had both messages in mind. Sometimes,
a er particularly di cult missions when there was downtime a er refueling and maintaining the
aircra , self-designated artists would paint threatening messages on the underside of the
helicopter or on the rockets we were sending their way.

Soc Trang, Vietnam

Tuesday, January 23, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
… involved in resupply missions, combat assaults, and various courier runs. ey all make up an
average week. On my down days I am working on a yearbook for the company that has to be ready
by March….
A few days ago a friend of mine and I came across a couple of guitars that the special services
people had in their center. We had a good time running through many old folksongs. ere really
isn’t enough time to start a group here because all of our down days are staggered for scheduling
purposes and depend on aircra availability. [ is man was Warrant O cer Ricky Lee Hull. He died
during Tet a couple of weeks a er this letter was written. e circumstances around the accident
were very confusing. eir slick went down on a supply mission not far from Soc Trang and all four
crewmembers died. It looked like they might have been shot down and a post-crash re ensued.]
I have 150 hrs of ight time in now. I am going into town this morning to nd a bedspread and
maybe some curtains for my room, and just plain poke around a few of the small shops.
e Vietnamese New Year called “Tet” is coming in about 10 days. Lasts 8 days they go wild with
recrackers, weapons and rewater and its best to avoid going to town then, so am going now to
pick up a few things. Everything here in the Delta is ne. e weather is comfortably warm and the
rice elds are burning as the harvest season is ending. I will write again soon and am doing well.
Love,
Your Son, Fred
***
Getting a haircut on our air eld was not your ordinary experience. e
local Vietnamese gentleman had a professional-looking shop and barber
chair in the middle of our compound over by the chapel and the water
supply/swimming pool. When I went in there, I was the only one in the
shop. e barber would greet you with a bow and ask you how you would
like your hair cut. You were given a shave with about a 12-inch-long straight
razor that was sharpened in your presence on a long leather strap.
I o en thought it felt strangely foreboding that he had that straight razor
so close to my neck. It turned out later in my tour that it was determined
that someone had given the local Viet Cong a map of our base during Tet
that included where the o cers and ight crewmembers were billeted. I
heard that it was suspected that this individual had been the source of that
information. Even now, in my golden years, I can feel the cold steel of that
straight razor against my neck when I think of the many times I trustingly
sat in his chair. As he nished cutting your hair and giving you a shave, he
would apply some aromatic a ershave to the nished product. Every
procedure he conducted was done with style and grace as if you were
preparing to go out for an evening on the town. Some of us referred to the
whole experience as getting a haircut from the Barber of Seville.
e haircut ended with him giving you the nishing touches of pulling on
each of your ngers and both of your arms and cracking your neck in a
couple of directions. en he would nish you o by running an electronic
palm hand massager over your shoulders, arms, and head. By then you were
on the verge of falling asleep in his chair and it would be time to get up and
pay the man for his time and e ort. All in all, it was a pleasant, relaxing
experience and a welcome respite from daily life on the air eld.
Soc Trang, Vietnam
Saturday, January 27, 1968
Dear Nana,
We just got through watching “combat” on the movie screen. It’s the most popular lm here.
Everyone goes to see how it really is…. I sleep at night without fear of bombing but they mortar us
anyway. (I remember sleeping in my uniform with my boots on and a 45 pistol under my pillow
ready to run to the bunker by the Tiger’s Den when the siren on the tower went o signaling
incoming). It helps keep the arteries from hardening. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if we are doing a lot
of good. I think that the most important victories are in the attitudes of the people towards wanting
to ght for freedom and that’s a very hard thing to measure. I am enjoying the ying and time is
passing quickly. I don’t need anything.
Write when time allows.
Love,
Your Grandson,
Fred
To Market
Down the canal in a sampan boat To the market place
With a load of rice
To haggle with friends about the price.
Pull, pull, pull to the steady driving beat.
Water slapping on the bow Spraying back on bare brown feet
Wondering who we’re going to meet
And steering around the bend
But from the foliage on the shore A gun’s retort, a bullet’s bore
And the water is running red with fear e nearby boats all disappear
e word spreads rapidly all around Of a new location the VC have found And the fear
remains for a day or so Till another rice farmer decides to go To market with a load of
 rice
To haggle with friends about the price.
Soc Trang, Vietnam
Saturday, January 27,1968
Mom, Dad, & Family,
…I was fortunate to draw a courier mission to a Navy LST (smaller type Navy vessel) anchored
about 20 miles o the coast. I had a good lunch for a change with the o cers on board. You couldn’t
give me their job on that boat for a year. ey look bored to death. ey patrol the waters for gun
smuggling etc. Anyway I will say one thing, they eat a lot better than we do, but that’s no top secret is
it dad? Just the Army way. ey said they wouldn’t take our job for a fortune landing on that rolling
boat…. I guess di erent things appeal to various people.
I ew the light ship one night and we ended up shooting up a couple of snipers who are among a
VC Battalion who camp outside our air eld and keep the pilots on their toes with a little sporadic
re every now and then. e gunships have been shooting up the area pretty regularly so at least he
knows that we are keeping tabs on him. e week went fast, many long hours ying, but it helped to
pass the time.
Love,
Your Son,
Fred
Vietnamese Kids
Whenever we set the chopper down
A million kids gather around
Poking in here and looking in there
And generally getting in our hair.
And they laugh and say “OK, OK.”
And salute us in the American Way
And they horse around as little kids do
ey get out of hand
And we make them skidoo
And they come right back to get in our hair
Like little kids do everywhere
I think they’re cool
 ese children are a little older. ey liked to demonstrate their ability to speak English and
engage you in conversation. Some brought things to sell and others just wanted to tell jokes or say
something funny that would begin a conversation. Others were looking for money or food. We
usually greeted them and had some opening exchange with them but made it very clear they were
to stand back from the helicopter and not touch things. Some of the enemy soldiers we had
encountered weren’t too much older than some of them and of course there were stories of
Americans being too trusting and nding themselves on the receiving end of losing their
valuables or money.
 Ash, Trash, and General Little Minh
I was a new pilot to the unit, ying slicks with the Tigers, when we were
assigned a single ship mission to resupply a Special Forces outpost in the
Seven Mountains area along the Cambodian border. is beautiful area was
characterized by wide stretches of green cropland, rice paddies,
geometrically separated land areas, and steep mountains that jutted up from
the valley oor. e outposts here were manned by Cambodians and
supervised by Green Beret Special Forces personnel. It was stormy and
raining, which added another couple of elements to the mix of the mission.
In the Seven Mountains area, there were concentrations of enemy hiding
in caves on the mountainsides, usually well protected from hostile re
because of the steep and rugged terrain. ey usually retreated into caves in
the side of the mountains. We generally avoided ying near the mountain
areas but stayed low over the valleys on resupply missions. We were
navigating along the valley oor into and out of the outposts. e mission
required shuttling cargo in and out of an outpost and avoiding rain showers
that got quite heavy and disorienting at times. We were pushing the limits
on fuel and were quite far away from a refueling station. As we navigated
around the storm cells on one later run, we got a little disoriented and
disagreed as a team where the location of the outpost had been.
Frank later disclosed that this had been one of his rst missions as an
aircra commander and I was the co-pilot. We had been suspicious of the
fuel gauges on this bird. ey had been giving us some erroneous readings.
As we searched for the outpost, the 20-minute low fuel light came on a
bright yellow. A er some back-and-forth with the tactical maps and banter
about the disorienting weather, we nally located the outpost.
Frank made a pilot-in-command decision to call our base and ask that a
drum of fuel be brought out by a maintenance ship to give us the fuel
necessary to get home. e operations o cer, who we all had some issues
with at times anyway, decided to y the mission of bringing us out the fuel.
He didn’t mince words with Frank about our fuel management and his need
to bring it out to us. e fuel had to be pumped by hand into the tank. We
returned safely to our base but our tale of having the fuel brought out to us
was the subject of lots of ribbing that night in the Tigers’ Den.
Frank was a good aircra commander and a character as well. One time
he had been ying all night long on air eld security, in a specially equipped
transport helicopter we called Viking Surprise. is aircra was a D model
Huey that was equipped with a large spotlight, ares, and machine guns and
was used to patrol the canals around Soc Trang at night. e mission was to
search for Viet Cong moving enemy supplies, ammunition, and sometimes
relocating their mortar tubes under the cover of darkness. When the crew of
Surprise located the enemy, they would engage them with machine gun re,
and if there were multiple targets, they might alert a gunship team to come
and assist them. e pilots who ew Viking Surprise were usually either
Blue Tigers or White Tigers because it was a modi ed D model slick (-
transport-type) helicopter rather than a B model gunship.
As Frank attempted to get some rest the next day a er being up all night,
there were some Vietnamese workers who were mowing the lawn outside
his hooch and they were taking a break and lying down on the sandbags
stacked outside his window. e sandbags were there to protect the hooch
and residents in the event of a mortar attack. ey also provided a
convenient place for workers to take a siesta away from the hot sun.
Frank opened the shutters and told them to “Di Di Mau” or “get out of
here.” e lawn workers seemed unmoved by his order, so to emphasize his
request he emptied a fragmentation grenade, broke o the fuse, pulled the
pin in the disabled grenade, opened the shutters again, and placed the
grenade on the chest of the closest workman and shut the shutters. Needless
to say, this sparked an immediate response from all of the workers, who
dove in all directions. At the same time as this was occurring, our
commanding o cer, Major McNair, was coming out of his hooch in his
Fruit of the Loom. He saw the grenade and hit the deck thinking it was a live
grenade.
A er a few minutes with no explosion the workers and Major McNair
looked around at each other and determined that the grenade was not going
to blow up, and so they returned to their previous activities a little unnerved
by the experience. e workers dispersed and began mowing the lawn again,
and Major McNair returned to his hooch.
When the dust settled, Frank was summoned to the commander’s o ce
where he was interrogated about the what and why of his actions. A er
listening to his report of the unfolding events, the commanding o cer was
not impressed with his actions and threatened him with an Article 15 for
scaring the hell out of the workers and in particular for upsetting the
company commander. Oddly enough, no further discipline was meted out.
Days passed with no further action, and Frank concluded that the incident
had been forgotten and he would neither be dealing with a military
discipline procedure nor face further consequences.
However, when a request came down for pilots from the 1st Cavalry up
North, because they were in need of Loach pilots, Frank was one of the rst
transferred. He nished his tour ying these Light Observation Helicopters
in hunter/killer teams paired up with a couple of Cobra gunships. It was a
very high-risk assignment. e Cav. was known for its austere living
arrangements (tents mostly) and for its aggressive approach to mission
accomplishment.
Soc Trang, Vietnam
ursday, February 8, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
It’s 6 am in the morning. We have been on 24 hr alert since all this disturbance started. We are
ying long days and sleeping in the helicopters at night. We are still getting mortared o and on but
last night was quiet so maybe a new trend is starting. In the last 30 day period I have more hours of
ight time than most pilots so I was given today o to go to bed. I had one day o about a week
ago…. Mail is way behind because of all the ghting etc throughout Vietnam so I am anxious to get
my hand in the mail bag when it comes in. e towns in the Delta will be a while in rebuilding most
of them have sections about one quarter of the town burned to the ground by V.C. and bomb strikes
etc to regain towns from the V.C. We have been resupplying many of the towns. As we go in o en
there are snipers on the roof tops but most of the towns are mopping up now and should be normal
pretty soon. ere has been lots of action. I have been here 1½ months already and the time is
passing very quickly. I don’t need anything. I could go without the last few weeks but we always have
something like that to contend with. It makes life challenging.
So long.
I will write in another week.
Hi to Nana and Uncle Fred. Love,
Your Son, Fred
 ere were two platoons of transport helicopters in our company: the Blue Tigers and the White
Tigers. e third platoon, the Vikings, was our gunship platoon. Each platoon leader worked at
creating an identity and esprit de corps among the pilots and enlisted ight crewmembers of their
platoon. ere was little room for traditional military protocols in the combat environment.
Some crew chiefs and door gunners were given ight instruction by their aircra commanders in
case the pilots up front were incapacitated so that a ight crewmember was capable of ying the
aircra back to the base or at least getting it on the ground in one piece during an emergency or
combat situation.

We picked up a full load of anti-tank rockets at Bien Hoa Air Base near
Saigon and were delivering them to Bac Lieu Air eld, deep in the Delta. It
was a heavy load for a D model Huey, and as we arrived overhead of the
destination air eld and started our approach from altitude, the damn engine
quit. I was the co-pilot and Charlie Hardin was the aircra commander. We
had a door gunner and crew chief on board, as was standard practice with
us. Charlie lowered the collective and began an autorotation heading for the
air eld at Bac Lieu. I called in, just as I had rehearsed, in as low and
controlled a voice as I could muster: “Mayday, Mayday, this is Tiger 673 with
an engine failure over Bac Lieu in Four Corps.”
 e controller on the other end amped up his voice and asked if we had
everything under control. We were approaching touchdown. I don’t know
why, but I responded, “No sweat!”
We were lined up for the runway, but there was a big garbage dump o
the approach end and with the heavy load of explosives we were sinking,
and it looked like we were going to end up in the dump. at would not
have been a good thing because the dump was full of old equipment and
derelict vehicles and the helicopter was full of anti-tank explosives. So
Charlie pulled a little pitch back in the blades to get us over the dump and
we ran out of pitch at the bottom to cushion us on and just sort of fell in
from about the last ve feet. We hit the runway with a pretty good force that
smashed the landing gear up into the undercarriage of the aircra . We all
exited the broken bird posthaste, in no hurry to stay in case of a re. e
next thing I remember I was standing about 100 feet away from the wrecked
chopper looking back at what had previously been our trusted
transportation and now looked like a pitiful o -kilter grasshopper. e skids
got pushed up into the undercarriage, but the anti-tank weapons did not go
o and no post-crash re.
***
I recall that an early mission when I rst started out as an FNG Peter Pilot
was a resupply mission into an outpost deep in the Delta that had a lot of
history of being a lone outpost of regular Vietnamese citizen soldiers led by
a Catholic priest named Father Hoa. e triangular piece of dirt they
defended was part of a “hamlet program” of the South Vietnamese
government, establishing outposts designed in a triangle, rectangle or square
con guration surrounded by a dirt mounded barrier with mine elds and
concertina wire. e outpost was located on a fork in a canal on a river and
was surrounded by dense jungle and known as bad guy territory outside of
the wire. My aircra commander was Chief Warrant O cer Vic Beaver, a
warrant o cer we called Beaver because of his last name and the family TV
show Leave It to Beaver that was popular in our youth. Later, a er his tour in
Vietnam, he wrote a very good novel, Sky Soldiers, re ective of our
experiences in the 121st Assault Helicopter Company at Soc Trang.
We picked up our ash and trash at Ca Mau and headed further south
towards the outpost indicated on the map as Nam Can. From altitude,
everything south of Ca Mau was lush green jungle canopy. It had an
ominous feeling about it, and pilots develop almost a sixth sense about
places where things can go south in a hurry. is was one.
We arrived at our destination 15 kilometers south of Ca Mau. From the
air it looked like a triangle piece of dirt about the area of a football eld. Two
sides of the compound were bounded by canals that widened when two
tributaries joined at the south end of the compound. A berm was piled up
outside the compound and on top of the berm was concertina wire. Between
the berm and the water’s edge was an area that was heavily mined, according
to the Beaver, who had been in here before on resupply missions. When
you’re heavy and coming in or out of these places, you want to know where
the mine elds are and avoid them or it could be your last ight. Landing in a
mine eld is not conducive to longevity.
Vic told the crew to get ready and be on their guns. He’d been in here
before, and the local VC usually sharpened their aim by taking a few shots at
any helicopter on approach. en he turned to me and said, “Mac, we
approach this place from the south side over the river and land on that little
piece of dirt just inside the wire at the top of the triangle.”
He keyed the mic and contacted the outpost and asked them to pop
smoke to give us an idea of how the wind was blowing. ree di erent
colors of smoke were visible shortly in the area. One was near the dirt
landing area and two others, yellow and blue, were in small clearings outside
of the outpost by a few hundred yards. ese were our invitation from
Charlie to land in the wrong place so that they could have us for lunch. Vic
transmitted “Roger the red smoke,” and got a couple of clicks reply on the
radio.
He said, “Here we go!” He dumped the nose over into a corkscrewing
descent down to about 30 feet above the river, about a quarter mile down the
main con uence of the two canals to the south and we low-leveled up the
river, slowing to about 60 knots. en we heard a few pops and the distinct
sound of a couple of them hitting the fuselage like a hammer. He hauled
back on the cyclic and did a big are and dropped into the dirt landing pad.
e dust and debris ew everywhere, obscuring the pad from view for a few
seconds. en the dust settled and some local friendlies approached the
helicopter, smiling under their metal helmets and ak jackets, and
welcomed us into their version of the Alamo out here on the River of No
Return. I looked at Vic, and he was as calm as could be.
As we shut the engine down, I said, “Was this normal?”
He answered, “Yeah, we hardly ever get into here without a little
excitement. Outside of this dirt triangle, the VC own the jungle, but they
don’t mess around too much with Father Hoa because he knows so many
people in this area. If we had had a gun team in the area, we might have
asked them to y cover for us, but this is how we do it when we are on our
own.”
I thought, “Man that was some wild-ass approach that no one ever taught
us in ight school. Now we are a sitting duck if they decide to mortar us
while we are shut down on the ground in this godforsaken place.” I didn’t
look forward to the takeo from here.
Vic said, “Let’s get out and see how good a shots they were.” We found a
couple of bullet holes in the tail boom and fuselage but nothing critical was
hit, just another opportunity for the contractors back at Soc Trang to use
their metal patching skills.
Our takeo consisted of pulling pitch in the unloaded bird, a pedal turn
and charging down the river to 100 knots and then a cyclic climb back to
altitude. e local VC must have either been eating their lunch or giving us a
break because no re was received on our departure. It was a good feeling to
be out of there.
On a later mission during Tet, the Beaver spent a few days with his crew
on the ground in another outpost, Tieu Can, a er a similar resupply
mission. Strategic shots from the enemy that time resulted in multiple leaks
in the fuel tank and an ensuing attack on the outpost. ey were required to
hunker down in the outpost awaiting the arrival of a mission to pull them
out and recover their aircra . ings o en were unpredictable on these
missions resupplying remote and necessary outposts without the protection
of a gunship cover.
***
When I made aircra commander in slicks, I was assigned to be the
designated pilot for a Vietnamese province chief, General Minh. He was
called “Little Minh” to distinguish him from another General Minh, who
was called “Big Minh.” On days when assigned, I would be scheduled in a D
model transport-type helicopter and would pick him up, sometimes with
another Vietnamese o cer or two, and we would y him to one of the cities
or to observe an operation, usually to confront some Viet Cong resistance.
Frequently, we would start early in the morning, and then land in a city
that had been deemed secure enough for lunch, provided by some local
supporter or associate, and then y another mission in the a ernoon around
the province. On this particular day, we landed at a soccer eld in the
middle of My o. We were met by soldiers in ARVN jeeps and driven to a
villa.
e meal started as usual with scented washcloths, served to us with silver
tongs. is was followed by sh and vegetable courses, accompanied by
orange pop, and ended with a type of cookie. e general introduced us to
his hosts as “my number one pilot and his crew.” As the meal came to a
close, General Minh announced that he had “something special” for us.
With this statement he made a gesture with his hand. e French doors of
the dining room opened and in walked 12 uniformed soldiers armed with-
AK-47s, B40 rocket launchers, Chi-com Mausers and other obviously
Chinese Communist weapons. As the soldiers led in and spaced
themselves in military fashion equidistant around the walls of the formal
dining room, with the weapons held at the ready, surrounding us on three
sides, we shi ed in our seats uncomfortably.
Without a word being spoken, I could see the collective concern in the
faces of our crewmembers. Had we just been treated to the Last Supper and
were we now to be the unwilling participants and recipients of a rerun of the
classic movie of Al Capone and the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre? e fear
in the room was palpable.
e general preempted further discomfort by announcing, “I have
arranged for a display of captured weapons for my number one pilot and his
crew.” e crew and I, who shared a mutual discomfort, breathed a collective
sigh of relief.
Each soldier stepped forward upon command from the general and
presented arms, while the general described each captured weapon. He
would take the weapon, clear the bolt, and point it out the doorway. en he
would elaborate on the recent operations in which the weapon was captured.
He was obviously knowledgeable about the enemy’s weapons and how they
had been used against his own ARVN troops and seemed delighted to be
able to demonstrate how to chamber rounds and sight each weapon. We
were captivated by the honor of this demonstration being organized for us.
As the nal weapon was brought forward and demonstrated and the soldiers
were ordered to proceed out of the room, I expressed to the general our deep
appreciation for this thoughtful gesture and demonstration.
e missions I ew with General Minh were interesting and a welcome
respite from the uncertainty of combat assaults. Usually they were what we
would call VIP-type missions consisting of looking over the countryside in
the province and checking on each town’s leaders in his province and his
soldiers in the eld.
ere were a couple of times when he was displeased with the loyalty of a
city, town, or area, and would say over the intercom something like, “ ese
people are not paying their taxes and are loyal to the VC. is is a free- re
zone.” Of course, every ight crew knew that the words “free- re zone”
meant that any person sighted in the area described could be assumed to be
enemy and could be engaged. My crew also knew that they had to have
permission from the aircra commander beyond this to re weapons, to
clear weapons, or to engage the enemy. Unless we were in a combat
operation, or unless we were taking re and they had been given the “cleared
to re” command, they were not to re. I let the passing comments from the
general be just that, and we did not engage the people we saw when he made
these statements. He seemed unfazed by our inaction, so I guess he was just
blowing smoke. Sometimes the area below us was obviously populated by
people going about their daily business of rowing to market or farming. e
unsettling part about this was that the permission he extended to us was
legally the only permission a ight crew needed. I’m glad we had standard
operating procedures and ring discipline built into our unit.
I enjoyed the variety, relationship, and missions that we had with General
Minh. My crew and I had the opportunity to y into the center of a number
of cities in the Delta and to meet interesting political leaders and see where
they worked and lived. It was a welcome counterpoint to combat assaults
and ash-and-trash resupply missions. e ying was challenging in its own
way because in the smaller cities we were avoiding structures and power
lines and antennas as we landed in the heart of each town or city. It resulted
in our being able to see and experience how the war was a ecting those loyal
to the government of South Vietnam in positions of power and leadership.
e cultural norms and courtesies of the upper-echelon citizenry were on
full display during our visits. We were welcomed into impressive villas.
Associates interested in impressing their leader o en rolled out the red
carpet to him and to us as his ight crew. Lunches and dinners were in
elegant dining rooms, and meals were served with china and crystal and
utensils of bronze with black bu alo horn handles. Scented hand towels
preceded each meal.
Soc Trang, Vietnam
Sunday, February 11, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, Family,
ings are settling down a little but we’re still on 24 hour alert. Most of the V.C. activity in our area
has centered in a town to the South of us which might indicate that they are slowly moving back to
the wooded areas in the south of the Delta where they are known to base their headquarters and
supply stores. eir activities in the area, however, has been su cient for us to remain ready 24 hrs a
day…. As usual time is really moving. In 5 more days I’ll have been here 2 months only 10 months to
go. I now have about 325 hrs of ight time. Last night I ew are ship for 10 hrs on air eld security
dropping ares where movement is detected and generally being in the air in case of mortar attack
or attempted ground assault. Tonight I am waiting for the mission board to be posted to nd what
tomorrow holds and which chopper I sleep in tonight…. I want to do something constructive in line
with my talents and just have the time and opportunity to do some small things like go up in the
mountains or y. I think maybe my experience here would be useful and I feel a lot more ready to
try for whatever I decide to do.
Love,
Your Son, Fred
 Tet 1968: A Turning Point in the War
e focus of the Tet O ensive of 1968 was a coordinated attack by the
Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese on every military installation and
civilian town or city in the country. Our air eld was attacked in a similar
fashion, but due to the planning and preparation e orts our senior o cers
required, we were in a little better position to resist the attacks. We weren’t as
strategic a target as the larger elds of Vinh Long and Can o. e air elds
of Can o and Vinh Long were secured within a matter of days of ghting,
and among the disturbing ndings were that the Viet Cong had maps of the
elds and knew just what and who they were a er. is was an indication
that some of the Vietnamese people who worked on these bases from
neighboring towns must have provided the hand-drawn maps and inside
information to the VC.
In the rst week of February 1968, the Tet O ensive was initiated by the
Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese throughout Vietnam, and we were
engaged in defending our own air eld. We heard that communications
indicated that the perimeters had been breached at Vinh Long and Can o,
two larger air elds than ours, and that o cers and enlisted men had been
killed in the attacks. At rst, this sounded surreal to us, but as the rst days
unfolded, we began to realize that these were not just isolated incidents but
part of a new major o ensive in the war.
One of the missions I was a part of involved doing resupply missions into
the city of My o in the rst few days of Tet. ese were memorable
because we were sniped at from shooters on roo ops as we made these
resupply runs and had to take their location into account when returning for
additional resupply missions.
 ese children are gathered around on what seems to be a soccer stadium looking in awe at our
helicopter. When we ew in with a Vietnamese leader to a unit based in a city like My o or Can
o we would o en land in a courtyard, park or athletic eld. e visiting dignitary might be
whisked o by car or jeep to meet with in uential city leaders and we would remain with the
helicopter and interact with the children. We enjoyed the banter back and forth. e children
would ask for candy, money, or cigarettes. We had to be very clear about them keeping their
distance from the helicopter for their own safety and because some of them were tempted to steal
knives, cameras, or C-rations if they were le unattended.

***
Another set of missions involved making combat assaults like we
normally did in the outlying rice paddies or province cities of the Delta, but
what was di erent this time was we were making them at night into our own
air elds to take them back from the intruders. ese particular missions
seemed unreal because they were night missions, we were loaded with
combat troops, and the skies were lit up by ares and tracers being shot at us
by the enemy and from inside of the air elds by the enemy intruders.
In early January of 1968, I enrolled in an undergraduate correspondence
course from the University of Washington back home titled Modern British
Poetry. I read the assignments during downtime from ying missions and
extra duty assignments and had received good marks on a couple of
submissions. e Tet O ensive hit at the end of January 1968. During Tet, as
the ghting amped up and there was a coordinated e ort throughout the
country to overthrow the South Vietnamese government and to turn the
tide of the war in favor of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese, our lives
changed. We had been ying long days and sleeping under the helicopters at
night. ey were distributed inside and around the edge of the perimeter of
the air eld to change their location from standard and to be ready to
respond to either evacuate them from the air eld or involve them in
missions of moving ARNV and/or Ninth Infantry American troops where
needed. We were literally staying at the ready in these positions for a few
days, and as we got up one morning to greet the new day, the aircra
commander Mike McNamara, an avid photographer, was taking pictures of
the Air Force ghters putting in bomb runs just outside of our perimeter. I
heard a swishing sound and then a couple more and asked Mike if he was
rewinding his camera. He said, “Nope,” and then we both hit the deck as we
realized the sound was bullets whizzing overhead. ey came from a sniper
outside the perimeter who had us in his sights, despite his poor aim.
I completed my next assignment for my class, which I kept with me to
work on when we had downtime between missions. I wanted to mail it in
but knew the stamps were in my room and the post o ce was across the
runway. As the shooting subsided, I ran across the runway to return to our
hooch, got the stamp and put it on the letter, and turned it in to the post
o ce before returning to our ship. All of this was done while we were under
re. Upon my return and a little re ection, I realized that this was absolutely
crazy. I decided I better put this course on hold while we are involved in this
level of activity. In this context, a course in Modern British Poetry is not
worth risking my life in order to turn in assignments.
e Tet O ensive started for our air eld on January 31, 1968, in the wee
hours of the morning. At about 3:00 a.m., we heard several loud explosions.
is resulted in “scrambling” our gun team, the Vikings, for what seemed
like a typical response to a mortar attack. ings remained quiet a er the
gun team launched, and the all-clear was ultimately sounded. Everyone le
the bunkers where they had gone for cover and went back to their hooches.
About an hour later, incoming mortars began to fall on the air eld. ese
were responded to with another gunships scramble. en a third attack
occurred. is led people to the conclusion that something di erent was
happening.
e distinct sounds of gun re were heard o in the distance towards the
city of Soc Trang, and soldiers on guard duty around our perimeter began
reporting small arms re and bullets whistling overhead. Reports began
coming in of skirmishes between ARVNs in the city of Soc Trang being
confronted by attacking Viet Cong units. e Vikings were now on high
alert and were engaged in providing gun cover and helping push back the
o ensive, as well as in responding to mortaring of our own air eld.
We were on the ground at this time awaiting our next assignments. All
personnel not engaged in ight missions were assigned perimeter positions
or some other combat-related role. ere was an ominous feeling in the air
that the war was taking on a new and more immediately threatening
dimension. e next night, and for many therea er, mortars were red onto
the air eld. At one point I remember hearing that the YO-3A glider had
detected images of troops advancing towards the air eld perimeter in larger
numbers. is was the time we all started wondering if we were going to get
overrun and be involved in combat and hand-to-hand ghting against the
VC.
Our Artillery Detachment was positioned in defense of the air eld, and
they had a unique experience of Viet Cong soldiers breaking into a facility
that was their base just outside of our perimeter to the north. Some of the
artillerymen actually confronted them face to face. But to the artillerymen’s
amazement, the enemy soldiers seemed very young and confused about the
surprise encounter and withdrew, and the nine men of the detachment
quickly retreated back temporarily to safety inside Soc Trang Air eld.
On February 9, 1968, a little more than a week into the Tet O ensive, our
gunships were engaged in resisting mortar attacks at Soc Trang and retaking
in ltration situations at Vinh Long and Can o. e slicks were involved
with resupplying outposts and strategic locations. White Tiger 782 went
down by a place we called Five Canals for the juncture of those north and
west of our air eld. e aircra was not heard from as expected. An aircra
sent to check on where they had last been reported to be operating observed
the crash site. It appeared that there were no survivors. On that aircra were
crewmembers we knew very well in various capacities and as friends.
e aircra commander was Captain Franklin S. Bradley, who was
credited with seeing that our perimeter defenses at Soc Trang were such that
they withstood the unexpected Tet O ensive attacks better than other
air elds. e pilot was Warrant O cer Ricky Lee Hull. He was a personal
friend of mine, and I had been teaching him some guitar chords for singing
in the Tigers’ Den. e crew chief was SP5 Paul R. Anzelone, and the door
gunner was SP4 Michael Lynch. Apparently, the aircra had been shot
down, and there was evidence of a re.
Back at Soc Trang on another occasion during the rst few days of Tet,
the word circulated that a Viking ship had been hit with gun re and the AC
Larry MacDonald had been wounded. We went out to the ight line to
watch for the incoming gunships. I remember seeing the medical personnel
out on the ight line, and as the gunship landed the crew reclined the-
armor-plated seat back and pulled Mac out through the cargo door area.
Personnel from our clinic were there to meet the incoming gunship and
took him into the eld hospital area. It was one of the times that he was
awarded a Purple Heart for his wounds. He was one stoic cookie and a cool
customer under re.
We believed we were in the best aviation unit in the U.S. Army in Vietnam. Our company area
entrance and our stationery proclaimed us “ e World Famous Soc Trang Tigers.” ere was an
unstated expectation that we did not turn down missions. We had a reputation to uphold, and
many units told us they counted on us to get the job done. Before our time in 1967–1968 the
company had an actual captured tiger mascot in a cage in the company area.

Soc Trang, Vietnam

Wednesday, February 21, 1968
Dear Nana and Family,
… ings are still pretty hot. We got mortared the last two nights in a row. I was ying the are
ship last night and as the rst rounds hit we scrambled, dropped ares over the tubes, and the
gunships blew the hell out of them with rockets. But the VC are pretty well forti ed in earthen
bunkers and it would take almost a direct hit with a 250 pounder to nish them o . We just keep
pounding them and they go underground & come out again the next night to lob a few more in at
us. We’re still on full alert sleeping in the ships at night and have been since about 28 Jan when all
this started (Tet O ensive). Our losses have not been very substantial but it sounds like Charlie is
getting wailed on.
Anyway despite the long hours I’m feeling very well and getting a lot of ight time in so all is
well…. I like what I am doing and the experience is invaluable. I take care and always have my PF
yers on when they yell “incoming.”
Love, Cousin, Fred
 Combat Assault Reality erapy
Flying in general has been characterized by some aviation writers as
hours of boredom punctuated with seconds of stark terror. I would say,
based on my experiences, that military helicopter ying during combat
assaults in Vietnam in the IV Corps area of the Mekong Delta was
characterized by hours of excitement and uncertainty punctuated regularly
by minutes of stark terror, adrenaline rush, and sometimes undesired
resultant experiences. Combat assaults were the meat and potatoes of what
we did many days in our role as slick drivers. A combat assault for our
company usually consisted of from three to nine transport helicopters ying
in formation, escorted by a light (two helicopters) or heavy (three
helicopters) team of gunships. e whole operation was coordinated and
overseen by a command and control helicopter overhead at 1,000 feet. ere
were frequently other aircra involved in preparing the landing zone. One
was a forward air controller from our air eld with the call sign “Shotgun.”
ey ew a light plane with rockets to mark targets or suspected targets
either for ghter aircra , artillery, or gunships. e FAC was a high-risk role
in a relatively unarmed small airplane to guide the bombing or artillery in
advance of the combat assault. ese preparation bombings or artillery
barrages were optional and used when there was reason to believe that the
landing zone would be “hot” with active resistance and ground re.
e transport helicopters we ew in 1967 and 1968 were initially D model
Hueys that were replaced in the middle of my tour with more powerful H
model Hueys. ey looked essentially the same but had a larger engine. ey
were one of the most resilient aircra in the Army’s inventory, and at the
same time they were vulnerable to ground re and limited in the protection
they provide their pilots and crew. e capacity of the slick was either six to
eight American combat-ready infantry soldiers or 10 to 12 Army of the
Republic of Vietnam combat-ready soldiers. e di erence being in the size
of each.
 ***
When you are an aircra commander in a slick ying in formation on a
combat assault you are focused. Formation ying is an all-consuming
activity. e basic formations we used were straight trail, staggered trail,
echelon right, echelon le , and Vs of three, As the pilot on the controls you
are concentrating your whole being on your sight picture, which is a spot on
the aircra next to you and in front of you that is your reference point while
your hands and feet make subtle adjustments to the pedals, cyclic, and
collective to stay in the slot you are in. Changing formation to another
requires clear understanding on the part of each aircra commander of his
current position and what he will do when given a predetermined signal to
move into the next position. Your rotor blades are almost overlapping your
reference aircra and you are aware of not letting the aircra move in too
close or out too far. You are not looking anywhere but at that aircra you are
ying o of. You know that your other pilot is checking the gauges and ready
to take the controls if you get hit. Your ears are tuned in to hear the
commands on the radio, from Tiger Lead, the pilot and crewmembers in
your ship, and the aircra commanders in the other ships in formation.
“Tiger Lead is RP 5 inbound with smoke.”
“Roger lead, Viking 23, stumps and water in the LZ, light re received from North tree line, call
re, suggest minimal down time, south east departure, avoid over ying the tree line at your 12, will
be right with you all the way in and out.”
“Tigers, tighten up, call re, pick your spot, call when up.”
“Tiger 5 receiving re, 3 o’clock.”
“Tiger 3 taking hits 090 north tree line.”
“Tiger lead, pacs o , pulling pitch, Le 200.”
“Two is up.”
“ ree is up, light re 045 from hooch.”
“Four is up, guy in black by hooch with a weapon.”
“Five is taking automatic weapons re, heading 045, small hooch 50 yards.”
“Viking 24 is rolling in on the hooch, rockets and minis. Hang in there, 5 we are with you.”
“Six is up, taking hits, gauges are holding.”
“Seven is taking re.”
“Eight is up.”
“Nine is up, lead your ight is up. Nine is taking small arms re from the hooches.”
“Twenty-three, Tiger Lead, thanks for the cover, stay with us.”
“Lead, 23, will do—24 how’s it look on your side?”
“Twenty-four is dumping on the hooches and the north tree line and staying tight on the Tigers, all
are currently up.”
“Lead, 23, your ight looks good, we will follow you out and cover the ground troops.”
e crew chief and door gunner are calling re received and the re they
are initiating for your information. ey don’t have time at that point to ask
for permission to re. You have given them instructions on approach, and
they make the decisions at this point and you live with them.
Miscarriage
ey laid her roughly in the helicopter
e sergeant in the back was joking over the intercom that she could always walk to
the hospital. Her twisted form under the blanket convulsed and an expression of fear
and pain shot across her countenance, but she remained silent. She just had a
miscarriage and was hemorrhaging badly.
“ ese slopes are all alike,” he said. “Just like animals. You have to treat them like that.
Ha Ha. Well just the other day ….”
e miles crept by slowly, the blades popping steadily overhead.
Shut your mouth cried out within me
as my lips formed the word “why”?
Soc Trang, Vietnam
Saturday, March 16, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
…my name is on the list to get in the Vikings—gunship platoon of the 121st, so I think now it is
just a matter of time. eir requirements are fairly rigid for you have to have quicker reactions ying
low-level and they take a few more chances, but that type of ying really appeals to me. So I am
hoping to have a check ride in a few weeks for it. I will keep you informed about what turns up. e
food isn’t really too bad.
Today I’m Air eld O cer of the Day. at means I am up all-night and responsible for checking all
the bunkers on the perimeter to ensure communications and everything under control, also general
security of the Air eld. It’s a job that is rotated and you have it about every two months. Everything
here is running as usual and not much out of the ordinary.
So long for now. Love
Your Son, Fred
Soc Trang, Vietnam
Friday, March 29, 1968
Dear Mom Dad & Family,
Well today I ought to thank my lucky stars a little anyway. We had an engine failure at 3000'
yesterday. We got it on the ground OK but wrapped it up pretty well. Everyone escaped without
injury and we were over a secure area when it happened so it all goes chalked up to more war stories.
Other than that no more news. Same old everyday missions…. ings are calming down here. e
weather is getting more humid with the approach of the wet season.
Love
Your Son, Fred
e Hooch Maid
How quietly she cleans the room
De ly wielding the bamboo broom
Gently she dusts the writing table
Small she is and yet how able
 And willing to do the small things right
To clean diligently the overhead light
And only a fool could fail to see
e beauty in her simplicity.

e women who did our laundry, cleaned our rooms, changed our sheets, and polished our boots
were from the nearby city of Soc Trang. Every day they would walk through the entry gate past the
military police that guarded our entrance and would come to our area and collect our clothes and
take them to be hand-washed. ese women worked for very little pay and always approached
their work with smiles on their faces and peaceful demeanors. ey reminded us about the
dignity of work and doing even the humblest of tasks in a thorough and diligent manner.

Soc Trang, Vietnam

Sunday, April 7, 1968
Mom, Dad, and Family,
…we ew today in a ship with inoperative fuel gauges and sporadic boost fuel pumps. To make a
long story short due to a communication issue with the aircra commander, a monsoon storm, and
a poor aircra we almost ran out of fuel right on the Cambodian border, in the middle of a torrential
rain and we weren’t sure of our exact location. Anyway tonight I’m back at Soc Trang safe and sound.
About the bombing cutback, we haven’t felt any repercussions here in the Delta and I doubt if it
will have much e ect on the over-all situation here. I talked to the platoon leader of the gunships
again and they will have a few openings next month, so I will keep you posted. I broke 500 hours in
country last week so I am well on the way towards a goodly number for my tour.
 Everything is going ne. Love,
Your son, Fred

ere was a peaceful comradery among the many women who did the housecleaning and laundry
work on our base. ey worked as a team and coordinated the tasks they accomplished. We were
aware of their attention to detail and the way our clothing and artifacts were respected and kept in
order. ere was an overriding sense of trust and responsibility that characterized their work for
us.

***
One day, when walking by a hangar on the other side of the tower, I
noticed the door slide open to reveal what looked like a large glider painted
in camou age with a three-bladed propeller and a mu er pipe that ran
from the engine in the nose all the way back along the fuselage. “Whoaaa.
is is some kind of top secret aircra !” was my thought process. Below the
aircra was slung a basketball-like xture attached to the undercarriage. It
had a bubble canopy over the cockpit and turned out to be a limited-edition
glider called a YO-3A that was used to monitor troop movements. It was
equipped with an electronic device that detected human urine from the air
with an infrared detection device and was used to identify where enemy
troops were concentrated.
Initially it was hangared at Soc Trang, kept under wraps during the day,
and only taken out at night to y. e pilot and an observer were tasked with
ying the aircra quietly over enemy territory, observing activity, and
reporting it. When the Tet O ensive of 1968 occurred, during the initial
days of the attacks on bases throughout the country, there was a report from
one of these aircra that had detected a signi cant number of people
advancing towards our air eld. at was a little bit unsettling as we
envisioned being overrun by Viet Cong.
ere was some probing and in ltration of our base but not to the extent
that occurred at other Delta air elds where perimeters were breached,
positions were taken, and personnel were killed.
We were up on night patrol one particularly dark moonless night, ying
mortar patrol with a light gun team, when a black form passed underneath
us by about 500 feet, lights o , unannounced. We called the tower and were
then informed that it was an aircra on an approved mission. It turned out
to be the YO-3A.
Soc Trang, Vietnam
Tuesday, April 30, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
… We have been busy lately. I am an aircra commander now responsible for the helicopter, crew,
and for teaching a new pilot from my experience ying here in the Delta. I also am really involved
trying to keep this newspaper organized and out on time. It seems like everyone enjoys reading
about what’s happening in the company but no one has any time to contribute articles for it. e wet
season is here. When it rains it really comes down. e mud gets a foot deep in a matter of minutes.
But the showers usually pass as quickly and unexpectedly as they come, so they are usually fairly
easy to circumnavigate. And when the sun comes out again it’s usually very sticky and humid.
Temperatures lately have been reaching the high 90s in the a ernoon. inking of you o en,
Love, Your Son, Fred
Made in the Image and Likeness
Hey God!
Are you there?
In that man with the long black hair?
With the dirty hands and face?
Does he really live in that lthy place?
Does he know you?
Not like I do.
Does he have to?
I don’t think so.
Soc Trang, Vietnam
 May 14, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
… You asked about our command structure. Flying here depends on experience more than rank.
Regardless of rank, you y pilot with an experienced aircra commander who shows you the ins and
outs of the Delta, the weather, navigation, and particularly the enemy situation. ere are places you
resupply where you know you will receive re and there are certain ways to approach to provide the
least exposure. e aircra commander is responsible in all situations for the aircra , mission, pilot,
and crew. It is his prerogative and decision to accept a certain mission or not depending on whether
he thinks the cause merits excessive exposure to the safety of the crew and aircra . e Tigers have a
reputation here in the Delta for getting the job done. So almost always we’ll give it a shot. If the re
gets too intense, the a/c makes the go/no go decision. Most of our ships look like marvels of sheet
metal patching anyway, so we try to keep hits at a minimum. Besides bullets aren’t conducive to
longevity. I’m an aircra commander in transports and have been for three weeks. Now that I have
the experience with loads and a fairly good knowledge of the IV Corps area I am trying to get into
gunships. I should have some word in the next couple of weeks. Well 5 months down and only 7 to
go. Have over 600 combat hours. I’ve been scared many times. I still really enjoy the ying and I am
learning more every day. I hope you are all well as I am in ne health.
ere is still much more to see.
Love,
Your son, Fred
Why Him and Not Me?
A man
With a long pole
Scrounges around in the hole
We throw our refuse in
Looking for a scrap of meat
Or some worn out shoes for his blistered feet
Or just a damn piece of garbage to eat.
Why him and not me?
God, what should my life be?
Soc Trang, Vietnam
May 16, 1968
Dear Nan & Harnishes & Uncle Fred,
…between a lot of ying and writing the company newspaper I’m really pressed for time. anks
Nan for the most recent letter and news of the relatives around Tacoma. Now we are in the wet
season and the monsoon rains are really something else. Charlie still manages to put a few holes in
our ying machines but no major action lately and it keeps the sheet metal people busy. I’m in ne
health. 5 months down and 7 months to go. anks again for the letters and hello to all in Tacoma.
Love,
Your Grandson,
Fred
 Stayin’ Alive in Soc Trang
e Tigers’ Den was our air eld’s o cers’ club. It was a structure right out
of an Orient Express movie set. e walls were bamboo and wood. e
ceiling was thatched. ere were overhead fans that lazily turned around
and blew the humid air over the customers. Large red hand pump re
extinguishers were in four of the corners. e oor was tile. e bar was in
an L shape and would seat about 15 people. ere were also tables and chairs
throughout and some booths as well. It was shared by o cers from three
primary units: the 121st Assault Helicopter Company (the Soc Trang Tigers
Slicks and the Vikings Gun Platoon), the 33rd Maintenance Detachment
(the Wrecker and other retrieval aircra ), and the 85th Medical Detachment
(Dusto 85 and 87). We also had a doctor, a dentist, air tra c control tower
operators, military police o cers, engineers, artillery, military police, and
command and control personnel on our air eld.
e Tigers’ Den was the refuge and gathering place for the warrant
o cers, lieutenants, captains, and majors who did the ying. Occasionally
the commanding o cer came through. When he did, those inside came to
attention and were usually instructed to be at ease if it was just a social call.
Once in a great while, if there was a problem of epic proportions, the
presence of the commander might signal that enough damage and
destruction had been in icted for one evening, but this rarely happened.
Our days were sometimes very long, and that sometimes involved 14
hours of ying, shooting, being shot at, and other various forms of
entertainment and excitement. Sometimes emergency lights came on during
short nal into a hot LZ, bullets came through the fuselage, people screamed
on the radio “I’m taking hits” or “we’re losing altitude” or the dreaded “going
down in the LZ,” followed by absolute quiet when the engine quit running.
Even just a day of standby at a remote staging eld and the ultimate
cancellation of a mission for weather or lack of contact could be exhausting.
We o en sang in the Tigers’ Den a er a long day of di cult missions. e
singing followed a ritual pattern of progressively escalating behavior that
culminated with the songs and even some unique post singing activity if the
day was particularly con icted. One example was the slip-and-slide contest.
Someone would buy up cans of the least desired beer and pour them into
the hand pump re extinguishers. en the oor and some of the patrons
were hosed down with rigorous pumping, the furniture was moved, and a
few brave souls forti ed with Vitamin B or a B52 (shot glass of bourbon
dropped into a glass of beer) would take a running start and slide across the
beer slicked oor into the bar amidst raucous countdown, cheers, and
laughter.
e songs were rude, crude, and fall-down-on-your-face funny, at least to
us in the context of being at war. We all knew the verses, and the points of
emphasis were always made with a rousing chorus. ey were lled with
obscene language and sexually charged phrases, alliteration, and assonance,
and they were, in our collective opinion, a great way to bring to closure the
craziness of a day spent in-country.
So when we came into the place, it was somewhat like the media images
of some early Western movies and the shootouts at the local saloon.
Sometimes a er just a few drinks, tuned up gun drivers would say
something like, “It’s time to throw the slick drivers out of here!” e Tigers
would play along to humor them and then re-enter to the cheers of other
Tigers in the bar. It was all usually done in a good-natured atmosphere. e
former sergeants who ran the bar and the local Vietnamese girls who waited
on us were always in ne form and enjoyed the stories and the characters
who told them.
I remember one particular night when we were in the Tigers’ Den. Into
our inner sanctum walked three gundrivers from the neighboring gun team
called the underbirds. We disrespectfully referred to them as the
“Blunderbirds,” but I’m sure they had their own derogative terms for us as
well. ese pilots were already pretty well tuned up and announced that they
had just walked by the Viking ight line on their way into the club: “By the
way, we just pissed on your aircra .”
We didn’t know if this was true or not, but it was enough provocation for
a couple of Vikings to leave the bar and return with some palm branches
they had cut down o banana trees on the “Blunderbirds” ight line. ey
proceeded to run the branches through the overhead fans, and they were
thrown all over the Tigers’ Den to the cheers of all Tigers and Vikings
present.
We ew a number of joint missions with the underbirds gun teams and
their Warrior slicks from the 336th AVN Company from Soc Trang and
always worked well together in combat. is friendly rivalry created an
atmosphere of competition that was, for the most part, a healthy factor in
the combat environment.
 Sisters, Orphans, POWs, and a Hospital
I was asked to report to the commander’s o ce one day, and he asked me
if I would be the assistant civic actions o cer for the company. He explained
to me that the 121st had a relationship with three social service-type
programs in the city of Soc Trang, that he had asked the operations o cer to
take the lead in this responsibility area but that he needed an assistant in
these duties, and that he had decided I would be the best person for this job.
e three programs were in three di erent locations o base in town and
involved a Catholic orphanage, a hospital, and a Chieu Hoi Center for
retraining Vietnamese young men who had been involved with the Viet
Cong and were now being reoriented towards the government of South
Vietnam. It sounded like interesting work. My role was to coordinate with
our support services and to see what sorts of humanitarian aid we could
solicit from surplus food or supplies on our base and from friends and
relatives back home to help these organizations. I was to accompany the
operations o cer in a jeep to town and to check in on these programs and
then a couple of times a month see what we could do for them. e
relationship with the orphanage and hospital had been started a few years
earlier by one of the doctors at Soc Trang.
e orphanage population seemed like around 50 to 100 children from
infants to school-aged children, and there were about ve or six sisters on
the sta . eir orphanage was in an old French villa and the sisters were a
French order including older sisters from France and younger sisters who
had joined the order from the local area. ey wore white traditional nuns’
habits and were very kind and dedicated. When I rst visited the infant
section, I was surprised to see how many young infants were being taken
care of, and the conditions were pretty primitive. I think there were about 15
in a ward. Each had a bassinet they were in and many appeared sick, some
with deformities. e babies appeared to be well taken care of, but there
were ies around in the ward, and it seemed like a continuous activity to
keep them from the babies. Sister Martha was introduced to me as the
mother superior of the sisters. She explained to me that in Vietnam at the
time, if your baby was born with deformities, they were o en abandoned or
le for care with the sisters. She told me that generally the Viet Cong le
their orphanage alone because it was the only hope for these children, and
they seemed to respect the work being done by the sisters in the community.
Back at the base the operations o cer went around with me to our kitchen,
medical clinic, PX, supply, motor pool, etc., and introduced me and
explained our mission. en he pretty well le me to coordinate with them
and check in with them regularly to see if they had supplies that could
bene t one of these organizations. We would then make runs into town with
a jeep or truck and deliver the supplies.
We brought some of the sisters and some of the orphans out on a few
occasions to the air eld in one of our trucks and had a barbecue for them.
We entertained them on the grassy area in front of our hooch where we
sometimes played games like volleyball. I played guitar and we sang simple
children’s songs and played games like so ball and football with them. It was
inspiring to see the interaction between the ight crewmembers and the
contractors who said they were reminded of their own families back home. I
began including information about these programs in my letters home, and
my former seminarian friends and my mother and her friends gathered
together money, medical supplies, and clothing that was sent to me for
distribution to them. Our various support services and medical clinic
provided surplus medicines, etc. from time to time. It was very rewarding
work. Once following a barbecue and the delivery of medicine and clothing,
Sister Martha gave me a goat that I brought back to the ight line. I didn’t
feel right saying “no thank you,” and it was a very generous gesture from
them, but we had to realize we were not equipped to have a goat running
round the ight line and so we returned it on a subsequent trip.
e hospital was lled with Vietnamese men who had been wounded or
were sick from their combat experiences. ey were soldiers with the Army
of the Republic of Vietnam. I would go from bed to bed with a doctor or
nurse, distribute small gi s of toiletries, etc., and shake their hands. ey
were very grateful for the simplest of gi s or supplies. I could see in their
eyes the fear of the experiences they had been through and could see the
various injuries they had experienced. Here again the hospital was clean and
the nurses and doctors there were dedicated, but the conditions were
primitive and anything we could provide was deeply appreciated.
e Chieu Hoi Center was like a primitive school setting where a number
of young men were in classes for part of the day and were basically in a
holding center the other parts of the day. Here we delivered supplies and
clothing that were appreciated and were invited to look in at classroom
settings where they were being instructed. is Chieu Hoi Center was
certainly a more humane way to treat captured prisoners of war from the
local community. I always came back from these visits feeling very grateful
for my own life in America and motivated to do what I could to gather
meager supplies and clothing for future visits. I doubt if anyone outside of
the military would have known that when pilots and ight crewmembers
were not piloting combat helicopters, they were engaged in this type of
humanitarian work, but this is a reality and important work that goes on
virtually anywhere a military operation is undertaken by the United States.
One of my duties as assistant and later acting civic actions o cer was to organize picnics for the
sisters and orphans from the Soc Trang orphanage. We would hold these picnics on a grassy area
between the Vikings’ hooches and operations. We had 50-gallon oil drums that were cut in half
and supported with legs welded on in the maintenance shop for our barbecues. e sisters and
children were brought out to the air eld in deuce-and-a-half trucks by our motor pool drivers.
We cooked hamburgers, steaks, and hot dogs and had baked beans, chips, ice cream, soda pop,
beer and a cake made and served by our cooks for these occasions. e civilian contractors joined
us. e orphans wore little seersucker suits and dresses. We all enjoyed carrying them around,
singing songs with them, playing games, and giving presents. It was a real connection with family
and home for many. We played baseball and volleyball and the sisters were delighted to share in
the games and festivities.

is is a picture of our company jeep parked outside of the orphanage in downtown Soc Trang.
e orphanage was sta ed by a mother superior from France and French and Vietnamese sisters.
One of my “extra duties as assigned” was to be assistant civic actions o cer and to provide
supplies and assistance to this orphanage, a hospital, and a Chieu Hoi (POW retraining facility)
in the town of Soc Trang. We brought some of the orphans and sisters out to the air eld for
barbecues and picnics from time to time. We also asked our relatives and friends back home to
send us clothing and medical supplies for the orphans. We were touched by the primitive
conditions and the way these women took in the abandoned and orphaned children and took care
of them. We were inspired by the positive attitude of the children and their warmth and laughter
in spite of the on-going war.
A war involves everyone in the country in some form or another. is picture of one of our
picnic/barbecues reminds me of the kindness and patience of the sisters in being there for these
forgotten children. One of the small boys has le his crutches aside and is enjoying lunch with his
friends. e children were very respectful and happy to be in a safe place enjoying the kinds of
food and treats that children appreciate everywhere. Even these orphaned children were on their
best behavior and demonstrated the manners and respect that the sisters exempli ed in their
prayer life and in exercising their nursing and teaching duties. Some of the soldiers are in their
military uniforms signaling the ever-readiness of an assault helicopter company. Many of us who
were not on duty at the time of these gatherings chose to wear civilian clothes. We were reminded
in these settings of the many blessings in our lives while at the same time being aware of the high
price being paid by so many in ghting this war.
 is picnic picture shows the orphans surrounded by some of the care packages that had arrived
from family and friends in America. Men in uniform are holding up children and being reminded
of their own families back home. ere is a soccer ball by one girl’s feet. So many times, we would
see children in hamlets and villages playing soccer on dirt elds, in alleyways, and in open elds.
e Viet Cong attacked many of the houses and businesses in Soc Trang during the Tet O ensive
of 1968, but they seemed to respect this orphanage and the work of the sisters.
 Helicopter Gunships
I was getting to know the Delta and the ins and outs of ying the D model
Huey in the combat environment, and we were starting to get a few of the
more powerful H models to replace them in the company. We had
experienced the Tet O ensive of 1968. We had seen the loss of the
momentum and the gradual tapering o of intermittent mortar attacks and
the successful rebuilding of the air elds and cities. Combat assaults had
become a regular part of my schedule as well as ying General Minh around
the province. It was the ve-month marker in my 12-month tour. Mortar
attacks were a regular occurrence, and we were seeing the rotation home of
the pilots that trained us. We were welcoming new pilots and crewmembers
into the unit and training them in the standard operating procedures of the
unit.
One night, I had turned in a little early a er a long day of combat assault
missions and a couple of drinks in the Tigers’ Den. e screen door of my
room swung open, and in the faint light of the hallway I noticed six men had
come in my sparsely furnished home room and were dressed in jungle
fatigues, black T-shirts, and black berets.
“You better get up, McCarthy” was the introduction I recognized in my
friend Jim’s voice from the back of the group.
Another Viking started out, “We have come to tell you that we have
decided that you will no longer be a Tiger but have been selected to be a
Viking.” e Vikings was the name of our gunship platoon. Our transport
helicopters or slicks were divided into two platoons, the Blue Tigers and the
White Tigers. It was a common practice in assault helicopter companies for
a pilot new to Vietnam to y slicks rst, and then some were selected to be
gunship pilots. Flying a gunship was considered an honor, and most pilots
selected were honored by the selection. A pilot who joined the Vikings could
choose at any time to return to ying slicks.
I think I said something like, “Gee, that’s great,” and shook everybody’s
hand while I was thinking a whole lot of disconnected stu at the same time.
ings like, “Holy crap … these guys get shot at every day … they scramble
when there is a mortar attack … and others head for the bunkers…. I have a
fairly sweet deal ying a Vietnamese general around…. I have had being a
gunship pilot as my goal from the early days of ight school…. is is my
dream come true! … I can do this…. I think! ….”
One pilot stepped forward with a black beret. Another handed me two
black T-shirts with the instructions, “ is is what we wear … and by the
way, you don’t y anything but gunships from now on.” ough this whole
process appeared to be a spontaneous activity, it was actually the
culmination of a multi-step process. It had to be discussed in the platoon
and cleared with the commanding o cer of the 121st Assault Helicopter
Company, and the platoon leader of the Blue Tigers as well as the Viking
platoon leader would have had input prior to selection and this action being
taken. Also the Vikings would have a pretty good idea that the pilot selected
would say “yes” prior to this kind of a visit.
A er the brief presentation they le —except for Jim. He was smiling and
I asked, “Why did they pick me?”
His response was, “I need a wingman I can trust.”
I followed with, “What do I say if they assign me to y slicks?”
Jim said, “ ey won’t. ey already know about this. If someone asks you
to y ash-and-trash, tell them to go to hell. You are a Viking!”
Beautiful women have inspired aviators since the dawn of aviation. Many call their aircra “her.”
“Hanoi Hannah” was a North Vietnamese radio personality along the lines of World War II
propaganda deliverers, all of them called Tokyo Rose. On the airways Hannah taunted the
Vikings, threatened them, and called them “those Blue Diamond Devils of the Delta.” We had
little question from her threats of what would happen to us if they captured us a er raining down
so much repower on the enemy.

e sound of incoming rounds is very distinct … you never forget it. First
you hear a muted thud when they leave the tubes. en the siren warns you
that the ashes have been seen in the tower. A few seconds later, all hell
breaks loose and the mortars start impacting all around.
I ran down the hallway in the Viking quarters as fast as I could and hit my
knee on the screen door, tripped and fell at on my face; but I got right up
and kept going. I pushed open the swinging screen door and a mortar
exploded in front of me out beyond the ight line. I hesitated a second,
thought about turning around, and then ran again towards the gunship
revetments.
e blade was untied from the tailskid by the crew chief, who held the
right cockpit door open. I jumped in the right seat, turned on the overhead
master, and pulled the starter trigger while the chief pulled out the seat
armor along my right side. en started what felt like the longest minute of
my life … while the turbine spooled up from dead silence to 6600 rpm. e
VC were walking the mortars right down the ight line and into some of the
buildings. By now, the other base personnel were in the bunkers with their
heads down waiting for those of us in “the guns” to get airborne and get
them to knock this shit o . e cockpit instruments were dull red and the
dials were gradually coming to life. e distinctive smell of JP 4 igniting was
lling the cockpit. e haze of mortars and gunpowder was hanging in the
air.
I was careful about how quickly I rolled on the throttle so I didn’t over
speed the turbine or exceed the red line on the exhaust gas temperature
gauge. While rolling on the throttle, the momentum from turning rotors
causes the ship to rock from side to side. e accuracy of their mortars was
mixed. eir aim was all over the place, sometimes erratic as hell with shells
impacting within a block, or somewhere on the other company ight line or
a building away, then one right behind us. e co-pilot began strapping in.
We’re coming up. e skids start sliding on the tarmac and we angle towards
the runway. e skids scrape the asphalt ever so slightly with the weight of a
fully loaded B model prior to translational li . Sparks are ying from the
skids dragging the runway, then the blades grab the air and pull the whole
shaking metal conglomeration of bad-ass repower into forward ight.
“Two-three is airborne, going hot. Directions tower?” My eyes and head
are moving … looking for ashing tubes….
“Mac 10:30 low trees along the canal just to the west of the perimeter.
Rolling in … hose ’em with the minis” … four rockets away.
“Coming right,” I announced on the intercom as I put the helicopter in a
right turn. “Call out any more ashes!”
“None. No more, chief. We’ll keep climbing and looking. Tower 23, ight
of two Vikings circling west of the eld on station. We’ll stay airborne to see
if these mothers have gone to bed for the night.”
It is a clear beautiful night. e stars are out and so is the moon. We see
clearly the dark foliage of the area we call the “Tiger’s tail” of greenery that
trails away to the south of the air eld along a creek into the darkness. e air
is smooth and clear. It’s deathly calm except for the whine of the engine and
the whop whop syncopation of the blades. Our nav lights are o so we can’t
see 24 either. “24, this is 23. Anything happening north of Soc Trang?”
 is is the view from behind the aircra commander in the right seat and the pilot in the le seat
looking out through the windscreen from the cockpit of a B model Huey Viking gunship. e
inside of the cockpit feels like it is an extension of your body. A er a few months in-country and a
few hundred ight hours of missions you can tell the location of various switches, radios,
controls, and circuit breakers just by feel. e helicopter feels like an extension of you and
movements are seamless and intuitive. e sight in front of the aircra commander is for the
rockets. e sight in front of the pilot is for the mini guns. e radio communications are low-
key, brief, and matter-of-fact. e operational area passes by in front of you at treetop level at 100
mph, and you are controlling the ight path with coordinated intuitive moves of all extremities…
and then the enemy starts shooting at you!

Soc Trang, Vietnam

May 19, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
Well last night I was accepted into the armed platoon. at means no more ying transports. From
now on until the end of my tour, I will y B model gunships. I start ying night missions tonight
with the Vikings. With the rains has come a marked increase in humidity and the days are getting
pretty hot and sticky. I passed the 5-month mark 2 days ago, 7 months to go. I hope everything is
going as well for all at home as it is for me here. I just don’t have much other news, just that I got into
guns and am looking forward to a whole new type of ying.
So Long for now. Love
Your Son, Fred
 Sunset
It’s evening….
e so veil of an oriental night
Lingers in the frail silence
Of a warm day’s failing light.
Just a moment, en a whisper
And He puts the candle out.
Soc Trang, Vietnam
May 23, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
… I’m now in the gun platoon. I y le seat and have a gun sight which controls 4 M-60 machine
guns on exible pylon mounts. e man ying right seat res the rockets and does all the ying
when we go down to tree top level. en I just re the machine guns and am there if he should get
hit. ere is much more to learn, a whole new type of ying and the aircra commander has much
responsibility for coordinating with transports on combat assaults and with the ground troops when
they get in hot water and need some close re support. It seemed like I knew the game as an aircra
commander in slicks but now I’m on the ground oor again as one of the new pilots in guns…. Now
I will train to become an aircra commander of a wing ship in a 2 ship re team and eventually
maybe a re team leader if it turns out that I can catch on fast enough and have enough time le in
country at that point. ere are a few more tight situations to deal with and this o ers a much
greater challenge I think than slicks did. Will write again soon.
Love,
Your Son, Fred
 is is a view of the armament controlled by the pilots of a B model Huey gunship during 1968 in
Vietnam. e seven rockets in the tubes on each pylon were used in the Korean War. ey were
originally designed in the late 1940s. ey each had unfolding ns for accuracy that extended
when they were red and were powered by a rocket motor. ey were activated by a button on the
side of the aircra commander’s cyclic stick, and he had a pull-down sight in front of him for
sighting them on the target. e mini gun was a big advance over the regular M60 and could re
up to the rate of 4,000 rounds per minute or about 66 rounds per second. It makes an awesome
sound when red and literally obliterates a target. is gun was red by the pilot with a trigger on
the cyclic control.

Ode to Lieutenant Bill

(Parody of the Poem “Cremation of Sam McGee” by Robert Service)
My co-pilot and I
Had been whooping it up
In the “Tigers’ Den” Saloon
For quite a while
When we heard the incoming siren’s tune
Whomp whomp was a familiar sound
As each of them exited their tubes
And before we knew it
e silence was shattered
And the mortars started falling to the ground
e men got up and they ran in fear out of their seats at the bar
And into the bunkers nearby leaving the Den door ajar
 We knew we both were three sheets to the wind
And we knew that we had to scramble
And get a gunship up and rolling in
ere wasn’t any time to amble.
Cause if we didn’t the shells would rain down harder on us all
And we could kiss our asses goodbye because
e destruction they brought would not be small
Seems like the only language Charlie understood
Was 2.75 rockets returning that night in the Soc Trang hood.
We charged out through the fusillade drunk as skunks could be
And red up that tired old Model B and started to take o westerly
When scarcely out of the revetments
Bill squeezed the trigger on the mini gun
I tactfully leaned over and whacked him one
Saying we’re not out of the revetment yet son.
e next day captain C said come here Mr Mac
Like there was something that only he knew
Turn around here by ops and see
the Mars antenna way up there
Do you have any idea
how it got so full of holes and air
No Sir, I don’t, was my honest reply
Perhaps last night’s mortar men hit it up high
ey’re getting more accurate every day
I said with a shrug and a sigh.
It looked to us both like a big round piece of metal Swiss cheese
With holes about the size of 7.62 if you please
Captain C said as we parted
I hope to hell it wasn’t you
It wasn’t, in all honesty I did reply but I couldn’t help thinking it might have been Bill when he
pulled that trigger on the y
Strange things were done
In old Soc Trang, son
In those years that are gone by some of them made you laugh
And some of them made you cry
But the strangest night I do recall with a whimper and a sigh
Was that night lled with fate in 1968 when Bill and I scrambled
And lit up the Soc Trang sky.
Soc Trang, Vietnam
June 13, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
Last night we worked air eld security at Can o 40 mi from here. We killed 3 vipers (snakes) on
the line during the night—our crews had been sleeping on the ground between ights but that sort
of ended the camp out. Altogether 7 were killed on the line; they are dredging for a new runway and
that made them move up toward the present one.
When we rst went airborne the sky was lit up from tracers re from about 20 di erent positions
 ring automatic weapons. It looked like a gun pilot’s nightmare but proved to be Vietnamese
outposts celebrating some holiday. A pretty quiet night—no mortars or obvious activity to speak of.
We put in about 3 strikes where outposts recorded movement but received no re in return. e
time is beginning to drag a little but 4 more days and I’ll hit the 6 month mark. Now have 750
combat hours about 1,000 total ight time counting ight training etc. ough it pours with the
monsoon showers every a ernoon, when the sun comes out the temp runs a fairly consistent 91
degrees. All in all everything is going ne. Gunships are a very di erent experience and to me a real
challenge. anks again for the recent letters. Best to all.
Love,
Your Son, Fred
Soc Trang, Vietnam ursday
13 June 68
Dear Mom & Dad,
I sent another letter today but I forgot to ask—please send one of my ight suits—I need one. We
o en have to “scramble” in case of mortar attack or downed aircra in the middle of the night or
when we are on free time & there is not enough time to put on a fatigue uniform. anks a lot please
mail it soon.
Love, Your Son, Fred
 is is a picture of our Viking ight line at sunrise. Our gunships were right outside of our
hooches so that we could scramble and be airborne in less than two minutes in the event of a
mortar attack or priority mission. e parking spaces were called revetments and were built of 50-
gallon drums lled with sand to protect the aircra from ying shrapnel from the regular mortar
attacks that occurred during our tour. We kept the Viking gunships “combat cocked.” is meant
that a er refueling and regular maintenance, which o en extended far into the night, a pilot
would have gone through pages of a detailed pre ight checklist down to the last two steps prior to
starting the aircra . When the siren went o indicating a mortar attack, all air eld personnel
headed for a bunker but the Viking pilots and ight crewmembers, who would run out to the
aircra , switch on the ignition, pull the starter trigger and be up in the air a minute later to roll in
with rockets on the tubes where the ashes were coming from. ese attacks were among the most
exciting and adrenaline-rushing combat experiences for a gunship crew. Sometimes they were
pretty accurate and always they included trying to walk them down our ight line or into our
quarters.

Soc Trang, Vietnam Tuesday

June 25, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, & Family,
…having a little trouble getting o this morning due to radio problems so I have a few minutes to
get a note o . e situation here is carrying on about the same. We are working all over the Delta but
lately a lot around Vinh Long and Can o…. We are mostly supporting ground operations and
helping outposts that are under attack etc.
I wrote to a priest and some seminarians a few months ago when we were concerned with helping
the many refugees from the January “Tet” o ensive. From them I received almost $60, that was put
to good use in an orphanage downtown run by Vietnamese Sisters of Providence. ere are very
many homeless children there and the sisters do a real good job despite the overcrowded conditions.
Of late everything is going well and I am in good health. I’m getting a little scru er and more
sunburned with the passing days. If it wasn’t for an occasional scare or two I really enjoy the outdoor
life and ying and am well adjusted to the climate. So thanks again for the letters and I am doing real
ne.
Love,
Your Son and Brother
Fred

***
ere are about a hundred switches and breakers on the instrument panel
in a Huey, like a more complicated version of the dashboard of a car, and
there are breakers and switches in an overhead panel as well. ere are other
switches and buttons in the cockpit and on the controls, and some are more
consequential than others, as I would learn the hard way.
Flying a helicopter involves the use of all of one’s extremities. Two
fundamental controls a ect the ight of a helicopter. ere is a cyclic control
that looks like a broomstick coming up from the oor between your legs,
and it is moved so that the helicopter will move forward or backward and
right and le . is control links to a swash plate that tilts the rotor system to
bring this movement of the helicopter about.
Another control is called the collective, and it comes out of the oor on
the le side of the pilot’s and co-pilot’s seats on an angle and, when moved,
either puts pitch into the rotor blades or takes pitch out of the rotor blades.
e resultant action is that the helicopter goes up when the collective is
pulled up and down when the collective is moved in a downward motion at
a hover or during a takeo or landing.
e cyclic has a pistol grip type handle on it that includes a number of
switches. Among the functions controlled through this handle are the radio,
the trim, a cargo release, and the rockets when toggled on the instrument
panel to re.
I was ying wingman o another aircra in what we call a light re team,
and the lead aircra called receiving re and that he was breaking right. I
pressed what I thought was setting the stabilization system for a climb and
shot a rocket right at the lead aircra . For the rst second my heart sank. I
watched in horror thinking that the rocket might go right up the turbine
tailpipe of the lead aircra with catastrophic results including loss of the
crew. e rocket dropped below the lead aircra and exploded in the muddy
rice paddy underneath him when it impacted the ground. Before I could
disclose the mistake, the lead came on the radio and transmitted, “21
receiving heavier re, might be a B-40 rocket.”
I then keyed the mic and confessed something to the e ect of, “21 this is
22, that was my rocket. I’ll tell you about that later. It came from our ship.”
Later I remember buying a number of beers at the bar for that one.
Soc Trang, Vietnam
July 6, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, & Family,
We are pretty busy lately what with our normal ying program and doing some writing for news
releases and doing work on the company newspaper. I have not started counting the days yet and
still haven’t decided yet for sure on R & R. Everything here is as well as could be expected and am
still learning more and more each day in the way of gun tactics. I appreciate your frequent letters
and hope that all are in good health. I will write again soon. Perhaps then I will have something to
say. I’m pretty tied up tonight and not much comes to mind. You are all o en in my thoughts.
Love,
Your Son, Fred
 is is what a Lycoming T53-L-11 turbine engine looks like with the inspection panels removed. It
had 1,100 sha horsepower. Empty weight was 4,500 pounds and gross weight was 8,500 pounds.
e fuel tank held 206 gallons, and it burned about 68 gallons per hour. It had an endurance of
about three hours or a range of about 300 miles. ese panels were neither armored nor
bulletproof, so the engine became a prime target of the enemy. e engine burned JP-4 jet fuel,
and sometimes we “hot fueled” them and rearmed them with rockets and ammunition with the
engine running so we could turn them around on missions and be back on station when troops
were in contact and in need of assistance. Our engines were operating in a hostile environment
right at or over gross weight and o en near exhaust gas temperature red line when fully armed on
many missions. With the humid hot weather of Vietnam, we o en had to scrape the skids o the
runway with sparks ying to get them into forward ight and into translational li . ey were
generally very reliable engines, and we pushed them to their limits.

We had regular opportunities to practice emergency procedures while

ying combat missions in Vietnam. Crew chiefs started a tradition when
they had ridden through a tail rotor failure in a Huey that they later
expanded to encompass surviving engine failures and autorotations as well.
e tail rotor chain drive on a Huey was particularly vulnerable to failure
because its gearbox was lled with oil. I believe this was corrected in later
models of the Huey by having it encased in grease, but in the B and D
models we ew, if you took a round in the tail rotor gearbox and the oil
drained out, the drive chain could break, and you were in for an exciting
ride. A helicopter without a tail rotor can y forward ight but requires a
very skilled pilot and artful control touch initiating a running landing to
even hope of salvaging the situation. If it occurs at a hover, the aircra
fuselage will start rotating and accelerating in the opposite direction than
the rotor is turning and requires immediate action, called a hovering
autorotation. We practiced both of these in our ight training. When a crew
survived a tail rotor failure or an engine failure, the crew chief salvaged a tail
rotor chain from the junk pile and made it into a bracelet.
Soc Trang, Vietnam
July 18, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
e berets and black T shirts are part of our uniform in the gun platoon though I prefer wearing
the surfer shirt & cut o s on my down days. In the cockpit I’m holding the ex site with which I re
the 4 machine guns. Each ship has 2 rocket pods of 7 each & exible mounted machine guns. Inside
we have grenades for marking and a few hand weapons in case we’re brought down. e Vikings is
our name and we’re known throughout the IV Corps Delta area. ings got a little hot a few weeks
ago when we had two ships shot down but now they are cooling o , we hope. I have six months
down, six months to go—750 hours of combat ight time. I am really looking forward to R and R
and of course Christmas and getting home. Trying to do my best, miss you all very much.
Love,
Your Son, Fred
 Kick the Tire, Light the Fire, and Go
e mission board in ight operations looked very di erent and a little
ominous on this day. e destination for a Viking light re team and a Tiger
Agent Orange spray ship was a place called Duong Dong airstrip on Phu
Quoc island o the west coast of Vietnam up near the Cambodian border.
e point of departure from the Vietnam coast would be near a cement
plant north of the town of Rach Gia and south of the seaport town of Ha
Tien. I had had previous missions to these areas at the far reaches of the west
end of the country that involved resupplying the Special Forces camps on
the western coast and along the Cambodian border in the Seven Mountains
area.
Ha Tien was a vibrant seaport town with people shing an inner harbor
area. It included a downtown of shops and storefronts, and was famous for
jewelry and decorations made out of tortoise shells and restaurants with
seafood specialties. e Special Forces unit was located in an old, quirky,-
multi-leveled villa up on a promontory overlooking the harbor and the
town. I admired the courage of the few advisors who lived and worked there
because they seemed to have a closer and more thorough knowledge and
relationship with their Vietnamese counterparts. is probably was because
of the nature of their being reliant on the locals for their own security and
livelihood. If I had another life to live, I would have liked to have also been a
Green Beret. e training for this elite group of Army advisors involved a
special background in the history and language of the indigenous people as
well as being special weapons, survival, and paratrooper quali ed.
Rach Gia was right on the edge of a huge former Michelin tire rubber
plantation and northern parts of the triple canopy U–Minh forest. One got a
foreboding feeling ying into its remote dirt airstrip, a place where you
sensed a predominantly Viet Cong presence that could manifest itself at the
drop of a hat. Usually, there was no action right at the airport, but
occasionally you got plinked at on approach in a lightly armed slick
transport. Rarely did they re at a gunship for fear of releasing the repower
within. Occasionally, on ash-and-trash missions there, I would enjoy
watching the Air America (CIA) pilots landing in a turbine powered
Dornier or Helio Courier. ey wore khakis or civilian tropical clothes and
looked like they stepped out of a Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn
movie like e African Queen. I wondered what secret missions they were
on as they seamlessly slipped in and out of the dirt airstrip.
e cement plant in between these two places along the coast seemed out
of place and time. It produced much of the cement used in the urban areas
and temples of Vietnam and had a modern feel and look in an otherwise
agrarian and shing village type of area. is whole section of Vietnam
seemed out of character and a strange mix of the old and the new.
Phuc Quoc island had a bay to the west that was deep enough that it was
used for anchoring and for refueling large Navy ships. An unseen but
important piece of infrastructure was a beacon system for vectoring B-52s
from ailand via the Bay of Kompong Som into Vietnam. Here they
engaged in carpet-bombing missions with iconic names like “Rolling
under.” Phuc Quoc also had a well-kept secret that we would be shown.
ere were “tiger cages,” prison cells dug into the sand and dirt and topped
with bamboo prison bars that held both North Vietnamese and Viet Cong
prisoners of war. How they got out to this remote site I never found out, but
there were quite a few of them, and we would be asked to add something to
the fear factor and threat of dire consequences for attempting to escape for
the enemy prisoners.
To reach Phuc Quoc we ew from Soc Trang to the cement plant as a
formation ight and then took a westerly heading for the island.
ere was a point in the ight when we could see neither the island nor
the mainland behind us. A er some time, feeling just a little uncomfortable
with this experience in “no man’s land over water,” our destination came into
view. e runway at Dong Duong was on the northern tip of the island and
ran from east to west from one shore to the other. We descended and came
in over the water to land on the island’s airstrip. ere were a few thatched-
roof houses adjacent to the runway. A couple of jeeps met us and took us to
a small base a short distance away, where on a white sand beach there was a
club-type structure for the Navy personnel assigned there. On the beach
they had a ski boat, sur oards, and in atable ra s. It was like arriving on
the TV set of Fantasy Island. What kind of a war are these guys ghting?
Compared to old Soc Trang’s revetments, sandbagged hooches, and even
the Tigers’ Den, it felt like we had landed in paradise. e rst night, we had
great food and lots of beer and went swimming in the sea. One crewmember
fell asleep in a rubber ra and dri ed out about 100 yards, and we all yelled
to wake him up and then laughed as we watched him paddling aggressively
back towards the shore.
We slept in some austere quarters there, and the next day we started our
assigned mission, which was to spray Agent Orange on a road from the
Tiger UH-1D spray ship “Beer, Bullets and Blood,” while our light re team
of two gunships ew behind and below to provide gun cover. e road ran
generally through the island lengthwise, and the whole landscape felt like a
scene from a M*A*S*H television episode, where a few isolated “machine
gun charlies” were more of a nuisance than a threat. We sprayed the entire
road over about three or four days of ying defoliation missions while
enjoying the beach and the island scenery at the end of each day. We had
little contact with the enemy except for a handful of incidents. I believe our
goal was to make the road safer for the sailors assigned there to drive from
one end of the island to the other by stripping away the ground cover. As the
mission was winding down, one of the o cers with some sort of
responsibility for the POW camp asked if we would y the gunships over the
top of the “tiger cages” and re the mini guns over the top of them to
remind the prisoners not to try to escape. We obliged the request, and I still
remember looking down into those cages dug into the island sand with their
bamboo bars and the prisoners in them.
As the mission was completed, the crew chief let me know that he was
concerned about play in the trunnion bearing on the overhead rotor system
of our B model gunship. I wondered whether the play had become so
excessive that we might have to stay there longer since this was more like a
trip to Vung Tau for in-country R&R than a combat assault mission. But in
the end I realized that we trusted our lives to that bearing and that he knew
the acceptable tolerances and had consulted the other crew chiefs as well.
Regardless, the rotor system was compromised and the aircra needed to be
sling loaded o the island, and my crew and I rode in the back of the
Innkeepers Chinook while the other gunship and spray ship made the trip
back to Soc Trang. While we were en route, the pilot of the Chinook said
over the intercom, “You guys are pretty brave coming out here in those-
single-engine Hueys. ese are some of the most shark-infested waters in all
of Vietnam.” at comment got our attention.
Soc Trang, Vietnam
July 22, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
… All in all I received about $60 from the Seminary … went a long way in purchasing supplies,
clothing, and medical aid for the children in the orphanage in downtown Soc Trang. e checks
presented a small problem as there are no facilities on post that will cash personal two-party checks.
In town they just deal in piasters and have no concept of bank or check accounts, so you see it would
be impossible to do something like sign a check over to them. So I worked things out with a captain
here who had a checking account. I signed the checks over to him and he purchased the items with
me. I’m going to check with the orphanage and see what they need, then I’ll tell you what the deal is,
and maybe we can work out a joint e ort to help them out a little. We so appreciate everyone’s
interest. So just wait a short while and I’ll check it out. e sisters are very dedicated and do a real
ne job in the face of many obstacles.
I now write up all of the proposed Awards and Decorations for our platoon as well as the company
newspaper and the normal ying schedule. It all keeps me pretty busy … 90 degrees out and the sun
is very hot. It will rain around 2 o’clock like always…. We have had the chance to help a lot of ground
troops out of some tight jams lately We have also been blowing up our share of VC huts and bunkers
and getting them in the open once and a while for some con rmed kills.
Love, Your Son Fred
 is is a typical picture of a Vietnamese hooch in a rural area. is would probably be the home
of a Vietnamese farmer and his family. Or it could be a place for hiding mortars and Vietcong
weapons and ammunition. e problem is you don’t know exactly what this is. If you found this
hooch in the middle of a landing zone where the week previous a lot of enemy contact had been
part of landing here, then you would probably rst y down a tree line and over the area in a
gunship and see of you could draw re. If you did draw re, you would probably return re and
see if it escalated. If it did escalate from single shots to automatic and semi-automatic weapons,
then you would return re, and if it was coming from these hooches, you would probably roll in
with a few rockets and increase your altitude o the top of the trees because a rocket might touch
o a secondary explosion if in fact there were arms and ammunition stored in the hooch. So there
ends up being few situations where you can just assume that what you see is what you are going to
get.

e front-end view of this B model Huey gunship may not have any
signi cance to the casual viewer, but deeper inspection reveals a story that
has personal meaning for me. e windshield on the le has a white border
indicating it was recently replaced and, in all likelihood, shot out on a recent
mission. I cannot claim any personal war story for that one. But the chin
bubbles, the lower pieces of plexiglass, both also have white borders around
them, and I am responsible for at least one of those being replaced.
We were ying a mission somewhere north of Binh uy Air Base, where
the Ninth Infantry Division was operating a er a concentrated B-52 carpet-
bombing mission with a light gun team of two gunships. e area was
completely obliterated from the intense bombing and unrecognizable in
terms of relating to our position on the tactical map. I was the aircra
commander in the lead gunship. We were low-leveling and wondering
where the hell we were without ground references from the bombing. e
place sort of looked like a moonscape.
While monitoring the artillery frequency, we heard announced, “Artillery
going into RP4.” We then con rmed that our location was too near RP4 on
the map as an explosion occurred about 50 meters in front of us. I turned
sharply at treetop level to get away, and the top of a lone surviving tree
popped up right in front of our ight path and whacked out the chin bubble,
leaving the remnants of the top of the tree sticking half in and half out, an
embarrassing but at least not fatal occurrence. Once again, we had dodged a
bullet. Maintenance seemed quite interested in hearing the backstory of this
mission, and I think we speculated that there might have been a mine placed
high in a tree on our pass. At any rate, the chin bubble probably needed
replacing anyway as all of our ships were tacked together and old, but I’m
sure it went on to y many more missions.
Soc Trang, Vietnam
July 29, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
I just got back from an unusual assignment. With a two-ship re team we escorted two ships out to
Duong Dong Island o the western coast near the border of South Vietnam and Cambodia. We
couldn’t believe our eyes when we landed. e Air Force and Navy have small bases there (they
always seem to catch the good places). ere were white sand beaches, blue lagoons, and a surf with
about ve foot waves. e VC were isolated in the middle mountainous tree-lined areas so the rest of
the island was relatively secure. We escorted and covered the slick as they sprayed defoliation spray
on an overgrown road, which ran the length of the Island. Not much trouble … a little re in the
mountain passes etc. but nothing that we couldn’t handle. And were able to spend a few hours
between runs soaking up the sun on this tropical beach paradise. It was a real exhilarating
experience a er seven months of nothing but at rice paddies and mud. Well now we’re back and we
wouldn’t believe that there actually was such an island if it weren’t for the sunburn and sand in all of
our clothes. It was a real welcome break.
I am working with a captain to get some help for a Vietnamese hospital downtown. We got the
orphanage pretty well squared away with the generous donations from the Seminarians and church
groups many o cers knew. We are raising cain with the VC. I’m in great health, and glad to hear
from you so frequently.
Love,
Your Son, Fred
 is was the control tower for our air eld. In many respects this control tower was the best seat in
the house for observing the surrounding area and rice paddies. When mortars were red at our
air eld, as they were frequently during 1968, they were usually heard rst as distinctive whoomps
but rst seen in the control tower as muzzle ashes. e tower would then turn on a siren, and
everyone on the air eld except for the gunship pilots would head for the sandbagged bunkers that
were distributed around the air eld. e gunships would scramble, roll in on the ashes and
tubes and expend their ordnance, the mortaring would stop, and the all-clear signal would be
given by the tower and everyone would come out and survey the damage and then begin reporting
in through the chain of command where the damage occurred. ere were times when hooches
were hit and people were injured. e post o ce was hit once and some of the mail destroyed.
ere was damage done to helicopters and support vehicles. ere were occasionally lives lost
during these attacks. ey were a very scary enemy attack on our air eld.

***
Our gunships were usually “combat cocked.” at meant that we had gone
through what was normally a fairly lengthy checklist of pre ight items down
to the last two steps and le the helicopter at the ready for immediate
starting under combat conditions. When we were on standby we never knew
when the horn would sound for a mission. In addition to responding to
mortar attacks on our own air eld, we were scrambled when we had an
aircra down, when troops were in contact and in danger of being
outgunned, or when an infantry soldier was injured, and their unit needed
an immediate medevac. We also got called to unsecured areas when a
Dusto helicopter needed gun cover or for any one of a number of requests
that came in to our operations o ce regularly for immediate support due to
an unfolding combat situation. Every crewmember knew what needed to be
done in a scramble, and they inevitably responded to the horn by running
out to the ight line and readying the aircra for immediate takeo .
Crewmembers need to put on ak jackets and helmets themselves, pull the
bulletproof panels forward on the sides of the pilots, close the pilot doors
and secure them, and strap themselves into their position for takeo as the
engine spooled up to operating RPM. en the intercom came alive with a
staccato set of internal and external questions and responses—“21, 22 is
ready”—and then internal questions and responses—“crew ready, ready up,
coming up, clear le , on the go.”
And then the call to the tower from lead: “Soc Trang Tower, Flight of Two
Vikings, on the go, departing revetments to north on runway 36 and a west
departure from the crosswind.” e crew chief and door gunner picked up
their M 60s, laid them across their laps, and settled into their positions at the
ready for returning re sitting on the web seats in the back.
Soc Trang, Vietnam
August 10, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
… A er the last 7-1/2 months I feel like I am 42 not almost 22. e people here are very bad o .
Of course you couldn’t tell it by the way they laugh and have such sincere yet simple dispositions.
For not even having a potato sack to wear I think they have a few secrets to real happiness, that we
in all of our riches are o en too blind to see. I don’t agree with the idea that what they don’t know
they won’t miss for everyone is entitled to at least clothes and medical supplies. When I have so
much…. I feel a little guilty. I guess it will seem remote and far out of reach when I get home but
seeing these people every day the need is very intense.
I was ying wingman today o another ship in the lead. On the main control cyclic stick there are a
number of buttons grouped close together among them a stabilization system and the ring button
for the rockets. On the deck we y with the stabilization system set so that if one pilot gets hit the
aircra will climb up instead of dive into the ground. Well we just let down and you guessed it I went
to set the stabilization system and punched o a rocket, and it blew up right under the lead aircra . I
lost a few years of life in a second because I thought for sure that I’d shot down the lead gunship.
Well we carried on and had a pretty good day, zapped about 5 VC we caught in the open in black
uniforms, and the ground troops we covered got a lot of con rmed kills also.
Love, Your son, Fred
 is is a picture of the open-air market area in downtown Soc Trang. ere are owers, fruits and
vegetables, sh and meats, and live animals, and it is the center of commerce for a Vietnamese city
like Soc Trang. ere are shops selling all sorts of American-related items on the black market.
e usual currency was piasters, but most shops would also deal in military pay. ere were
artisan shops that did ne art and paintings and all types of services, restaurants, and motor
vehicle and scooter repair shops, etc. e military currency that was used throughout Vietnam
was changed randomly to inhibit the black market, causing distress among the merchants who
dealt in this area and found the currency overnight to be worthless.
 e Magic Carpet Ride
October 18, 1968, is a date I will remember for the rest of my life. We
were assigned a mission to the U-Minh Forest with a light gun team in an
attempt to locate an o cer who had been a prisoner of war and at the time
had been held in captivity for about four years.
We le Soc Trang at about 3:00 in the morning as a ight of two heavily
armed gunships and were en route to Camau in the southern part of the IV
Corps area of Vietnam. ese missions always evoked a heightened level of
anticipation because the areas outside of Camau were notorious bad guy
territory consisting of multiple canals, defunct rubber plantations, triple
canopy jungle, and lots of opportunity for Viet Cong to exist in the relative
protection of their natural surroundings.
We climbed to 1,500 feet, an altitude that was high for a gun team that
usually ies its combat missions at treetop level. At that altitude, the
temperature was a bit cooler. Our light re team was ying along smoothly
in the night air. It was a very dark night and raining, and the upcoming
mission was on everybody’s mind. e radio was tuned to Paddy Control,
but there was little tra c in the early morning hours of an otherwise quiet
day. e old B model was humming along, and the gauges were in the green.
About a half hour into the ight, we were about 30 miles out of Soc Trang
at about 95 knots when the RPM gauge started jumping up and down
slightly. As I scanned the instrument panel, I noticed the exhaust gas
temperature gauge was going o the top end, telling me that the engine was
probably ingesting itself. Other gauges were ickering, and the RPM started
dropping. We had been trained over and over about the importance of
taking decisive action when the engine fails. You don’t really have time to
debate alternative actions in a single-engine helicopter with an engine
failure. e helicopter is designed so that, in the event of an engine failure,
you lower the collective control. is disconnects the engine from the rotor
blades like a clutch on a motorcycle, and the blades keep spinning with the
weight of the descending helicopter and the resultant air coming up through
them.
I entered an autorotation and then went through the process of checking
o emergency procedures that included shutting o the fuel ow to the
engine. Now we were committed to landing somewhere down in the dark
area beneath our ight path. Looking down at the black hole beneath us
didn’t seem like a very promising prospect, but we had no other options at
that point. I made a call to Paddy Control that I had rehearsed in my mind
for such a time: “Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is Viking 23 with an engine
failure approximately 30 klicks out of Soc Trang en route to Camau in the
Delta.”
e controller on the other end amped up the pitch in his voice and said
there was a Dusto medevac helicopter in the area that would be en route. It
felt like he was pulling for us.
I responded, “Roger that!”
I proceeded with the shutdown and securing of systems in the aircra and
found the cockpit so black that I turned the master back on to include the
instrument lights so I could see the airspeed and mentally noted the altitude
going through 1,000. I thought I would need the landing light to see where
we were touching down. Our wingman was following us down. At 300 feet, I
turned on the landing light, and to my surprise there was a muddy eld
right in front of us. I ared the aircra at about 50 and then pulled the nal
pitch back into the blades at about ve. We sank into the muddy rice paddy.
e aircra started to pitch forward, but the mud was thick enough that it
held us from rolling over forward and it settled back down into the muck.
Whew! We had made it.
I yelled for the crew to pull the guns o the ship and set up a perimeter
while we waited for Dusto . We could see from some tracers that our
wingman was taking some re from a tree line to the west, and returning
some as well, as he set up a wide circular pattern around our downed aircra
in the open rice paddy. e medevac was on approach in about 10 minutes
and on the ground at the rear of our downed aircra in about ve more
minutes. We loaded our weapons and ight gear in the D model Huey with
the welcome red cross on the doors, and the four of us climbed in and exited
the area. Sometime shortly a erwards, the wingman observed the aircra
explode, either from a bullet or charge, and we never saw it again.
 e Dusto helicopter returned us to Soc Trang. I remember going before
the operations o cer for a debrie ng. He wanted to know all of the details,
what readings we had on the instruments, what actions we took, and how
the crew performed, etc. at part was somewhat of a blur because I was
sort of hyped up on adrenaline by then. e next thing I remember was
being in the Tigers’ Den having a can of chili for breakfast, feeling excited
about the incident, happy for the successful autorotation and the extraction
of our crew, and thankful for the luck of a muddy rice paddy opening up in
our ight path. Later, upon re ection, it sank in and felt like we had really
lucked out this time.
In 2015, my wife Shannon and I attended a reunion of the 121st Aviation
Association in Fort Worth, Texas. ese are attended by pilots and ight
crewmembers and their spouses and family members. I walked up to a
group of crew chiefs and door gunners at the bar and asked, “Do any of you
remember going through a night engine failure in October of 1968 in a
Viking gunship?”
One good old boy from Tennessee said, “I was on that ship. I’ve been
telling my family about that adventure all my life.”
I said, “I was the aircra commander.”
It turns out that Paul Woodby was the door gunner on that memorable
ride. He went on a er Vietnam to run a string of bail bond companies in
Tennessee. He later borrowed from the popular Steppenwolf song of the
1960s the phrase “magic carpet ride” to describe our shared experience. We
particularly enjoyed each other’s company at that reunion and have been
friends on social media ever since. We have a bond from that shared
experience that transcends the years. We have exchanged memorabilia over
the years, but the memory of that experience was a de ning one for both of
us and will be with us for the rest of our lives.
Soc Trang, Vietnam
Wednesday, August 14, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
Not much new in the way of the war here. It’s raining quite a bit. Last night I was on re y and had
to come down three times because the weather got too bad. Most of the rice paddies of the Delta are
submerged and all you can see around Soc Trang is miles and miles of water with trees and towns
occasionally.
Love,
Your Son, Fred
 Soc Trang, Vietnam
ursday, August 15, 1968
Dear Nana,
Well hello from the wonderful Far East Paradise of Soc Trang, Vietnam.
Not much new. It rains like all get out lately as we are in the middle of the monsoon season. My
roommate just got back from R and R in Bangkok and came back with some very ne silks and
bronze ware so am debating whether to go there. I think will go on R and R at the end of November.
It’s a long way o .
… I was out tooling around in the operational area at 90 miles per hour about 10’ above the
ground turned and a tree grew right up in front of my ight path. Well the only tree in the area and I
hit the top of it. e tree knocked out the plastic chin bubble below my feet and but for a good scare
we came out all the better for wear. It got a little windy in the cockpit as we ew the only “air
conditioned” B model around in a rain storm.
A lot of this place depends on your attitude and I am fortunate with a number of very good friends
anks again for writing so o en and hello to all the relatives down Tacoma way.
Love,
Your grandson, Fred
Soc Trang, Vietnam
Monday, August 26, 1968
Dear Nan, Aunt B, Uncle J, and Relatives,
… A few nights ago the VC decided to lob a few mortar rounds in on us. As you recall when I ew
transports I could hit the oor or make it for the bunker. In guns it’s a little di erent. We have to run
out to the line and get the gunships airborne as they are our rst line of defense. en we form up in
our respective re teams and put rocket attacks in on the mortar positions. Usually as soon as we get
airborne they stop lest we make waste of their positions but charging out through the barrage to get
the ships cranked and airborne is quite an experience. Everything in you says “stay on the oor” but
next thing you know you are making it to the ight line and it’s quite a relief to get in the air. It’s a
little di erent pace from the old silent walls of the Seminary, huh? Well I really eat this stu up but it
scares the living daylights out of me once in a while.
e rains came yesterday. Talk about the N.W. It rained 4.5" here yesterday. at’s in one day! We’ll
all need web feet pretty soon.
Yesterday also we worked up around the 7 Mountains Region. You might ask your friend about her
brother as it is near the Cambodian border. We o en work with Special Forces units all along the
border in IV corps maybe he is at one of the outposts I used to resupply in transports.
Sincerely, Cousin Fred
Large woven baskets were the primary means of transporting farm goods or handmade items to
the market along with sampan boats that brought goods to Soc Trang via the canals that
connected with the Song Hau River. e women were the primary transporters of agricultural
goods and could be seen along roads and paths leading into the city either carrying large baskets
on poles across their shoulders or individual baskets balanced on their heads. When they arrived
at the market, they could be seen resting by squatting down and balancing their bodies in a
resting position while they sold their wares in the market. In contrast there were also professional
women dressed in áo dàis who worked in businesses, hotels, and nancial institutions in Soc
Trang.
 is is operations or ight ops. e two symbols on either side of the entrance remind you that
everything here is a team e ort. e growling Tiger with bared teeth and the lightning bolt is on
one side of the entrance. e Viking with his arms loaded down with 2.75 rockets is on the other.
rough this opening you will walk to nd out what your mission will be for the day. is is
where the days begin and, when you return from 10 to 14 hours in the cockpit, this is where they
end, and you turn in your aircra daily ight records. Some people walk in these doors in the
morning and are not here in the evening to check out. Will today be your day for the thrill of
victory or the agony of defeat? What adventures do the mission board hold for you and your crew
today?

Soc Trang, Vietnam

Wednesday, August 28, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
…a couple of hours before I go up again tonight. is week our re team has airport security. I’m
training another pilot in the tactics of ying the wing ship and there is word in the breeze of me
being one of the three re team leaders in the Company. It would mean being the aircra
commander in the lead aircra and making the decisions for the re team as well as instructions
given to the transports on airmobile assaults. It is quite a responsibility like knowing where all the
friendlies are in a large operation for you carry quite a bit of repower with you … it is the highest
position of control and responsibility that a warrant o cer can attain. In fact right now the only re
team leaders in the company are a Captain, a Chief Warrant O cer, and a First Lieutenant. Well
we’ll just have to see. Right now I am “Viking 22” maybe by the next time I write I’ll be “23.” It is
something to try for at any rate. Enough war stories!
I got your rst package of baby clothing etc. For future reference on such things as sweaters are
 Lead Gunship Goes Down
We were ying wing in a Viking light gun team. We had been requested
to join an operation with troops in contact in an area north of Soc Trang,
and we were entering into the operational area. I was the pilot and Steve
Richards, a rst lieutenant, was the aircra commander. As we entered the
operation area, our lead took re and reported breaking to the right. e
aircra began a turn and just kept rolling and impacted the ground and
rolled over about four times. Miraculously the ship did not catch re. It all
happened so fast that it felt like the picture we were seeing was in slow
motion. e crew chief was thrown out of the aircra on impact, and the
ship rolled over on him, taking his life.
Steve didn’t hesitate but said immediately to me, “Mac, hold on, we are
going down there and getting them. You see that tree line where the enemy
re is coming and the dike line in between the downed aircra and the tree
line? at is where we are going to land.”
I said, “Roger that.”
As we descended, he added, “You and the crew start ring when we are
on approach and don’t quit.” He spotted a place on the dike and began the
approach. I started ring into the tree line and subconsciously felt my body
scrunch down a little lower in my seat behind my bullet bouncer and kept
ring short bursts into the tree line while the door gunner and crew chief
also added their machine gun re.
We were laying down suppressive re to get their attention o the
downed bird. Bullet casings were bouncing around the inside of the
helicopter and the noise was deafening. It felt like we were one hell of a
sitting duck on that dike. Steve didn’t hesitate for a minute. I thought, “Man,
this guy has got ice water in his veins.”
He said over the intercom, “We are staying here until the crew is on
board.” We didn’t know at the time that the crew chief had been killed in the
rollover. His name was Specialist George S. Hudzinga.
 e two pilots and the door gunner got out of the destroyed B model and
moved across the rice paddy and threw themselves, totally covered with
mud and out of breath, into the back end of our aircra . We noticed there
were only three of them. One of them yelled that the crew chief didn’t make
it. And something like, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
We were taking re from the tree line and it was not a place to linger.
Steve pulled pitch and pedal turned the aircra so the ass-end was pointed
toward the hot tree line, and in a few seconds we were racing across the rice
paddy and climbing out of the area. A report determined that the aircra
had taken re in the engine area. As a company, we all felt the loss of
Specialist George Hudzinga. It was a reminder of the risks that we faced
each day on these missions.
 e sights, sounds, smells and experiences along the ight line of Soc Trang Air eld remind you
that you are not in Kansas anymore. e banana trees bend in the hot blast furnace of the dry
season in the Mekong Delta. ere are snakes that come out of the rice paddies at night. If you
leave the light on in your room at night while you are throwing them down in the Tigers’ Den, you
return to the light being covered with black bugs. A rat darts across the oor in the mess hall and
you focus on the food you are eating and don’t dwell on the apparition. You jump when the
outgoing artillery res o without a warning. e generators keeping the lights on grind out their
ever-present tune. e smell of JP-4 jet fuel lls your nostrils. e siren goes o and you nd
yourself in a dank, dark bunker with 20 other men half joking half wondering if this time the
mortar men are going to get lucky and hit your bunker. Of all the places you could be at 21 years
old, how the hell did you ever end up here?

Soc Trang, Vietnam

ursday, September 5, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
I have decided to wait until about two weeks before I am scheduled to return stateside before going
on R and R.
From many experiences here, getting the clothes and money for the Vietnamese, and from my talks
with the local chaplain I have thought a lot lately about the brotherhood or a similar life. If I could
nd one that needed a gunship driver I’d be set. In all seriousness I am trying to consider what I will
be in the future as there is much time for contemplating what you want to do in your life.
We have received two of the clothing packages so far. I hear it is raining a little at home. Well in
that case I will be well prepared to return to the Northwest as all it does here is rain. e situation
here remains moderate and no room for complaint but it gets a little tense once in a while.
ank you very much Mom & Dad for both of your recent letters they were indeed well read and
anxiously awaited. I am in ne health and everything is going well. I hope you at home are doing as
well and in equally good health. So long for now you are o en in my thoughts.
Love
Your Son
Fred
Soc Trang, Vietnam
Friday, September 6, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
Well I nally made it. I ew re team lead today. ere were a few rough edges but nothing that a
little experience won’t x up. I worked with transport ights of from 10 to 18 aircra putting troops
in on combat assaults in about 8 di erent landing zones around a major canal junction objective
area. e weather gave us a little problem and we got zapped at a few times but the li s came o well
and none of the aircra took any hits, so apparently, we were successful in providing good cover and
re on the assaults. e o cers in the command and control ship remarked that it was a real ne
day. It was a feeling that is quite hard to express to be controlling and covering all those assets. It was
sort of a rewarding highpoint a er the many hours of training and preparation to take over the
position….
Well just wanted to share a very rewarding experience with you. I could never have had the
experience or one of equal satisfaction had it not been for this tour. I feel a little strange. Everyone
says too bad you have to go to Vietnam and all but I wouldn’t trade this year for any other
experience wise. Don’t get me wrong though, I can’t wait to get home.
Everything is going well, think of you o en. Love,
 Your Son, Fred

is heavy re team—three Viking gunships—is returning from a successful mission with smoke
grenades popped on the skids, ying in formation, and celebrating the way ghter pilots have
done since the beginning of combat aviation. Everyone on Soc Trang Air eld felt the thrill of
victory when an occasional yby like this occurred.

***
I have hugged the deck, at out at 85 knots over the tree lines and avoided
the open rice paddies of the Mekong Delta. Down, down, down we went
below the treetops dodging ominous canal intersections and mud- lled
bomb craters weaving back and forth making it hard to lead us with a
strategic shot.
I have popped a tree line and had a Viet Cong in black pajamas empty an
AK-47 in my face and miss! I have heard the hammers of hell pounding on
the fuselage with rounds piercing the thin sheet metal. I have felt the
ominous presence of eyes and guns ready to open re northwest of Camau,
in the plantations adjoining the U-Minh Forest, while looking for a POW
camp and a captured Green Beret major.
 I have lost friends who were there one day and gone the next … without
being able to understand how or why. I have heard the rumors of grenades
in the gas tank with a rubber band around them and the pin pulled, waiting
for the fuel to eat away at the rubber and obliterate a Huey and its crew
when least expected. I thought about these rumors each time I pre- ighted
and looked in the fuel tank with a ashlight and knew I couldn’t see the far
reaches in the corner inside the tank.
I have reloaded the tubes with 2.75 rockets, saying a prayer the rst few
times I placed the rocket body on my knee and cranked the warhead on with
one solid jerk. I have pushed the nose over and pounded the target dodging
tracers, knowing I was seeing only a few of the rounds in the tracers coming
at us, and held the nose down until the runs were made, the target was hit,
and all 14 rockets were away.
I learned to keep a calm, low-pitched voice calling “mayday, mayday,
mayday” when the engine failed at 2,000 feet one night, in a fully loaded B
model gunship and we autorotated in … and I said a silent “thank you”
when I turned on the landing light at 300 feet and there was a muddy
clearing in front of me. I have pulled pitch just right, that one time you get
… and then we slammed into the oozing mud while the tracers were shot at
us by some unknown VC from a tree line to the west.
I have heard the unforgettable call sign “Dusto inbound on short nal,”
and been swept up and away and out of the mud and the dark and the fear. I
have felt the loss of a ship as the VC blew her up before daylight. I was back
home in the Tigers’ Den having a can of chili at the bar for breakfast. We
never saw her again.
I have slept in my boots with a loaded .45 under my pillow and my jungle
fatigues around my ankles when I rst was in-country. I was ready for
whatever, at the distinct sound of the incoming mortars leaving the tubes on
their way to the target, and the air eld siren signaling their impending
arrival.
I have agonized many times as the turbine spooled up ever so slowly on a
scramble as a gunship aircra commander while the Viet Cong walked the
mortars down the ight line towards us, blowing the hell out of the runway
and some of the aircra .
I have own the “midnight special” … gun cover for a Dusto
medevacing wounded from Seven Canals, low level, circling, lights out, pitch
black, silence, sweat, and head on a swivel … with a couple of weeks le in
my tour.
And I have reached out for the hand of God and made promises to him,
asking him to pull me out of these adventures … and to me it felt like he did
… time a er time.
I did this. I was scared to death a lot of the time; but I did this for 1,300
hours of combat missions in one year.
I was a Vietnam helicopter pilot. I was a Blue Tiger slick pilot then aircra
commander with the Tigers and a gunship pilot and aircra commander at
21 years old, call sign Viking 23 of the Blue Diamond Devils of the Delta,
with the 121st Assault Helicopter Company based at Soc Trang, RVN. I was
a Soc Trang Tiger for the rst half of my tour and a Viking for the second
half. We were 100 miles south of Saigon at an air eld surrounded by rice
paddies in the Mekong Delta of South Vietnam during 1967–1968 and the
experiences changed my life … forever.
Soc Trang, Vietnam
Friday, September 13, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
… So far I have received three bundles of clothing and powders etc. and today I ventured
downtown to the orphanage … the nuns were there. I met Sister Mary Martha the Mother Superior
of the orphanage/school. e grounds themselves are very gracious in comparison to the humble
surroundings of Soc Trang City. e orphanage/school complex itself was constructed in 1951 by the
French and is cement of structure and two stories high, in a rather traditional Vietnamese-French
design with high ceilings and archway corridors but without windows or doors. In one wing the
Sisters of Providence run a day school for local Catholic children. e orphans ranging from a few
days old to about 10. e most touching sight was an entire room of mal-formed and premature
babies. Sister Martha introduced me to the nun and the women volunteers in this section and
remarked at the ne job that these women do. Sister said almost one baby dies every day, the job is a
very demanding one. If a child can live for a few months at least then there is a good chance for the
child. I noticed in particular a child with hands so small they would t inside my ring without the
energy to brush the many ies from around his face. For a moment I stopped by their chapel as the
nuns were chanting the litany. It was a very rewarding touch of reality in this war torn and confused
country.
Love,
Your Son, Fred
Soc Trang, Vietnam
Saturday, September 21, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
Well thank you very much for the many funny cards and newsy letters of late. I have had quite a
few interesting missions lately and it seems like the more you learn some new aspect opens up and
you realize how much more there is to know. I am taking over as “Viking 23” re team leader and
my long-time friend, Jim Lucking, from way back at pre ight is team leader of the “21” re team. We
alternate as primary mission team every other day or so and the platoon leader whose job is
concerned with mostly running the platoon also ies lead when he gets the time. Have 1,100 combat
hours to date. I am looking forward to a package or so as I only received three of the ones you sent.
e captain I worked with on the orphanage and hospital returned home so I was designated the
Civic A airs O cer and now I am awaiting the developing of some pictures so I can send out some
letters and give the program a good kick in the rear. As Awards and Decorations O cer for the
platoon I’m nally getting everyone written up. … Well I am busy and time is ying by. I hope you
are all in good spirits.
You are o en in my thoughts. Everything is ne.
Love,
Your Son, Fred
Soc Trang, Vietnam
Sunday, October 6, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
Well thanks for all of the cards on my birthday…. e winds are shi ing.
is is a signal of the transition period between the wet season and the beginning of the dry. Now
we are experiencing some quite severe thunderstorms which add a real challenge to our job. In
between the sun is very hot, and it feels good to lie out and soak up the rays when we have time. All
of a sudden the old people are gone home and now we are the ones teaching the new people what we
have learned by word of mouth and trial and error. In the next A & D ceremony I am getting the Air
Medal with V Device for Valor when our wing man got shot down and we landed to pick up the
three surviving crew members. It was a pretty hot area and so they wrote us up for the action. We
have a new platoon leader, a new Major with no previous gunship time and what with our now
having so many new pilots the other re team lead and I will have our hands full pulling our regular
missions as well as a rigid training schedule for the younger pilots and the new Major.
We have had a little activity around the air eld lately with Charlie and the local VC mortar men.
is week I’m up again as a counter-mortar force and a rst line of air defense should the air eld be
hit. I think if I could get transitioned into the Huey Cobra I would extend for a while but that’s
highly unlikely…. I’m a re team leader and it’s really a rewarding job to help out the ground troops.
Love,
Your Son, Fred
Soc Trang, Vietnam
Monday, October 8, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
Just got back from visiting my old pal Sister Mary Martha down at the Orphanage. I got together
with the mess sergeant and we took them a deuce and a half load of food, the remainder of the ve
bundles of clothing and the medicines from Mrs. March. ey were very glad to see us and most
appreciative for the supplies. We have a lamb outside our hooch now, not very good as a lawnmower
but a good friend. Sister gave it to us about 3 weeks ago and today she wanted to give me another so
it wouldn’t be lonely. Luckily I had to return for lunch before they could round me up but I’m sure
we are in for another four-footed lawnmower before the month is over.
I am ying nights this week. e air is cool and unusually clear. underheads form on the horizon
and the fantastic lightning storms light each one up from inside like a giant Chinese lantern. It is
truly a remarkable sight and one which I have seen nowhere else to such a magni cent degree.
… I am nding many more rewarding experiences every day. I think the key to a seemingly short
time over here is to get involved with a few jobs and keep busy. I have had the opportunity here to do
the most rewarding work I ever have before and though I y my rear end o I still love burning up
the sky.
Love,
Your Son, Fred
Soc Trang, Vietnam
Sunday, October 14, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
Good Morning, I hope everything is going well in school at home and at work. I got my request for
an R & R approved so if everything works out I will be going on the 25th of November.
… We had a show the other day from Australia. Some singers and a modern band and an old
woman something like “Phyllis Diller” type of humor and she really brought the house down.
A couple of people in our unit came down with hepatitis and infectious mononucleosis. We are all
sore as hell from getting shots, but now the initial excitement about a potential epidemic has cooled
down. I ew nights all this past week—not much action—a few outposts and patrols around the
air eld ran into some trouble. We enjoyed listening to the World Series games. With the time
di erence they came on about 1:30am in the morning about the time you start getting sleepy and it
helps to have a good program on to keep you wide awake in the air. I wonder about the presidential
candidates. I realize that it is a part of campaigning to make exaggerated claims but I sure feel sorry
for the people on the DMZ if they ever halt the bombing. at will be one hell of a risky tactic. If it
back res the NVA and the VC there will be so well supplied that they will really make waste of what
little we have gained there.
Love,
Your Son,
Fred
Soc Trang, Vietnam
Wednesday, October 17, 1968
Dear Nana,
Well I’m getting there. Slowly but surely the days are creeping by. I am looking forward very much
to the 24th of November when I am scheduled to go to Australia for a long-awaited R & R. In the
next few days I will get a 3-day pass to go to one of the more paci ed seaside towns, Vung Tau, up
country for a little break. I am sure glad I waited until the end to ask for any passes or R & R. is
way it gives you something to look forward to and it makes the remainder of your tour seem much
shorter. I still have no word on my next assignment. I am getting in a lot of ight time lately. Have
close to 1,200 hours now. I hear the weather has turned cold at home and I can hardly wait to get
into a cold climate for a while. Well Nana everything is about the same. I have many new
experiences every day but can’t wait to get home.
I just wanted to let you know I am doing real ne and in the best of spirits.
Say hello to the rest of the relatives. ink of you o en.
Love,
Your Grandson,
Fred
 Bringing It All Together
John Steinbeck, recipient of both Nobel and Pulitzer prizes for his famous
novels, travelled to Vietnam in 1966–67 at the request of the publisher Harry
Guggenheim. He spent time in Pleiku observing and ying with the 10th
Cavalry, D Troop there. Words of his describing his admiration for their
skills and courage were found in personal letters published in a book
Steinbeck in Vietnam edited by omas E. Barden, professor, University of
Toledo.
Alicia, I wish I could tell you about these pilots. ey make me sick with envy. ey ride their
vehicles the way a man controls a ne, well-trained quarter horse. ey weave along stream beds,
rise like swallows to clear trees, they turn and twist and dip like swi s in the evening. I watch their
hands and feet on the controls, the delicacy of the coordination reminds me of the seeming and sure
hands of [Pablo] Casals on the cello.
ey are truly musicians’ hands and they play their controls like music and they dance them like
ballerinas and they make me jealous because I want so much to do it.
Remember your child night dreams of perfect ight free and wonderful? It’s like that, and sadly I
know I never can. My hands are too old and forgetful to take orders from the command center,
which speaks of updra s and sidewinds, of dri and shi , or ground re indicated by a tiny pu or
ash, or a hit and all these commands must be obeyed by the musicians’ hands instantly or
automatically.
I must take my longing out in admiration and the joy of seeing it.
Sorry about that leak of ecstasy, Alicia, but I had to get it out or burst.
Soc Trang, Vietnam
Tuesday, October 22, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
Yesterday the powers that be decided to change the military pay currency throughout Vietnam and
I would imagine that this morning found many distraught Vietnamese merchants who have been
pro ting from the black market. We are presently in the tail end of a sizeable typhoon, which has
limited our ying quite a bit for the last few days.
… I will be looking for a car if I get a stateside assignment and think I would just as soon get one in
Seattle on leave and then drive across the states on my way to my next duty station because if it is in
the states it will probably be in the South. So you might keep an eye out for about a 66 or 67 Corvette
convertible. I clear about 500 a month a er insurance and bonds and whatever and I will make Chief
Warrant O cer in less than a month, so the upgrade in rank and pay will about equalize the loss of
combat pay. I don’t have any bills and think it would be a good time to get a good sports car from a
nancial standpoint and just to get it out of my system before I have to settle down to anything, but I
don’t think that will be for quite a while anyway.
 I saw Sister Martha the other day and gave her your most recent package of medicine and I took
some toys for the kids. ey were all very happy and thankful for your generosity. anks again for
all the letters.
Love, Your Son Fred
Soc Trang, Vietnam
Wednesday, October 23, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
Well just call me “Chief.” I got promoted last night to Chief Warrant O cer CW2. It was indeed a
happy occasion for ve of us from our class of 67–19. ree of us have been ying together for two
years through ight school, transports, and then gunships all hanging in there. We all had a few
engine failures and managed to walk away from some pretty banged up aircra . It’s a heck of a lot of
experience for 12 months. Our only regrets were that six of us came over together and as it looks
only ve will be coming back. A real ne guy, Ricky Hull, was killed during the Tet O ensive of this
year when his ship was brought down by heavy enemy ground re. Our class has given many to the
cause and we are very proud of those who have given their lives and only wish they could share in
the joy of our promotion and the anticipation we all feel at the thought of returning home.
ough at times I have had some very close calls and been scared out of my mind, in many ways I
regret leaving Vietnam. I have never before felt such a feeling of accomplishment both in ying as
well as my dealings with the people in Civic Action and such. is has without a doubt been the
most rewarding year of my life.
Love,
Your Son, Fred

***
Most people who have been in combat and whose role involved killing
the enemy, and in cases seeing them die, either need to make peace with
those decisions before entering the military, during the actual war
experience, or sometime a erwards. e rest of their lives can be weighed
down by the memories of what they saw and did and how they felt about it.
is is particularly problematic for Vietnam veterans who were ghting in a
war that was waged with continually changing objectives, seemingly
arbitrary rules of engagement, and some clear examples of questionable
leadership and decision-making at the highest political levels. I have
re ected on my own experience and asked whether there was anything I
might have done di erently to better prepare for this experience. I’m not
sure that there was for me.
We were taught in combat infantry training to shoot weapons, to
maintain them, to throw grenades, to put on gas masks, to escape and evade
the enemy, to attack strategically, to move surreptitiously under re, and
techniques of hand-to-hand combat, etc. We were not taught that enemy
soldiers had their own lives, their own goals and dreams, their own values
and beliefs, their own love of country and passion to defend it, their own
families they hoped to return to a er the war.
Two people I know and respect had a son take his own life a er service in
combat in the U.S. Army in Afghanistan, personally experiencing some
terrible encounters and struggling with PTSD a er being honorably
discharged from his military service. eir son was a writer, a sensitive
young man who grew up in an idyllic rural island setting and entered the
military with noble intentions. He found the actual experience of being a
combat soldier to be very traumatic. ey later published their son’s war
re ections in a book titled A Soldier’s Journal—Last Supper to No Goodbye.
ey took their grief and turned it into a life quest to help veterans by
forming an organization to help veterans dealing with PTSD and the e ects
of war to integrate back into their communities. ey formed a community-
based organization that is now known as the Whidbey Veterans Resource
Center on Whidbey Island. It currently provides peer support groups that
meet regularly, help to veterans in accessing their VA bene ts, van
transportation to city-based VA health care, and specialized counseling
services for military veterans living on Whidbey Island.
eir personal recommendation at the culmination of the book project
they completed in their son’s memory was that young men and women not
be allowed to enlist in the military until age 23 or 24. eir message was:
“Stop taking the youngest into the military and into combat prior to them
having their full human biological capacity to withstand the trauma of
military experiences. We believe if we, civilians and veterans, carry these
moral, physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental burdens of war together we
will nd our way to healing not only our veterans, but ourselves and our
communities.”
e military has recruited and dra ed young men as young as 18, like my
door gunner and friend, Paul Woodby, for military service, and many of
them have bene ted from the self-discipline, leadership opportunities, and
organizational skills that come with military training. I was a young soldier
at age 20. My experience in the military was a very positive one. I
acknowledge that for some young people the experience can be profoundly
di erent depending on the experiences they have and the people who are in
their unit. I believe a need exists to inform young people of all of the risks
and rewards of military service and to do as much as possible to see that
they are comprehensively informed prior to their enlistment.
Soc Trang, Vietnam
Wednesday, October 30, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
I just returned from a relaxing 4-day pass at Vung Tau, a seaport town in the II Corps area. e
town is very secure and the curfew at night is not until 11:00pm at which time you must be o the
streets. e beaches are light brown sand with good surf and I spent the greater part of my time
walking for miles up and down the beach, swimming, and soaking up the sun’s rays. ere are many
large estates and modern villas of concrete and sandstone in the city proper and on the outlying
drives along the ocean. e place is so secure and prosperous because the V.C. as well as U.S. soldiers
nd the town a relaxing break from the war. Many merchants are reaping immense pro ts from the
fortunes of war.
ere are quite a few con people, prostitution, and so forth. We had a blast going from bar to bar. I
stayed in a villa that a friend of mine rents with his buddies who y engineers out of the local air eld
to construction sites throughout III and IV Corps. It was very modern, two story cement, with a
roo op patio which I found very relaxing at night for looking at the stars and a quiet place to think.
What I appreciated most was getting in bed and being certain you weren’t going to be mortared or
scrambled but just a good sound sleep awaited you. And it was most enjoyable to walk down secure
city streets in the day and at night without getting shot at or mortared.
Love,
Your Son,
Fred
Sidney, Australia
ursday, October 31, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
I’ve started a few letters and then wham! Something else comes up to do here and the paper gets
pushed aside. Tomorrow morning I return to good old Soc
Trang so tonight I’ll give you a rundown of my many and varied activities over the past few days.
All of the Australian people I have met are really great and go way out of their way to ensure that you
have a very memorable 6 days. Incidentally it has without a doubt been the fastest 6 days in the last
year at any rate. I met one girl at a mixer sponsored by the R & R center and on the next day we took
the ferry to Manly Beach…. e day was cloudy because of the many wild bush res that are
burning in the open country on the outskirts of Sydney.
One day I took my camera into town and visited the New South Wales Art Gallery, Sydney
Museum, and Hyde Park. Last night had a blind date with a nice girl and went to dinner at an Old
Australian place that used to be an old prison, And we drank, ate, and sang old folk songs with an
Australian Folk Band raising hell and dancing some really wild dances, you know just jumping up
and down and clapping.
e country itself is geared down monetarily which is very interesting and appealing. e people
drive smaller cars and people seem more concerned with one that runs good than owning the
newest model with the latest accessories.
Love,
Your Son, Fred
Soc Trang, Vietnam
Sunday, November 17, 1968
 Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
Sunday morning, the sun is shining very brightly and all is well. I received noti cation of my next
duty station. I’ll be going to Fort Wolters in Texas and I really think it is about the best stateside
assignment I could have gotten. e towns of Fort Worth and Dallas are within 60 miles with much
to o er in the way of entertainment and many ne lakes in the area promise some good times. Also
there are some very well-known xed wing ight schools there and I’m sure I will get many chances
to increase my pilot pro ciency and gain additional ratings. You might mention the assignment to
Mrs. Fleming I think I will probably be able to see Paul during Christmas leave but I would be all for
going in on a real nice apartment.
Received a check from Spiegel Catalogues for $100.00 for the orphanage and will make plans for
some type of Christmas party for the kids and use the rest to buy needed medical supplies and such.
Looking forward to the package from Mrs. March and tell her thanks very much for her interest and
generosity.
Love,
Your Son, Fred
Soc Trang, Vietnam
Tuesday, December 3, 1968
Dear Mom, Dad, and Family,
Well Everyone—I’m back at good old Soc Trang—on the last night of my stay in
Sidney I was invited to dinner with a family who lived out in the suburbs. It was a very pleasant
end to a really enjoyable R & R. Now I am getting shorter every day.
I’m ying re y this week and the time is passing very quickly. I almost have a delay in route in the
bag and am planning on a three or four day stop-over in Hawaii on the way home. I can’t pass up the
chance to see the country at Uncle Sam’s expense. I should be home just before Christmas if all my
plans work out as they should. I hope everything is going ne at home and see you soon.
Love,
Your Son,
Fred

***
As the days clicked down towards my DEROS (Date Estimated of Return
from Over Seas) I was getting short, and the standard protocol was that you
ew fewer missions and fewer combat assaults in the last couple of weeks of
your tour. I was in the Tigers’ Den one evening with just a few days le ,
enjoying some singing and having a few drinks with some Vikings and
Tigers, and someone from operations came in and said, “We have a request
for a couple of gunships to cover a medevac at Seven Canals. Someone there
is wounded and in pretty bad shape and needs to be airli ed out of there
tonight. We have Dusto ready to go but they have been getting some action
there today and there is a need for a couple of gunships to y cover and
escort the medevac in and out. Is anyone available to take it?”
I found myself raising my hand with three other Vikings, and before I
knew it we were on the ight line cranking up the B models.
We touched base with each other and the Dusto on the radios and took
o in a ight of three for the area west of Soc Trang that we knew well as
Seven Canals. We ew in a loose formation of three towards the area and
decided that we would minimize the pro les of our aircra by going in with
lights o for the last mile or so.
We had radio contact with the outpost and could sense the expectation of
the people on the ground to get this person some timely medical treatment.
As I recall, it was a clear night with some light from the moon. We turned
out the navigation lights, and the gunships settled into a circular pattern
around the outpost. e Dusto came in overhead and did a corkscrew-type
approach down through the middle of our circular pattern and landed to a
few ashlights at the outpost.
e wingman and I talked back and forth relaying our positions and
watching out for the other aircra . e Dusto called “pacs loaded,” and
pulled pitch and called out his easterly heading setting out to return to Soc
Trang. We kept our heads on a swivel and joined up with him in a loose V
formation climbing up to 1,500 feet, turning the navigation lights back on,
and following him back to Soc Trang. ere wasn’t any need for suppressive
re during the mission, but we couldn’t help but think that, given the
previous few days of reports from this outpost, that without the gun cover
things might have gone a lot di erently. at’s how it was in the guns. Some
days just the threat of a fully loaded gunship seemed to cause the VC to
think twice about engaging a Dusto helicopter. I’m glad they didn’t pick
this night to change that pattern of behavior. Later that night, I was glad I
took the mission even though my days in-country were now numbered on a
couple of hands.
As my days wound down towards my DEROS, I went to Can o. I
stopped in the MACV o ce to get paperwork for taking a captured Chinese
Communist Mauser ri e home as a war souvenir. Upon returning from
R&R in Australia with about a month le of my in-country tour of duty, I
began the paperwork process of getting ready to leave Vietnam.
Headquarters for the First Aviation Brigade was in Can o. On a day when
I was not scheduled to y missions, I hopped in a UH-ID slick as a
passenger and then inquired about the routing for the ight home. To my
delight one of the routes home for the contracted commercial airliners had a
stop in Hawaii for fuel and passengers. I began the process of requesting to
be on this particular ight.
When it came time for me to depart Vietnam, a similar process of
departure was in e ect but now consisted of getting on a C-123 (a U.S. Air
Force transport) in Soc Trang and riding to Tan Son Nhut Air Base and then
transferring to a commercial airliner. When I arrived in Hawaii, I decided to
rent a motor scooter to see the island and rode out to a secluded beach. I
marveled at the beautiful beach and jumped in the water to be taken out
rather quickly over my head by a strong undertow. As I struggled to get back
to the sandy beach, my thought process was, “I have survived a year in
Vietnam and now I am on the verge of drowning in the waters o Hawaii.”
Just by luck I got deposited back near the shore by the next couple of waves
and decided there were other dangers in life that were just as life-threatening
as combat.
I got a room in the BOQ (Billeted O cers Quarters) at Hickam Air Force
Base and got scheduled on a military ight a few days later in an old Air
Force transport two-engine plane called Old Shakey, a C-124 ying from
Hickam to McChord Air Force Base in Tacoma, Washington, where I had
grown up and where many of my uncles, aunts, and cousins lived. e plane
was a cargo plane, and the ight engineer showed me how to strap into a cot
that was suspended from the interior side of the plane amidst a cargo of jet
engines and other mechanical equipment. In the air I was encouraged to stay
in the cot but could walk around if necessary. e ight took about 13 hours
as I recall and didn’t go more than 13,000 feet over the ocean. I had a
window by my cot that looked out at the ames shooting about eight feet out
of the exhaust stacks on the radial engines. e weather was clear, the moon
was out and the ight was smooth. At McChord Air Force Base, I found a
phone and called my uncle Jerry Harnish, and he came out to meet me and
take me to his house to stay over while my parents came from Seattle to pick
me up. It was the end of a great adventure for me.
 Re ecting on Vietnam
I was a very average student academically in high school, and my
personal interest in the subject of history was even more limited. Many of
the facts I have learned more recently were not common knowledge in my
peer group at the time I entered the Army. ey were not the regular topic of
high school students’ conversations in the seminary.
When I enlisted in the U.S. Army in Seattle, Washington, on December 6,
1966, I was 20 years old and interested in learning to y helicopters, having
an adventure, serving my country, and being a warrant o cer in the U.S.
Army. I also believed I would be contributing in a very personal way to
ghting the spread of Communism throughout the world and helping the
people of South Vietnam establish a democratic government for the people
of the Republic of South Vietnam.
Indochina had a long history of French control and war with its
neighbors. Japan had invaded various parts of the country of French
Indochina in 1940. e Japanese did not establish a Japanese government
but decided to align themselves with the pro–Nazi French Vichy
government. e Japanese chose to work under the leadership of the French
and committed their military advisors to be in a secondary administrative
role in the country. As World War II came to a close in Europe in March of
1945, the Nazi in uence was defeated, and the Japanese began an open
resistance to the French-Vichy government and set about establishing a state
government with a puppet emperor named Bao Dai.
In the spring of 1945, American involvement in Indochina came in the
form of military hardware, guns, ammunition, and training for military
advisors from the O ce of Strategic Services (known as the OSS), the
precursor to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. is military support was
provided to a small band of freedom ghters known as the Viet Minh who
were at the time waging guerrilla warfare against the Japanese in northern
Vietnam. ese ghters were led by two men, Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen
Giap, in skirmishes near the Chinese border.
Fredrik Logevall, a Pulitzer prize-winning author, in his book Embers of
War: e Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam,
characterized the Vietnamese people as having a very positive perception of
Ho Chi Minh from their personal interactions with advisors from the O ce
of Strategic Services, who invariably described him as “warm, intelligent,
and keen to cooperate with the United States.”
Ho Chi Minh stated, “American technicians could help build an
independent Vietnam.” Ho Chi Minh was a student of American history and
saw his Viet Minh’s resistance as akin to the American Revolution and his
role similar to that of George Washington in his e orts to achieve
determination and democratic government in the United States of America.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in a meeting with Winston Churchill
and Chiang Kai-shek of the Republic of China in 1944, stated, “Indochina
should not go back to France…. France has had the country and its thirty
million inhabitants for nearly one hundred years and the people are worse
o than they were in the beginning…. e people of Indochina are entitled
to something better than that.”
Mr. Logevall further asserted that, “a er World War II, Ho Chi Minh
tried to get American support in the ght against the French (occupation) of
Vietnam. A er World War II, Ho Chi Minh wrote at least 8 letters that were
never answered to United States President Harry Truman asking for
American help. Ho played down his communist background and hinted that
he would welcome U.S. investment in a free Vietnam and that he was open
to considering allowing the United States to set up a military naval base in
Vietnam. e letters apparently went unanswered. Soviet allies were growing
and expanding in countries like Iran and Turkey and were becoming a major
threat. People were afraid of communist world domination.”
Two incidents prompted the U.S. commitment to support France a er
World War II. One occurred in August of 1949 when the Soviets conducted
a rst successful test of a nuclear weapon. A second occurred in October of
1949 when the Chinese Communists defeated the Nationalists and took full
Communist control of China. Later, as we know, Ho Chi Minh aligned his
Viet Minh with the Communists, and his leadership of the Viet Minh was a
major factor in the defeat of the French at the de ning battle of Dien Bien
Phu in 1954 where the French experienced a devastating defeat and
surrender.
What might have happened if President Truman had responded to the
letters? Did the fear of Communist domination of the world, so present at
that time throughout the world, set the stage for the unfolding events that
resulted in the Vietnam War?
It has been revealed that Richard M. Nixon lied to President Lyndon B.
Johnson and took advantage of the timely opportunity to quietly delay the
Paris peace talks so that he could become president of the United States of
America. Nixon maintained that he had not undermined President
Johnson’s 1968 peace initiative to bring the war in Vietnam to a conclusion
during his term of o ce. “My God. I would never do anything to encourage
[North Vietnam] not to come to the table,” Nixon told Johnson, in a phone
conversation that was recorded on the White House taping system. In later
released documents, H.R. “Bob” Haldeman, Nixon’s aide, revealed that
Nixon had directed him, and in turn his campaign sta s’ e orts, to
undermine the Paris peace talks because he thought this could give him a
leg up over his opponent, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, in the 1968
election. On October 22, 1968, in advance of the November 3 elections, he
had ordered Mr. Haldeman to move forward in this manner.
Former general Pete Piotrowski published a shocking accusation in his
book Basic Airman to General: e Secret War & Other Con icts: Lessons in
Leadership & Life, stating “that the U.S. noti ed the North Vietnamese
government of U.S. airstrikes ahead of time.” is fact was con rmed in later
years in an interview with Dean Rusk, secretary of state at the time. He
stated in the interview, “We didn’t want to harm the North Vietnamese
people and so we passed the targets to the Swiss embassy in Washington that
would be bombed the next day with instructions to pass them on to the
NVN government through their embassy in Hanoi.”
ese examples of political ineptitude at the highest levels of government
are astonishing in that this kind of thinking surely did at least two major
things. One, it enabled the North Vietnamese to not only move civilians out
of the area but also, more importantly, move anti-aircra weapons into the
area ready to shoot down the Navy and Air Force ghters on their doomed
missions. I wonder how many POWs were held in the Hanoi Hilton, having
been shot down as a direct result of this particular ill-conceived strategy.
Secondly, then candidate Nixon’s e orts to delay the Paris peace talks for
political reasons in the presidential elections was an equally egregious act.
***
A er World War II, the French attempted to reinstate their colonial rule
over the Indochinese countries of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. ey
asked for support from the United States, who had been their ally in World
War II, to help them in this pursuit. Ho Chi Minh, as was stated earlier, also
tried at the end of the war to get support from the United States. It is le to
speculation whether outspoken and passionate administrative supporters of
the French, fearful of the spread of Communism, kept Ho from meeting
with the president. ere was enormous pressure at the time to side with the
French in supporting colonial rule of Vietnam, and a growing fear emerged
as Ho Chi Minh’s e orts were characterized as being associated with an
expanding Soviet and Communist movement to systematically take over the
free world country by country, starting with Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
In early 1950, ve years a er the end of World War II, the Truman
administration decided to provide nancial aid to the French military in
Indochina. e ostensible goal of this move was to contain the spread of
communism throughout the world. President Truman was advised by
Secretary of State Dean Acheson to give France military and nancial aid to
oppose the Communists and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the name
of the emerging movement to form a free and independent nation of
Vietnam. Nationalist China had fallen to the Communists, and Communist
China had mobilized troops on the Indochina border the previous winter.
e Soviet Union and Communist China followed by acknowledging Ho
Chi Minh as the emerging leader of the government of Vietnam. China also
began to train and supply military weapons to the Viet Minh, who began
identifying themselves as the Revolutionary League for the Independence of
Vietnam and were, at the time, developing into a major military resistance
force.
Top U.S. o cials informed the president that they would either have to
support the legal government in Indochina or face the spread of
communism in Southeast Asia. In May of 1950, President Truman o cially
authorized the use of U.S. funds to back the French in their war against Ho
Chi Minh and the Viet Minh.
e French increasingly re-established control in Vietnam over the next
four years. is prompted resistance from and growth of the Viet Minh.
Many began to say the French owned the country in the day and the Viet
Minh owned the country in the night as the resistance of the Viet Minh was
widely supported and largely an underground guerrilla type of resistance.
French soldiers were brutal in their ruthless re-establishment of colonial
control. e French maintained they were supporting and protecting the
largely Catholic population of Vietnam from the evils associated with
communism. But in their enthusiasm for domination they burned villages
deemed to be uncooperative, executed resistors, raped women, and
promulgated an atmosphere of fear throughout the country.
e legacy of United States support to its ally France in the form of
nances and military advisors was carried on and grew signi cantly through
the succession of presidents from President Truman to President
Eisenhower, himself a former general in World War II. Animosities built
between the French and resisting Viet Minh until a de ning battle that
occurred in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu.
By 1953, the French had lost 100,000 troops in Vietnam and were no
further along on their plan for “paci cation” of the country than when they
started in 1945. Ho Chi Minh was growing in his prominence among his
people. General Giap had become a military co-leader with Ho Chi Minh
and was much more aggressive in his beliefs and tactics. He proposed a
strategic plan to wipe out the French and turn the tide of the war. General
Giap surreptitiously moved 250,000 Viet Minh troops, 200 large guns, and
related material into position around the mountaintop stronghold at Dien
Bien Phu. On March 13, 1954, the ghting began with the Viet Minh
shelling the French stronghold. e French appealed to President
Eisenhower for more military and material support. He consulted with the
British and ultimately declined the request. A 55-day brutal battle ensued.
On May 7, 1954, the French, whose numbers had been decimated by 8,000
men, surrendered. General Giap and the Viet Minh emerged victorious,
though the price they paid in war dead was a heavy one, estimated to be
24,000 men. e end of French colonialism in Vietnam was signaled by this
surrender.
Vietnam was divided at the 17th parallel into North and South Vietnam,
elections were planned and Ho Chi Minh was considered to be a clear
favorite to lead a reuni ed Vietnam in the future. Dien Bien Phu
underscored the resolve of the Viet Minh and their leaders. is battle and
defeat was now a matter of history and one that was seemingly forgotten or
never internalized by the politicians who charted the course for later
involvement of the United States in the future internal struggles for
Vietnam.
e proposed open and free elections were neither open nor free. A
leader, Ngo Dinh Diem, emerged based in Saigon, promising democracy
and hatred for the French and communism, but his management style
followed and incorporated a crime-type syndicate characterized by
corruption that was pervasive in the country. e French withdrew
completely. e idea of reuni cation of the split country was abandoned.
President Eisenhower met with Diem, and this meeting lent credibility to
Diem’s leadership. President Eisenhower began sending advisors to Vietnam
ostensibly to “win the hearts and minds of the people.” e Viet Minh began
killing corrupt o cials who were tyrannical in their leadership styles as the
country began disintegrating into chaos with a series of coups and military
leaders.
President John F. Kennedy came into o ce as the situation in Vietnam
was further unraveling. Advisors continued to be placed in Vietnam
throughout the ies and sixties. He put pressure on Diem to resign or be
replaced and even approved a coup e ort. en in 1963 President Kennedy
himself was assassinated. A er his death he would be quoted as saying, “I
shouldn’t have approved of the coup.” All of this dysfunction set the stage for
involvement of the United States in Vietnam.
***
I had joined the Army in December of 1966. I was excited to learn how to
y helicopters and felt strongly that I could make a di erence with my life in
helping the Vietnamese form a democratic form of government. I believed
we were ghting to address the spread of Communism throughout the free
world. In learning more about the history of war in Vietnam, I had an aha
moment when I realized that the Tet O ensive of 1968, the deadliest year of
the war, when I served there, was probably an attempted re-enactment of the
successful victory of the Viet Minh over the French at Dien Bien Phu.
A er my tour in Vietnam I returned stateside to an assignment in
Mineral Wells, Texas, teaching weather- and ight-related subjects to
warrant o cer candidates and regular o cers at the Primary Helicopter
Training Center at Fort Wolters, Texas. is was an enjoyable assignment for
me. I lived with two other Vietnam veterans in an apartment in Fort Worth
with a swimming pool in the shape of the state of Texas. We each had a
muscle car. Paul had a Pontiac GTO, Frank had an Oldsmobile 442, and I
had a Corvette. We enjoyed an active social life in Fort Worth and Dallas on
the weekends.
A year later, I asked for and was granted an early release from the military
and I returned to Washington and re-entered the seminary. My thoughts at
the time were to become a priest and serve as an Army chaplain. I continued
my interest in military ying by becoming a member of the 540th Assault
Helicopter Company at Fort Lewis, Washington, with the Washington State
National Guard, where I ew Hueys, OH-23 Ravens, and CH-34 Choctaws
while pursuing seminary training. I retained my military classi cation as a
helicopter gunship pilot. is created some pushback at the seminary from
one priest/teacher in particular who was actively involved in a number of
war protests in downtown Seattle and thought it was inconsistent with the
mission of Saint omas Seminary to have a seminarian like me be active in
a military unit. I could sense his disapproval as I walked out on Fridays with
my ight helmet, etc., and he was also departing to a war protest in Seattle.
is was another time of discernment for me and of processing my
Vietnam experiences. Returning to the seminary was quite an interesting
experience. e enrollment in the seminary was decimated during the 1960s
and there were only 40 students remaining in the major seminary training to
become priests in the Archdiocese of Seattle. My leadership and combat
experience in Vietnam taught me to question, listen, and do whatever was
necessary to get the job done. is sort of “can-do” attitude appealed to
many of my classmates, and when a speci c question about the quality of the
food surfaced, I was elected to go express the concerns of the student body
to the administration and ask for some changes in our food and meals.
When a mere meeting resulted in the desired changes, I was elevated to
student body president and began being seen as the “go-to person” for
solving student dissatisfaction issues. is was quite a change from the way I
was perceived in my previous seminary life.
At the end of the year, things were further unraveling and a number of
students were discussing the possibility of leaving the school. I personally
questioned my vocation and decided to enter a state university and become
a teacher. I withdrew and entered Central Washington University (then
Central Washington State College) and subsequently completed a BA and a
master’s degree in education. While at CWU, I read every book I could nd
on the teaching profession and especially on early childhood education. I
volunteered in a small parochial school in town in exchange for being able
to do some of my practicum activities and assignments with the students
there.
Halfway through my second year at Saint Andrew’s School, a teaching
position opened at the second-grade level. I took it and nished out the year
teaching in the school. Toward the end of the year, I applied for a permanent
position teaching kindergarten on the west side of the state, in the growing
Marysville School District. As the year ended, the older parish priest, who
was straight from Ireland, called me in and said, “Since June was not a full
month, we are not paying people for June.”
I responded, “Well, Father, that isn’t the way it works in America. I think I
should be paid even though the month was a partial month.”
He said, “You know that we are closing the school and the convent.
Would you take the dining room furniture in the convent for your pay?”
I thought the furniture was quite nice and agreed. at furniture was part
of our lives for another 10 years or so.
I was hired under a Title I federal grant in western Washington, in the
growing suburban Marysville School District north of Seattle, to be a
kindergarten teacher. I commented to my supervisor, Frank Carlson, who
had hired me, that I thought the grant for the program could be written
di erently and better meet the needs of parents and students. He saw a need
in the growing school district for someone to write and manage grants for
the district, and this path led me to become the district’s grants manager and
ultimately the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction and
later nance and operations. Frank Carlson and I became great friends, and
I will always appreciate the fact that he hired me, one of the few men at the
time who was interested in teaching kindergarten. I look back on my years
in Marysville as very special. I met my wife, Shannon, through a friend,
Mary Schau, who worked there and initially told me about the job posting.
Mary and her husband, Ed, a classmate of mine from the seminary, have
been great friends over the years.
 In the middle of my education career, a er completing a doctorate in
educational administration at age 50, I was eligible for early retirement and
became the principal and development director of a small and unique
private Catholic school in the Wallingford neighborhood in the city of
Seattle. It served children in preschool through grade 8. I held this position
from 1998 to 2005, and it was a memorable and very rewarding experience. I
was hired for this position by an extraordinary priest who was the parish
pastor, Father Paul Waldie. e school was in a bit of turmoil from the
leadership of the principal and he wanted me to restore its reputation,
improve student performance, and put the school on a rm nancial
footing. I was a parish member and helped the school raise funds to operate
while I was completing my doctoral studies at Seattle Paci c University.
 Historical Lessons Learned
e Vietnam War is going down in history as one of the most
controversial and misunderstood wars in the history of wars fought by the
military of the United States of America. I believe we owe it to ourselves as
citizens of this country to learn some lessons for the future from each war
e ort that we make a decision to enter. My thoughts and re ections about
this area of personal interest for me come from ve perspectives: (1)
political leadership, (2) military leadership, (3) combat soldier, (4) morality,
and (5) historical context.
From a political leadership perspective, the involvement of the United
States government in Vietnam seemed rooted in a widely held belief among
the citizenry that democracy was fundamentally the noblest form of
government. Many Americans believed democracy and the right of self-
determination were basic human rights that man by his very nature was
destined to pursue. Additionally, many of those who ascribe to this belief
believed that communism was fundamentally a repressive and regressive
form of government that controlled the individual citizen and subjugated
individual needs to the needs of the state. ese beliefs set the stage for a
convincing view that all people around the world would be better o if they
were governed in a democratic manner than if they were governed based
from a di erent set of assumptions like the communist perspective. Our
country had taken great pride in its history and foundational principles.
Many other countries looked to the United States of America as a model for
how a democratic government should be constituted and function.
Problems surfaced when our country and in particular its political leaders
came to the conclusion that other countries would be more successful if they
were led as a democratic form of government without taking into
consideration their culture, history, and developmental stage of readiness to
accept the challenges associated with forming and operating this type of
government.
 When we stood up with our allies against the obvious evils of unbridled
military aggression and basic human rights violations during World War II,
our strength and principles were celebrated around the world. We let that
previous experience in uence our later decision-making to the degree that
we responded with support for France, our ally from World War II, in its
e ort to reinstate colonial leadership over Vietnam a er that war. We missed
the opportunity to acknowledge the limitations and dark sides of colonial
oppression. When our political leaders ignored the requests and attempts to
communicate with our government that came from an emerging leader of
the people within Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, to support self-determination
e orts in Vietnam, we lost a de ning moment and the opportunity to help a
edgling nation move from colonial oppression to build a better system of
governance espoused by their populace and emerging leaders of the time.
ose decisions led us down a path of deeper and deeper involvement in the
Vietnam War to bolster up South Vietnamese forces that were ill prepared
for the task at hand and not representative of the emerging popular
leadership of the country.
ere were de ning moments where we might have seen the course of
history change and have avoided escalating America’s involvement in the
Vietnam War. Ho Chi Minh made multiple attempts to communicate with
President Truman. One source documented 13 letters that were written to
President Truman but were never seen by him. In these letters, Ho Chi Minh
expressed his feeling that he was similar in his beliefs to our Founding
Fathers. He alluded to aligning his e orts with the United States and actually
intimated that a U.S. Navy base might be located in a reconstituted and
reorganized Vietnam. History tells us that the letters were never read by the
president, and we are le to speculate whether cabinet-level administrators
with con icting agendas caused this to happen.
e Vietnam War had its beginnings for the United States in the 1950s,
when President Eisenhower authorized military advisors to help the country
address the challenges presented by emerging unethical leadership in the
governance of Vietnam a er the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. When the
free and open elections that occurred in 1954 were neither free nor open in
the way they were conducted, a journey down a path destined for failure
began for American military advisors in Vietnam. ARVN troops and their
military leaders did not take up the gauntlet of war with a deep commitment
to victory and based on strongly held beliefs and core values. ey had been
at war in one form or another for over 100 years, and they were neither
inspired by their corrupt leaders nor convinced of their ability to put their
own needs above the corruption and shortsighted desires for power and the
trappings of success. e actions of the military leaders were not seen by the
people as being noble and well-intentioned but as self-serving and
personally enriching their families while the common citizen’s life was
expendable.
American military leaders, who approached the war rst as advisors and
then from the perspective of winning battles and skirmishes, became
concerned about the lack of success of the advisor/advisee relationship with
the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. In response to lack of success in
various engagements, they requested and received more military personnel
and led them into deeper and deeper military roles as the Vietnamese
military showed itself to be not up to the task at hand. is resulted in
increased bombing and use of primarily American backed and executed
military maneuvers and logistics and choosing metrics like body counts and
territory taken as indicators of success.
e war was reported over television on a daily basis to Americans back
in the United States, by reporters embedded with both South Vietnamese
and United States military units. e atrocities of war were many, and these
were shown in graphic detail to an American citizenry who lost con dence
that the strategies were well conceived or having the desired results. As
military leaders became more and more frustrated with the lack of military
discipline in the South Vietnamese Army, there was a tendency to
overcompensate with escalated American e orts in battles, use of aircra
bombing, defoliation of major portions of the country, and increasing use of
ordnance and military power. Body counts became the accepted metric for
evaluating skirmishes and engagements. e North Vietnamese and Viet
Cong body counts were regularly reported as being much greater than the
American losses, and they probably were. Remember that in the de ning
colonial oppression battle at Dien Bien Phu, the Vietnamese won the battle
by sacri cing an estimated 24,000 lives to the 8,000 given by the French
prior to surrender. e Vietnamese were not limited to thinking about their
engagement in war as being evaluated with body counts.
Our logic in Vietnam became that if their side lost more men in a battle
than ours that was a win for our side. Of course, the North Vietnamese and
Viet Cong did not have the military hardware and ordnance to equal the
seemingly endless support of the American military. What they lacked in
hardware and armament they compensated for in passion for their purpose,
ingenuity in guerrilla warfare tactics, and commitment to the end goal of
their cause. In the nal analysis, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were
more passionate about their cause of self-determination and permanent
escape from further colonial domination than their South Vietnamese
counterparts were about their beliefs in democratic processes prevailing
over a communist form of governance. e corrupt and self-serving
leadership legacy that appeared endemic in the South Vietnamese
government was a signi cant factor in undermining the credibility of the
nobility of the democratic approach to governance.
ese war e orts were escalated in the 1960s by President Kennedy,
continued to expand under presidents Johnson and Nixon, and were
brought to closure under President Ford. On April 30, 1975, the Vietnam
War was brought to a rather ignominious and hasty closure, as viewed by
many Vietnam veterans, that included tactically and strategically
embarrassing actions led by an ambassador in a questionable mental state,
who failed to accept the impending defeat of the Army of the Republic of
Vietnam’s military and overthrow of the South Vietnamese military
leadership in Saigon. is was followed by a precipitous withdrawal of
military personnel and the abandonment of many South Vietnamese who
had been loyal supporters of American involvement in the war. ese people
le behind were subjected to persecution, imprisonment, and their own
devices for evasion and escape to freedom from retaliation and retribution
at the hands of the North Vietnamese and their counterinsurgent arm, the
Viet Cong.
As the war progressed, various military actions were taken that seemed to
lack focus or purpose and be characterized by metrics like in ated body
counts or reports of accomplishments designed to show that the United
States backed ARVN forces were winning, when in fact they were seemingly
unmotivated or lacking enthusiasm for the causes being pursued. e war
seemed to be undertaken for noble but shortsighted reasons, conducted and
managed with serious misperceptions and questionable actions, and brought
to closure seemingly without a plan for strategic withdrawal or protection of
personnel or asset recovery. e challenge for the combat soldiers in
Vietnam was that they were ghting in an unconventional war that o en did
not make sense to them. Troops became dispirited over time a er taking
and retaking the same objective in the same area multiple times with loss of
life, and then relinquishing the area to the same situation that existed before
the battle or skirmish. ere is no question that frequently a combat soldier
approaches a new engagement with renewed aggression if the previous
engagement resulted in the loss of the lives of friends around him.
Tragedies like My Lai, where a speci c unit was led to perpetuate
unspeakable atrocities, were an ever-present possibility and easy for even the
most ethical person to justify from a logical point of view, in that every
encounter with the enemy could reveal a suicide bomber or passionate
opponent who believed that dying for the cause was a legitimate action.
Hanoi Hannah broadcast that the Blue Diamond Devils of the Delta would
get theirs for wreaking havoc on the Viet Cong in the Delta. Rumors
abounded that women and children were co-opted into being willing to give
their lives for the cause or that bounties were placed on taking out a
helicopter pilot or aircra . ey also included stories of bodies of ight
crewmembers being discovered having been mutilated, and one story of
unexplained aircra explosions due to grenades being placed in the gas
tanks with a rubber band around the detonation device so that when the fuel
ate through it the grenade would explode in the gas tank and obliterate the
aircra . e challenge for the combat soldier was to carry out the mission
while exercising the responsibilities of commanding the ight crew of a
helicopter to follow rules of engagement and speci c orders given for each
mission. It was essential for a person to have a set of personal core values
and operating principles that were adhered to for being at peace later in life
with the decisions made in combat situations.
***
It was obvious to the combat soldier that corruption plagued the
leadership of the South Vietnamese military and drove much of the
economy in South Vietnam. American military supplies were available in
the PX but also on the black market. Prostitution and drugs were commonly
available and the currency in the country was changed randomly in an
attempt to thwart the black-market pro ts and trade. A picture emerged of a
country destined for failure that was unraveling due to a lack of ethical and
moral leadership.
It was important for the pilots in command in our unit to know the
di erence between legal authority and doing the right and moral thing. For
example, a Vietnamese province chief had the authority to declare an area a
free- re zone. at meant that the area was so sympathetic to the Viet Cong
that any person observed could be assumed to be a combatant and engaged.
is was all of the legal authority that a ight crew needed to engage
observed personnel. A few pilots took this literally and let their
crewmembers engage whomever they saw. Most pilots adhered to a belief
system that had strict criteria for ight crews to discharge weapons, such as
(1) if red upon; (2) if engaged in a combat assault and directed to re on
approach or departure from or to a combat landing zone or operational area
to “keep their heads down”; (3) if ordered to use recon by re to see if an
aircra could engage the enemy or discover hidden caches of ordnance or
weapons from secondary explosions, like rockets red into suspicious-
looking hooches; (4) when entering an obviously engaged combat situation;
(5) when discovering combatants dressed in military uniforms or black
clothing with weapons upon previously given orders to do so or as given
orders from a command and control aircra o cer in the area.
e country of Vietnam, like many countries, had a long history of being
at war. ey were steeped in a tradition of war and military service. ey
had been invaded by neighboring countries and had been occupied as a
colony by the French for many years. ey had a religious tradition based on
Buddhism and had been also heavily in uenced by Catholicism during the
French colonial period. ese two religious perspectives were o en at odds
with each other, and con icts existed between them and the people who
supported them.
When Vietnam was invaded by neighbors, the Vietnamese people
developed an approach to warfare that took advantage of their knowledge of
their homeland and their ability to be long-su ering and endure signi cant
hardships in a quest for nation building and self-determination. is
approach evolved over time from one of primitive ghting with basic
weaponry into a contemporary sophisticated model of guerrilla warfare that
included traditional and non-traditional weapons and tactics. An insight
into the resolve and commitment of the Vietnamese people can be deduced
from their sacri ces made while battling the French. ey were creative and
tactical as they surreptitiously positioned people and weapons around the
French stronghold at Dien Bien Phu. e French underestimated their
resolve and capacity for waging war. A similar end came to the Vietnam War
as North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops encircled and overran Saigon.
 e Just War eory and Vietnam
A number of philosophers, historians, and Church leaders have shaped
the “just war theory” over the centuries. Some unique dimensions of the
Vietnam War prompted a new generation of philosophical and theoretical
thought, re ection, and interpretation of this important theory.
Scholars and early students of history attributed the beginnings of the
traditional just war theory to Saint Augustine (354 to 43 ). Saint
Augustine is considered one of the primary architects of Western thought.
He was born in the town of Tagaste in North Africa. At the age of 29, he le
North Africa and settled in Rome during the decline of the Roman Empire
and rise of Christianity. Rome was under siege from various tribes from the
north and east. Christians were struggling with what military response to
these invaders was permitted by their faith. Augustine had been chosen to
be the Bishop of Hippo. In this role he sought to lead his people and to
answer many questions posed by the early Christians and in particular the
de ning questions related to war and military service. One question was:
“Can a Christian answer the empire’s call to military duty and still have a
clear conscience before God?” His re ections included some fundamental
premises that became the foundational assumptions of the traditional just
war theory for the emerging Roman Catholic Church.
omas Aquinas (1225 to 1274 ) was born in southern Italy, was
taught by Benedictine monks at Monte Cassino, studied at Cologne under
Saint Albert the Great, and achieved a doctorate at the University of Paris.
He was a theologian and a philosopher. He formatted the re ections of
Augustine into speci c criteria that remain the basis for the just war theory
as it has been de ned in the Roman Catholic Church today. In his work
Summa eologica he organizes, categorizes, and explains the elements of
the just war theory.
According to the just war theory, the morality of a war is tested in two
parts. ese two parts are de ned with two Latin-termed categories. One is
jus ad bellum (justice to war)—the conditions for justly going to war. e
second is jus in bello (justice in war)—the conditions for the just conduct of
a war. From this traditional philosophical perspective, wars are judged twice,
rst with reference to the reasons for initiating them and secondly with
reference to the means adopted in actually ghting them.
According to jus ad bellum, a just war, at its outset, must have just
authority, just cause, just intention, and be a last resort. Jus in bello stipulates
that a just war, as it is conducted, must have proportionality, discrimination,
and responsibility.
A number of philosophers and researchers have concluded that the
Vietnam War was not a just war because their view inextricably linked jus ad
bellum with jus in bello in their interpretation of the just war theory. Many of
these philosophers and researchers have never been a combatant in a war,
and therefore their views are not supported by primary-source experience. I
have read a few doctoral dissertations that have come to this conclusion.
Mr. Michael Walzer, author of the seminal book Just and Unjust Wars: A
Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, is a scholar and author whose
writings have been referenced frequently in analyses of the Vietnam War.
ere are some very valuable insights from his work, rst regarding the
responsibility of the United States and its leaders, both political and military,
and second regarding the unique role of the combat soldier in war. Mr.
Walzer’s research is based not only in philosophy and morality but also in
military history, the gathering of personal combat stories, novels and poems,
and in some factors and insights unique to the role of the combat soldier. He
was not a combat soldier himself but has expanded his view and perspective
beyond other academics of the just war theory from this additional research.
e Vietnam War began in the 1950s with advisors under President
Eisenhower, was escalated in the 1960s under President Kennedy, and
continued under Presidents Johnson, Nixon, and Ford. e Vietnam War
was brought to an ignominious closure on April 30, 1975. From this
perspective the war lasted some 10 to 20 years. Communism was widely
perceived to be a very real threat to democracies around the world.
Communist countries represented themselves as wanting to expand their
span of control and take over other countries. ere was an international
belief in the “domino theory,” that neighboring countries were like
dominoes set on end in close proximity to each other and if one fell to
communism, they would all fall into communist domination like dominoes.
e principles of communism were considered inconsistent with Western
beliefs in freedom, liberty, and justice for all.
ere may have been limited knowledge of the extent of the corruption
that plagued the leadership of South Vietnam and that it would accelerate
and continue to unravel. However, it is plausible that the evolving pattern of
corruption that emerged and grew unabated painted a picture of a country
destined for failure. As the war progressed, various actions were taken
politically and strategically to respond to emerging levels of awareness. As
dissatisfaction with tactics mounted, and a number of events unfolded in
sequence, what resulted was that the war took on enough distorted
dimensions, and was concurrently misdirected by advisors to the presidents
at the highest government levels.
In my opinion, the war was undertaken for noble but shortsighted
reasons, and the way it was conducted and managed, with serious
misperceptions and questionable actions, resulted in a war that was brought
to closure in a such a manner that it no longer met the second criteria of the
just war theory.
As Michael Walzer states, once you are involved at the combat soldier
level, these leadership and political issues become secondary to the role of
being a combat soldier. Your role in its simplest form is to kill the enemy.
eir role is to kill you. is is a frightening realization that all combat
soldiers come to and are charged with doing.
e soldiers I knew for the most part believed that they were involved in a
cause so noble that they were willing to risk their lives on a daily basis to
ght the war. e leadership I witnessed at the company and platoon level
was both enlightened and informed and responsive to the commands that
were given from higher-ups. e cause, at the outset, was curtailing the
spread of communism throughout the world. I decided for myself that I did
believe in the war, that I would do my very best to do the di cult work of a
combat helicopter pilot, with the information and awareness of the factors at
stake in waging the war and based on the information I had available to me
at the time.
My awareness has been expanded in the later years of my life with the
disclosures of decisions made at both the political levels and the strategic
levels that were less than honorably motivated. I am deeply saddened about
these revelations and for the deaths of soldiers on all sides of this con ict. I
acknowledge, like the song says, that I was indeed a weapon in the Vietnam
War. It was a war intensely fought by courageous soldiers on all sides. I was
one of those soldiers.
I worked in the Marysville School District for 24 years and in three other
public school districts as an administrator for six more. Early on in my time
in Marysville, a very skilled superintendent and leader of the district saw the
power of a sta development program called “Increasing Human
E ectiveness.” Dick Huselton encouraged all sta to participate in the
program and selected teams consisting of a classi ed and a certi ed person
to teach the concepts of this program to all employees in the district for
college credit. Ultimately, we had about 400 employees trained in this
program.
e human potential movement was gaining support across the country,
and we were seeing some exciting results right in our district when people
began to realize how much of a di erence they could make not only in their
chosen profession of education but in their personal lives, as well. Some of
the dimensions in the program were awareness, self-image, self-esteem, self-
talk, visualization, goal setting, making and managing change, and achieving
your personal and professional goals and dreams one day at a time.
e concepts really struck a chord with me, and I began to implement
them in my personal and professional life. In one of the visioning activities, I
set a number of personal and professional goals. I was surprised by how
much progress I was able to make and the power of writing these goals
down, making a plan to accomplish them, and knowing how to take steps
each day that led me in the direction of a more satisfying and rewarding life.
e enthusiastic program author and presenter, Mr. Bob Moawad,
personally presented to those of us chosen to be on one of the
leadership/trainer teams, and he encouraged us to not place limits on our
thinking but to realize the tremendous potential we all had for unlimited
personal and professional growth and success.
I found that this training helped me not only in my work and personal
life, but in my thinking about the experiences I had had in combat in
Vietnam. I learned that most people’s thoughts are predominantly negative
and how powerful just changing your thoughts could be. It was a
transformational process for me personally and it came at a time—“a
teachable moment”—when I was in a particularly receptive mode for
internalizing this material.
One activity involved creating a personal list of all of the things you might
like to accomplish if you looked at your life as having no limits on what you
could accomplish. is is a very empowering activity that few people ever
engage in during their lifetime. For most people, their lives unfold in a
random manner, and their perception is that some people are just lucky and
others unlucky and that determines their success or failure in life. I listed the
following accomplishments I would like to see: achieve nancial
independence; get a doctoral degree; become a superintendent of schools;
hold public o ce; teach college; write a book; travel; have interesting
hobbies; maintain a spiritual dimension in my life; have positive
relationships; become a national-level presenter; achieve a high degree of
physical tness and lead a healthy lifestyle; travel; become an expert in a
certain area of my work; be a happy person; make a di erence in the quality
of life for others; be a good friend to my friends; be a positive in uence in
my family and have a satisfying family life; be a good parent; own an
airplane, boat, motorcycle, and log cabin; play the guitar and entertain
friends, family and others, etc. I wasn’t sure how I would accomplish all of it,
but it was exciting just listing the possibilities of a “no limit thinking” life. A
review of my résumé in my golden years is empowering because I have had
the joy of accomplishing these goals and many others along the way that I
had not ever dreamed I could accomplish. I attribute a lot of my success to
the power of positive thinking and to the strategies I learned in Human
E ectiveness training. My sincere thanks go out to my friend, mentor, and
visionary superintendent, Dick Huselton, and Bob Moawad (RIP) and his
Human E ectiveness training program that has enriched my life
immeasurably.
e VA has rated me as a 50 percent disabled Vietnam veteran for-
service-related conditions. I am a very active person. I have been blessed to
lead a very productive, active, and satisfying life from my point of view.
When I was evaluated with a number of assessments at the VA hospital in
2012 as part of my registering in the VA health care system, I was intrigued
by the comprehensiveness of the assessments and examinations. At the time
my interest was in registering with the VA while I had my faculties about me
as a pre-emptive measure for potential issues later in life when lling out
forms and gathering data would be challenging.
irty percent of my assigned disabilities are attributed to moderate to
severe damage to disks in my neck and back. I am in the Agent Orange
registry and ew gunship cover on defoliation missions where we were
around the stu in the loading areas and ew below and behind the spray
ship. I have been diagnosed with peripheral neuropathy involving my
extremities (hands and feet). I also have been tested for hearing loss related
to combat noise and have high-tech hearing aids provided by the VA that
interface with my iPhone.
On my own and separate from the VA, I had a laminectomy in 2014 with
titanium plates and screws that hold together the lower part of my back. I
had this operation a er a few bouts with pinched nerves and compromised
disks resulted in signi cant pain and discomfort in basic daily activities like
just getting out of bed and getting moving in the morning. I have found a
series of arch supports from the Good Feet Store to minimize the discomfort
of walking, regular exercise, balance and daily mobility. ey consist of three
arches that go in my shoes: a trainer arch that is only worn for an hour and
feels for that hour like I am walking on golf balls and creates a more
balanced feeling in my feet, a maintainer arch system that gives me better
balance and mobility during regular daily activities, and a relaxer arch
system that is for later in the a ernoon and evening. ese arches and
regular exercises, provided years ago by a gi ed trainer, have helped me
maintain my mobility and stay active and lead an extraordinarily mobile life.
One of my favorite activities is hiking in the Paci c Northwest, and I enjoy
doing this with friends and family.
During the medical tests done at the VA hospital, a doctor noticed that I
had a low thyroid result, and so I have been taking medication for this for
about nine years. For a number of years, I had a case of jungle foot that was
cleared up with medications by our dermatologist.
In my later years, I enjoyed college teaching and I thought how lucky we
are to live at this time when there are so many medical procedures and
forms of assistance to help prop us up and stay mobile and engaged in
productive and satisfying work. Getting ready for the day takes a little bit of
time and e ort to put oneself together, but the result is that the quality of
our lives is enhanced by these inventions and medical advances over the past
few years. Of course, my story is a very ordinary one compared to the
challenges many people face in their lives.
I am grateful for living at this particular time, for the VA bene ts that
provided much of my education and additional ight training, and for the
professionals who work in the VA medical profession. I look forward to the
exciting adventures that may be in my future. I have been blessed with a
long and very satisfying life a er Vietnam. I o en remember the 30 ight
crewmembers from our unit and the more than 58,000 men and women
whose lives ended in Vietnam and who have not had these additional years.
***
When I returned from Vietnam, like others who have been in a combat
environment for a year, I had the occasional start from loud noises that
would cause me to inch and feel like jumping under the nearest bed for
cover from incoming mortar rounds. While driving a car, it was
uncomfortable if people pulled up next to me. I always envisioned getting
zapped from the side, where I couldn’t see the shooter. I went to a few war
movies early on and ended up going up to the ticket window and
demanding my money back because I had seen enough of this stu for real
and didn’t want to pay for it for entertainment purposes. ese are typical
and very minor reactions a er being in a combat situation.
Probably the most visible forms of annoyance for my family involved the
need to walk around the house in the dark at night to check the doors, and a
preoccupation with hyper-organizing my environment that came from
almost being thrown out of Warrant O cer Candidate School for demerits
and disorganization of personal e ects.
I remember watching a video about Vietnam veterans and their spouses
going through a healing retreat exercise, and one veteran was asked why he
felt the need to carry a sidearm when hiking in the mountains. He
responded, “ ere might be some scary people up there.”
His wife chimed in, “ e only scary person up there carrying a weapon is
you!”
As part of the VA intake process, I also met with a psychologist in a glass-
high-rise building in downtown Seattle who ran me through a number of
tests and interview questions, but his conclusion was that I had experienced
quite a bit of combat in 1967–68 but that I seemed well adjusted with no
typical signs of PTSD.
 Memories, Legacy, Faith
Over the years, I have been invited to speak on Veterans Day on a number of occasions. I have
made these speeches in public and private schools, at the elementary and secondary levels, to
school boards and city councils, at a university, in churches, and to civic groups about what
Veterans Day means to me. e following is the speech that I have developed and given over the
years. I think that these invitations represent a sincere interest on the part of those making the
invitation and a unique opportunity to share a perspective from a primary-source participant in
the Vietnam War. When I have given these talks, I am always surprised at the unexpected and
uniquely personal responses they bring out from those in attendance. I share this with you in the
hope that other Vietnam veterans might consider making these talks and sharing their ideas and
use any of mine they think might be relevant. I tend to write out what I am going to say and then I
study the material and give the talk spontaneously like I am winging it:

ank you for the invitation to speak on this Veterans Day. I am honored
to be your Veterans Day speaker. I give these talks in memory of some very
special people who have not had the opportunity to live as I have.
When I was 20 years old I told my friends that I wanted to learn to y. I
started taking ying lessons at Paine Field in Everett, Washington, and the
most exciting day in my young life was when I rst soloed an airplane. Since
I was a teacher during my life I am going to weave some lessons into my talk
today. e rst lesson is: Treasure your dreams. You never know where
they will take you.
I enjoyed learning to y, but it cost a lot of money and I didn’t know how
I could a ord to pursue my dream of learning to y. One day I saw a poster
in a storefront in downtown Seattle that said you could learn to y
helicopters in the Army. I stopped in the place and found out it was an Army
recruiting o ce. ey said the Army was looking for young men in good
physical condition who were intelligent and interested in learning to y
helicopters. I said that sounded like me. ey invited me back to take
written test called the FAST test. It stood for Flight Aptitude Standards Test.
I took it and passed. ey said, “You quali ed, and if you want to become an
Army helicopter pilot you can enlist for that school and you can enter next
week.” ey also said, “If you become an Army warrant o cer and a
helicopter pilot a er the training you are probably going to go to Vietnam.” I
thought it over for a day or so and decided I would enlist. My second lesson
is: When opportunity knocks, answer the door.
I was assigned to Fort Polk, Louisiana, for basic training as an infantry
soldier. is training was to prepare me mentally and physically to be a
combat soldier. It was tough and I made many friends who supported me
and we all learned to support each other. My third lesson is: Friendships are
among life’s greatest gi s.
ere were many new and di cult things to learn, and learning implies
that you don’t know how to do something when you start but if you work
hard at it you can learn anything you set your mind to. My fourth lesson is:
Be humble. Realize that learning o en means you don’t know what you
are doing at the start. But stay with it and you can learn new skills and
information no matter how hard it seems.
Sometimes we were pushed very hard to stretch our physical and mental
abilities, and some of my friends got discouraged, but the ones who worked
hard and stayed with it learned the new skills. My h lesson is: Have a
positive attitude. It makes all the di erence!
When I was in ight school it was a lot of study and learning and it was
exciting. We learned how to y rst in lessons in a classroom, and then we
applied the lessons in learning to y actual helicopters. e ight instructors
would tell us what to do, show us how to do it, and then we would have a
chance to try and try again until we learned the skills. It was hard work, and
we practiced everything over and over again until doing them was second
nature. We even practiced how to land a helicopter if the engine quit. is
skill saved my life two times in Vietnam when the helicopter I was ying had
an engine failure. My sixth lesson is: Practice, practice, practice until you
really learn something.
My sixth lesson is: Study history. You might ask, “Why?” Because if you
study history, you will know why some civilizations thrive and some
disappear. Historians have documented that, over history, 22 civilizations
have ourished and vanished, and they have identi ed the main reasons
why these civilizations collapsed:
 1. ey lost their sense of right and wrong.
2. ey became obsessed with pleasure for pleasure’s sake.
3. ey let their money lose its value.
4. Honest work ceased to be a value.
5. Respect for law and order disintegrated and violence became accepted
for getting what individuals and groups wanted.
6. ey got to a point where the citizens of the country would not ght
for the country and so they paid soldiers from other countries to
defend them.
So here is lesson number seven: Always do what’s right
Lesson number eight: Be willing to put o immediate pleasure for a -
long-term greater good
Lesson number nine is: Learn about the value of your money and use it
wisely
Lesson number 10 is: Work hard
Lesson number 11 is: Respect the law and the rights of others
My nal lesson is number 12: Value and appreciate the choice that some
people make to serve our country in the military.
irty ight crewmembers from my unit gave the ultimate sacri ce of
their lives in the Vietnam War. Nine of these men were known to me and
gave their lives during the year that I was there. I would like to ask for nine
volunteers to help me remember these men by holding a rubbing I have
made o the Vietnam Wall in Washington, D.C., of their name and bringing
it up and placing it on the table by the American ag as I read them. I will
read these names as I read lines of the Pledge of Allegiance to conclude my
talk today. Remember to show respect for the ag and our country when the
Pledge of Allegiance is recited at a sports game or the start of a program.
I pledge allegiance to the ag—Captain Franklin S. Bradley
Of the United States of America—Warrant O cer Ricky Lee Hull
And to the Republic—Specialist Paul R. Anzelone
For which it stands—Specialist Michael Lynch
One nation–Chief Warrant O cer Francis L. Gri n
Under God—Specialist Michael Edward Ecker eld Indivisible—Warrant
O cer William G. Moncrief
With liberty—Specialist George S. Hadzega
 And justice for all—Specialist Willie B. Catling
On behalf of these great men and their ultimate sacri ce I thank you for
the privilege of speaking to you today.
A er Vietnam, like many of my fellow veterans, I had a deep sense of
responsibility to make a di erence with the rest of my life. I would like to be
remembered for having lived an ordinary life of service and adventure and
for always striving to listen, learn, grow, and help improve the quality of life
for others.
To my family. I love my wife and family members deeply. I didn’t always
show it to them in my actions and priorities. ey endured my personal
quirks in terms of being hyper-organized, intolerant of violence in
movies, and goal-oriented to distraction at times in pursuing my goals,
dreams, interests, and hobbies.
To my country as a combat helicopter pilot and Army chief warrant
o cer in Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
To the city of Langley, Washington, as appointed and elected mayor.
To students, sta , and parents in four high-quality public school
districts as a teacher and administrator.
To two high-quality Catholic schools, the students, sta , parents and
patrons, as a teacher and administrator.
To the Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) camping program, sta and
campers as a camper, counselor, and director.
To my beloved Catholic Church as a parish council president, Catholic
school principal, Eucharistic minister, director of stewardship, second
degree Knight of Columbus, musician, and CCD teacher.
To my fellow veterans through the Whidbey Veterans Resource Center as
interim VRC director and WVRC development advisor.
To my siblings as a proud brother and the executor of my parents’ estate.
To my profession in publishing two educational books on employee
recognition and a memoir of my Vietnam experience.
To the WWU Administration Certi cation Program and graduate
students by teaching principal and superintendent applicants part-time
and mentoring graduates for eight years in the Woodring College of
Education.
To the communities I have worked in on various ad hoc committees and
 task forces.
To my friends in sharing the joy of various activities and adventures with
family, special friends and strangers in ying, sailing, hiking, motorcycle
riding, old vehicle restoration, shing, camping, writing, guitar playing,
song writing, singing and public speaking and presenting.
To our neighbors in living our lives and being a helpful neighbor in
Seattle at our condo by the Locks, on Whidbey Island in Langley, in
Bellingham at our condo, and in Mount Baker at our log cabin, and
many years in Marysville.
I have been an active Catholic for my whole life and attribute my ability to
process my Vietnam experience and move on from it into a productive life
a erwards to my faith and belief system. I believe in the fundamental
precepts of my Church but not all of the formal positions it takes. I also
believe that the highest form of moral judgment comes from an informed
conscience. I feel responsible to use my talents, skills, and abilities to
improve the quality of life for others. I developed some leadership abilities in
combat in Vietnam that have been the basis for a life of leadership and
responsibility in education, public service, in the communities I have served,
and in my church. I believe our lives consist of a temporal life on this earth
and an eternal life a erwards.
Re ected in my writing, poems, stories, and letters home is a sense of
personal responsibility for my actions, compassion for others, forgiveness of
myself and others, and hope that the Vietnam War had some positive
implications for improving the quality of life for others. I realize that some
considered the Vietnam War a dark part of our nation’s history, and others
felt it was a war with no positive outcomes. I don’t share those points of
view. I knew many courageous people for whom I have the greatest respect
and admiration who served in the military during Vietnam. We did the best
we could as soldiers and aviators with the information and assignments we
had at the time.
We had a Catholic chaplain on our airbase in Vietnam, and he conducted
regular masses and the sacraments for us and memorials when someone was
killed in action. As I recall, he also served the other bases in the Delta. ere
was a chapel on our air eld that was a place to go to re ect and consider the
responsibilities we were carrying out in our assigned missions each day. He
 ew in helicopters in the unit on missions with some of the pilots. His
presence was an important part of the operation of our base. I believed in
the noble causes we were ghting for in supporting American values of
freedom and democracy and resisting communism and oppression. History
will ultimately judge our e orts.
 Reunions and Memorials
In the half-century since I was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, I have
enjoyed belonging to two Vietnam-related ight crew organizations. e
rst is the 121st Aviation Association and the second is the Vietnam
Helicopter Pilots Association (VHPA).
e VHPA includes any pilot from any military service who ew
helicopters as their primary assignment in Vietnam. is organization has
an annual reunion in a city in the United States and it is a large conference. I
have attended a few of these reunions and remember one in particular, the-
30-year reunion in San Francisco, where our whole family attended and
enjoyed seeing the other families and pilots as well.
e 121st Aviation Association also has an annual conference in a
strategic location, and it is much smaller group because it includes the
o cers and enlisted personnel from the units that were stationed at Soc
Trang associated with the 121st Assault Helicopter Company.

A Date with an Old Girlfriend UH1B 64–13972

A friend of mine, Bob Bogash, has been instrumental in putting teams of
what he calls “ghosts” together to acquire and restore iconic aircra for the
Seattle Museum of Flight. e “ghosts” are pilots, mechanics,
philanthropists, enthusiasts, ight crewmembers, and uniquely skilled
experts. His motto is “Go big or go home!” Among the aircra he and his
teams have acquired are the rst Boeing 727, a British/French Concorde, the
“Midnight Express” Vietnam B-52, and a Constellation. He believes (on a
stack of Bibles) that aircra have “souls” and can speak to “ghosts.”
I was a CW2 re team leader in UH-1B gunships with the 121st Assault
Helicopter Company stationed at Soc Trang, RVN, from December 1967 to
December 1968. We were in “ e World Famous Soc Trang Tigers.”
Humility was not considered a virtue in our company. My call sign was
Viking 23. A fellow pilot in the 121st, Tom Jameson, texted me and said,
“Hey padre, did you know that the aircra you commanded made it back
from our unit in Vietnam and is on display in South Carolina at Fort
Jackson?”

e Viking logo was on the nose cone of each of the gunships of the 121st Assault Helicopter
Company. Our company had many colorful nose cone art examples that are among the best
examples of this art form from the Vietnam War. Most were the work of an anonymous but highly
skilled painter from the nearby town of Soc Trang. In the gunship platoon our ships all had this
logo of a Viking with rockets under his arms and M60 machine guns in his hands blasting away.
Hanoi Hannah picked up on this logo and the fear it instilled in the enemy by calling us over the
radio airwaves “the Blue Diamond Devils of the Delta” (Shannon McCarthy).
My family members and I thought we would take a few sel es and then be on our way a er
spending some time with the aircra , but the lovely ladies in the public relations department at
Fort Jackson, unbeknown to us, had contacted the local news media and we were greeted by three
TV news teams and two radio news teams from Columbia, South Carolina. is picture of me is a
favorite of mine in that it captures not only the spiritual connection but also the physical
connection that a pilot makes with an aircra that has been own on some memorable missions
and brought the crew home (photograph by Shannon McCarthy).

My older son, Michael, a businessman and regional supervisor for

Springfree Trampolines, does business in Texas and Georgia and loves
visiting historic Charleston, South Carolina. He invited his mother and me
to accompany his family there on an epic four-day vacation just before
Christmas 2019. I didn’t want to hijack the trip over an old girlfriend, but
since I had found out that Fort Jackson was only a two-hour drive away, I
thought, “What the hell!!
Why don’t we add a little romantic side trip?” I found a picture of the “old
girl” on Google Maps using a website titled “Tour of Honor.” It is a list, data,
and coordinates of all displayed Vietnam helicopters. I made a few calls to
the fort’s public information o ce, and was tickled with their enthusiasm for
facilitating such a reunion.
Our visit occurred on December 23, 2019. ere was a monsoon rain
falling over South Carolina, the wind was howling, and there was a powerful
storm front in the whole area. I brought my old Class A uniform I hadn’t
worn in 50 years, my treasured Viking beret, a black Viking T-shirt we wore
back then, and my tail rotor chain wristband, and wore my ight school
class ring to be dressed appropriately for the reunion pictures we planned to
take with our cell phones. Four ladies from the public information o ce at
Fort Jackson went out of their way to welcome us to the base. eir names
were Veran, Darcie, Julie, and Leslie.
Our arrival was deferred by a car re on the interstate highway. As we
were delayed a few minutes in tra c on approach, we noti ed our hosts,
who mentioned that the three TV news teams and two radio station
reporters were waiting. is of course was quite an unexpected surprise, and
I was glad I had written out and rehearsed a few thoughts ahead of time. My
family said, “Hey, this is more than we expected!”
“Papa, are you going to introduce us?”
“Yes, of course!”
My granddaughter Lizah, eight years old, piped up, “Tell them I like
animals!”
“OK, I’ll tell them you sing in the Seattle Girls Choir, and if I get a chance
I’ll mention you like animals.”
We arrived at Gate #2 and were escorted by LA to the museum, passing
the aircra with its distinctive Viking logo in a menacing raked climb out
attitude perched in a tting display for the old girl from Vietnam. I was
breathless at seeing her restored in all her splendid glory but noticed right
away that she was not wearing a few of the de ning attributes I remembered
her for. e 2.75 rocket pods on each side and the mini guns were missing,
as were the call sign and cherries logo on the doors.
We stepped into the high-quality museum and I disappeared into the
restroom to transform from retired educator and politician to warrant
o cer. When I emerged they put three microphones on me and we took o .
e brief talk and interview went very well. I looked over some printed
memorabilia they had spread out like photographs a er Vietnam, an
original checklist, and data sheets they had for the aircra , and then we
adjourned to look at her in the pouring rain and take some more pictures.
e millennial-aged news crews were real troopers despite the rains and
made me feel important by asking for individual sel es with me a erwards.
I thought to myself, “Boy, we never got this response when we came back
from Nam.” A young Marine Corps vet called me “sir,” smiled, and said he
was deeply honored to meet me. I told everyone how impressive the display
was.
I remember at least one song written in the sixties about meeting up with
an old girlfriend and realizing the magic wasn’t there anymore. Well, for the
bene t of my former fellow gun drivers in the Vikings, I can truly say, she
looked even better than ever with age. And you too should go down and see
her.
Our unit has at least one other display, a Vietnam helicopter gunship
survivor that is at a memorial site in Angel Fire, New Mexico. It was own
on a memorable Easter Sunday mission in 1967 as a smoke ship by Father
Jerry Daly, then Chief Warrant O cer Daly, one of the most decorated
helicopter pilots in the Vietnam War, and our version of World War II’s
Pappy Boyington of the Black Sheep Squadron. A er he made 13 runs and
laid down smoke to cover saving the survivors of multiple crews who were
shot down in the landing zone, the ship was so full of bullet holes it had to
be taken out of service, “red Xed” as we used to say.
I was very fortunate to be in a company with this kind of history and this
kind of men. We were berated by Hanoi Hannah over the airwaves out of
radio North Vietnam as those “Blue Diamond Devils of the Delta.” I can’t
think of a more exciting and tting tribute to a bunch of young 20-
something helicopter pilots from the Vietnam War.
Interspersed with the Pledge of Allegiance I read the names of nine of our
friends who were lost as ight crewmembers in 1968, out of the 30 total who
gave their lives for their friends and the mission from the Tigers and Vikings
with our unit during the war. We must never forget them. I do believe that-
UH-1B 64–13972 has a “soul,” and I am so honored to have earned the title
of a “ghost” from my friend Bob.
e last interview question was the most di cult to answer: “Did this
helicopter have a name when you ew her?”
“Yes,” I responded. “Yes, but it was sort of politically incorrect and a
surprise that my crew chief thought up and told me about later a er he had
already painted it on. It probably became one of the most well-known
helicopters by its name in our unit and in the IV Corps area of the Mekong
Delta. Are you sure you want to know?”
“Of course we do!” replied the news crews.
“Well,” I said, hesitating a moment: “It was called the Cherry Buster, and it
had two big red cherries and Viking 23 painted on each door!”
I notice they are not there now and that’s OK. ose of us who know her
know her name. All I can say is we were soldiers once and we were so young.
We were “Above the Best.” e best were down in the jungles and rice
paddies, and we did everything we could to support them. We are all proud
of being Vietnam veterans and helicopter ight crewmembers. For many of
us it changed our lives forever.

Monuments and Memorials

Soc Trang Tigers and Vikings Monument, Fort Rucker, Alabama
In the summer of 2012, my wife, Shannon, and I returned to the Army
Helicopter Training Center at Fort Rucker, Alabama, for a very special
dedication. Members from our company, the 121st Assault Helicopter
Company, that were stationed at Soc Trang and also at Da Nang, came from
all across the country to dedicate a beautiful black marble monument to 30
ight crewmembers who made the ultimate sacri ce during their tour of
duty during the time our unit was actively involved in the Vietnam War.

Vietnam Helicopter Pilots and Crewmembers Monument in

Arlington National Cemetery, Washington, D.C.
On April 18, 2018, a er years of dedicated hard work and advocacy on
the part of leaders of the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association, a very
special monument was placed in Arlington National Cemetery to
commemorate forever the lives of 5,000 ight crewmembers who were lost
during the Vietnam War. A featured speaker at the dedication was Brigadier
General Carl McNair, who was our company commander in 1968. Father
Jerry Daly, who was the Vikings platoon leader for our gunship platoon in
1967–1968, gave the benediction.
A Headstone for ousands: A Long Journey
Completed by Tom Kirk

is monument to 5,000 helicopter pilots and ight crewmembers who made the ultimate
sacri ce for the mission and in support of the ground troops from 1961 to 1975 in Vietnam did
not just happen. It was because of the e orts of Mr. Bob Hesslebein and a dedicated Legacy
Committee of VHPA volunteers over a number of years and through many channels and
exceptions to standard rules and regulations that this monument exists where it should be in
Arlington National Cemetery for generations to see and remember (Lisa Kirk McAndrew;
courtesy VHPA Aviator).
Arlington National Cemetery is the nation’s preeminent memorial to those who have made the
ultimate sacri ce for our country. e helicopters ying overhead in a V “missing man”
formation with one helicopter missing reminds us that there was a signi cant cost in terms of
human life during and a er this war, as there is in all wars. Missing for many who returned from
combat in Vietnam was the thanks of a grateful nation. Our country learned a lesson from
Vietnam. e soldiers who fought there did the best they could and in some cases felt blamed for
the war. Today there is a better understanding of the costs incurred in waging a war and the
country regularly expresses gratitude for the men and women who are willing to put themselves
in harm’s way to serve honorably this country that we love. Identity of individuals unknown
(Carolyn Kirk; courtesy VHPA Aviator).
It is tting that a simple granite monument with the picture of a Huey helicopter, the dates of the
Vietnam War, and the symbols of the services of our country would be the headstone for these
brave ight crewmembers. ey were courageous in battle, dedicated and willing to lay down
their lives for the mission, their fellow soldiers, and their friends. No greater love than this can
there be. Military service has been one of those pillars that represent a strong nation going back
in history to the earliest of times and con icts. e crowd that assembled for this memorable day
was a cross section of America here to honor the legacy of these brave ight crewmembers. e
commanding o cer of our company in Vietnam was Colonel Carl McNair. He was our leader
during the 1968 Tet O ensive of the 121st Assault Helicopter Company, “ e World Famous Soc
Trang Tigers,” and he returned to give the keynote speech at this dedication. Attendees at the
Monument Dedication, le to right: Retired Colonel Herrick and Retired Brigadier General Carl
McNair (Lisa Kirk McAndrew; courtesy VHPA Aviator).
 ese retired high-ranking Army o cers who attended the memorial dedication were in charge
of infantry and aviation units in Vietnam. ere was a special bond between the soldiers in the
jungles and rice paddies and the ight crews that brought them in, covered them, and pulled
them out of combat. As ight crewmembers we were reminded we were “Above the Best.” at
meant we were ying above the best. e best were down in the jungles and rice paddies, and we
needed to do everything we could to help and support them. e Vietnam Wall is a sacred
monument that has a special meaning for veterans. is monument, a short distance away in this
special place, will be a sacred reminder far into the future of the Vietnam War and the sacri ces
made by so many. e friendships forged in a combat situation are among the most endearing of
life’s relationships. We will always remember the ultimate sacri ce made by so many. Le to right:
Major Frank Moreno, Colonel Paul Winkel, Colonel Bob St. Louis, Brigadier General Jack
Nicholson (Col. Robert St. Louis; courtesy VHPA Aviator).
How tting it was for Bob Hesselbein (le ), past VHPA president and chairman of the VHPA
Legacy Committee, to introduce Father Jerry Daly, former Viking platoon leader and Catholic
priest, to lead the gathered in a benediction of this sacred monument: two warriors returning in
their civilian roles to honor those who made the ultimate sacri ce for their country (Lisa Kirk
McAndrew; courtesy VHPA Aviator).

For many, the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots and Crewmembers Monument

seemed like a unicorn—many details but no sightings.
e VHPA envisioned a non-governmental funded, logical, appropriate
and well-deserved symbol for the men who le our ranks while ying in the
“Helicopter War.” Bob Hesselbein was appointed chairman of the Legacy
Committee and immediately entered a world where logic (if used) was
skewed. Due to his e orts, the support of the members of our organization,
some legislative benefactors, and o cials supportive of the project, all of the
challenges were overcome. e long-awaited monument was dedicated on
April 18, 2018, with suitable ceremony and in the presence of several
thousand people.
I attended as a member of the Legacy Committee, not a reporter. e
print and electronic coverage has been widespread and comprehensive as
well as available well in advance of this issue’s printing. I can add, however,
what the cameras may not have revealed. Many in the audience honoring
our fallen brothers were Gold Star Family members, friends, currently
serving members of our Armed Forces, and even a contingent of VNAF
pilots. e emotions they displayed were as varied as their status.
ere are too many names to list as participants on this long journey to
that sunny April day. I hope those who went before us had a “sky box” for
the event.
 Appendix: e Men Who Gave eir Lives
e 30 men from the 121st Assault Helicopter Company who gave their lives for the mission and
their friends during the Vietnam War
 Author’s Service History

CW2 Frederick C. McCarthy (5 years total), U.S.

Army
Basic and Advanced Infantry Training—Fort Polk, Louisiana Dec 1966–
Mar 1967
Primary Helicopter Flight Training—Fort Wolters, Texas Mar 1967–Jul
1967
Advanced Helicopter Flight Training—Fort Rucker, Alabama Aug 1967–
Dec 1967
Warrant O cer–Helicopter Pilot—121st Assault Helicopter Company—
Soc Trang, Vietnam Dec 1967–Dec 1968
Meteorology and Flight Subjects Instructor—Fort Wolters, Texas Jan
1969–Dec 1969
Pilot–540th Assault Helicopter Company–WA State National Guard—
Fort Lewis, Washington Oct 1970–Jun 1971
Pilot–92nd Avn Co—U.S. Army Reserve—Paine Air eld, Everett,
Washington—Dec 1975–Sep 1977

Awards and Decorations—DD 214

National Defense Service Medal
Army Aviator Badge
Vietnam Service Medal
Vietnam Campaign Medal
Air Medal with Two Oakleaf Clusters with “V” device
Air Medal Meritorious Service
Two Overseas Bars

Miscellaneous Data
1,300 ight hours of helicopter missions in Vietnam
UH-1 D & H model slicks and UH-1B model gunships
 Tet O ensive of 1968
Soc Trang Tigers and Vikings

Helicopters
Hughes TH 55
Bell TH 47
UH-1 A, B, D, H Hueys
Sikorsky CH 34
Hiller OH 23
Class A uniform a er Vietnam tour. In this photograph, I see the experience of 1,300 ight hours
of missions, surviving the war, and what being in combat does to age a young person. At the time,
I wrote to my parents that I was 22 but felt like I was 42.
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 Index of Terms
Agent Orange
Air America
aircra commander
AK-47
area of operation
Armed Forces Radio
Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN)
Army Times
artillery; detachment
ash and trash
autorotation
awards and decorations o cer
B-52 (the drink)
B model
babysan
Bac Lieu
ballistic helmet
beret
black t-shirts
Brown Water Navy
bullet bouncer (chicken plate)
C model
C rations
Cambodian border
Can o
carpet bombing
cashes
chaplain
Charlie model
Cherry Buster
Chi-com Mauser
chief warrant o cer (CWO)
Chieu Hoi Center
chin bubble
civic actions o cer
close re support
collective
combat assault
combat cocked
command and control (C and C)
commercial helicopter rating
control tower
correspondence course
crew
crew chief
cyclic
D model
Daly, Jerry
date of estimated return from overseas (DEROS)
di di mau
Dien Bien Phu
disorientation
door gunner
downtown
drill sergeant
dry season
Duong Dong
Dusto
engine failure
extraction
.50 caliber
Five Canals
ares
ight line
FM
Fort Jackson, South Carolina
Fort Polk, Louisiana
Fort Rucker, Alabama
Fort Wolters, Texas
.45
free re zone
friendlies
Giap, General
glider
Greatest Generation
grenade
gunships
H model
Ha Tien
hamlet
Hanoi Hanna
Harnish, Jerry (Uncle)
Hawaii
heavy re team
Ho Chi Minh
Ho Chi Minh Trail
Hoa, Father
Hoboken
hog
hooches
hospital
hot refuel/rearm
hover
hueys
in country r and r
incoming
insertion
instructor pilot (IP)
intramurals
IV Corps
JP4
jungle canopy
jungle fatigues
Jungle Rot and Khaki Bloomers
just war theory
Kenmore, Washington
Khang Hung
killed in action (KIA)
landing zone (LZ)
light re team
lights o
lightship
Long Binh
low leveling
Lucking, Jim
M-16
M-60
magic carpet ride
main gate
mangrove
mayday, mayday
McCarthy, Betty
McCarthy, Bob (Jim)
McCarthy, John
McCord Airforce Base
McNair, Carl
Mekong Delta
Memorial—121st AHC—KIAs—Fort Rucker, Alabama
Memorial—Flight Crew Members—Arlington Cemetery, WA DC
mess hall
military police
mine eld
Minh, General
Minh, General Little
Minh, Ho Chi
mini gun
missing in action (MIA)
Mobile Riverine Force
monsoon
mortars
morti cation
Mount Rainier
Nam Can
New Guinea
Ngo DImnh Diem
Ninth Infantry Division
North Vietnamese Army (NVA)
nose cone; art
o cer of the day (OD)
Old Shakey
121st Assault Helicopter Company
Opelousas, Louisiana
operational area (AO)
operational RPM (6,600)
operations
operations o cer (Ops)
orphanage
orphans
outpost
overlapping rotor blades
P-38
Paddy Control
perimeter
Phu Quoc
pick up zone (PZ)
picnics, orphans
pilot
platoon
POL area
pop smoke
pulling pitch
PX
r and r
racetrack pattern
Rach Gia
red line
refectory
reticle
rice paddies
Richards, Steve
rocket pods
rotor blades
Rowe, Maj. James Nikki
rule of silence
S turn
Saigon
Saint Edward’s Seminary
Saint Patrick’s Elementary School
Sampan
Sandbags
scramble
Seattle Prep
secondary explosion
seminary
service-related disabilities
Seven Canals
Seven Mountains
sidearm
sight picture
silver wings
Sister Martha
sit rep
67-19
skids
slick driver
slicks
smokeship
sni er
sniper
Soc Trang
special forces
special services
spray rig
staggered trail
standard operating procedure (SOP)
suppressive re
swi boats
swimming pool/water supply
switches
Tacoma
tactical o cer (TAC)
Tahoma National Cemetery
tail rotor
Tan Son Nhut
Tet O ensive
TH-13
TH-55
Tieu Can
Tiger Lead
Tigers’ Den
Tiger’s Tail
Tour of Honor
tracers
trail
trajectory
Trans Texas Airlines
translational li
two step viper
U-Minh
VA bene ts
VC
Veterans Day talk
VHF
Viet Cong
Viking
Vs of three
Vung Tau
water moccasin
wing ship
wingman
Wyco , New Jersey
YO-3A glider
Zippo