For those of you computer gurus out there, go to google earth and plug in Phan Thiet. If you fly a short distance away from the coast and head back toward Xuan Loc, you will see that things become a bit mountainous.
The NVA and VC loved to hide there and we didn't have any fire support bases on the top of the mountains in that area. In June of 1970, less than one month of my tour in Vietnam, lesson number 1 in the "Oh Shit" department was given to me by Craig Wollman and one of the gunners who I think was Little O.
The bad boys had decided to attack one of our field units and they called in for air support. The Colonel apparently had Wollman on call because we were scrambled to get the Command and Control Helicopter ready, the one with the huge radio package in the back, and Craig led the charge of crew to the Huey that was parked just outside the burm at Mace.
Everybody was running to the ship including the Colonel. In less time than it takes to write about it, the crew had the rotor blade tie downs off the rotor blade, the turbine inlet guide vane filters off and the engine was spooling up with that familiar whine the everyone is familiar with when a jet starts up.
I wasn't hooked up to the Colonel's scrambler radio set in the back but I was hooked into the intercom and Wollman and I both heard everything the Colonel wanted us to do through the intercom. I didn't know exactly what was going on but I knew there was one hell of a firefight going on somewhere and continued to flip my map as Craig continued to head to the area where all hell was breaking loose.
As we approached the site of the battle, I saw a pair of Huey gunships making gun runs toward the mountain as well as the impact of artillery rounds landing on the side of the mountain.
This was my first daylight experience of a huge ground attack and my mind was running a million miles an hour. I was trying my best to pay attention to the details coming from the instrument panel, listening to the ground commander who was now coming across our headsets as he transmitted the situation reports from his PRC 10, hand held, field radio set.
I didn't know which artillery battery was being used to suppress the enemy but I know that the Colonel told us to hold west of the battle field and make north south runs. Craig banked the Huey and began making back and forth passes so the Colonel could watch the firefight below and just east of where we were orbiting. I wasn't scared shitless but I was speeding a million miles an hour trying to do the best a newbie copilot could do in the middle of a really bad situation.
As if there wasn't enough going on at the time, the Colonel contacted another artillery battery and added them to which ever battery was already being used by the ground commander. With all the shells landing, and Wollman and I being in a position to see every one as they impacted,
the Colonel began ordering a complete reconfiguration in the responses we were making in the battle field.
He ordered the gunships that were on station to get out of the area and to hold east and north of the battle field. Worse than that, he then told Craig to change his holding pattern so we wouldn't be shot out of the air by our own artillery.
I had a momentary flashback of the difficulties I had during the artillery adjustment phase of tactics and hoped like hell that Craig wouldn't ask me anything. About that time, Craig scared the BeJesus out of me and I have never forgotten the maneuver he made to meet the demands of the Colonel and to avoid so much artillery fire flying through the air. What did he do? He stopped!
I mean he literally brought the Huey to a very serious slow flight condition that I considered to be as close to hovering as possible. In effect, he put the nose in the wind which at that altitude may have been 15 knots or so. That was enough to give him enough lift to keep the helicopter from falling out of the sky but it was not enough to eliminate my pucker factor which was attempting to suck the entire co pilots seat up my ying yang. I will admit now that I was scared shitless. Not only had I never heard of anything like this being done, I'd been taught not to do it.
All I could think of was the biggest rule of all that dictated that we never give the enemy a stationary target unless we were forced to like times when we had to land and off load or extract troops from the ground.
Here I am, fresh out of flight school and more current with Ft. Rucker's tactics course than anyone else in the unit. I didn't know what to think and actually looked over at Craig to see if he'd caught a round and was just frozen in his seat. When I looked at his face, I even became more concerned than I was previously.
He looked like he was as comfortable as a guy on a coffee break. I don't mean to imply that he was enjoying any of this but reflections of the past and many more combat missions with him bring me to the conclusion that he was just real happy with the performance of the ship and wasn't at all worried about falling out of the sky.
Nothing seemed to phase him including the fact that there were 51 caliber anti aircraft positions on the mountain that could have shot our asses down at a much higher altitude than we were flying. Despite that, I remember being embarrassed when I asked him such a stupid question as to explain why we were hovering. He just smiled and said something to the effect that he was avoiding artillery lines. He added that he would explain it later which was a really considerate answer and far better than "You know nothing idiot, sit back, shut up and learn".
After the Colonel had directed all the artillery in the world on that little space in Vietnam, the battle was over. He promised something like an extraction of the men or an immediate resupply, congratulated Captain Dave, who I would meet later and then told us to head for the barn.
I learned alot of things on that day and Wollman's aerial tactical skills were only one. I saw how a fighting Colonel could arrive at the battle field, take control and literally make one hell of a difference. I knew that I was in real good shape with guys like Wollman serving as Aircraft Commanders and Colonel Collins actually getting into the battle and making things happen.
I have a lot of stuff to tell about Wollman but for now Imma hang this up and call it a night. I hope you guys appreciate the details of this as it was guys like Wollman that wrote the book on rotary wing combat tactics and co pilots like me that he mentored on every mission. I eventually replaced Aircraft commanders as they went home, mentored the new guys and created some of my own tactics. Thanks to Craig Wollman, Dudley Young, Terry Femmer (rip), J. C. Moore and Kat Ballew for helping me become the combat pilot that I became.
Friday, March 30, 2012
First Room Mate and Flyin' with Fireball Pilots
After day 1 in the Area of Operations, we flew back to Long Binh where I was to officially check in with Headquarters of the 199th. Once the paper work was properly attended to, I was assigned to the officer's barracks where I met Ed Wolfe. Ed was obviously a well educated guy and, by the looks of his area, he was really squared away. He was so squared away I thought that he would be a perfect officer to replace Diable once Ed was finished with his tour and headed back to the States. He was REALLY squared away.
Everything was in it's proper place including Ed's uniform, flight suit, flight helmet, flak jacket, firearm and personal items. As I reflect on that day, I recall that Ed looked something like an actor that had played a part in a World War II movie as a pilot flying during the Battle of the Bulge. He even looked the part of a combat aviator.
As luck would have it, I was chosen immediately to go back to FSB Mace. As I recall the next morning I went to the revetment area and went through the pre flight checks of the aircraft. I don't remember who I was to fly with that day but I remember getting the map so it must have been Dudley Young. Dudley had a really large map that was laminated and folded in a fashion that regardless of which magnetic heading you were flying, you could just flip the map and continue to fly using the VFR charts (Visual Flight Rules).
I didn't know how the pilot rotations went but it seems that immediately after my first orientation flight around the AO, I was assigned another one, a real combat mission and not just an indoctrination flight.
I flew that one with Terry Femmer as I vividly remember that once we took off from Mace, we headed north north east over the jungle and that it was so dark, part of the flight had me totally focusing on the instruments just as if we were in a cloud and couldn't see the ground.
I remember writing the name of the firebase and the magnetic heading from FSB Mace on my map with a grease pencil that all pilots kept with them in a slot on the arm of their flight suits. I think it was Dudley that told me that he had references written down on his maps that would allow him to make references to that if he lost an engine or was shot down from high altitude. It sounded like more of the "Diable Maneuver" as Dudley, like Diable, seemed to memorize everything.
He could recite the magnetic heading from Mace and the flying time to help the search teams find the downed crew and aircraft. "Mayday, mayday, mayday, Fireball 337 going down 7 minutes north east of Mace on 065 degrees magnetic". I realized how important that was and talked to Dudley at length about it. Dudley gave me another example that included writing down the six digit grid co-ordinates of certain land marks to add to the information about magnetic headings and flight times. To this day, I recall the six digit grid co-ordinate of Mace to be Yankee Tango 106601.
Luckily for me, during my first Nighthawk mission, Femmer and I didn't have any contact that night but we did fly a few gun patterns around the Fire Base just to let the VC or NVA know that if they wanted to show their asses, we would show up and cover the entire area with a 4,000 round per minute minigun that was located on one side of the ship and a 50 caliber machine gun that was located on the other.
Just for good measure, we also had an M 60 machine gun located behind each of those weapons just in case all of the action was on one side of the ship. We could put out 4,650 rounds per minute of suppressing fire and do so with a great degree of effectiveness because we had real good gunners who hated the enemy and wanted, in their language, "to bust that ass". That phrase came from O'Chadluss who we referred to as Little O. His big brother served with the 199th as well and that's the nick name he had and it stuck. To this day, we still refer to him as Little O.
Even though I had only been "In Country" for less than a week, I was going to take my 3rd flight, the first one that was in broad daylight. It's real easy to remember that because I was under the impression that newbie pilots were to be slowly but surely indoctrinated into unit operations before an Aircraft Commander wanted to have them as a copilot. Didn't happen that way for me. They wanted the new guys to get some combat time right off the bat so they could determine who could take it and who could not.
In any event, the Colonel wanted to take a daylight tour of the AO and he chose one of 3 of his favorite pilots to be the Aircraft Commander. I recall that to be Craig Wollman. Almost immediately, I learned a valuable lesson from Craig that I used throughout my entire combat tour.
It was hot as hell that day and to compound the problems of high density altitudes, the Colonel's ship was always heavy. It had a huge radio set in the back and more often that not, he wasn't the only one on board when his inspection tours took place. Often times he brought Sgt Major Hamm with him as well as our two gunners, me and whoever was Aircraft Commander that day. With full fuel and all the ammunition we had to carry, it was a heavy load.
Wollman picked up to a hover and told me to write down the OAT, outside air temperature, the EGT, exhaust gas temperature of the turbine engine and the torque meter reading. He briefly explained that he did that repeatedly and logged the readings as it would, over time, give you an indication that the turbine engine might be getting weaker and weaker as engine times rose. We were okay to proceed with the flight and off we went.
I didn't know it at the time but this was going to be the first daylight combat mission I would fly and that I would learn that the guys who had been flying combat missions in Vietnam were writing a different kind of tactics book than the one I had studied and practiced so hard at Ft. Rucker. Wollman was a master at current combat tactics and I was still stuck on page 12 from Ft. Rucker. You have to remember that I had only been in Vietnam for two or three weeks when this battle occurred and effectively, I didn't know how much the current tactics had changed those that were taught in flight school.
I'll have to close this now as Wollman's aircraft commander skills that day would teach me another lesson far more valuable that checking the OAT, EGT and torque readings. This account will not be one of those stories that start off with "Once upon a time" and will more likely be classified as "This is no shit". Stand by. the story of Craig Wollman begins next.
Everything was in it's proper place including Ed's uniform, flight suit, flight helmet, flak jacket, firearm and personal items. As I reflect on that day, I recall that Ed looked something like an actor that had played a part in a World War II movie as a pilot flying during the Battle of the Bulge. He even looked the part of a combat aviator.
As luck would have it, I was chosen immediately to go back to FSB Mace. As I recall the next morning I went to the revetment area and went through the pre flight checks of the aircraft. I don't remember who I was to fly with that day but I remember getting the map so it must have been Dudley Young. Dudley had a really large map that was laminated and folded in a fashion that regardless of which magnetic heading you were flying, you could just flip the map and continue to fly using the VFR charts (Visual Flight Rules).
I didn't know how the pilot rotations went but it seems that immediately after my first orientation flight around the AO, I was assigned another one, a real combat mission and not just an indoctrination flight.
I flew that one with Terry Femmer as I vividly remember that once we took off from Mace, we headed north north east over the jungle and that it was so dark, part of the flight had me totally focusing on the instruments just as if we were in a cloud and couldn't see the ground.
I remember writing the name of the firebase and the magnetic heading from FSB Mace on my map with a grease pencil that all pilots kept with them in a slot on the arm of their flight suits. I think it was Dudley that told me that he had references written down on his maps that would allow him to make references to that if he lost an engine or was shot down from high altitude. It sounded like more of the "Diable Maneuver" as Dudley, like Diable, seemed to memorize everything.
He could recite the magnetic heading from Mace and the flying time to help the search teams find the downed crew and aircraft. "Mayday, mayday, mayday, Fireball 337 going down 7 minutes north east of Mace on 065 degrees magnetic". I realized how important that was and talked to Dudley at length about it. Dudley gave me another example that included writing down the six digit grid co-ordinates of certain land marks to add to the information about magnetic headings and flight times. To this day, I recall the six digit grid co-ordinate of Mace to be Yankee Tango 106601.
Luckily for me, during my first Nighthawk mission, Femmer and I didn't have any contact that night but we did fly a few gun patterns around the Fire Base just to let the VC or NVA know that if they wanted to show their asses, we would show up and cover the entire area with a 4,000 round per minute minigun that was located on one side of the ship and a 50 caliber machine gun that was located on the other.
Just for good measure, we also had an M 60 machine gun located behind each of those weapons just in case all of the action was on one side of the ship. We could put out 4,650 rounds per minute of suppressing fire and do so with a great degree of effectiveness because we had real good gunners who hated the enemy and wanted, in their language, "to bust that ass". That phrase came from O'Chadluss who we referred to as Little O. His big brother served with the 199th as well and that's the nick name he had and it stuck. To this day, we still refer to him as Little O.
Even though I had only been "In Country" for less than a week, I was going to take my 3rd flight, the first one that was in broad daylight. It's real easy to remember that because I was under the impression that newbie pilots were to be slowly but surely indoctrinated into unit operations before an Aircraft Commander wanted to have them as a copilot. Didn't happen that way for me. They wanted the new guys to get some combat time right off the bat so they could determine who could take it and who could not.
In any event, the Colonel wanted to take a daylight tour of the AO and he chose one of 3 of his favorite pilots to be the Aircraft Commander. I recall that to be Craig Wollman. Almost immediately, I learned a valuable lesson from Craig that I used throughout my entire combat tour.
It was hot as hell that day and to compound the problems of high density altitudes, the Colonel's ship was always heavy. It had a huge radio set in the back and more often that not, he wasn't the only one on board when his inspection tours took place. Often times he brought Sgt Major Hamm with him as well as our two gunners, me and whoever was Aircraft Commander that day. With full fuel and all the ammunition we had to carry, it was a heavy load.
Wollman picked up to a hover and told me to write down the OAT, outside air temperature, the EGT, exhaust gas temperature of the turbine engine and the torque meter reading. He briefly explained that he did that repeatedly and logged the readings as it would, over time, give you an indication that the turbine engine might be getting weaker and weaker as engine times rose. We were okay to proceed with the flight and off we went.
I didn't know it at the time but this was going to be the first daylight combat mission I would fly and that I would learn that the guys who had been flying combat missions in Vietnam were writing a different kind of tactics book than the one I had studied and practiced so hard at Ft. Rucker. Wollman was a master at current combat tactics and I was still stuck on page 12 from Ft. Rucker. You have to remember that I had only been in Vietnam for two or three weeks when this battle occurred and effectively, I didn't know how much the current tactics had changed those that were taught in flight school.
I'll have to close this now as Wollman's aircraft commander skills that day would teach me another lesson far more valuable that checking the OAT, EGT and torque readings. This account will not be one of those stories that start off with "Once upon a time" and will more likely be classified as "This is no shit". Stand by. the story of Craig Wollman begins next.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Reporting to Fireball Aviation. First combat.
In somewhat of a similar situation to the reception station at Ft. Polk, we found ourselves checking in at the first stop before we were assigned to our unit. Once that was completed, we began hanging around and looking for other pilots we knew.
It was like a meeting of Who's Who from the 5th WOC. Bill Reinhardt was there as were many others but Bill was a magnetic personality to say the least and alot of the 5th WOC guys gathered around him as he and another pilot were quite familiar with Vietnam and had somewhat of a back ground as to where "not to go".
They gave us a single sheet of paper filled with the names of helicopter units all over Vietnam. Since I didn't have a clue, I guess I simply took the luck of the draw and hit a home run. I was assigned to the 199th Light Infantry Brigade that was headquartered very close to the Replacement Battalion barracks and on day one, a jeep drive picked me up to take me to the 199th and the famous Fireball Aviation section.
The driver dropped me off at a large green hanger that had a "Fireball Aviation" sign above the doors. I thanked him, got out of the jeep with my bag and began looking around. There wasn't a single soul on the airfield, in the hanger or the barracks. It appeared that all of the helicopters were gone except one, that nobody was home and I was dropped off to a large facility filled with nothing. I began to wonder where headquarters was located so I could begin my in processing. About that time, a Spec 4 Ron West pulled up in a jeep. He was the Aviation Sections Jeep Driver and I was real glad to see him.
After a brief introduction, he pointed to the D model Huey on the field, the only helicopter there, and said that I needed to fly it to Xuan Loc immediately. I was pretty much staggered by the request as I knew I was required to have an aircraft commander check me out first, a Area of Operations Orientation Flight had to be completed and a fit and proper check in at the company was needed before I did anything. To add insult to injury, the D model wasn't anything like I'd flown before. We had A and B models in flight school and compared to them, this helicopter looked like a monster.
Word spread that the replacement pilot had arrived and before long some of the guys came back from the forward area and I was taken to Xuan Loc for introductions. When I reported, I noticed that Major Lewis had a ring on his finger that indicated he was a fraternity man in college and belonged to Kappa Alpha, the same one I did. After a short discussion regarding college and some recollections of our mutual experiences, he called someone in and told them to find me a bunk and introduce me to the pilots.
I don't want to claim that my association with the KA gave me an edge up on any new guys coming into the Aviation Section, but Major Lewis made sure that I met the most experienced pilots first. I can't remember if it was Terry Femmer, Craig Wollman or Dudley Young but those were the 3 I flew with more than any others. There was one other character named Nelson Kat Ballew but I only flew with him on a few occasions even though he was one of the older guys.
Femmer, Young and Wollman were alot like Diable in that they took me under their wing and were real glad to see that a new guy was reporting and that I would be assigned to fly Hueys for Nighthawk missions instead of Loaches that did the tree top scout work that had taken the life of Bob Gorske, the pilot I was replacing.
Since it was late in the day and all of the schedules were already in place, I was taken to an underground bunker where several bunks were located. I found it strange that there were slit holes in the bunker through which we could fire our M 16's during ground attacks. That's when the "holy shit" part of my perception began.
One of the crew members told me that we would be moving to Fire Support Base Mace for operations and that almost all of the time, the pilots slept in the rear area in Long Binh where I initially reported for duty. He told me not to worry because Long Binh wasn't nearly as dangerous a place to be than Xuan Loc and FSB Mace. For some reason, that wasn't all that comforting but I continued to take in everything I could so I could fit in.
Not long after sunset, we were awakened by the loudest noise I had ever heard in my life. The men jumped out of the barracks screaming "Incoming, Incoming" as they headed toward the slit holes. At that time a huge 155 Howitzer began to return fire and it was louder than whatever the VC or the NVA was shooting at us. The concussion from both incoming and outgoing fire was a real awakening for a guy who had not yet been in the unit 12 hours. I recall thinking that "IF this is what day one is like, how in God's name will I ever survive this war".
Apparently, it was a single aggrevation round that the VC or NVA shot at us as often as they could, as the attack never included additional incoming rounds that night. Early the next morning, I was picked up by a Huey, flown to FSB Mace which was only two or three minutes flying time from Xuan Loc, and was introduced to the Commanding Officer of the 199th. He immediately made me feel very welcome to the unit. He didn't say anything about General Bond being killed nearby by a sniper nor did he mention anything about the loss of Bob Gorske, the pilot I was replacing.
Before long, I was given my initial Area of Operations Orientation Flight which pointed out a couple of Fire Support Bases in the jungle as well as a rail road track and some roads that we could use to navigate by if our navigation equipment was shot away.
It was a very short flight as I recall because I was somewhat surprised with the thoughts I had surrounding the appearance that all we had to do was cover two or three FSBs that weren't really that far away from Mace.
When that flight was at it's eastern most limit, I was given the controls and told to fly back to Mace. To me, it was pretty much of a no brainer because I knew that the east west road to Phan Thiet would be my southern boundry and the rail road track would be my northern boundry. All I had to do was fly west and look for the Mountain we referred to as Signal Mountain.
That's where, at the base of the mountain, FSB Mace was located. I'm pretty sure that flight was commanded by Dudley Young as Dudley was a maniac as it related to navigation. He had the best of the best map information and all of the co-pilots in the unit, as I recall, had one of the maps to carry with them at all times.
I have a really cool story to tell about that but it will have to wait till later. I just wanted to set up the story of my first 24 hours with the 199th and the fact that the Army reports that unit to be the one that had more combat hours per pilot than any other unit in Vietnam. Since that statistic is a published statistic from the Army, we are all very proud to have served with them at that time.
I'll continue this later tonight or tomorrow but I have a doctor's appointment and a funeral that I have to attend today and I don't want to be late for either one. Stand by as I have some incredible stories about a pilot that I consider to be the best Night Combat Operations pilot that I ever knew, flew with or even heard about. That would be Craig Wollman and I have some whoppers to tell about him.
We had some great pilots in the unit but I spent a lot of time with Wollman and during those times, HE established some things that would end up with me being considered good enough at Nighthawk Operations to go to Macv in Saigon to interview for the position as Standardization Pilot for Nighthawk Operations for the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. Pretty neat deal for me. More later. Thanks. Tim
.
It was like a meeting of Who's Who from the 5th WOC. Bill Reinhardt was there as were many others but Bill was a magnetic personality to say the least and alot of the 5th WOC guys gathered around him as he and another pilot were quite familiar with Vietnam and had somewhat of a back ground as to where "not to go".
They gave us a single sheet of paper filled with the names of helicopter units all over Vietnam. Since I didn't have a clue, I guess I simply took the luck of the draw and hit a home run. I was assigned to the 199th Light Infantry Brigade that was headquartered very close to the Replacement Battalion barracks and on day one, a jeep drive picked me up to take me to the 199th and the famous Fireball Aviation section.
The driver dropped me off at a large green hanger that had a "Fireball Aviation" sign above the doors. I thanked him, got out of the jeep with my bag and began looking around. There wasn't a single soul on the airfield, in the hanger or the barracks. It appeared that all of the helicopters were gone except one, that nobody was home and I was dropped off to a large facility filled with nothing. I began to wonder where headquarters was located so I could begin my in processing. About that time, a Spec 4 Ron West pulled up in a jeep. He was the Aviation Sections Jeep Driver and I was real glad to see him.
After a brief introduction, he pointed to the D model Huey on the field, the only helicopter there, and said that I needed to fly it to Xuan Loc immediately. I was pretty much staggered by the request as I knew I was required to have an aircraft commander check me out first, a Area of Operations Orientation Flight had to be completed and a fit and proper check in at the company was needed before I did anything. To add insult to injury, the D model wasn't anything like I'd flown before. We had A and B models in flight school and compared to them, this helicopter looked like a monster.
Word spread that the replacement pilot had arrived and before long some of the guys came back from the forward area and I was taken to Xuan Loc for introductions. When I reported, I noticed that Major Lewis had a ring on his finger that indicated he was a fraternity man in college and belonged to Kappa Alpha, the same one I did. After a short discussion regarding college and some recollections of our mutual experiences, he called someone in and told them to find me a bunk and introduce me to the pilots.
I don't want to claim that my association with the KA gave me an edge up on any new guys coming into the Aviation Section, but Major Lewis made sure that I met the most experienced pilots first. I can't remember if it was Terry Femmer, Craig Wollman or Dudley Young but those were the 3 I flew with more than any others. There was one other character named Nelson Kat Ballew but I only flew with him on a few occasions even though he was one of the older guys.
Femmer, Young and Wollman were alot like Diable in that they took me under their wing and were real glad to see that a new guy was reporting and that I would be assigned to fly Hueys for Nighthawk missions instead of Loaches that did the tree top scout work that had taken the life of Bob Gorske, the pilot I was replacing.
Since it was late in the day and all of the schedules were already in place, I was taken to an underground bunker where several bunks were located. I found it strange that there were slit holes in the bunker through which we could fire our M 16's during ground attacks. That's when the "holy shit" part of my perception began.
One of the crew members told me that we would be moving to Fire Support Base Mace for operations and that almost all of the time, the pilots slept in the rear area in Long Binh where I initially reported for duty. He told me not to worry because Long Binh wasn't nearly as dangerous a place to be than Xuan Loc and FSB Mace. For some reason, that wasn't all that comforting but I continued to take in everything I could so I could fit in.
Not long after sunset, we were awakened by the loudest noise I had ever heard in my life. The men jumped out of the barracks screaming "Incoming, Incoming" as they headed toward the slit holes. At that time a huge 155 Howitzer began to return fire and it was louder than whatever the VC or the NVA was shooting at us. The concussion from both incoming and outgoing fire was a real awakening for a guy who had not yet been in the unit 12 hours. I recall thinking that "IF this is what day one is like, how in God's name will I ever survive this war".
Apparently, it was a single aggrevation round that the VC or NVA shot at us as often as they could, as the attack never included additional incoming rounds that night. Early the next morning, I was picked up by a Huey, flown to FSB Mace which was only two or three minutes flying time from Xuan Loc, and was introduced to the Commanding Officer of the 199th. He immediately made me feel very welcome to the unit. He didn't say anything about General Bond being killed nearby by a sniper nor did he mention anything about the loss of Bob Gorske, the pilot I was replacing.
Before long, I was given my initial Area of Operations Orientation Flight which pointed out a couple of Fire Support Bases in the jungle as well as a rail road track and some roads that we could use to navigate by if our navigation equipment was shot away.
It was a very short flight as I recall because I was somewhat surprised with the thoughts I had surrounding the appearance that all we had to do was cover two or three FSBs that weren't really that far away from Mace.
When that flight was at it's eastern most limit, I was given the controls and told to fly back to Mace. To me, it was pretty much of a no brainer because I knew that the east west road to Phan Thiet would be my southern boundry and the rail road track would be my northern boundry. All I had to do was fly west and look for the Mountain we referred to as Signal Mountain.
That's where, at the base of the mountain, FSB Mace was located. I'm pretty sure that flight was commanded by Dudley Young as Dudley was a maniac as it related to navigation. He had the best of the best map information and all of the co-pilots in the unit, as I recall, had one of the maps to carry with them at all times.
I have a really cool story to tell about that but it will have to wait till later. I just wanted to set up the story of my first 24 hours with the 199th and the fact that the Army reports that unit to be the one that had more combat hours per pilot than any other unit in Vietnam. Since that statistic is a published statistic from the Army, we are all very proud to have served with them at that time.
I'll continue this later tonight or tomorrow but I have a doctor's appointment and a funeral that I have to attend today and I don't want to be late for either one. Stand by as I have some incredible stories about a pilot that I consider to be the best Night Combat Operations pilot that I ever knew, flew with or even heard about. That would be Craig Wollman and I have some whoppers to tell about him.
We had some great pilots in the unit but I spent a lot of time with Wollman and during those times, HE established some things that would end up with me being considered good enough at Nighthawk Operations to go to Macv in Saigon to interview for the position as Standardization Pilot for Nighthawk Operations for the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. Pretty neat deal for me. More later. Thanks. Tim
.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Next stop Vietnam, 90th Replacement Battallion
I enjoyed my leave time after I graduated with 5th WOC and even though I knew my next stop was to be Vietnam, it seemed to be an afterthought. I don't recall a single time that I felt fear or anything remotely connected to fear, during the days leading up to my departure. As an oddity that might be connected to those feelings, I decided to leave a few days early for California as I had an invitation from Mike Morris who was my cubical partner from day 1 of school to graduation day. He was from Northridge and promised a great tour of the California lifestyle if I would come a few days before we were to leave for Nam.
I remember the approach to Los Angeles and the impression I had of how big it was. When I left the plane and was headed to the main terminal building, there was Mike waving his arm and smiling like a kid with a trick up his sleeve. We immediately left the airport and went directly to his Mom's house where I put on civilian clothes and we hit the streets.
We met with Steve Eide a little later and after a few minutes of talking about our newly found status as Warrant Officers and Army Aviators, Steve briefed us on the plan to report to Travis Air Force Base in Oakland for our departure. We were to fly in a corporate jet that his father flew for a Fortune 500 Company. Since it was hangered in Burbank in the same hanger that Johnny Carson's jet was, we began to have a certain degree of enthusiasm about it.
After making note of the departure day two days later, Mike told me it was time for my "Cajun Ass" to see what the real world was like in California. He told me that we were going to a place called the May Company. He explained that it was the largest mall in the free world and that every good looking California girl went there to shop.
After a short drive, the two of us were sitting on a short concrete wall between the mall and the walkways that were next to the entrance. Mike was right. there seemed to be a never ending line of the most beautiful girls you could imagine. We did some girl watching as did the girls but the military hair cuts must have been a negative thing as they more or less avoided us and despite smiles and a wave or two, they just passed us by and we didn't meet a single one.
After a cross country flight and our trip to the mall, it was getting close to supper time and Mike's mom had mandated a home cooked meal for her boy. I was more than a little happy to see that as we had been burning both ends of the candle during our last few days in the United States and a home cooked meal fit the bill perfectly.
The next morning marked my first full day in California and my last full day before we left for Vietnam. We took a hard run to each of the places Mike wanted to show me and I'd like to say, it was one hell of a tour. It seemed that California girls didn't have alot of interest in wearing alot of clothes and that most of them were dressed in the "Ready for the Beach" attire of the day.
As the day was coming to an end, Mike and I were sitting at a small club that was located at the Beach, drinking a beer and listening to music. I thought that we would be hearing the Beach Boys but the one song that struck me was, "The Girl From Eponema" (SP). Palm trees, sand, perfect weather and temperature left me with a vision that I can see today when I close my eyes and think back on that last day. There were no get drunk, raise hell and go naked parties in place that I knew about. We ended up staying at Mike's house and visiting with his Mom, an Uncle and a couple of close friends.
The next morning, Mike wanted to eat breakfast at one of his favorite hang outs and that's where we went after bidding his family good bye. When we finished that, we went to Burbank and reported to the hanger where Johnny Carson's jet was located. We met Steve Eide there and he showed us the jet we would be flying to Travis/San Francisco. It was the most beautiful thing with wings I'd ever seen. I recall it to be a BH 125 that was described to us as a Hawker Sidley or Dehavilland.
We saw Johnny Carson's jet and a few other planes there and I was most impressed to be there. While the jet was being pulled out of the hanger, Steve's Dad explained that our flight would be a short one with 3 stages. He invited us to draw straws as he had decided to let each of us be the co pilot on one of each 3 stages which consisted of take off and climb out, enroute flying and then approach.
I don't remember which one of the boys picked take off and climb out or the approach section but I clearly remember that I had the enroute portion and I was thrilled that I was going to get some front seat time regardless of the section it would be in.
During the start up procedure where both jet engines were spooling up to speed, I realized that the similarity between the sounds of these jet engines and the ones we had been using for months, was almost the same sound. That sound stimulated the feeling that pilots have when they hear the music that they make.
When we took off from Burbank, I realized that this was a completely different world than the 80 knot helicopters we'd been flying. When we reached our cruising altitude, it was my turn to fly and I made it to the front seat and before I even sat down and buckled up, I was amazed by the instrument panel and the multitude of gauges that existed there. Most of all, I noticed a navigation box at the top of the instrument panel and I asked Mr. Eide what it was.
He explained that it was a "Flight Director" that would allow him to pre program his entire flight into it and that it, when slaved to the auto pilot, would do the climb out, intersection intercept, enroute course and altitude and then a portion of the approach.
I was blown away by it and couldn't believe, that during our Huey transition, all we had accomplished was the ability to fly something that could hover and speed up to 80 knots while this missile was a far cry from what we had just completed. Mr. Eide, being the gentleman that he was, simply said: "We can't hover like you guys can". It was a great comment and it came just before my enroute flight time was over and I had to give my seat up to who ever drew the approach end.
From the passenger seat, I leaned over and looked out of the cockpit wind screen and saw San Fransico International's main runway. In no time at all, we'd landed, taxied to the Fixed Base Operator and deplaned this incredible Lear Jet looking beauty. After a few hugs, pats on the back and well wishes from Steve's Daddy, we got in a cab and began the short trip to Travis Air Force Base. We knew this was it.
We went through a customs style inspection and presented our boarding passes/orders to Vietnam and sat down until the remaining troops arrived. When they did, we boarded a Tiger Airlines DC8 that had been contracted to fly us to Vietnam via Hawaii and Wake Island.
There were lots of guys on board and several, already having done a tour in Vietnam, were stretching to look out of their windows. As we began our take off roll many of them were saying: "Good bye World, see you again". Soon after that we were airborne and the DC8 became very quiet. Many knew that there would be alot of them that wouldn't be making the return trip. The cabin became pretty quiet as we passed the beach and headed out over the Pacific and remained so until the vision of the West Coast left us.
Before long we were at our cruising altitude headed toward Hawaii. I looked out the window and saw the wake of a large ship as it headed westward on the same course we were flying. For some reason, I thought I'd seen that sight before and I began to think that it was a memory from the past even though I'd never flown the Pacific of Atlantic at that time. I wondered if I'd seen this in another life as a fighter pilot fighting in World War II. At the time, I didn't think that was an odd thought at all.
As we approached Hawaii, it started to rain but it wasn't so bad as the turbulence was acceptable to those of us who had become accustomed to it in helicopters. When we landed in Hawaii, we pulled up to our refuel point and noticed that it was close to a military Quonset hut. When a few of the guys asked why we couldn't get out and have a sandwich, one of the guys said:" You aren't here, you don't exist, that's why".
About that time, the rain really hit and so did the wind and lots of lightning. The aircraft was shaking back and forth as it was being refueled and resupplied with the sandwiches and drinks that sustained us during our flight. We began to hope that the flight would be cancelled because of the monsoon type storm that we'd obviously flown into but unfortunately for us, the war didn't care about the weather. We spooled up the 4 engines and began our taxi to the runway for takeoff.
I couldn't believe that we were taking off in the midst of this monster weather cell. As soon as we lifted off the runway, the aircraft began to shake from the turbulence. As we climbed, it worsened. It shook so badly that it caused a twisting motion of the fuselage that caused many of the over head storage lockers to open with all the baggage falling down on the guys sitting in the seats below them. I'll admit, when the lightning hit us, I was scared to pieces.
Once we climbed out the mess, we began a somewhat smooth cruise to Wake Island. Around sun up of that morning, the Captain announced that we were beginning our approach to Wake and the we would be given a few minutes on the ground. I was thankful for that until I saw the size of Wake Island out of my window. I remember thinking how little it was and that it appeared that there was nothing there except a small terminal building. Despite that, I was glad to get out of the DC8 when we pulled up to the terminal building.
Despite the short stop, I remembered all the things I'd read about the battles that took place around this part of the Pacific and realized that, in a sense, I was standing on hallowed ground. We were called to board and quickly re boarded the DC8. Not long after that, we were off in clear weather and began our last leg to Long Binh Air Force Base. It didn't seem to take very long as most of us did some sleeping on that route of the flight and before we knew it, the Captain announced that Vietnam was on the horizon and that he was beginning his descent for landing.
The landscape was covered with bomb craters. I didn't know it at the time but our aircraft passed very close to Xuan Loc where, a few days later, I would receive my baptism of fire. When we landed, an A 37 pilot who was taxing back to his revetment area with his cockpit in the "up" position, stood up and saluted us. I'll never forget that gesture.
After exiting the plane, we were put in Army buses who's windows were covered with wire. When I asked what that was about, one of the guys said: "So the dinks do throw a grenade in here and kill all our asses". After a brief trip through the village, we arrived at the 90th Replacement Battalion and reported as ordered.
I'll stop here as I'm running out of energy. I hope you guys that have made that trip enjoyed the trip down memory lane. I'll be back on this as soon as I can. Stand by.
I remember the approach to Los Angeles and the impression I had of how big it was. When I left the plane and was headed to the main terminal building, there was Mike waving his arm and smiling like a kid with a trick up his sleeve. We immediately left the airport and went directly to his Mom's house where I put on civilian clothes and we hit the streets.
We met with Steve Eide a little later and after a few minutes of talking about our newly found status as Warrant Officers and Army Aviators, Steve briefed us on the plan to report to Travis Air Force Base in Oakland for our departure. We were to fly in a corporate jet that his father flew for a Fortune 500 Company. Since it was hangered in Burbank in the same hanger that Johnny Carson's jet was, we began to have a certain degree of enthusiasm about it.
After making note of the departure day two days later, Mike told me it was time for my "Cajun Ass" to see what the real world was like in California. He told me that we were going to a place called the May Company. He explained that it was the largest mall in the free world and that every good looking California girl went there to shop.
After a short drive, the two of us were sitting on a short concrete wall between the mall and the walkways that were next to the entrance. Mike was right. there seemed to be a never ending line of the most beautiful girls you could imagine. We did some girl watching as did the girls but the military hair cuts must have been a negative thing as they more or less avoided us and despite smiles and a wave or two, they just passed us by and we didn't meet a single one.
After a cross country flight and our trip to the mall, it was getting close to supper time and Mike's mom had mandated a home cooked meal for her boy. I was more than a little happy to see that as we had been burning both ends of the candle during our last few days in the United States and a home cooked meal fit the bill perfectly.
The next morning marked my first full day in California and my last full day before we left for Vietnam. We took a hard run to each of the places Mike wanted to show me and I'd like to say, it was one hell of a tour. It seemed that California girls didn't have alot of interest in wearing alot of clothes and that most of them were dressed in the "Ready for the Beach" attire of the day.
As the day was coming to an end, Mike and I were sitting at a small club that was located at the Beach, drinking a beer and listening to music. I thought that we would be hearing the Beach Boys but the one song that struck me was, "The Girl From Eponema" (SP). Palm trees, sand, perfect weather and temperature left me with a vision that I can see today when I close my eyes and think back on that last day. There were no get drunk, raise hell and go naked parties in place that I knew about. We ended up staying at Mike's house and visiting with his Mom, an Uncle and a couple of close friends.
The next morning, Mike wanted to eat breakfast at one of his favorite hang outs and that's where we went after bidding his family good bye. When we finished that, we went to Burbank and reported to the hanger where Johnny Carson's jet was located. We met Steve Eide there and he showed us the jet we would be flying to Travis/San Francisco. It was the most beautiful thing with wings I'd ever seen. I recall it to be a BH 125 that was described to us as a Hawker Sidley or Dehavilland.
We saw Johnny Carson's jet and a few other planes there and I was most impressed to be there. While the jet was being pulled out of the hanger, Steve's Dad explained that our flight would be a short one with 3 stages. He invited us to draw straws as he had decided to let each of us be the co pilot on one of each 3 stages which consisted of take off and climb out, enroute flying and then approach.
I don't remember which one of the boys picked take off and climb out or the approach section but I clearly remember that I had the enroute portion and I was thrilled that I was going to get some front seat time regardless of the section it would be in.
During the start up procedure where both jet engines were spooling up to speed, I realized that the similarity between the sounds of these jet engines and the ones we had been using for months, was almost the same sound. That sound stimulated the feeling that pilots have when they hear the music that they make.
When we took off from Burbank, I realized that this was a completely different world than the 80 knot helicopters we'd been flying. When we reached our cruising altitude, it was my turn to fly and I made it to the front seat and before I even sat down and buckled up, I was amazed by the instrument panel and the multitude of gauges that existed there. Most of all, I noticed a navigation box at the top of the instrument panel and I asked Mr. Eide what it was.
He explained that it was a "Flight Director" that would allow him to pre program his entire flight into it and that it, when slaved to the auto pilot, would do the climb out, intersection intercept, enroute course and altitude and then a portion of the approach.
I was blown away by it and couldn't believe, that during our Huey transition, all we had accomplished was the ability to fly something that could hover and speed up to 80 knots while this missile was a far cry from what we had just completed. Mr. Eide, being the gentleman that he was, simply said: "We can't hover like you guys can". It was a great comment and it came just before my enroute flight time was over and I had to give my seat up to who ever drew the approach end.
From the passenger seat, I leaned over and looked out of the cockpit wind screen and saw San Fransico International's main runway. In no time at all, we'd landed, taxied to the Fixed Base Operator and deplaned this incredible Lear Jet looking beauty. After a few hugs, pats on the back and well wishes from Steve's Daddy, we got in a cab and began the short trip to Travis Air Force Base. We knew this was it.
We went through a customs style inspection and presented our boarding passes/orders to Vietnam and sat down until the remaining troops arrived. When they did, we boarded a Tiger Airlines DC8 that had been contracted to fly us to Vietnam via Hawaii and Wake Island.
There were lots of guys on board and several, already having done a tour in Vietnam, were stretching to look out of their windows. As we began our take off roll many of them were saying: "Good bye World, see you again". Soon after that we were airborne and the DC8 became very quiet. Many knew that there would be alot of them that wouldn't be making the return trip. The cabin became pretty quiet as we passed the beach and headed out over the Pacific and remained so until the vision of the West Coast left us.
Before long we were at our cruising altitude headed toward Hawaii. I looked out the window and saw the wake of a large ship as it headed westward on the same course we were flying. For some reason, I thought I'd seen that sight before and I began to think that it was a memory from the past even though I'd never flown the Pacific of Atlantic at that time. I wondered if I'd seen this in another life as a fighter pilot fighting in World War II. At the time, I didn't think that was an odd thought at all.
As we approached Hawaii, it started to rain but it wasn't so bad as the turbulence was acceptable to those of us who had become accustomed to it in helicopters. When we landed in Hawaii, we pulled up to our refuel point and noticed that it was close to a military Quonset hut. When a few of the guys asked why we couldn't get out and have a sandwich, one of the guys said:" You aren't here, you don't exist, that's why".
About that time, the rain really hit and so did the wind and lots of lightning. The aircraft was shaking back and forth as it was being refueled and resupplied with the sandwiches and drinks that sustained us during our flight. We began to hope that the flight would be cancelled because of the monsoon type storm that we'd obviously flown into but unfortunately for us, the war didn't care about the weather. We spooled up the 4 engines and began our taxi to the runway for takeoff.
I couldn't believe that we were taking off in the midst of this monster weather cell. As soon as we lifted off the runway, the aircraft began to shake from the turbulence. As we climbed, it worsened. It shook so badly that it caused a twisting motion of the fuselage that caused many of the over head storage lockers to open with all the baggage falling down on the guys sitting in the seats below them. I'll admit, when the lightning hit us, I was scared to pieces.
Once we climbed out the mess, we began a somewhat smooth cruise to Wake Island. Around sun up of that morning, the Captain announced that we were beginning our approach to Wake and the we would be given a few minutes on the ground. I was thankful for that until I saw the size of Wake Island out of my window. I remember thinking how little it was and that it appeared that there was nothing there except a small terminal building. Despite that, I was glad to get out of the DC8 when we pulled up to the terminal building.
Despite the short stop, I remembered all the things I'd read about the battles that took place around this part of the Pacific and realized that, in a sense, I was standing on hallowed ground. We were called to board and quickly re boarded the DC8. Not long after that, we were off in clear weather and began our last leg to Long Binh Air Force Base. It didn't seem to take very long as most of us did some sleeping on that route of the flight and before we knew it, the Captain announced that Vietnam was on the horizon and that he was beginning his descent for landing.
The landscape was covered with bomb craters. I didn't know it at the time but our aircraft passed very close to Xuan Loc where, a few days later, I would receive my baptism of fire. When we landed, an A 37 pilot who was taxing back to his revetment area with his cockpit in the "up" position, stood up and saluted us. I'll never forget that gesture.
After exiting the plane, we were put in Army buses who's windows were covered with wire. When I asked what that was about, one of the guys said: "So the dinks do throw a grenade in here and kill all our asses". After a brief trip through the village, we arrived at the 90th Replacement Battalion and reported as ordered.
I'll stop here as I'm running out of energy. I hope you guys that have made that trip enjoyed the trip down memory lane. I'll be back on this as soon as I can. Stand by.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
I met Newt Gingrich last night.
There was a $250.00 per plate fund raiser for Newt last night in Shreveport. I received an invitation as a "guest" and didn't have to pay a dime. It was a very small gathering of invitation only supporters and it was held at the private home of a Shreveport couple. No film crews or media attended. It was strictly private and by invitation only.
I believe the list of folks attending came from his supporter base of which I am a part and have been since he made his speech regarding the plans he had for the first 2 hours of his Presidency, should he be elected. That's the part where he vowed to fire all the Czars before Obama's plane made it back to Chicago.
Shortly after I arrived, I noticed a couple of State Police cars driving up the drive way with a few cars between the first and last trooper. The place went "electric" to say the least. Since this was held at a private home, there wasn't a huge crowd. I guess there were probably fifty to sixty supporters in attendance and most of them stood up to see if they could get a glimpse of him as he came into the house.
I saw him walk through the kitchen as I was on the back patio with a clear view of all the traffic coming in and out of the kitchen. As he walked out of the kitchen door onto the patio, he could see that there were roughly six or seven rows of metal chairs set up and he went to the last row first and introduced himself to every person there.
I was the last guy as I had a front row seat so when he approached me, I stood up and extended my hand to greet him. I said: "Tim Butler, Disabled American Veteran, former Chief Warrant Officer helicopter pilot in Vietnam and Cambodia, 1970-71".
As he shook my hand and heard who I was, he took his left hand and covered the back of my right hand with a double hand shake. He smiled at me and said: "Thank you so much for coming and thank you for your service".
I'd heard that a million times before but I never "felt it" the way I did when it came from Newt. I didn't get to discuss anything with him at that time as his speech was next. Despite that, I was very pleased that he took the time to listen to my introduction and then extend the double hand shake. As the great historian that everyone credits him with being, he gave me the time and it was very nice to be treated that way by a man who might one day be in the White House.
As is typical, there was no mud slinging in his speech and he immediately began to talk about the oil and gas business in Louisiana and Texas. He spoke about the second World War and the contributions that the Texas and Louisiana Oil producers made during the war. I remembered studying the history of that time and the oil industry in general. If you google "Spindle Top" you will learn about the beginning of it's development. If you support the other side, don't waste your time as it is filled with "Learn" and "Be Informed" things which of course, is not part of your informational requirements to vote.
Having said that, he began to talk about the current situation with dependence on the Middle East Oil producers. Finishing that, he began to list the oil and gas reserves of Louisiana and the effect it has had on the State of Louisiana and Texas. My involvement in building the many drill sites for the Haynesville Shale, made that part of his speech, extremely interesting.
Since the last job I did before I was mandated to retire in December of 2010, was building roads and drill pads for the huge drilling rigs to stand on, I was particularly interested in his grasp and knowledge of the technology and the production numbers. From an economic standpoint of the oil industry, he has certainly done his homework and was even able to deliver what the natural gas production meant in terms that citizens with no oil field experience, could understand.
He converted the millions of cubic feet of natural gas to "gallons of gasoline". I made good money when I was doing that and can only imagine what kind of employment numbers would come with another boom of it's kind elsewhere in the United States.
He then began to speak of the new oil and gas reserve numbers coming out of North Dakota. Almost 20 years ago, I didn't see any new technology horizontal drilling in South Louisiana. It may have existed but it did not exist on any of the wells I was involved with. They were drilling as deep as 16,ooo feet and that was it. In today's day and time, with the ability to turn the bit and continue drilling in a horizontal fashion, the production numbers rose exponentially.
I was amazed at the amount of oil and gas we have as proven reserves and further amazed at the efforts to depress those fields and continue with our dependence on anybody from the Middle East. You will be proud to know that I didn't use the terms "donkey fooker" or "rag head" one single time.
As he continued with the economic effect and then the increase in National Security we would have by telling the Middle East Oil Producers "We don't need any more of your oil", I was both thrilled and reminded of the Tree Huggers that almost killed the Forest Product Industry in the Northwest.
At the time of the Forest Product hassles in the Pacific Northwest, I was selling process equipment to the paper mills and sawmills in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Mississippi. I had friends in the Pacific Northwest who were suffering from the Spotted Owl fears that the tree huggers had and they developed a saying about that. It was directed at the liberals and focused on taking "toilet paper" out of their bathrooms and using something else.
There is a huge difference between asking the Muslims to produce more oil and Newt telling them we don't need it anymore. For me, even with the limited experiences I've had on the drilling rigs themselves, it's easy for me to see the differences that can exist if we go back to the America we were before the punks took over.
When Newt's speech was concluded, he asked if it would be okay to take questions from the audience. I raised my hand first and being on the front row, I was the first that was called upon to speak to him. I really wanted to ask about the open door policy of Immigration where we see a flood gate of America's enemies simply walking across the border, getting with their friends and planning more suicide bombings. I held my tongue on that one.
I simply told him that "You are the last hope we have. Please don't pay any attention to the negative campaign advertisements from the other side, just consider the source and know that all of us here are behind you". That was it and when I'd said it, I took my seat and others began with their questions. That was the second of three times I had a one on one exchange with him that evening.
Shortly thereafter, when the Q&A period ended, we were invited to go inside to have pictures taken with Newt, one on one. I immediately got in line but being on the front row during the speech, I would effectively be on the last row for pictures. I signed in with the professional photographer, gave them my phone number and address, and made my way to the fireplace where the pictures were being taken.
When I walked up to Newt, he smiled at me and said" You were the gentlemen who made the first comment, weren't you"? We shook hands, I smiled at him and said: "Yes sir, you are the only hope we have left". He smiled again and we looked at the camera and the picture was taken. The party broke up, I thanked the host and hostess for the wonderful hospitality and the pleasure of being in their beautiful home, and then I left to go home.
I once again concluded, that since he has a track record of working both sides of the isle and actually balancing the budget and creating lots of jobs, I knew that there were still lots of people out there who really didn't care about that kind of thing and only wanted to see what they can get off the government till.
I think I need to go see an "in law" and have a baseball cap or a tee shirt made. It won't be a vote Newt tee shirt. It should be: "If you voted the worst President in History into office, would you please move to Kenya or join a Mosque somewhere in the Middle East".
In any event, that's it. If this offends you, please do a little study and inform yourself as much as possible about today's situation. Emotions belong with a different discipline. Please, please use the net and get all the information you can. The end result is amazing and it will give you a degree of confidence that is far ahead of those who wish to argue with you about their mistakes.
Thanks
I believe the list of folks attending came from his supporter base of which I am a part and have been since he made his speech regarding the plans he had for the first 2 hours of his Presidency, should he be elected. That's the part where he vowed to fire all the Czars before Obama's plane made it back to Chicago.
Shortly after I arrived, I noticed a couple of State Police cars driving up the drive way with a few cars between the first and last trooper. The place went "electric" to say the least. Since this was held at a private home, there wasn't a huge crowd. I guess there were probably fifty to sixty supporters in attendance and most of them stood up to see if they could get a glimpse of him as he came into the house.
I saw him walk through the kitchen as I was on the back patio with a clear view of all the traffic coming in and out of the kitchen. As he walked out of the kitchen door onto the patio, he could see that there were roughly six or seven rows of metal chairs set up and he went to the last row first and introduced himself to every person there.
I was the last guy as I had a front row seat so when he approached me, I stood up and extended my hand to greet him. I said: "Tim Butler, Disabled American Veteran, former Chief Warrant Officer helicopter pilot in Vietnam and Cambodia, 1970-71".
As he shook my hand and heard who I was, he took his left hand and covered the back of my right hand with a double hand shake. He smiled at me and said: "Thank you so much for coming and thank you for your service".
I'd heard that a million times before but I never "felt it" the way I did when it came from Newt. I didn't get to discuss anything with him at that time as his speech was next. Despite that, I was very pleased that he took the time to listen to my introduction and then extend the double hand shake. As the great historian that everyone credits him with being, he gave me the time and it was very nice to be treated that way by a man who might one day be in the White House.
As is typical, there was no mud slinging in his speech and he immediately began to talk about the oil and gas business in Louisiana and Texas. He spoke about the second World War and the contributions that the Texas and Louisiana Oil producers made during the war. I remembered studying the history of that time and the oil industry in general. If you google "Spindle Top" you will learn about the beginning of it's development. If you support the other side, don't waste your time as it is filled with "Learn" and "Be Informed" things which of course, is not part of your informational requirements to vote.
Having said that, he began to talk about the current situation with dependence on the Middle East Oil producers. Finishing that, he began to list the oil and gas reserves of Louisiana and the effect it has had on the State of Louisiana and Texas. My involvement in building the many drill sites for the Haynesville Shale, made that part of his speech, extremely interesting.
Since the last job I did before I was mandated to retire in December of 2010, was building roads and drill pads for the huge drilling rigs to stand on, I was particularly interested in his grasp and knowledge of the technology and the production numbers. From an economic standpoint of the oil industry, he has certainly done his homework and was even able to deliver what the natural gas production meant in terms that citizens with no oil field experience, could understand.
He converted the millions of cubic feet of natural gas to "gallons of gasoline". I made good money when I was doing that and can only imagine what kind of employment numbers would come with another boom of it's kind elsewhere in the United States.
He then began to speak of the new oil and gas reserve numbers coming out of North Dakota. Almost 20 years ago, I didn't see any new technology horizontal drilling in South Louisiana. It may have existed but it did not exist on any of the wells I was involved with. They were drilling as deep as 16,ooo feet and that was it. In today's day and time, with the ability to turn the bit and continue drilling in a horizontal fashion, the production numbers rose exponentially.
I was amazed at the amount of oil and gas we have as proven reserves and further amazed at the efforts to depress those fields and continue with our dependence on anybody from the Middle East. You will be proud to know that I didn't use the terms "donkey fooker" or "rag head" one single time.
As he continued with the economic effect and then the increase in National Security we would have by telling the Middle East Oil Producers "We don't need any more of your oil", I was both thrilled and reminded of the Tree Huggers that almost killed the Forest Product Industry in the Northwest.
At the time of the Forest Product hassles in the Pacific Northwest, I was selling process equipment to the paper mills and sawmills in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Mississippi. I had friends in the Pacific Northwest who were suffering from the Spotted Owl fears that the tree huggers had and they developed a saying about that. It was directed at the liberals and focused on taking "toilet paper" out of their bathrooms and using something else.
There is a huge difference between asking the Muslims to produce more oil and Newt telling them we don't need it anymore. For me, even with the limited experiences I've had on the drilling rigs themselves, it's easy for me to see the differences that can exist if we go back to the America we were before the punks took over.
When Newt's speech was concluded, he asked if it would be okay to take questions from the audience. I raised my hand first and being on the front row, I was the first that was called upon to speak to him. I really wanted to ask about the open door policy of Immigration where we see a flood gate of America's enemies simply walking across the border, getting with their friends and planning more suicide bombings. I held my tongue on that one.
I simply told him that "You are the last hope we have. Please don't pay any attention to the negative campaign advertisements from the other side, just consider the source and know that all of us here are behind you". That was it and when I'd said it, I took my seat and others began with their questions. That was the second of three times I had a one on one exchange with him that evening.
Shortly thereafter, when the Q&A period ended, we were invited to go inside to have pictures taken with Newt, one on one. I immediately got in line but being on the front row during the speech, I would effectively be on the last row for pictures. I signed in with the professional photographer, gave them my phone number and address, and made my way to the fireplace where the pictures were being taken.
When I walked up to Newt, he smiled at me and said" You were the gentlemen who made the first comment, weren't you"? We shook hands, I smiled at him and said: "Yes sir, you are the only hope we have left". He smiled again and we looked at the camera and the picture was taken. The party broke up, I thanked the host and hostess for the wonderful hospitality and the pleasure of being in their beautiful home, and then I left to go home.
I once again concluded, that since he has a track record of working both sides of the isle and actually balancing the budget and creating lots of jobs, I knew that there were still lots of people out there who really didn't care about that kind of thing and only wanted to see what they can get off the government till.
I think I need to go see an "in law" and have a baseball cap or a tee shirt made. It won't be a vote Newt tee shirt. It should be: "If you voted the worst President in History into office, would you please move to Kenya or join a Mosque somewhere in the Middle East".
In any event, that's it. If this offends you, please do a little study and inform yourself as much as possible about today's situation. Emotions belong with a different discipline. Please, please use the net and get all the information you can. The end result is amazing and it will give you a degree of confidence that is far ahead of those who wish to argue with you about their mistakes.
Thanks
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Learning to fly Hueys and Combat Tactics
I don't have any trouble at all remembering my instructor pilot in the Huey. He was a CW2 and was just back from a tour in Vietnam. He was a lot like Diable but that was only in the intellectual department. I never saw him out of a flight suit and his boots weren't exactly ready for a Diable inspection.
Despite that, he was like a walking encyclopedia when it came to the numbers and procedures surrounding the Huey. In view of that and some of the influences I had received from Diable, I would spend time on the week ends trying to memorize the preflight check list and the entire starting procedure for the Huey. We even invented a nick name for the list because it was so extensive. Added together, all of it contained 144 separate items. We called it the "Gross Checklist" to help with remembering the 144 items we needed to perform.
Many of the things we had to learn were very close to those things we'd learned at Wolters. Autorotations, emergency procedures, pinnacle approaches, confined areas and precision hovering were just a few. I was glad when that phase of training was over with because I had been paired with another student who didn't have the best eyesight. We barely escaped a midair collision one day at sunset. On another occasion, during a night pinnacle approach, he hit the landing spot so hard, I thought the rotors were going to come off. I was scared to death, told Hofius about it and luckily, I was given another student to fly with. I'm sure that Hofius cut me some slack because he knew I had memorized the check list.
Not long after that, we entered the final phase of training. It was titled "tactics" and covered every thing from high overhead combat approaches to troop insertions in the jungle. That was to be one of the most incredible memories I had. We flew to Eglin AFB in Florida and were ordered to pick up a group of Rangers and insert them into the swamp near the base which was their training ground.
After that, we had a couple of days of additional training and were then ordered to fly back to Eglin and extract the Rangers from a landing zone. We were told that it was a tradition to take a candy bar along with us and give each of the Rangers one as they had been in the swamp for several days with nothing more than a knife, a canteen of water, a compass and a good attitude. When we picked up the Rangers, it was no longer my time to fly and the student that was flying with me, took over the flight duties.
When we got everybody on the ship, I turned around and passed the candy bars out. One of the guys took off his helmet and introduced himself as he thanked me for the Baby Ruth I'd been hiding in my helmet bag.
There's a huge coincidence regarding that candy bar because, just after graduation and during my drive back to Shreveport, we stopped to eat at the Holiday Inn that was located in Ruston, Louisiana. As I was sitting in the booth waiting on lunch, a guy on a motorcycle rode up and parked right outside my window. When the guy got off the bike and took off his helmet, I noticed it was the Ranger I'd given the candy bar to.
We immediately made eye contact and I knew he recognized me. He came in the restaurant and we high fived for a second, wished each other luck and when we finished eating, I said my good byes.
As an incredible coincidence, roughly 8 months later, I was standing next to the active runway at Tay Ninh and heard the screaming sound of a motorcycle engine as it was going back and forth along the runway between aircraft arrivals. I went out to the runway, waved my hand at the rider and he pulled over. You guessed it, the rider was the Ranger from Eglin and the restaurant.
We laughed our asses off and talked a moment about the coincidence of seeing each other again. We talked briefly about our tour of duty and then he was back on the bike and out of sight in no time. I never saw him again but I'm sure he remembered the experiences of running into each other at all 3 places.
One of the last things I had to master during tactics was artillery adjustment. At this point in time I had a really good rating in the class and had even been in discussions about the possibility of obtaining additional aircraft qualifications for the higher placed candidates. When I failed the artillery test, those thoughts went away and a candidate named Orsi was given the opportunity of going to Ft. Hunter Stewart to learn how to fly the twin rotor Chinook. With a little tutoring, I passed the test and went on to graduate well placed in the Company but not at the top.
The only story I remember about a weird run in with a highly placed General Officer, was the day Bob Bandusky went to the hospital for a visit with the doctor. While he was there General Westmorland made an inspection. He found Bob right after he had blown his nose into a white hanky. The coal dust that was everywhere on the base, made his hanky turn black and explained some of the reasons Bandusky was in the hospital.
It wasn't all work and no play. Bruce Marshall, Paul Grubbs and a couple of other students bought cars and we would have rallies on the week end. A couple of times we went to Panama Beach in Florida and let it all hang out. One night we went to a beach bar to listen to some live music. I was amazed to discover that the bad for the night was "Rare Earth" who went on to have a top of the chart song. They were really cool and we had a ball.
Our graduation ceremony was really neat as we had our wings awarded to us and pinned on our chest right after we were awarded the Warrant Officer bars that we would wear for the next year. It was so cool. I went down the usual list to find a date but this time the first one I called said she could come. It was Camille Grigsby who was a top pick. She could dance, drink with the best of them, tell jokes and laugh at the jokes everybody else was telling. She's gone now but her memory is not. Melissa and I talk about her to this day. What a fun high school friend she was.
In any event, that's pretty much the memories I have from Ft. Rucker. They may not seem to be as acute as the ones I had from the Diable Days at Ft. Wolters but those days were filled with "firsts". Even though Rucker was the first time we flew instruments and turbine powered Hueys, it was just different than the first time you ever flew a helicopter by yourself. Rucker is generally referred to as the Cradle of Army Aviation but in my mind, Ft. Wolters is where we were hatched.
Needless to say, my next stop is Vietnam but I have a 30 day leave period before I was to ship out and after I hit on that, I'll get down to the business of fighting the war as Fireball 28, the 199th Light Infantry Brigade's newest pilot. Stand by.
Despite that, he was like a walking encyclopedia when it came to the numbers and procedures surrounding the Huey. In view of that and some of the influences I had received from Diable, I would spend time on the week ends trying to memorize the preflight check list and the entire starting procedure for the Huey. We even invented a nick name for the list because it was so extensive. Added together, all of it contained 144 separate items. We called it the "Gross Checklist" to help with remembering the 144 items we needed to perform.
Many of the things we had to learn were very close to those things we'd learned at Wolters. Autorotations, emergency procedures, pinnacle approaches, confined areas and precision hovering were just a few. I was glad when that phase of training was over with because I had been paired with another student who didn't have the best eyesight. We barely escaped a midair collision one day at sunset. On another occasion, during a night pinnacle approach, he hit the landing spot so hard, I thought the rotors were going to come off. I was scared to death, told Hofius about it and luckily, I was given another student to fly with. I'm sure that Hofius cut me some slack because he knew I had memorized the check list.
Not long after that, we entered the final phase of training. It was titled "tactics" and covered every thing from high overhead combat approaches to troop insertions in the jungle. That was to be one of the most incredible memories I had. We flew to Eglin AFB in Florida and were ordered to pick up a group of Rangers and insert them into the swamp near the base which was their training ground.
After that, we had a couple of days of additional training and were then ordered to fly back to Eglin and extract the Rangers from a landing zone. We were told that it was a tradition to take a candy bar along with us and give each of the Rangers one as they had been in the swamp for several days with nothing more than a knife, a canteen of water, a compass and a good attitude. When we picked up the Rangers, it was no longer my time to fly and the student that was flying with me, took over the flight duties.
When we got everybody on the ship, I turned around and passed the candy bars out. One of the guys took off his helmet and introduced himself as he thanked me for the Baby Ruth I'd been hiding in my helmet bag.
There's a huge coincidence regarding that candy bar because, just after graduation and during my drive back to Shreveport, we stopped to eat at the Holiday Inn that was located in Ruston, Louisiana. As I was sitting in the booth waiting on lunch, a guy on a motorcycle rode up and parked right outside my window. When the guy got off the bike and took off his helmet, I noticed it was the Ranger I'd given the candy bar to.
We immediately made eye contact and I knew he recognized me. He came in the restaurant and we high fived for a second, wished each other luck and when we finished eating, I said my good byes.
As an incredible coincidence, roughly 8 months later, I was standing next to the active runway at Tay Ninh and heard the screaming sound of a motorcycle engine as it was going back and forth along the runway between aircraft arrivals. I went out to the runway, waved my hand at the rider and he pulled over. You guessed it, the rider was the Ranger from Eglin and the restaurant.
We laughed our asses off and talked a moment about the coincidence of seeing each other again. We talked briefly about our tour of duty and then he was back on the bike and out of sight in no time. I never saw him again but I'm sure he remembered the experiences of running into each other at all 3 places.
One of the last things I had to master during tactics was artillery adjustment. At this point in time I had a really good rating in the class and had even been in discussions about the possibility of obtaining additional aircraft qualifications for the higher placed candidates. When I failed the artillery test, those thoughts went away and a candidate named Orsi was given the opportunity of going to Ft. Hunter Stewart to learn how to fly the twin rotor Chinook. With a little tutoring, I passed the test and went on to graduate well placed in the Company but not at the top.
The only story I remember about a weird run in with a highly placed General Officer, was the day Bob Bandusky went to the hospital for a visit with the doctor. While he was there General Westmorland made an inspection. He found Bob right after he had blown his nose into a white hanky. The coal dust that was everywhere on the base, made his hanky turn black and explained some of the reasons Bandusky was in the hospital.
It wasn't all work and no play. Bruce Marshall, Paul Grubbs and a couple of other students bought cars and we would have rallies on the week end. A couple of times we went to Panama Beach in Florida and let it all hang out. One night we went to a beach bar to listen to some live music. I was amazed to discover that the bad for the night was "Rare Earth" who went on to have a top of the chart song. They were really cool and we had a ball.
Our graduation ceremony was really neat as we had our wings awarded to us and pinned on our chest right after we were awarded the Warrant Officer bars that we would wear for the next year. It was so cool. I went down the usual list to find a date but this time the first one I called said she could come. It was Camille Grigsby who was a top pick. She could dance, drink with the best of them, tell jokes and laugh at the jokes everybody else was telling. She's gone now but her memory is not. Melissa and I talk about her to this day. What a fun high school friend she was.
In any event, that's pretty much the memories I have from Ft. Rucker. They may not seem to be as acute as the ones I had from the Diable Days at Ft. Wolters but those days were filled with "firsts". Even though Rucker was the first time we flew instruments and turbine powered Hueys, it was just different than the first time you ever flew a helicopter by yourself. Rucker is generally referred to as the Cradle of Army Aviation but in my mind, Ft. Wolters is where we were hatched.
Needless to say, my next stop is Vietnam but I have a 30 day leave period before I was to ship out and after I hit on that, I'll get down to the business of fighting the war as Fireball 28, the 199th Light Infantry Brigade's newest pilot. Stand by.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Getting started at Rucker
I remember my arrival at Rucker and noted that it was nothing at all like my arrival at Ft. Wolters. Apparently, somebody must have figured out that we were serious and didn't need any instruction at all with regard to making beds or keeping our area squared away.
I say that because I do not recall having a tac officer when I arrived. I assume that it was a Saturday or Sunday because there were no commissioned officers anywhere. I was given a barracks number and told to get my stuff squared away and that a formation would be called later to instruct us on the upcoming expectations. To this day, I do not remember if we had a tac officer. That's a mighty far cry from having CW2 Diable running the show.
As I stepped out of the Company Headquarters building, I noticed that the barracks were the same old World War II styled barracks that Ft. Polk had. I wasn't concerned about the airconditioning as it was cold outside and, with the hint of coal dust all over the place, I could tell that we almost certainly had steam heated radiators. Oh my God, it was back to the past and living in the same barracks that World War II veterans lived in.
Things started looking up when I ran into some familiar faces. Larabee was there and not long after that Chuck Olsen and a couple of the other guys showed up. Before long, the barracks were full and we met the Captain that was running the company. Still no tac officers around.
I began to see why everything had been so lazy after we graduated from Wolters because our Class number changed from 70-05 to 70-07. It seemed that Rucker was behind or Wolters had been ahead of schedule. I don't know which one was the case but somehow, we were two graduating classes behind our original date of 70-05.
Ground school started immediately and before we were familiar with our surroundings or the layout of the base, we were in our Instrument Ground School phase of training. I liked it alot because it allowed us to transition from our primary days of flying the Hiller OH 23's to the Bell OH 47G which Uncle Sam called the OH 13.
We were told that the G designation meant that the Gas tanks were larger due to it's role as an instrument trainer. For the unfamiliar, the Bell looks just like the helicopter that is seen during the opening moments of the tv series "Mash".
One morning, we arrived at a building where we were introduced to the "Blue Canoe". That was their word for the Link Simulator that would allow a student to fly a practice instrument mission without ever getting off the ground or ever seeing the land or the horizon. I heard rumors about it and didn't laugh at it even though it looked to be something that was built in the dark ages.
Initially, they taught us to fly straight and level with a few radio communications ordering us to change altitudes and headings just to see if we could coordinate all of that. Eventually, we were given instrument departure and en route clearances that would simulate a flight in horrible weather conditions from one city to another. Adding insult to injury, they would make all kinds of changes to our original flight clearance, throw in turbulence and cross winds and finally, put us in a "holding pattern" just like the airliners had to do.
The holding pattern exercises would become a very valuable skill one night in Vietnam when I was with the 199th. I'll get to that later but I wanted to make note of it now as one Fireball Aviation Pilot reads this every day.
It wasn't easy in the beginning but it was really neat to review the ground tracks that were printed on a map by the simulator to show us our ground track along the map. This was a big help to all of us and taught us to be very easy with our turns and very precise with our manipulation of the instruments as we flew along.
In a very short period of time we passed that phase of training and were sent to the flight line to begin flying the Bell with an instrument instructor. I didn't realize it at the time but in less than 5 months I would have 3 experiences in Vietnam where those lessons came into play. Of those 3, one ended up with my Aircraft Commander in the 199th getting a serious compliment by one of the higher ranking officers in the unit.
Early in my tour with the 199th, Craig Wollman was my aircraft commander and I served as his co pilot. He made an IFR flight from Long Binh to Xuan Loc one morning, which wasn't a flight over a long distance but it was one where the fog and the clouds forced us to make an instrument departure, make the trip inside the clouds and then, once we popped out on top of the clouds, allowed us to navigate to Xuan Loc, find a hole and make the approach to a landing.
The "Old Man" came over the intercom and complimented Craig on his airmanship. The entire crew heard it and was thrilled that the CO knew what Craig had just completed. I really liked that flight and remember it to this day as it was the first real IFR flight I took in Vietnam. I have a ton of stuff to write about as it relates to Craig, but it will have to wait a little while until I graduate and make it to Vietnam.
In any event, as we completed instrument flight training and prepared to move to the transition where we would begin flying Hueys, my confidence level continued to rise. I don't remember my instrument flight instructor's name, nor do I remember my final grade in that course. I do however, remember the smile on his face and the pat on the back he gave me when the final instrument flight test was completed. I guess I can relate that to how Craig Wollman felt when the Colonel remarked about his perfect IFR flight in Vietnam.
Ya'll stand by and I will get into flying Hueys and beginning the tactics course where we were taught combat tactics by pilots who already had a tour of duty in Vietnam. I remember my flight instructor during that course because he was one fine pilot. He was CW2 Hofius and I would give anything to be able to talk to him now.
More coming. Thanks.
I say that because I do not recall having a tac officer when I arrived. I assume that it was a Saturday or Sunday because there were no commissioned officers anywhere. I was given a barracks number and told to get my stuff squared away and that a formation would be called later to instruct us on the upcoming expectations. To this day, I do not remember if we had a tac officer. That's a mighty far cry from having CW2 Diable running the show.
As I stepped out of the Company Headquarters building, I noticed that the barracks were the same old World War II styled barracks that Ft. Polk had. I wasn't concerned about the airconditioning as it was cold outside and, with the hint of coal dust all over the place, I could tell that we almost certainly had steam heated radiators. Oh my God, it was back to the past and living in the same barracks that World War II veterans lived in.
Things started looking up when I ran into some familiar faces. Larabee was there and not long after that Chuck Olsen and a couple of the other guys showed up. Before long, the barracks were full and we met the Captain that was running the company. Still no tac officers around.
I began to see why everything had been so lazy after we graduated from Wolters because our Class number changed from 70-05 to 70-07. It seemed that Rucker was behind or Wolters had been ahead of schedule. I don't know which one was the case but somehow, we were two graduating classes behind our original date of 70-05.
Ground school started immediately and before we were familiar with our surroundings or the layout of the base, we were in our Instrument Ground School phase of training. I liked it alot because it allowed us to transition from our primary days of flying the Hiller OH 23's to the Bell OH 47G which Uncle Sam called the OH 13.
We were told that the G designation meant that the Gas tanks were larger due to it's role as an instrument trainer. For the unfamiliar, the Bell looks just like the helicopter that is seen during the opening moments of the tv series "Mash".
One morning, we arrived at a building where we were introduced to the "Blue Canoe". That was their word for the Link Simulator that would allow a student to fly a practice instrument mission without ever getting off the ground or ever seeing the land or the horizon. I heard rumors about it and didn't laugh at it even though it looked to be something that was built in the dark ages.
Initially, they taught us to fly straight and level with a few radio communications ordering us to change altitudes and headings just to see if we could coordinate all of that. Eventually, we were given instrument departure and en route clearances that would simulate a flight in horrible weather conditions from one city to another. Adding insult to injury, they would make all kinds of changes to our original flight clearance, throw in turbulence and cross winds and finally, put us in a "holding pattern" just like the airliners had to do.
The holding pattern exercises would become a very valuable skill one night in Vietnam when I was with the 199th. I'll get to that later but I wanted to make note of it now as one Fireball Aviation Pilot reads this every day.
It wasn't easy in the beginning but it was really neat to review the ground tracks that were printed on a map by the simulator to show us our ground track along the map. This was a big help to all of us and taught us to be very easy with our turns and very precise with our manipulation of the instruments as we flew along.
In a very short period of time we passed that phase of training and were sent to the flight line to begin flying the Bell with an instrument instructor. I didn't realize it at the time but in less than 5 months I would have 3 experiences in Vietnam where those lessons came into play. Of those 3, one ended up with my Aircraft Commander in the 199th getting a serious compliment by one of the higher ranking officers in the unit.
Early in my tour with the 199th, Craig Wollman was my aircraft commander and I served as his co pilot. He made an IFR flight from Long Binh to Xuan Loc one morning, which wasn't a flight over a long distance but it was one where the fog and the clouds forced us to make an instrument departure, make the trip inside the clouds and then, once we popped out on top of the clouds, allowed us to navigate to Xuan Loc, find a hole and make the approach to a landing.
The "Old Man" came over the intercom and complimented Craig on his airmanship. The entire crew heard it and was thrilled that the CO knew what Craig had just completed. I really liked that flight and remember it to this day as it was the first real IFR flight I took in Vietnam. I have a ton of stuff to write about as it relates to Craig, but it will have to wait a little while until I graduate and make it to Vietnam.
In any event, as we completed instrument flight training and prepared to move to the transition where we would begin flying Hueys, my confidence level continued to rise. I don't remember my instrument flight instructor's name, nor do I remember my final grade in that course. I do however, remember the smile on his face and the pat on the back he gave me when the final instrument flight test was completed. I guess I can relate that to how Craig Wollman felt when the Colonel remarked about his perfect IFR flight in Vietnam.
Ya'll stand by and I will get into flying Hueys and beginning the tactics course where we were taught combat tactics by pilots who already had a tour of duty in Vietnam. I remember my flight instructor during that course because he was one fine pilot. He was CW2 Hofius and I would give anything to be able to talk to him now.
More coming. Thanks.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Transferring from Ft. Wolters to Ft. Rucker
I quite clearly remember the drive from Ft. Wolters to Ft. Rucker. I remember being really happy to drive the VW that belonged to James Miles because he was so helpful to all of us in A1 and I was happy to return the favor while he was spending a few days with his wife.
I remember the decision, once I made it to Mississippi, to use the Gulf Coast road because I wanted to see what remained of the damages from Hurricane Camile. It's easy to recall the sight of huge fishing boats being in the front yards of people who lived close to the beach as it was such an unusual sight to see in person. Seeing a boat that was bigger than a house sitting in some one's front yard has remained with me to this day. Little did I know at the time that, five years later, I would be sitting inside a metal building when the roof came off during another Gulf Coast Hurricane.
For some reason, as I thought about the trip to Rucker, the memories of all my fellow students continued to come to mind. It wasn't just the guys from my Flight that continued to surface. I thought about several others from different Flights within the 5th WOC that didn't make it and were killed in action in Vietnam. When those thoughts continued to surface and, in my mind, took me off the specific story of leaving Wolters and driving to Rucker, I simply turned off the computer. That was 4 days ago.
Despite the fact that I'm back suffering from the "meltdown" situation again, I'm not crashing 24 hours a day. Those situations come un-announced but they only come in short spurts and sometimes only last a brief period of time. As an example of that, I only crashed 3 times yesterday which left the remainder of the day free of the tears and the body that is more or less unable to function in a normal manner.
During the time frames where I'm not on the floor or unable to function normally, my mind continued to go back to this story and I continued to think about my buddies who were killed in action or died later from Agent Orange contamination and the multitude of side effects that come with that.
As a somewhat strange coincidence that came with those thoughts, I began to think of myself as one of many who associated with some very serious heroes from the war. Having just finished a study on the invasion of Tinian, Guadalcanal and Saipan, I began to see my buddies as a group of guys who were identical to those pilots who fought the air battles in the 1941-45 era.
The more I thought about it, the more my thoughts expanded to the fighter pilots who flew off many different carriers and island airfields that were built during the Second World War. The thoughts continued and contained pilots like Butch O'Hare, Dick Bong, Joe Foss and Pappy Boyington.
For some reason, I began to see the connection, the camaraderie and the same experiences of intensity that comes with combat missions in the aviation community. I concluded that we were more or less connected at the hip with all those who fought the air war.
I can clearly recognize that we were not of the same stature and National recognition of those mentioned above, but without a doubt, we could have easily had the same conversations that they did about the next battle or the fears that came as the tracers were seen passing the cockpit or hitting the aircraft. Those thoughts were recently intensified when my gunner / crew chief sent me an email with several pictures of our helicopter with all the bullet holes in it.
I guess what I'm saying or trying to say has to do with all the men who prepare to fight a war from the air. Whether you are driving to Randolph Field in 1942 and entering the first stages of learning the art of flying or going to another base to transition into specific aircraft types like
a fighter, all of us belong to that unique brotherhood and it's impossible for me to think about the "Air War" without thinking about the entire picture. I find it very difficult to view the first aircraft carrier war and the first helicopter war as a war that is different in any way other than the tools that were used to fight it.
To finish this, let me say that I am quite thankful to have received the number of emails I have about this story. I enjoy writing it as much as some of you are telling me that you enjoy reading it. I hope that my input may have some degree of awakening in all of you as it relates to the airmen who have fought for our Country and fought at the highest levels of bravery. Hand salute to all of you. Tim
I remember the decision, once I made it to Mississippi, to use the Gulf Coast road because I wanted to see what remained of the damages from Hurricane Camile. It's easy to recall the sight of huge fishing boats being in the front yards of people who lived close to the beach as it was such an unusual sight to see in person. Seeing a boat that was bigger than a house sitting in some one's front yard has remained with me to this day. Little did I know at the time that, five years later, I would be sitting inside a metal building when the roof came off during another Gulf Coast Hurricane.
For some reason, as I thought about the trip to Rucker, the memories of all my fellow students continued to come to mind. It wasn't just the guys from my Flight that continued to surface. I thought about several others from different Flights within the 5th WOC that didn't make it and were killed in action in Vietnam. When those thoughts continued to surface and, in my mind, took me off the specific story of leaving Wolters and driving to Rucker, I simply turned off the computer. That was 4 days ago.
Despite the fact that I'm back suffering from the "meltdown" situation again, I'm not crashing 24 hours a day. Those situations come un-announced but they only come in short spurts and sometimes only last a brief period of time. As an example of that, I only crashed 3 times yesterday which left the remainder of the day free of the tears and the body that is more or less unable to function in a normal manner.
During the time frames where I'm not on the floor or unable to function normally, my mind continued to go back to this story and I continued to think about my buddies who were killed in action or died later from Agent Orange contamination and the multitude of side effects that come with that.
As a somewhat strange coincidence that came with those thoughts, I began to think of myself as one of many who associated with some very serious heroes from the war. Having just finished a study on the invasion of Tinian, Guadalcanal and Saipan, I began to see my buddies as a group of guys who were identical to those pilots who fought the air battles in the 1941-45 era.
The more I thought about it, the more my thoughts expanded to the fighter pilots who flew off many different carriers and island airfields that were built during the Second World War. The thoughts continued and contained pilots like Butch O'Hare, Dick Bong, Joe Foss and Pappy Boyington.
For some reason, I began to see the connection, the camaraderie and the same experiences of intensity that comes with combat missions in the aviation community. I concluded that we were more or less connected at the hip with all those who fought the air war.
I can clearly recognize that we were not of the same stature and National recognition of those mentioned above, but without a doubt, we could have easily had the same conversations that they did about the next battle or the fears that came as the tracers were seen passing the cockpit or hitting the aircraft. Those thoughts were recently intensified when my gunner / crew chief sent me an email with several pictures of our helicopter with all the bullet holes in it.
I guess what I'm saying or trying to say has to do with all the men who prepare to fight a war from the air. Whether you are driving to Randolph Field in 1942 and entering the first stages of learning the art of flying or going to another base to transition into specific aircraft types like
a fighter, all of us belong to that unique brotherhood and it's impossible for me to think about the "Air War" without thinking about the entire picture. I find it very difficult to view the first aircraft carrier war and the first helicopter war as a war that is different in any way other than the tools that were used to fight it.
To finish this, let me say that I am quite thankful to have received the number of emails I have about this story. I enjoy writing it as much as some of you are telling me that you enjoy reading it. I hope that my input may have some degree of awakening in all of you as it relates to the airmen who have fought for our Country and fought at the highest levels of bravery. Hand salute to all of you. Tim
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Meltdowns back, On the floor.
Hard time going on right now. Meltdowns are back and I am stoned as Ben Gump trying to knock them out. It's a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation. If you want to knock them out, you pretty much have to knock yourself out.
They took me to the Oncology Dept today to get a blood test with the hopes that I will have a much higher level of Dilantin (Phenytoyin NA) in my blood stream than is needed. I'll find out tomorrow but in the meantime, I still have to deal with these un -announced ass kickers they refer to as meltdowns.
I think I've run out of tears for today so, since the meds are really kickin' in, I thought I'd let ya'll know that I am real interested in getting on with the transfer from Ft. Wolters to Ft. Rucker but I'm not in any kind of shape to do a good job of it right now. Hang tight, maybe tomorrow. Thanks. Tim
They took me to the Oncology Dept today to get a blood test with the hopes that I will have a much higher level of Dilantin (Phenytoyin NA) in my blood stream than is needed. I'll find out tomorrow but in the meantime, I still have to deal with these un -announced ass kickers they refer to as meltdowns.
I think I've run out of tears for today so, since the meds are really kickin' in, I thought I'd let ya'll know that I am real interested in getting on with the transfer from Ft. Wolters to Ft. Rucker but I'm not in any kind of shape to do a good job of it right now. Hang tight, maybe tomorrow. Thanks. Tim
Monday, March 12, 2012
Diable's Attention to Detail applied in war
If you remember the story about the old first sgt that came in the barracks and caught everybody sleeping and the most recent one about Diable catching the candidate with his cash exposed in the barracks, you may enjoy the brief note I am about to make about my application of his "Attention to Detail" rules. I will be brief as I do not want to mess up a story I will write about the invasion of Cambodia later on in this article.
If you will remember from my post about the first day we met Diable, I outlined my first impression of his impeccably squared away uniform and his overall demeanor. The last note I made concerned his memorization of the rule book that was given to incoming candidates at Ft. Wolters and how impressive it was to hear him recite the rules from memory. Putting those impressions into actions while in combat, literally saved me from going to jail and I will make a brief note about that here before I get to the next post about training at Ft. Rucker.
When we invaded Cambodia, I had just experienced my immediate Commanding Officer's departure from the Scout Platoon and witnessed the God Awful conduct of his replacement. Let's use the comic book character and call him Captain "Dilbert". He certainly was a Dilbert kinda guy and was easily the sorriest human being I'd ever met during the entire time I was in the Army.
Upon his arrival, I was pretty much the old, experienced combat pilot and it was left up to me to give him his "In Country Orientation Flight". This was a requirement that had to take place before anyone was allowed to venture out and fly to the AO or Area of Operations.
I had mixed emotions about that. I was glad that I had been pointed out as the "Go To Guy" as it made me quite proud to be described that way by the Major who was commanding the entire Air Cav Troop. On the other hand, I had already pegged Captain Dilbert as one of those "short guy complex" kinda guys and wasn't all that excited about flying him around the AO.
Despite that, I found myself preparing for take off and explaining to Dilbert that we would be going throughout the AO and identifying land marks that he could use as way points for navigation. As soon as I took off and cleared the concertina wire that marked the perimeter of the base, I reached down to the mini gun arming switch and flipped it to the "on" position. I didn't say anything about that, I just did it and continued with my explanations of landmarks and flew directly to Phu Loi which was an area that was easy to identify and use as a navigation point to begin missions from.
He really didn't have much to say during the entire flight. I found that to be a little strange but didn't get on him or pressure him about anything. I returned to base, made my radio calls and landed at the heli pad where the scout pilots began all operations. When I did that and began the procedures to shut down the turbine and end the flight, he took off his seat belt and shoulder harness and began to exit the aircraft. Before he unplugged his patch chord that connected him to all the radios and intercom, he said: "Meet me in the TOC (Tactical Operations Center" and I will "critique" your flight.
I was amazed that this "know nothing, first day in the unit idiot" would say anything other than Thank You, Mr. Butler. Having heard his comment, I replied with: "Captain Dilbert, I am the aircraft commander and as soon as I finish with my post flight and log book, I will critique you in the TOC". Suffice it to say that day one was the beginning of the war between us.
Shortly after that, we began Hunter Killer operations in Cambodia. I was already over the hump in my tour of duty and had less than six months remaining before I would go back home. Having been around that long, following the lessons Diable had taught me, I had already memorized the Rules of Engagement (ROE) booklet and was ready to do my part in accordance with the procedures I'd learned and the experiences that had kept me alive to that point. Dilbert, on the other hand, was just beginning his learning curve and was more than willing to let pilots and gunners pay the price for his inexperience and what later proved to be, his total unsuitability for command.
One day, Dilbert ordered one of the scouts into a tree top level recon mission at the Chup Rubber Plantation. This was a day to day typical order but on this particular one, a gunner ended up taking an AK 47 round in the left arm. When the pilots got together to explain the details, I discovered that the gunner was hit on the 4th mission of the morning and worst of all, the first 3 missions had taken fire prior to Dilbert ordering the 4th mission in.
I knew that this order was improper as the Macv ROE booklet was clear in it's directive that mandated the 4th mission commander to order air strikes, artillery fire or other available ground support before the 4th mission would enter the area. If Dilbert had known that, we would have pulverized the area with 155 howitzer fire and began the 4th mission to access the effects of the barrage. Unfortunately for the gunner, Dilbert didn't have a clue.
The scout pilots were a very close knit group of individuals. We pretty much kept to ourselves and met in our ready room to discuss the specifics of what had happened when Dilbert screwed up and ordered the 4th mission in without doing anything according to the ROE. On that day, Dilbert lost the respect of every pilot in the scout section and he would never regain it. I elected not to inform the gunners and crew chiefs at that time as I feared one of them would blow him up with a frag or concussion grenade, a move that happened more than once in Vietnam when an unfit commander kept killing his troops through ignorance or dereliction of duty.
Soon after that, I drew the slot of 4th mission and was scheduled to go back to the Chup exactly where Bustin and I had already been hit and the gunner lost his arm. We were all on edge that day as one of our Cobra pilots had been hit by a 51 caliber anti aircraft position even though he was flying at 5,000 feet instead of tree top level like the scouts did. Oddly enough, he took one in the arm and was lucky that it didn't take off his entire arm and shoot down the Cobra. Teddy survived it and was shipped back to the United States to try and save his arm.
As I arrived at the Chup, 3rd mission was already doing his recon and received fire. When he pulled out of the recon and attempted to fly back to Vietnam, hoping that his helicopter would make it without crashing, Dilbert gave me the order to "Go In". Needless to say, I refused to do it and did not give him any reason for doing so. I knew that Macv directives were law and order and basically, his ass belonged to me.
He screamed, yelled and raised hell on the radio and ordered me back to Thien Ngnon, which was a small airstrip in the middle of the jungle that was located right on the Cambodian border. Poor Bustin was quite concerned about an ass chewing coming over the radio but I calmed him down by reading him the ROE that identified Dilbert's order as unlawful if not derelict in duty.
Loren and I had flown alot of combat missions together and deep down inside he knew that Dilbert and I were going to lock horns and when that hit him, a smile came across his face.
When we landed at Thien Ngnon, Dilbert was no where to be found. He'd left orders there directing me to fly back to Dian instead of Tay Ninh which was our forward operating base.
Dian, pronounced Zee Awn, was our Regimental Headquarters and in Dilbert's mind, he thought I deserved to be court marshaled for cowardice in the face of the enemy and that there would be no better place for me to be than Regimental Headquarters when he hung me out to dry. I had mixed emotions. I was furious that he would accuse me of such a thing because I had already been recognized for my combat performance and had been given excellent Officer Efficiency Reports from every Commander I ever had including the Major he was obviously intending to report me to.
Despite the "hype" that was going on at the moment, I felt that it was a great place to meet because I knew I had his ass and I was so furious I was prepared to hand it to him and in effect, file charges against him at the Regimental level. I was ready to go see the Commander of the entire Regiment, not just our troop commander.
As I was making my final approach to the helipad at Troop Headquarters I could see Dilbert's helicopter as well as a large number of people standing around it. There were enlisted door gunners and crew chiefs, non commissioned officers that knew me well and credited me with saving their bacon on more than one occasion, as well as some Warrant Officers and a commissioned officer from the Aero Rifle Platoon. The word had spread that Dilbert and I had a run in and it was obvious that the "fans" were standing by waiting to see which trick I would pull out of my hat.
When I shut the engine down, Dilbert was already screaming at me and doing so in front of all mentioned above. When I climbed out of the helicopter and the noise of the turbine engine was gone, he seemed to be come louder and louder. I infuriated him when I smiled back at him almost as if I were laughing in his face. That really set him off. He began a verbal attack on me and called me a chicken shit coward. When he did that, I looked around the area at all the men witnessing this mess and saw a look of shock on their faces because each and every one there had already experienced my performance in combat and they didn't know what was going on. Despite that, they knew that I didn't play and later on, many told me that the knew I was going to jump his ass worse than he'd jumped mine.
As Dilbert continued to rant and rave, I walked up to him, grabbed the front of his flight suit, pulled out my 38, and screamed as loud as I could. I said: " I was flying combat missions in Cambodia when you were sucking your primary flight instructor's Di**." For those of you who know me, you may well imagine how loud I was when I used the last word in that sentence.
As things heated up and I pulled the hammer back on that 38, he asked if I had lost my mind, I told him that the Butler family was full time certified crazy and that there was nothing "temporary" about it. At that, he stomped his foot and announced that he was going to see the Major. As he walked away, he could hear the enlisted men and many others in the crowd, laughing. That only further infuriated him but he knew he was in a hostile crowd and never said another thing as he continued toward the Major's office.
I further infuriated the situation by immediately showing up at the Major's office thereby, removing him from the opportunity to "Order Mr. Butler here NOW". Little did he know the magnitude of the ass whipping, career killing conversation he was about to take.
As I stood at attention and requested permission to speak, Major Wulff told me to stand at ease which I did. He said that Captain Dip Shit, I mean Dilbert, had made some very serious comments about me and he wanted to know my side of the story. I loved it because I already knew the Macv directive was going to place a turd in Dilbert's punch bowl and ruin him through out the troop.
I described the enemy fire taken by the first, second and third mission and then, without turning the page to the ROE booklet that was still hanging around my neck, I began to quote chapter and verse of the Macv directive that ordered me to call in air strikes, artillery or other ground support assets before the 4th mission could commence the recon. Dilbert was becoming uneasy and Major Wulff was becoming more and more interested in the report I was giving him about his new Scout Platoon Commander.
As I was finishing, I opened the ROE booklet and pointed to the Macv directive and began to hand it to Major Wulff. As I was doing that, I mentioned that "If Captain Dilbert had read his ROE booklet, we wouldn't be here today and we would not have lost our gunner who was shot in the arm during the last episode where he violated the ROE. I finished my statement by saying two things.
I told the Major that I considered Captain Dilbert as the "Puke" of the officer corp and that he had done more damage to us than the NVA or the Vietcong. Dilbert became fire engine red but said nothing as there was nothing he could say about the Macv directives without putting himself into further trouble.
At the end of the conversation, the Major said we were suffering from a shortage of scout pilots as we had one killed and two more wounded. He said that he wanted to know if I could fly with Dilbert again and I said: "I can do, sir but I will say that if he's shot down and I know his gunner is dead when I get there, I will kill him.
The Major, in an example of true command leadership said that he knew I had flown more combat hours that I was supposed to, that I may be suffering from combat fatigue and that since I had refused R&R before, he wanted me to go to R&R in Hong Kong and get some rest. I took that as a signal that he knew he was going to have to deal with Dilbert and it would be wise for me not to be around as a target of harassment for Dilbert. Hong Kong was great.
Despite hanging Dilbert's ass out to dry, I have more to report from the dirty deeds division shortly. Gotta run for now but felt it important to connect the Attention to Detail Mantra that Mr. Diable hammered into us and apply it during my war time experience. I will finish this later but need to get back on track with the move to Ft. Rucker. Thanks for allowing me the latitude of getting off topic and the opportunity to apply the rationale of listening to those who are your teachers and never forget what they were trying to teach. Thanks again and again to Mr. Diable for being a wonderful tac officer who taught us many things that would save our asses in Vietnam. I have more stories about these teachings but I can't get too far ahead. Tim.
If you will remember from my post about the first day we met Diable, I outlined my first impression of his impeccably squared away uniform and his overall demeanor. The last note I made concerned his memorization of the rule book that was given to incoming candidates at Ft. Wolters and how impressive it was to hear him recite the rules from memory. Putting those impressions into actions while in combat, literally saved me from going to jail and I will make a brief note about that here before I get to the next post about training at Ft. Rucker.
When we invaded Cambodia, I had just experienced my immediate Commanding Officer's departure from the Scout Platoon and witnessed the God Awful conduct of his replacement. Let's use the comic book character and call him Captain "Dilbert". He certainly was a Dilbert kinda guy and was easily the sorriest human being I'd ever met during the entire time I was in the Army.
Upon his arrival, I was pretty much the old, experienced combat pilot and it was left up to me to give him his "In Country Orientation Flight". This was a requirement that had to take place before anyone was allowed to venture out and fly to the AO or Area of Operations.
I had mixed emotions about that. I was glad that I had been pointed out as the "Go To Guy" as it made me quite proud to be described that way by the Major who was commanding the entire Air Cav Troop. On the other hand, I had already pegged Captain Dilbert as one of those "short guy complex" kinda guys and wasn't all that excited about flying him around the AO.
Despite that, I found myself preparing for take off and explaining to Dilbert that we would be going throughout the AO and identifying land marks that he could use as way points for navigation. As soon as I took off and cleared the concertina wire that marked the perimeter of the base, I reached down to the mini gun arming switch and flipped it to the "on" position. I didn't say anything about that, I just did it and continued with my explanations of landmarks and flew directly to Phu Loi which was an area that was easy to identify and use as a navigation point to begin missions from.
He really didn't have much to say during the entire flight. I found that to be a little strange but didn't get on him or pressure him about anything. I returned to base, made my radio calls and landed at the heli pad where the scout pilots began all operations. When I did that and began the procedures to shut down the turbine and end the flight, he took off his seat belt and shoulder harness and began to exit the aircraft. Before he unplugged his patch chord that connected him to all the radios and intercom, he said: "Meet me in the TOC (Tactical Operations Center" and I will "critique" your flight.
I was amazed that this "know nothing, first day in the unit idiot" would say anything other than Thank You, Mr. Butler. Having heard his comment, I replied with: "Captain Dilbert, I am the aircraft commander and as soon as I finish with my post flight and log book, I will critique you in the TOC". Suffice it to say that day one was the beginning of the war between us.
Shortly after that, we began Hunter Killer operations in Cambodia. I was already over the hump in my tour of duty and had less than six months remaining before I would go back home. Having been around that long, following the lessons Diable had taught me, I had already memorized the Rules of Engagement (ROE) booklet and was ready to do my part in accordance with the procedures I'd learned and the experiences that had kept me alive to that point. Dilbert, on the other hand, was just beginning his learning curve and was more than willing to let pilots and gunners pay the price for his inexperience and what later proved to be, his total unsuitability for command.
One day, Dilbert ordered one of the scouts into a tree top level recon mission at the Chup Rubber Plantation. This was a day to day typical order but on this particular one, a gunner ended up taking an AK 47 round in the left arm. When the pilots got together to explain the details, I discovered that the gunner was hit on the 4th mission of the morning and worst of all, the first 3 missions had taken fire prior to Dilbert ordering the 4th mission in.
I knew that this order was improper as the Macv ROE booklet was clear in it's directive that mandated the 4th mission commander to order air strikes, artillery fire or other available ground support before the 4th mission would enter the area. If Dilbert had known that, we would have pulverized the area with 155 howitzer fire and began the 4th mission to access the effects of the barrage. Unfortunately for the gunner, Dilbert didn't have a clue.
The scout pilots were a very close knit group of individuals. We pretty much kept to ourselves and met in our ready room to discuss the specifics of what had happened when Dilbert screwed up and ordered the 4th mission in without doing anything according to the ROE. On that day, Dilbert lost the respect of every pilot in the scout section and he would never regain it. I elected not to inform the gunners and crew chiefs at that time as I feared one of them would blow him up with a frag or concussion grenade, a move that happened more than once in Vietnam when an unfit commander kept killing his troops through ignorance or dereliction of duty.
Soon after that, I drew the slot of 4th mission and was scheduled to go back to the Chup exactly where Bustin and I had already been hit and the gunner lost his arm. We were all on edge that day as one of our Cobra pilots had been hit by a 51 caliber anti aircraft position even though he was flying at 5,000 feet instead of tree top level like the scouts did. Oddly enough, he took one in the arm and was lucky that it didn't take off his entire arm and shoot down the Cobra. Teddy survived it and was shipped back to the United States to try and save his arm.
As I arrived at the Chup, 3rd mission was already doing his recon and received fire. When he pulled out of the recon and attempted to fly back to Vietnam, hoping that his helicopter would make it without crashing, Dilbert gave me the order to "Go In". Needless to say, I refused to do it and did not give him any reason for doing so. I knew that Macv directives were law and order and basically, his ass belonged to me.
He screamed, yelled and raised hell on the radio and ordered me back to Thien Ngnon, which was a small airstrip in the middle of the jungle that was located right on the Cambodian border. Poor Bustin was quite concerned about an ass chewing coming over the radio but I calmed him down by reading him the ROE that identified Dilbert's order as unlawful if not derelict in duty.
Loren and I had flown alot of combat missions together and deep down inside he knew that Dilbert and I were going to lock horns and when that hit him, a smile came across his face.
When we landed at Thien Ngnon, Dilbert was no where to be found. He'd left orders there directing me to fly back to Dian instead of Tay Ninh which was our forward operating base.
Dian, pronounced Zee Awn, was our Regimental Headquarters and in Dilbert's mind, he thought I deserved to be court marshaled for cowardice in the face of the enemy and that there would be no better place for me to be than Regimental Headquarters when he hung me out to dry. I had mixed emotions. I was furious that he would accuse me of such a thing because I had already been recognized for my combat performance and had been given excellent Officer Efficiency Reports from every Commander I ever had including the Major he was obviously intending to report me to.
Despite the "hype" that was going on at the moment, I felt that it was a great place to meet because I knew I had his ass and I was so furious I was prepared to hand it to him and in effect, file charges against him at the Regimental level. I was ready to go see the Commander of the entire Regiment, not just our troop commander.
As I was making my final approach to the helipad at Troop Headquarters I could see Dilbert's helicopter as well as a large number of people standing around it. There were enlisted door gunners and crew chiefs, non commissioned officers that knew me well and credited me with saving their bacon on more than one occasion, as well as some Warrant Officers and a commissioned officer from the Aero Rifle Platoon. The word had spread that Dilbert and I had a run in and it was obvious that the "fans" were standing by waiting to see which trick I would pull out of my hat.
When I shut the engine down, Dilbert was already screaming at me and doing so in front of all mentioned above. When I climbed out of the helicopter and the noise of the turbine engine was gone, he seemed to be come louder and louder. I infuriated him when I smiled back at him almost as if I were laughing in his face. That really set him off. He began a verbal attack on me and called me a chicken shit coward. When he did that, I looked around the area at all the men witnessing this mess and saw a look of shock on their faces because each and every one there had already experienced my performance in combat and they didn't know what was going on. Despite that, they knew that I didn't play and later on, many told me that the knew I was going to jump his ass worse than he'd jumped mine.
As Dilbert continued to rant and rave, I walked up to him, grabbed the front of his flight suit, pulled out my 38, and screamed as loud as I could. I said: " I was flying combat missions in Cambodia when you were sucking your primary flight instructor's Di**." For those of you who know me, you may well imagine how loud I was when I used the last word in that sentence.
As things heated up and I pulled the hammer back on that 38, he asked if I had lost my mind, I told him that the Butler family was full time certified crazy and that there was nothing "temporary" about it. At that, he stomped his foot and announced that he was going to see the Major. As he walked away, he could hear the enlisted men and many others in the crowd, laughing. That only further infuriated him but he knew he was in a hostile crowd and never said another thing as he continued toward the Major's office.
I further infuriated the situation by immediately showing up at the Major's office thereby, removing him from the opportunity to "Order Mr. Butler here NOW". Little did he know the magnitude of the ass whipping, career killing conversation he was about to take.
As I stood at attention and requested permission to speak, Major Wulff told me to stand at ease which I did. He said that Captain Dip Shit, I mean Dilbert, had made some very serious comments about me and he wanted to know my side of the story. I loved it because I already knew the Macv directive was going to place a turd in Dilbert's punch bowl and ruin him through out the troop.
I described the enemy fire taken by the first, second and third mission and then, without turning the page to the ROE booklet that was still hanging around my neck, I began to quote chapter and verse of the Macv directive that ordered me to call in air strikes, artillery or other ground support assets before the 4th mission could commence the recon. Dilbert was becoming uneasy and Major Wulff was becoming more and more interested in the report I was giving him about his new Scout Platoon Commander.
As I was finishing, I opened the ROE booklet and pointed to the Macv directive and began to hand it to Major Wulff. As I was doing that, I mentioned that "If Captain Dilbert had read his ROE booklet, we wouldn't be here today and we would not have lost our gunner who was shot in the arm during the last episode where he violated the ROE. I finished my statement by saying two things.
I told the Major that I considered Captain Dilbert as the "Puke" of the officer corp and that he had done more damage to us than the NVA or the Vietcong. Dilbert became fire engine red but said nothing as there was nothing he could say about the Macv directives without putting himself into further trouble.
At the end of the conversation, the Major said we were suffering from a shortage of scout pilots as we had one killed and two more wounded. He said that he wanted to know if I could fly with Dilbert again and I said: "I can do, sir but I will say that if he's shot down and I know his gunner is dead when I get there, I will kill him.
The Major, in an example of true command leadership said that he knew I had flown more combat hours that I was supposed to, that I may be suffering from combat fatigue and that since I had refused R&R before, he wanted me to go to R&R in Hong Kong and get some rest. I took that as a signal that he knew he was going to have to deal with Dilbert and it would be wise for me not to be around as a target of harassment for Dilbert. Hong Kong was great.
Despite hanging Dilbert's ass out to dry, I have more to report from the dirty deeds division shortly. Gotta run for now but felt it important to connect the Attention to Detail Mantra that Mr. Diable hammered into us and apply it during my war time experience. I will finish this later but need to get back on track with the move to Ft. Rucker. Thanks for allowing me the latitude of getting off topic and the opportunity to apply the rationale of listening to those who are your teachers and never forget what they were trying to teach. Thanks again and again to Mr. Diable for being a wonderful tac officer who taught us many things that would save our asses in Vietnam. I have more stories about these teachings but I can't get too far ahead. Tim.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Graduation/ Inspection and Departure
In the late 60's, there was something about muscle cars. I had an SS396 when I was a senior in high school and that one ruined me as nothing short of great performance in a car, was acceptable. Mr. Diable's Mustang was a hot rod and it was beyond cool that he let me use it to drive to Love Field to pick up my date.
I recall walking through Love Field on the way to the gate to pick up Joyce and noticing those looks one gets when a soldier who is really "decked out" walks by. I passed a long, tall Texan who was waiting for a flight and as I did, he tipped his cowboy hat to me. I thought that was pretty cool.
At that time, I hadn't had a date or even been around a girl in roughly 7 months. When Joyce walked off the plane and through the hall way between deplaning and tickets, I was knocked out. She looked like a million dollars and I was glad that she had accepted my invitation. I'll never forget that she smiled and said: "Hello, little brother". She lived in the same apartment building as my sister Linda and her husband Malcolm when they were at Louisiana Tech and often times referred to me as little brother.
Joyce wanted to know all about flying and I'm sure that I never shut up during the drive back to Ft. Wolters. Despite that, when we checked into the Holiday Inn, time was drawing near to the dance and we hurriedly prepared for the big night. I wish I had some dramatic story to tell you but the bottom line is that I don't. We went to the party and I showed her off to all my buddies who were impressed with the "Good Looking Blond" that Butler brought.
When all the festivities were over, we went to sleep and the next day, retraced my steps back to Love Field and that was it. I drove back to Mr. Diable's quarters and prepared to continue with my Super Senior duties, a job that was later described as "an assistant tac officer". I didn't see Joyce again for many, many years.
When I returned Diable went back to his mentoring and taught me something that would save my ass in Vietnam. I'll get into the specifics of that later when I write about Vietnam but I will give you an example of it now.
He explained that we would be given a "code book" and that when he received his, he put it on a string and wore it around his neck. The code book contained specific radio frequencies that we would use during combat operations and that it was super important that we guarded it with our lives. Not doing so would allow the NVA or the VC to get it, tune in to the frequencies and find out what we were going to do before we did it.
He also explained that we would be given an ROE book which covered the "Rules of Engagement". He advised that I memorize the rules and not just wear it around my neck. I paid close attention to that and, when I made it to Vietnam, I studied it and could quote all kinds of MACV (Military Assistance Command Vietnam) directives from memory.
To illustrate that, we went over the incoming information booklet that we'd given to the incoming students and went over the section regarding "security". It had in it a mandate that "no money" was to be left out or in the open.
After the lesson was complete, he told me to get in the car and we would go to the reception area where the new students were. When we arrived at the company area, it was late and all the new Candidates were asleep. He walked into the barracks, turned on the lights and screamed "Off your ass and on your feet". That was term that I use to this day. IT reminded me of the first day we met Diable, the one where I couldn't figure out if he was General Patton's kid or a Chuck Norris kinda guy.
When the inspection started, Diable found a roll of cash and immediately brought the guilty Candidate to a stiffer degree of attention. He yelled something like "Candidate, is it that you CAN'T read or YOU CAN and just don't think you need to comply with the regulation regarding cash?".
After a few seconds of stuttering on the part of the guilty party, Diable yelled, "Check out regulation A6, Section 1, Paragraph 2" or something like that. In any event, he quoted it from memory and the Candidate was flipping through the rules and regulations as fast as he could. From someplace unknown, Diable pulled out the Regulation booklet and opened it to the page where the regs about leaving cash out in the open, was posted.
I don't know if it's important to recall what his punishment was but I definitely remember the impact Diable had on me that night. I swore that I would memorize the ROE book when it was given to me and the vow I made to myself that night, would eventually save me from going to LBJ which was the nick name of Long Binh Jail. '
I will have one more post about my last day at Wolters before I move out and head to Ft. Rucker but I wanted to put as much emphasis on Diable's mentoring as I could. I think this particular example of his mentoring style is very important because the guys I flew with when the 11th Cav invaded Cambodia, still talk about it to this day. Stand by, I wont' forget it because it was the 3rd most impactful event that I had during my entire tour of duty in Vietnam and Cambodia.
I recall walking through Love Field on the way to the gate to pick up Joyce and noticing those looks one gets when a soldier who is really "decked out" walks by. I passed a long, tall Texan who was waiting for a flight and as I did, he tipped his cowboy hat to me. I thought that was pretty cool.
At that time, I hadn't had a date or even been around a girl in roughly 7 months. When Joyce walked off the plane and through the hall way between deplaning and tickets, I was knocked out. She looked like a million dollars and I was glad that she had accepted my invitation. I'll never forget that she smiled and said: "Hello, little brother". She lived in the same apartment building as my sister Linda and her husband Malcolm when they were at Louisiana Tech and often times referred to me as little brother.
Joyce wanted to know all about flying and I'm sure that I never shut up during the drive back to Ft. Wolters. Despite that, when we checked into the Holiday Inn, time was drawing near to the dance and we hurriedly prepared for the big night. I wish I had some dramatic story to tell you but the bottom line is that I don't. We went to the party and I showed her off to all my buddies who were impressed with the "Good Looking Blond" that Butler brought.
When all the festivities were over, we went to sleep and the next day, retraced my steps back to Love Field and that was it. I drove back to Mr. Diable's quarters and prepared to continue with my Super Senior duties, a job that was later described as "an assistant tac officer". I didn't see Joyce again for many, many years.
When I returned Diable went back to his mentoring and taught me something that would save my ass in Vietnam. I'll get into the specifics of that later when I write about Vietnam but I will give you an example of it now.
He explained that we would be given a "code book" and that when he received his, he put it on a string and wore it around his neck. The code book contained specific radio frequencies that we would use during combat operations and that it was super important that we guarded it with our lives. Not doing so would allow the NVA or the VC to get it, tune in to the frequencies and find out what we were going to do before we did it.
He also explained that we would be given an ROE book which covered the "Rules of Engagement". He advised that I memorize the rules and not just wear it around my neck. I paid close attention to that and, when I made it to Vietnam, I studied it and could quote all kinds of MACV (Military Assistance Command Vietnam) directives from memory.
To illustrate that, we went over the incoming information booklet that we'd given to the incoming students and went over the section regarding "security". It had in it a mandate that "no money" was to be left out or in the open.
After the lesson was complete, he told me to get in the car and we would go to the reception area where the new students were. When we arrived at the company area, it was late and all the new Candidates were asleep. He walked into the barracks, turned on the lights and screamed "Off your ass and on your feet". That was term that I use to this day. IT reminded me of the first day we met Diable, the one where I couldn't figure out if he was General Patton's kid or a Chuck Norris kinda guy.
When the inspection started, Diable found a roll of cash and immediately brought the guilty Candidate to a stiffer degree of attention. He yelled something like "Candidate, is it that you CAN'T read or YOU CAN and just don't think you need to comply with the regulation regarding cash?".
After a few seconds of stuttering on the part of the guilty party, Diable yelled, "Check out regulation A6, Section 1, Paragraph 2" or something like that. In any event, he quoted it from memory and the Candidate was flipping through the rules and regulations as fast as he could. From someplace unknown, Diable pulled out the Regulation booklet and opened it to the page where the regs about leaving cash out in the open, was posted.
I don't know if it's important to recall what his punishment was but I definitely remember the impact Diable had on me that night. I swore that I would memorize the ROE book when it was given to me and the vow I made to myself that night, would eventually save me from going to LBJ which was the nick name of Long Binh Jail. '
I will have one more post about my last day at Wolters before I move out and head to Ft. Rucker but I wanted to put as much emphasis on Diable's mentoring as I could. I think this particular example of his mentoring style is very important because the guys I flew with when the 11th Cav invaded Cambodia, still talk about it to this day. Stand by, I wont' forget it because it was the 3rd most impactful event that I had during my entire tour of duty in Vietnam and Cambodia.
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