Day 2 in the Slick Platoon

I think it's common place to have uncertainties when you come into a new unit, but the ups and downs that came from day one in the Air Cav Troop seemed a bit different from my first couple of days with the 199th. I was pleasantly surprised by the demeanor of the Huey pilots I'd met and could tell by looking at them that they knew what was going on and were ready for whatever else was to come. Despite that, there still appeared to be something uncertain from the overall picture.

I discovered that we had a Lt assigned as a pilot with the Slicks, but he never flew. I also discovered that the pilots in the Slick Platoon were sitting around for the second day and not out flying any missions. Further to that, even though I did not expect any kind of heroes welcome, I was a bit surprised that no commissioned officers had called on me to discuss preparations for the Nighthawk missions I was there to begin. I still hadn't met Cpt Sheehan and that seemed to be the most unsettling thing.

On the upside of that, I quickly learned that there was a Huey pilot in the Slick Platoon named Jim Jelsomin and he was considered by all the pilots in the unit, to be the most experienced Huey pilot and that the description of him was somewhat like my description of Wollman, Femmer and Young.

With that thought in mind, I remember the first time I saw him and I had to agree that he looked the part of the "Ace" and perfectly fit the mold of what you might expect a super pilot to look like. If there was any Huey pilot that should have been on the front cover of Life Magazine, he surely fit the profile.

Despite those things, I finally met Captain Sheehan. As he extended his hand, he told me that he was real excited to see me in the unit and could not wait to begin night combat operations. I soon found out that he had been briefed and knew where I had come from, what my combat experiences were and  what I was there to do. Even though that made me feel much better, it gave me a certain degree of uncertainty as it related to my first meeting with Major Blanchard who more or less said nothing along those lines.

As Sheehan went into his background, he told me about his experiences as an instructor pilot at Ft. Rucker and that during his time there, he became General Patton's instructor. He also told me that he'd written General Patton a pink slip for poor performance during one his flight lessons and that the General raised hell about receiving a pink slip. The part I liked most about that story was the ending where he said that the pink slip stuck and he wouldn't change his grade. I thought that was more than a little ballsy.

As our discussion continued, he told me something that furthered my comfort level. He told me that he would not accept a situation where I simply came into the unit and started training the other pilots in the art of night combat operations. He was most emphatic about his position as CO of the Slicks and how important it was that he be the first pilot in the unit to become Nighthawk qualified.

Even though I didn't know him, I was quite relieved that I would be flying with a pilot that had been an instructor at Rucker and was stepping up to the plate as a Platoon Commander who exhibited an attitude that he would not ask any of his men to do anything that he wouldn't do himself. I instantly became comfortable with that as I knew he had extensive knowledge of our Area of Operations, more flight hours than I did and that he knew everybody in the unit on the aviation side including the gunners and crew chiefs. 

As I returned to the Slick Hootch, my new level of confidence fell a bit when I discovered all the pilots still sitting around playing guitars, writing letters home, listening to music or just shooting the shit with each other. It was then that I discovered that the Slicks had not seen much flying in the recent past and they were bored to death, wanting to fly and make a difference.

Somehow, I had the sense that they blamed Sheehan for all that. I'd never experienced a situation like that with the 199th as we were a very tight knit outfit and flew all the time. I remember that I eventually fell into the same sense of boredom as day after day went by without me flying. I didn't know how the scheduling ran but I knew that Sheehan almost certainly had nothing to with it.

In any event, I was soon to take my first flight and even that added to my uncertainties. Major Blanchard sent a runner to get me and have me report to the helipad for a flight. I was thrilled with the opportunity to get back in the cockpit, but soon became disappointed with it. I thought I was going to have an opportunity to show my stuff but instead, more or less became a passenger who did nothing.

We flew North for a minute, turned west and gained alot of altitude which was something we only did in the 199th when we knew there was alot of anti aircraft fire around. As we passed the famous base at Cu Chi where Colin Powell had been stationed, and continued to head westward, I told the Major I'd been here before and advised him that I had made a flight to Cambodia when I was first with the 199th. When I said that, he looked at me with an eye that showed me his "hold card" and let me know that he was thinking something was going on that he wasn't aware of.

I remembered that flight because there had been a huge firefight when another ground unit landed right in the middle of a huge marijuana field in Cambodia where our ground unit learned that the drug lord's private army was every bit as tough as the NVA or the VC.

Another aviation unit was there dropping 55 gallon drums of gasoline out of a Chinook which immediately set the marijuana field on fire. I remembered Little O laughing and saying: "Fly us over there". It was my one and only flight into Cambodia during my entire time with the 199th and I had no idea why we were there.

As we approached Tay Ninh and the famous mountain that was known as Nui Ba Din, Major Blanchard did a 180 and we began our flight back to Dian. I don't remember if I did any piloting at all that day but I do remember that I considered it be as far away from an orientation flight as it could be. When we landed back at Dian I filled out the log book, post flighted the Huey and watched the Major go back to his office. It was the only flight I made with the Troop Commander during the entire time I was with the Cav and I considered it to be a very strange and uninformative flight.

When I returned to the Slick Platoon, I found the pilots in their usual positions and began to understand a bit more about the types of pilots these were. It was on this day that I became convinced that these Huey jocks were fighters and should not be left to sit on the side lines during the big game.

I would soon realize that my side of that situation would change radically. I was going to completely skip the normally accepted procedure of flying with Jelsomin first and THEN being released or qualified as okay to fly Slicks. Instead of that I would immediately begin night combat ops with Cpt. Sheehan.

Even though I welcomed the chance to begin spying on the night life of the NVA or VC in the area, I found myself flying at night and sleeping most of the day. With that schedule, I missed alot of the shit shooting times with my fellow pilots. I was a bit concerned that I would not be looked upon with any degree of equality as I was getting flight time and during the daytime lull, they were getting none.

Adding insult to injury, we had Cobra gunship escorts as back ups if anything went wrong and that produced a situation where almost everybody was getting flight time except the Blue Team.

By that time, we were already into October of 1970 and as I see it, the Slicks had seen very little flight time at all for the first two weeks I was with the unit and even though I was Blue 28, I was wracking up the flight hours almost every night while my brothers were sitting on the side lines waiting and waiting and waiting.

It was a strange environment for me as everybody from the 199th always had their hands full with flight time and I'd never experienced a situation where pilots more or less were grounded by situation and circumstance. As hindsight often proves, we would soon wish for the lull in the fighting as before long, the fighting began on a large scale and with that, came losses.

I just received a call from the hospital and I have to run but this is as accurate a report as I can make from the first two weeks I was in the ACT. I am certain that, at a minimum, Bill and Curt will remember these weeks as I recall having conversations with them about it as I didn't understand the long terms of inactivity either.

More later, stand by.