Don't Screw Up A Good Late.

If the last post makes any sense, if the good first impression that I saw when I was desperate to see one gives you an insight to the value of good character and how important it is to seek out those who have it, this post should allow you to see how I learned to separate the good from the bad during life and death situations.

It certainly proved to be a life saver in my case. As a side benefit of that, it also proved to be a life saver for my OH6 gunner, Lorin Bustin, and several other crew members when I was still flying Nighthawk missions.

I find a great degree of comfort in knowing how to see both. If there ever was a time where all of us need to be associated with those with good character, now is that time. It might be one of those "From all things evil, abstain" things but anyway you look at it, there's no doubt that we need to be careful with those we associate with.

I know that there are a lot of you following the ramblings that I post here. I get many emails on my personal account that discuss the details. More often than not they tell me how difficult it is to post a reply comment here but I just let that slide cause I haven't even figured out how to change the picture on the opening page of this blog.

In any event, I've received another mind blowing email from a guy that I served with when I was with the 199th. That would be Ray Shibe and he told me that he had a little inside information about Craig that he wanted to share.

He told me that Craig had been a "brown hat", the term we sometimes used to identify ourselves. Ray trained with Wolman and remembered CW2 Hampton who was there when my class went through. Despite that, Craig was already training at Ft. Rucker when Diable came into the 5th WOC at Ft. Wolters.

I don't think I ever shared that with Craig or any of the other guys at the 199th as I'm sure if Wolman told me he was a brown hat, I would have seen things a bit differently. Despite all the years, knowing that makes a hell of a lot more sense to me now. Craig had the same people training him that I had training me.

I don't know which class Dudley "Doc" Young graduated from but I know that he was the best navigator I ever met. Dudley had more laminated VFR en route charts than anyone. They were folded in a manner that would allow us to simply flip the page as we flew off the map and flew into the next section.

He had penciled in notes all over it. There were radio frequencies that we didn't often use and that allowed him to immediately dial in the right frequency if we went IFR and had to contact Saigon Center, Long Binh Tower or any other facilities in our area . He even had six digit grid coordinates for various land marks that we used to navigate by. Even after 42 years, I think that Yankee Tango 106601 was the coordinate we used to identify FSB Mace which was our forward base of operations.

In any event, I remember one night during the monsoon season when we were caught in a really bad storm. We had to divert from our intended flight path from Xuan Loc to Long Binh and go to Bear Cat to make an instrument landing as Long Binh was shut down by weather.

It was a really bad storm. I was quite thrilled to have the radio frequencies for Center and Bear Cat at hand before the Aircraft Commander even asked for them or tried to look them up himself.

In a sense, I felt like I'd hit a home run and established myself as a copilot who was prepared, had his stuff together and was worthy to fly with guys like Wolman, Young and Femmer. I'll go ahead and admit right now that the night flight to Bear Cat, in horrible weather conditions, was a milestone for me as I didn't even know where in the hell Bear Cat was.

The point I want to make about the ramblings that go on here, has to do with the mentoring deal. With the influences that came with Dudley's navigation skills and the night fighting skills from Craig, I managed to get a front row seat to observe the masters as they did their work.

One night, Wolman and I flew an all night long Nighthawk mission just above Phan Thiet. That was in the summer of 1970. It was the damnedest, night time, combat operation mission I ever flew in Vietnam. I've gone to Google Earth a million times and flown that mission over and over again.

It had all the ingredients of a nightmare as it was flown in the mountains just above Phan Thiet and it required us to be used as the primary close air support, strafing the NVA from tree top level while trying not to crash into either of the two mountain ranges that were so close together the Air Force couldn't even get their C 47 gunship low enough to do the job.

We had to fly back to Phan Thiet several times to refuel and rearm. On our last sortie in, we had to come to a hover over the troops below while our crew dumped ammo out of the Huey as the guys on the ground were just about out of ammo when we made it back. If we failed, I'm sure they would have been over run and maybe killed to a man. That was flown sometime around 2 or 3 a.m and it was still dark as it could be outside.

I've written about it many times. I haven't looked it up under "older posts" but it may be under "One Long Night In Vietnam". If I wrote that somewhere else, I'll try to dig it up and copy it here as it's well worth the time for me to do it.

In any event, I also know that those of you who have followed this for a while, might remember the times that I wrote about the values of having other mentors teaching "attention to detail". If you recall the first episodes of that, you'll remember my ole tack officer from 5th WOC at Ft. Wolters,  the famous and sometimes infamous, CW2 Diable.

If you remember that and connect the dots between Diable and Craig, I hope you can see two guys, one that already had a combat tour under his belt who decided to come back to Ft. Wolters and teach the new kids going through flight school and the other one, a 5th WOC graduate, already in a combat zone, already an Aircraft Commander and somewhat comfortable in that position. Diable lived in the back of my mind while Wolman, Femmer and Doc Young were sitting across from me in the Aircraft Commander's seat. Talk about lucky! That would be me.

Even though they were very far removed from one another, I learned an incredible lesson from each and, as stated yesterday, I continue to learn from both of them.

CW2 Diable looked  more  like  Audie  Murphy  than  John  Wayne. Despite that, if  you will  remember correctly,  Audie Murphy  kicked  more  ass and took more  names  than  The  Duke  ever did. Wolman,  if  the  war  hadn't  been  so controversial  in  the  public  eye,  would  already  have  had  a book  written  about  him.

In my opinion, these were two really nice guys who you could have hung out with anywhere. At the same time, these were two guys who could generate the worst nightmare in the world if you were their enemy. Good fighters, strong willed, calm under fire, focused, proficient, experienced, brave and tough as tough could be.

On the other hand, as it relates to being "late" with a good first impression, there's that natural born prick out there that not only missed the mentoring boat and made a horrible first impression, but further complicated that situation by trying to continue his command authority using the same methods of Egomania 101 that failed the moment he opened his mouth.

He wasn't with the 199th, thank God. I ran into him when I was with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment when the dearly loved and respected Captain Berry was finishing his tour and preparing to go home. Captain Ron Berry! THAT, my boys, was a prefect example of a real, live, teacher, mentor and commander. Captain Berry's return to the States made a void in the Scout Platoon but, with the arrival of Captain Prick, he was missed more than any of us would have thought.

Captain Prick was already late in his attempt to fit in but since it's impossible for an asshole to mentor anything but asses, his attempts to establish himself as God, while demanding everyone's unearned respect, basically put him in a position where he really screwed up a Good Late. Think about that for a minute.

I'll leave you guys with these thoughts as it's getting close to noon time and I'm still in my PJs and I need to make a run to see my new, 17 day old Grand Daughter and begin today's errands. Bare with me, I'll get through this and finish connecting all the dots. Thanks again for the ear and the comments. TButler94@hotmail.com