Are You Ready?

I watched Pearl Harbor last night, the one with Ben Afleck in the leading role. As my surround sound system filled with the sounds of the machine gun fire, I thought back to the time I was flying Nighthawks with Wollman and the 199th. It occurred to me that even though we were ordering the crew members to open fire and "Light Em Up", I never personally pulled the trigger a single time from May to September of 1970. After my baptism of fire and many combat missions after that, I knew I could do it. After a gruesome scene at a fire support base near Phan Thiet, I knew I wanted to do it.

When I transferred to the Air Cav Troop of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment and became the Nighthawk Standardization pilot for them, I eventually ended up being very tired of flying at night so I asked for and was given permission to attend a "Transition Course" that taught me to fly the Hughes 500 C or, as the Army referred to it, the OH 6.

Upon completion of that course and the "Scouting Course" that followed it, the one that taught me how to track the enemy from hovering over their trails, I was certified as a "Loach Pilot" on Hunter Killer teams and became the "Low Bird" that flew over the trees and followed the trails of the VC and NVA while the AH 1 Cobras flew over us providing gunship support when we started to take fire.

During those courses, I had one more to master and that was the gunnery course that taught us to use the mini gun. It had so much torque from the 2,000 to 4,000 round rate of fire, it would literally turn the nose of the helicopter to the left and force you to use the anti torque pedals to adjust your aim. It never was as simple as putting the target in the cross hairs of the sight reticle and pulling the trigger. It definitely was something that you had to master.

In any event, I never really got to use it until we made it to Cambodia. The first time that opportunity presented itself, I was quite shocked to pull the trigger and have nothing happen. The NVA shot up our helicopter and took out the mini gun with a lucky hit. Neither Bustin nor I were wounded but the ship had lots of bullet holes in it from the skids all the way to the top of the dog house.

As good luck would have it, we made it to a South Vietnamese Firebase, located across the road from where we where shot. I didn't even shit the engine down. I fractioned down the controls and got out of the helicopter to see if the fuel cell was hit. I lived in the same hootch as a pilot that was hit in the fuel cell and Bert told us to always try to make it to a relatively safe area to see if any of the bullet holes were leaking fuel.

As I was making that inspection, an RPG round hit very close to me and the shrapnel barely missed my head. Yellow smoke was everywhere and the RPG landed so close to me it put dirt down the back of my flight shirt. It put a nice, long shrapnel wound on the tail boom about 12" above my head. As things turned out, I hit the ground in the supine position, pulled out my 38 caliber pistol and ended up returning fire. My first time pulling the trigger, on an ememy I could see, was with a pistol. Not much John Wayne bidness going on there. It was definitely one of those "holy shit" moments in combat and I didn't have time to do anything else but react.

The moral of this story is simple. It's one thing to watch a movie and visualize yourself shooting at the ememy but it's another thing to have actually done it. It stays with us and we think about it every day of our lives. Politicians and the news media have totally screwed up that scenario. Slimestein says that Veterans are mentally ill, I say we have vivid memories of our time in combat. Pelosi is another matter. In any event, I would chose me over them anytime.

The liberal news media isn't going to go away or fix the inaccuracies surrounding the mental condition of veterans. They had the power to undo a lot of these injustices but never did a thing. A lot of the trashy punks that spit on Vietnam veterans when they returned home are still alive and, as I see it, they haven't changed either. They're just older now but well seasoned in their chicken shit-ness.

When it gets down to it, and it eventually will, we are going to wake up to the news that there's been another beheading or another problem of some sort from these new generation foreigners coming across the border now. I don't understand how the "worship center", where the be-header was radicalized, is still standing.

In any event, when the time comes, many civilians will throw out the ideas they have about veterans and many more will be the first ones to seek out a combat veteran and ask for help. I saw this happen to "Annie" who used to raise hell about all the stories I told about combat. She said I was still fighting the war in my head.

When the gangstas from New Orleans arrived in Shreveport after Katrina drove them out, they came down our street, yelling at the neighbors and terrorizing the little kids. This happened after they did a car jacking at the hospital near Dixie Garden, a murder in Minden and two pharmacy robberies. It was only two doors down from Blame it on Bob's house.

I grabbed my 22 rifle, walked down the drive way to the street and when they came by screaming at Gracie, Debbie's little girl, I screamed F**k You N word" as loud as I could and they hauled it out of sight and didn't return.

Uncle Charlie (rip) saw it and heard it all. He looked at me and yelled: "Timmy, I like your style". Everybody in the neighborhood saw it and they knew that I wasn't afraid. They didn't have an RPG and I could shoot a Ruger 10-22 with a scope on it a lot better than I could a 38 caliber pistol at a time when two NVA guys were shooting an RPG at me. I regret not shooting their tires out but figured it was okay that all it took was the look of a crazy man with a rifle screaming at them as they drove by.

Are you guys ready? I am and I'm experienced enough to know not to take the first shot. I'm not saying that the end is near but I am saying that the beginning has already begun. I feel like I need to go to Texas where my friends with big guns live.