Traveling By Huey

Two similar snapshots.  I'm sitting on the floor in the doorway of a Huey helicopter.  Across the way is another Huey flying along with us in formation.  Usually there were five of them flying together.

If you look closely at the other helicopter, you can see someone sitting in the same place I am sitting with his feet dangling in the breeze.  He is a lot closer to us than it looks.  I could almost yell hello to him over there if it wasn't for the noise from the helicopter's jet engine and the blades beating the air above.

 On my right, is an M60 machine gun.  It is held in place by a gun mount that allows it to be pointed in any direction.  Linked 7.62 mm ammunition with tracer rounds are fed into the side of the gun and ready to shoot.  The door gunner sits above and to my right on a webbed chair behind the gun.  He is relaxed and I am relaxed for the moment.  We are both looking out at the landscape below.  We cannot get in trouble when we are cruising along at 80 knots and 2,000 feet in the air.  Enemy soldiers are not going to shoot at us this high up.  They will wait until we drop lower where we are a much larger, slower, and easier target to hit.

When we traveled like this, we were either on the way in or on the way out of the jungle.  If on the way in, we would be enjoying the view while at the same time wondering what the landing zone in the jungle will be like.  Most times, the landing zone would not have enemy soldiers waiting there for us.  The reason was they had no idea what particular open spot in the jungle the helicopter would choose to drop us in.  They didn't have enough soldiers to cover every clearing out there so most times a landing in the jungle was uneventful.

If we had just been picked up from the jungle, we would be feeling relieved.  We knew we were heading to hot showers, hot meals and clean clothes on a firebase somewhere.  So we just sat back and enjoyed the ride.  Yes, we would have to pull guard in the evening on a firebase, but the days would be spent relaxing and reading for the most part.  We could wind down a bit.  As you might imagine, I enjoyed leaving the jungle a hell of a lot more than returning to it.    

Huey Helicopters

The Bell UH-1 Iroquois, widely known as a Huey by the Grunts in Vietnam, were primarily used when traveling to and from the jungle.  We traveled in them so much that we all earned Air Medals.

The Army had other uses for Huey's as well.  They used them as medivac helicopters,  They would swoop in and extract wounded soldiers from the jungle then deliver them to a hospital.   They installed all kinds of weaponry on them, such as mini-guns and rocket pods, then used them as attack helicopters.  They were used to supply us with food and water every three days while we were in the jungle.

It didn't surprise me when I read that the Army used over 7,000 of them in Vietnam.  What first impressed me about them was a Huey was powered by a turbojet engine.  Until I saw my first Huey, I thought jet engines were all used to push an aircraft like a rocket.

As a troop carrier, it was amazing how many guys they could transport.  The crew consisted of a pilot, co-pilot and two door gunners.  The door-gunners sat on each side toward the rear.  If you look closely at the picture above, you can make out the M60 machine gun they used.  There was an M60 on each side.  Behind the pilots was space for about eight soldiers, each with their own pack and weapons.  When you consider that a pack alone weighed about eighty pounds, it is hard to believe that a Huey could actually fly with all of that weight.

To help save weight and simplify getting in and out of a Huey, the doors were removed.  Everywhere we flew, we flew with no doors.  A prized place to sit was on the floor where the door would normally be with your feet dangling out over the struts.  We held on for dear life, believe me, but it was a rush.  You probably think that it was a scary experience flying like that.  When we would first take off, I would feel a flutter in my stomach as we passed low over the jungle.  But once we were up over a thousand feet, the flutter disappeared and I enjoyed looking down at all the greenery that passed below.




 

Having Some Fun

My book, "21 Months, 24 Days" has a whole chapter about these snapshots.  What you are looking at is the bottom of a Huey helicopter with three soldiers dangling from it.  I was one of those soldiers!  That day was maybe the craziest day of my life.

When we are young, a lot of us take risks on a dare or just for the thrill of it.  Some take a day and learn to parachute from an airplane.  Some climb rock walls hundreds of feet high.  Some take dangerous rafting trips on wild river rapids.  Others bungee jump from bridges.  In this case, I didn't get pushed into it on a dare.  Nor did I do it because of the thrill.  I did it because I thought I was going to die anyway over there so why not.

What you see in the picture was part of a fifteen minute thrill ride.  The ride began when we stepped into the harness.  The harness was formed into a simple loop that we tucked under our ass like a kids swing.  The helicopter was hovering one-hundred feet over our head, waiting for our signal.  When ready, with nothing more than a thumbs-up, the pilot began to rise straight up until we were about 750 feet in the air.  Then he tipped the main rotor forward while increasing the pitch of the blades and we found ourselves accelerating forward while continuing to rise.  Before you knew it, we were flying at an elevation of 1,500 feet and traveling forward at 80 knots.  Air resistance swung us back behind the helicopter so when you looked up, the helicopter was actually out in front of us.  In that position we cruised over the countryside.  Thankfully, we were out of range from enemy rifle fire below.  Too soon, we were back to where the ride began and then lowered to the ground.

Well that is enough about what we did.  You will have to read the book to learn why the ride was offered to us in the first place.  

South Vietnamese Soldiers

South Vietnamese soldiers always looked so perfectly dressed when I saw them, which was not often.  They had nice uniforms and were clean looking.  Those jungle pants you see in the snapshot have been tailored.  They were shortened and narrowed to remove the bulkiness.  Notice the colorful patches they wore?  We would never have those on our uniforms.  Too bright, too much of an eye-catcher.  You could get shot more easily by displaying flashy patches like they wore.

I always seemed to run into South Vietnamese soldiers on a large firebase.  Sometimes I would see them in Bien Hoa.  I never saw them on the small, temporary firebases that were built in the jungle.  I never saw them out in the jungle where we spent most of our time.  To be fair, they probably did fight for their country in the same places we fought.  I just didn't witness it..

If I sound resentful, you are right.  In my humble opinion, American soldiers did all of the heavy lifting in Vietnam.  When there was a tough job to do, we did it.  When there was heavy fighting going on, we were in the middle of it.  It seemed that our blood was being spilled more than theirs.  I always wondered why, with no clear answers.  Worse, I was never convinced that the South Vietnamese appreciated what we were doing for them.  I never felt it in my dealings with them.

In 1975 we left Vietnam.  Not long after the sound of the last helicopter faded away, the North Vietnamese Army swarmed into Saigon and it was over.  The South Vietnamese Army collapsed.  I saw a picture recently of what looked like hundreds of South Vietnamese Army boots scattered in the middle of a street.  They abandoned them so the North Vietnamese couldn't identify them as soldiers.  All that American money and blood and for what?  If you look at Afghanistan and Iraq today, the same thing happened.  We never seem to learn.          

Hooch

My last month in Vietnam, I no longer had to go on search & destroy missions in the jungle.  The reason was I was "short".  Being short was when you had very little time left on your one-year tour.  It was a time when your thoughts were on getting the hell out of Vietnam and not on the job at hand.  It was a time when you were paranoid that you would be wounded or killed after making it this far.  So Army brass assigned short people to a temporary rear job until their time was up.

I was assigned to a firebase where I was given the job of unloading and delivering supplies from helicopters.  It was heaven.  I had my own "hooch" to sleep in at night.  The snapshot you see is my hooch.

I can't tell where the name hooch came from but I can tell you what it consisted of.  A hooch in a structural sense was made from a piece of half-round steel culvert about eight feet long and six feet wide.  A layer of sand bags covered the steel for protection at night from mortar rounds.  The green material you see at the entrance is mosquito netting that I would drape down at night.  Just behind the netting is a poncho liner that was draped over the netting if it was raining outside.  Inside was a canvas cot that kept me above the rats and insects that wondered in at night.  Living in a hooch was similar I would imagine to living in a cave.

In the lower left corner of the entrance, you can see a black, plastic, jerrycan.  It held five gallons of water.  I would fill the can with water every morning after breakfast so the sun would heat it during the day.  In the evening, I used the hot water to fill a canvas shower bucket and take my shower.  Wow, it was great.  The wooden skid was my front porch.  I could sit on the edge of the cot, rest my feet on the skid and read a book or roll a joint.  Just inside the door was the rucksack I had used when I was heading out to the jungle.  Now it was sitting there almost empty and unused.  I still kept ammunition for my M16 rifle and a few frag grenades in it but that was about it.

You cannot imagine what a relief and a pleasure it was to get out of the jungle and have my own private hooch to live in.                

Firebase Entertainment

Here I am posing behind a rock-n-roll band made up of American soldiers.  You can see the audience sitting on the ground out in front of the band.

You are probably wondering how a band like this one was even formed.  After all, we were in a combat zone.  Well, musicians are very dedicated to their craft.  I know, ...my son is a professional musician.  Even in Vietnam, musicians found a way to get instruments and play.  I'm sure they were based in the rear somewhere, working for a support group.  Infantry soldiers could never have pulled this off.   I'll bet they started by getting together after work to jam.  What began as jamming sessions built into a reasonable repertoire of popular rock-n-roll tunes.  Others began to stop by and listen to them.  A few supply sergeants liked what they heard so found a way to get them the amplifiers, drum kit and keyboard they needed.  Before the group knew it, they had created for themselves a part-time job traveling between firebases playing for grunts.

I never did see Bob Hope while I was in Vietnam.  He played the big Air Force Bases and Navy Bases, ..not the small firebases where I spent some of my time.  So what we got was Vietnamese rock-n-roll bands when we were at the VIP Center in Bien Hoa.  This was the first and only time a band actually came to us.  It was nice!  I remember thinking though that they were like sitting-ducks up there on those storage boxes.  Vietcong soldiers could have easily hit them with rifle fire.  Well this time anyway, it didn't happen.

Sikorsky Skycrane

Whenever heavy lifting was required in the jungle, the Sikorsky Skycrane was there to get it done.  The Army's official name for the flying work horse was the CH-54 Tarhe.  We simply called it a Skycrane.

A Skycrane had a normal crew of three people; pilot, co-pilot and rear- facing observer.  It could pick up and transport 20,000 pounds.  That's  about the same weight as four Chevy Silverado 1500 pickup trucks.  The helicopter was 70 feet long, almost 19 feet tall and the six main rotors had an overall diameter of 72 feet.  To give you a sense of scale, the rotor blade diameter is about the same size as two tennis courts, side-by-side.  I heard they had a passenger compartment that could be fastened to its underside but I never saw one.  It had a range of about 200 miles on a full load of jet fuel which didn't seem very far.

Small bulldozers were used to build firebases in the jungle.  The only aircraft capable of picking one up and dropping it off was a Skycrane.  They carried even larger bulldozers sometimes, but in pieces.  Mechanics would remove the tracks from a bulldozer, transport them as a separate load then reassemble at the firebase.  I also saw Skycranes pick up and transport 155 mm howitzers to a firebase along with a load of ammunition.

It was an amazing site seeing a Skycrane land when there was a lot of weight under it.  During the dry season, an enormous cloud of dust would lift in the air as it slowed to a hover then began to touch down.  They wouldn't let us near the landing zone because the wash from the main rotors was so strong, you could get blown over or pelted with rocks and dust.  Once on the ground, they looked like a giant praying mantis.  They were totally vulnerable when landing if fired upon by the enemy.  They didn't have any firepower at all to fight back that I remember

It would have been neat to fly in one but I never had the chance.