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Experiences of a 68th AHC Pilot

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Chapter 01 by Kathy Hufford NEVER BELIEVE A PRESIDENT

	Army Warrant Officer 1, Kent Hufford in early Feb 1967, fresh out of ARMY Helicopter fight school, in Viet Nam . Assigned to an Assault Helicopter lift Company, flying UH1-H troop carrying helicopters. The main purpose of Assault companies is to carry ARMY combat troops into combat, and extract them…. Most of the time under direct enemy ground fire. The radio call sign of the unit was “Top Tiger”.
For a large view of this photo see Kent's Photos under the Mustang section of this site.

Lyndon Johnson became president when John Kennedy was assassinated. Johnson ran for election in 1964. In October 1964 he said “If I am elected President, I will not send American boys to fight an Asian war.” Most people believed him. He was elected in November 1964, and was sworn in January 1965, to begin his first full term of office. In March 1965, the largest peacetime draft was held since the end of the Korean War. I received my “pre-induction” physical notice. This is what came, just before your draft notice at that time. I decided to enlist to become an ARMY helicopter pilot. At that time all you had to be is physically fit, no police record, and at least a high school graduate. I had to pass flight physical, written flight aptitude tests, and a board of officer review. During this process, I received 3 draft notices… I went into the ARMY two days after Christmas 1965. In January 1967, I graduated from ARMY Helicopter flight school at Ft Rucker Alabama.

I arrived in Viet Nam in early February 1967 in the back of a contracted commercial Boeing 707. 116 of us that graduated from flight school and the first contingent of 23 enlisted female Army personnel to be assigned to Viet Nam that were not medical personnel. When we got out of the airplane, it was HOT, and it smelled. It took me a day to figure out the smell. The smell was from the mixing of diesel fuel in the containers from the latrines (toilets) and setting them on fire to burn them out. A smell you cannot describe, or put in a movie. They moved us in blue buses that had chicken wire for windows, guess so that no one could throw in a grenade.

All of us in my unit were there to win the war. “Kill a Commie for Christ” was the normal macho saying. We got up at 4am , strapped on the helicopter, and finished up the day in the dark. Some months I flew over 220 hours. Later in the war, they limited your flight time to only 140 hours in a 30 day period due to the number of accidents the Army was having.

The feeling was to do the best you could, take the chances needed to support the ground troops, win the war and come home. All the Warrant Officer Helicopter pilots took the same Basic training at Ft Polk, La. that the regular Army Infantry soldiers took. When you flew the infantry to war, you wanted them to get there, get the mission done, and you were there to bring them out, even if it entailed being shot at, coming and going. They knew that….but also the Viet Cong knew that.

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Author information goes here. Copyright © 2004 68thahc.com. All rights reserved. Revised: June 29, 2012 .

Author information goes here.
Copyright © 2004 68thahc.com. All rights reserved.
Revised: June 29, 2012 .