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Chapter 04

  by Kathy Hufford

   YOUR HELMET BAG AND OTHER DUTIES

Group of Army Warrant Officer Helicopter Pilots in the 68th Assault Helicopter Company, RVN, 1967 walking back from the flight line after a hard days flying.

Army helicopter pilots in Vietnam were like most of the other young military there. They just got out of school, most were around 20 years old, they listened to rock music, wanted a girl friend and a fast car when they get back to the States. Like 2/3 of the men that served in Vietnam , they were volunteers, not draftees. Also 79% of the military in Vietnam were high school graduates, a little less than the pilots. There is also a persistent myth that African-Americans were used as "cannon fodder", being assigned to infantry units where they were forced to "walk point". This is not supported by the casualty data which indicates that 86.8% of those killed in action were Caucasian, while 12.1%, or 5,711, were Black. This number is approximately the same as the percentage of Blacks in the general population during the war. In my flight school class of 1966 of 120 students, we had only 5 were African-American.

Most flight crews did not eat much for breakfast. The crew chief would get a case of C-Rations from the Mess hall, and the crew would snack on that all day long. So, in the helmet bag would be a helmet, a set of leather flight gloves, a scarf to protect your neck from machine gun brass, ear plugs, an extra plastic visor for the helmet, a survival knife, an extra box of bullets for your side arm, a camera, extra film and aviation maps of the area. Many of the pilots carried cameras. When flying, you wore a “chicken plate”, which was a steel and ceramic plastic plate to protect the front of your body. This held in by a flack jacket left over from what looked like WW2. We carried a COLT 45 automatic, which we had in a western style holster when flying place between our legs. One of the gun pilots took an enemy round right between the legs. It hit the 45 handles, deflected the round into his flack jacket and wound up in the chicken plate. He was sore, but alive.

Besides flying, we were assigned other duties. During my first year in Vietnam I was also the Gun Platoon Armament Officer, and company Theater Officer.

Over 40 of my flight school class have died in aviation accidents or combat in the first 20 years of service. Half of them from accidents involving striking wires.  Fate is the Hunter.