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Chapter 06

  by Kathy Hufford

   FACES OF WAR, FEAR AND DEATH

Young Vietnamese child, about 30 miles east of Saigon in 1967.

Troops that went to Viet Nam only stayed 12 months. Many of the troops in the “field”, the infantry and artillery only stayed in field duty 6 months, then were rotated to other jobs that were less stressful. Army helicopter crews, because they were not living “in the field” flew what they flew for 12 months. All troops were eligible to have a week or so break out of country on Rest and Recuperation (R&R) at about the 6 month point. I went to Tokyo for my R&R. A fellow pilot, Ray went to Hawaii to see his wife and kids for R&R. He had a good time. Ray loved his family, always thought about them, never thought about fooling around, etc.

Ray and I were both PICs. Since he had not flown for a couple of weeks because of his R&R, he was assigned to me as my co-pilot. We were having a very difficult day doing combat assaults, received a lot of fire, one of our gunships got shot down, the aircraft that went to rig the ship for extraction got shot down. First flight into a new LZ, Ray was flying, and I was backing him up. Backing up means that your feet are near the pedals, and your hands are “just” touching the controls in case the other pilot gets shot. You don’t want the aircraft to be flying without a pilot at the controls.  Besides the chicken plate, the flack vest, the seats we were setting in, had the same material that the plate was made of, and a side piece that slide forward to cover on side of your body. Now this is not a nice LZ, we took a lot of fire. We went back to the PZ and picked up more infantry, called “grunts”. Now it was my turn to fly. On the way into the LZ, the radio said we were receiving heavy ground fire. On the approach into the LZ I looked over at Ray, he was curled up in the seat, hiding behind the armor plate. Ray was about 6 foot 2. I don’t know how he got curled up in such a small package. He was not backing me up. We got out of the LZ without a scratch, went back and shut down for lunch. He apologized to me. Ray said, since he was not flying, he started thinking about his wife and kids he had just seen. He said he wanted to stay alive. I told him, the whole crew wanted to stay alive. We finished the day with no more bullet holes in the aircraft. He finished his tour, went back to the states to his wife and children. He got out of the Army.

I never liked looking at blood. Mine or anybody else’s. As a slick pilot I have had to carry many wounded soldiers in my aircraft.