One Wednesday morning Colonel Jamison came down to breakfast and there was no grapefruit juice. He went nuts. He was a full bird Colonel who was kissing ass to make Brigadier General. And so began the Great Seven-Day Grapefruit Investigation.
First he had his adjutant and flunky, First Lieutenant Kissass, come into the mess hall. He took everyone’s name and rank and listed their jobs. He then used the group’s S-2 Interrogation Office and made a large chart showing all our workstations and hours. He was like Dick Tracy. Next, he interviewed us all and wrote down our stories. He checked his wall chart and his drawings to put everyone and everything in place. Then First Lieutenant Kissass again interviewed everyone. Since I had no real duty station in the mess hall, he had a hard time pinning down exactly where I had been. He had the empty grapefruit juice box in S-2 as evidence. He told each one of us he would solve this crime, and whoever was responsible would end up in a rifle company on the front line. Hey Dick Tracy, there isn’t any front line in Vietnam. If there was, we would have won the war in a week, moron!
Lieutenant Kissass looked me straight in the face, like a Nazi Gestapo agent in a World War II movie checking passports on a train. I told him I had joined the Marines to kill zips and I didn’t know anything about the case of grapefruit juice, and if he continued to bother me, I’d write a letter to my Senator about his unjust harassment. This scared him, because he didn’t want any bad stories to tarnish the image of Colonel Jamison and the Colonel’s climb to One-Star General. I told him my father worked for the Courier Post in Pennsauken, New Jersey. I said I could guarantee the Great Grapefruit Investigation would make the papers in the US, thoroughly ruining the image of our great leader, Colonel Jamison.
He looked me straight in the eye again and said I was dismissed. He then said he didn’t appreciate being threatened by a bad publicity story. He said I had been sent down to Chu Lai for being a troublemaker. I said, “I killed seven VCs, how many have you killed?” They sent me down here to kill more VCs, because I am a hero with a medal on the way from the Secretary of the Navy.” Colonel Jamison and his flunky adjutant interviewed all 22 mess men, but the fact that I brought up the topic of bad publicity put an end to the Great Grapefruit Investigation.
My boss in S-3 Operations was Major Perfect. He was a squared-away officer, the type of guy who could lead men and was respected by both enlisted men and officers alike. If I ever met an officer who should have been promoted to General, this was the man! He was beyond fair in his dealing with everyone.
Major Perfect was super pissed off by Colonel Jamison’s wasted investigation, and he couldn’t stand to be in the same room with Lieutenant Kissass. He personally sent a slick helicopter up to Da Nang and got it loaded down with cases of grapefruit juice. He then had Corporal Sauté and me quickly pile all 12 cases up at Lieutenant Kissass’s hootch. Lieutenant Kissass took full credit for the 12 cases, and he didn’t even have a clue where they came from. Finally, there was peace in the mess hall again.
Praise the Lord, and don’t pass the grapefruit juice!
NSU, OR HOW I BECAME A HUEY DOOR GUNNER
After the Great Grapefruit Investigation, I knew that if I hung out with Corporal Sauté anymore I would get into some trouble that I couldn’t bullshit my way out of. I had to get out of the mess hall. One miserable rainy day at 5:00 AM, I was walking toward the chow hall, and who did I run into but Corpsman Cure-All. It seems somebody ratted him out about his private VD cure racket. The Navy transferred him down to Chu Lai when they saw a great deal of penicillin was missing and heard the rumors of Corpsman Cure-All’s activities.
When I saw him he was depressed and thought he didn’t have a friend in the world. I grabbed him and gave him a bear hug. He wanted to give me $230, my cut of his housecall business money. “I’m just happy to see an old friend,” I told him. “Keep the money and buy me a beer when you see me at the Enlisted Men’s Club.”
He asked how he could help me. I told him First Sergeant Prick had called ahead and I was stuck on mess duty with a new First Sergeant, Doright. He had a rather thick file on me. It seemed all the First Sergeants in the Marine Corps knew each other. Corpsman Cure-All and I went to chow hall and he sat down and wrote a note on official Navy stationary that I had contracted NSU. This is an abbreviation for Non Seraphic Uritus, which I must have caught off a dirty toilet seat. Basically, it meant that I could not work near food.
I had a great breakfast, walked back to the S-1 Administration Office, and asked to see First Sergeant Doright on a personal matter. I went in and showed him the note and he blew his stack. He called sickbay and talked to the Chief, who confirmed the note was for real. Corpsmen Cure-All did excellent paper work and marked my file, “Unfit for mess duty for two weeks.” First Sergeant Doright was beside himself. He looked at my thick record book and realized that if he put me on guard duty again I would more than likely blow something up or get into some shit. He stared at me and started drawing circles on a piece of paper. I could see the little man on a bicycle in his brain peddling real fast to come up with some nasty way to fuck me. Finally a Gunny Sergeant from the flight line came in and said Lance Corporal Unlucky had been shot in both knees on his second day as a door gunner. Lucky #7 Gunbird needed a new door gunner.
First Sergeant Doright stood up and said he was giving me a raise of $55.00 a month. This came as great news, since a minute before he’d wanted to shoot me. He said to hop in his jeep and he would take me out to my new assignment. It stopped raining and believe it or not, the sun came out. We drove out on the flight line where all our gunbirds were parked and stopped at Lucky #7. We got out of his jeep and he personally introduced me to Corporal Cross. He told Corporal Cross I was his new door gunner and that I had volunteered. Sure, under extreme duress. First Sergeant Doright shook my hand and told me he had a body bag ready to zip me into when I got my wiseass killed in combat. He smiled and left.
I asked Corporal Cross what he was cleaning up. It was Lance Corporal Unlucky’s blood. I got a wet rag and sponge and said, “I’ll do it.” A crew chief is too important to do such a tedious, sad thing like cleaning up another Marine’s blood. I then cleaned the whole floor of the gunbird and the belt links from the M-60 belts and dumped the empty brass in the trash. I helped load new boxes of M-60 ammo belts under the red nylon seats. I asked Corporal Cross if this was a dangerous job. He laughed and handed me a cold beer he somehow had hidden in an ammo box. He said, “Welcome to Lucky #7 Gunbird.”
The UH-IE was his pride and joy. He spent endless hours adjusting things mechanically and he knew his aircraft inside and out. He could even fly the bird, but he was terrible at landing it. He was a super mechanic. He carried an unauthorized Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum revolver, but no one dared say a word about it.
Our pilots were Major Moose and Captain Adventure. Major Moose was a piece of work. The way he told it, he had been a Lance Corporal on some hill in Korea when a Captain came by and asked him who was in command. He answered that all that was left was him and a few PFCs, that the rest were wounded. The Captain made him a Second Lieutenant on the spot and told him to get extra ammo off the dead and get his men ready to hold the hill against a night attack by the gooks. Somehow by the grace of God he lived through the night, and thus became an officer and gentleman.
It was fun when we launched our gunbirds. The pilot would rev up the engines and, since the gunbirds were loaded to maximum capacity with machine gun belts and rockets, we seemed to drop a few feet every time we took off. It was like getting in an elevator and going from the fifth floor to the first. Major Moose particularly enjoyed looking at the fear in my face when he just about got the gunbird up in the air. He did this to wake us up. Major Moose couldn’t be bullshitted; he knew his stuff and was game for anything you suggested.
Captain Adventure was equally fearless. All he wanted to do, day and night and weekends, was kill VCs and NVAs. He lived for the excitement of it all, and never got enough of it. He could drive a UH-IE like
the Corvette he’d left at home. What a team of misfits. A crazy Major who would do anything for excitement, a Captain who lived for war, a Corporal who could fix anything and was a genius with simple hand tools, and me, a professional PFC bullshit artist and glory hound, who really didn’t give a shit about living or dying, as long as I got the proper award or medal.
MISSION NUMBER ONE
My first mission was an adventure in darkness. Our squadron always had two fully armed gunbirds ready 24/7. Corporal Cross spent all day reading Natops books about Hueys. I practiced throwing my K-bar knife into wooden targets and reading a novel about World War II. We were on stand-by and couldn’t leave the flight line. Our meals were brought out to us, and we ate and slept near the ready room where an officer was always on duty to take radio messages from Wing Headquarters and local radio transmissions from Land Shark Alpha, which controlled all ground unit activities. If a Marine grunt unit or an emergency Med-Evac needed help, we were ready to go.
At 1900 hours we got an urgent request to suppress sniper fire on the ARVN outpost near Quang Ngai city. This was a quick 15-minute flight down the coast from Chu Lai. We got the call from Land Shark. We launched two gunbirds, Klondike One and Klondike Two, raced down the shoreline south to Quang Ngai city, and got the Green Beret in charge on their radio. He had the ARVN mark the sniper position with a Willie Peter round. We put our spotlight on and both Corporal Cross and I pulled back the bolts on our M-60 machine guns to waste this sniper. We searched all over and didn’t see anything but bushes. Finally we were ready to give up when I spotted a VC running with a long-barreled Russian Mosin-Nagant 7.62 x 54 rifle with a sniper scope on it.
I called out on the microphone in my helmet that I had just seen the zip. Major Moose yelled out to kill his ass! By this time we were about a mile past him, so we made a U-ball that just about threw me out of my seat. Luckily, I had my gunner belt on. This is hooked into the wall of the chopper to keep you from falling out and helps you when you have to go out on the helicopter skid to clear jammed outboard machine guns. I told Major Moose the VC was running on a dry creek bed headed for a tree line. Both helicopters used their searchlights, and damned if the VC didn’t hide in a clump of bushes almost directly under the hovering chopper so the gunners couldn’t get the angle on him. We wasted a few M-60 machine belts and the VC wouldn’t move.
Major Moose said we couldn’t hit the side of a barn, and he decided to waste two 2.75 mm rocket rounds on the bushes where the VC was hiding. What a rush! The two rockets blew a hole four to six feet deep in the creek bed. We shined our searchlight down and all I saw that was left of the zip was one leg. Mission accomplished. On our way back to the base, I noticed a huge red and white glowing object flying by the right side of the helicopter. I reported this immediately to Major Moose. At first he thought I was seeing flying saucers, until he saw one that went to the left of our chopper and realized we were flying through a 105mm artillery barrage. He frantically called Land Shark to see who the hell was shooting artillery in the Quang Ngai area. Land Shark returned our call: the ARVN were shooting without Land Shark approval. Land Shark Alpha called the American advisor and the artillery was lifted so we could fly back home up the coast to Chu Lai and not get hit.
The Major was happy when we landed. He had blown up a VC sniper and my keen eyesight had saved us from getting shot down by friendly fire. He said I’d done a good job and shook my hand. By this time another crew was on duty, so Corporal Cross and I cleaned our M-60s and hung them up in the ordnance shack. It was time to eat, drink beer, and tell tall tales of our great shoot-out!
THE BALLS TEST
Major Moose next got the dawn patrol mission. At the crack of dawn, we launched two gunbirds and flew low and fast over the local area, looking for VC coming home after a tough night of terrorizing the Marines and ARVN outposts in the area.
By this time I had borrowed a pair of 7x35mm binoculars, and from 1,000 feet up in the air I had eyes like a Red Tail Hawk. We spotted two VCs digging a hole near an abandoned village. We flew so low and fast I hardly had time to pop a red smoke on them. They split up and dee-dee’d (beat feet) out of sight. One smartass took his AK-47 and opened up on our chopper. Bad mistake! We returned fire and shot not only him, but the whole hillside behind him. Next his buddy broke for the village. I shot all tracers, which started a big fire. We hovered and waited to see if he would run from the burning village. He did. This zip had an old French 7.5 MAS Model 1935 bolt-action rifle. The Major took him out with our outside fixed machine guns. He dropped like a cowboy in an old John Wayne western.
Now this is where it gets good. Major Moose told me he needed this old French rifle for his gun collection in Texas, and asked me to run out and grab it. I told him I didn’t think it was a great idea. He then said, “I wear a golden oak leaf, and you wear a PFC chevron.” I said okay, but we were talking a Navy Cross if I got killed. He told me God was on our side and Corporal Cross was covering me with his trusty M-60. If we took fire, I should just keep my head low so Corporal Cross could shoot over it!
We took the chopper down to 100 feet and I looked around with my binoculars. It seemed quiet, but looks are deceiving. Our second gunbird was hovering overhead. Who was going to fuck with two gunbirds? Major Moose landed the chopper, I unhooked my gunner safety belt, and ran as fast as I could over to the dead zip. The chopper turned up all the dust there was, fanning up the village fire, and I could barely see. I grabbed the rifle, which had a bullet hole through its stock, and started running back. The Major was making a movie with his new Bell and Howell 8mm movie camera that his wife got him for Christmas. It showed me running with a 40-pound bulletproof vest in 110 degree heat, loaded down with a pistol, bullets, emergency signal flares, a K-bar knife and a hangover from the night before.
Would you believe the VC had friends, probably in some tunnel complex? We never saw it coming, but they started shooting at me. Corporal Cross opened up on them, and I saw bullets hit the chopper and around my legs. I hopped in the bird, and Major Moose took off so fast I almost slid out the other side. I had to grab Corporal Cross’s leg. Finally I got back in my seat, reattached my gunner safety belt and looked for bullet holes in my hide. Corporal Cross was laughing his ass off. “You got balls!” he said.
The Major decided the whole abandoned village needed urban renewal and I threw another red smoke. Major Moose called in Fixed Wing Oxwood 1-2 and 1-3—fixed-wing F-4 Phantom jets loaded with Napalm and 500-pound bombs. They arrived in about five minutes and made a K-Mart parking lot out of the village, burning them out and ruining their secret tunnel entrance. We said goodbye to Oxwood after they unloaded all their ordnance, then went low to do a body count.
The guy who’d had this old French rifle was now a crispy critter. He looked like a piece of burned bacon. His 100,000-mile tire shoes were still smoking. Next we saw a VC with blood coming out his ears walking around in circles in a daze from the concussion of the 500-pound bombs. The Major told Captain Adventure to drive. He grabbed the 7.5 French rifle and saw it still had three live rounds in it. He decided to shoot the VC walking around in a daze. We hovered, he took all three shots and missed. Then Corporal Cross tried his .357 Magnum and almost got the zip. Major Moose, not to be outdone, whipped out his Browning 9mm high-power with tag-sight and his name personally engraved on the back, and started shooting. He missed thirteen 9mm shots. Our other gunbird was running low on fuel and said, “Let’s wrap it up and head back.” But Corporal Cross said, “Let me waste him.” The Major said, “If we kill all the Indians, there’ll be no more fun for the cowboys. Let him live and we’ll get him another day. We wasted 21 shots on his ass and missed, so today is his day!” He obviously wasn’t going on vacation in his condition, so we let him be.
Meanwhile, I was amazed—I had almost gotten killed for a French 1935 MAS bolt-action junker. The French had a lot of guts to make their troops carry a piece of shit like that in combat.
We landed and marked our squadron blac
kboard with ten kills and 20 probables. In reality, we only saw four dead zips, but with the bombs and napalm, 20 seemed more believable. The metal shop workers came out and were pissed to see all the bullet holes in the skin of the chopper. They were curious to know how the chopper took level bullet holes instead of being shot in the under-carriage area. They spent all night patching up the bullet holes. Then Corporal Cross checked all the hydraulic lines for leaks—after all, this was his baby. The Colonel was mad that the chopper was in the metal shop with multiple bullet hole repairs, and bluntly asked me what had happened. I told him we flew through a valley and took hits from hilltops parallel to the chopper. He just shook his head and walked away. He wanted to court-martial Major Moose for his unethical tactics, but couldn’t even get a straight answer on what had taken place. Praise the Lord and pass the 7.5 rifle!
I proved to the crew I was as nuts as they were and I would do whatever they asked me to, period. When I asked Major Moose what type of medal I was getting for risking my life for an old French rifle, he said, “Eighteen more missions and you’ll be wearing Combat Air Crewman Wings!” I said, “Yippee Eye Aye!”
ROCKETS AWAY
As the days went on, I got to be a better gunner and learned a lot from Corporal Cross. On one mission I almost blew up the crew when I looked out at the rocket pod and saw a rocket that was armed and half out of the pod. I climbed out on the skid and removed the complete 2.75 rocket from the pod, and handed it to Corporal Cross, who didn’t want any part of an armed rocket. When I got back inside the chopper, the whole crew was yelling, “Take the warhead off and dump it! Watch when you drop it that it doesn’t hit our rear rotor blade!” I unscrewed the warhead and put the rocket tube on the floor. “Don’t drop the warhead in the aircraft,” they yelled, “or we are all lunch meat!”
LBJ's Hired Gun Page 12
