By Guy Miller

In Vietnam where I served, every compound of American GIs had their own dogs.  These were mostly fed mess hall scraps that the troops sneaked out for their canine buddies.  The dogs were very territorial, fiercely defending their home area and their troops against outside dogs and people.  Our Army helicopter company was the only American unit based inside a South Korean division headquarters compound.

“Hootch” was GI slang for living accommodations.  For American troops, their hootches could mean anything from mud-floor tent shelters which the infantry grunts called home, to actual air-conditioned dormitory barracks like the ones that housed the Air Force guys.  Our company had separate hootch areas for the officers, who were the aviators, and the enlisted troops. 

Originally linear concrete slabs for tents, over the years these hootch pads were transformed by the troops into pretty elaborate living quarters.  At some point early in the war, these slabs had been framed in, making rows of adjoining rough ten-by-twenty foot square sheds, each intended as shelter for two to four troops.  In the officers’ area, the three rows of hootches formed a “C.”

Building materials were salvaged from the long wooden boxes that gunship rockets were shipped in.  

We hired a local papa-san for three hundred piasters a day to break down the rocket boxes.  With his hammer, he would knock the boxes apart and pull the nails.  After stacking the boards, he pounded all the nails approximately straight and sorted them into coffee cans.  These nails and lumber were what the troops used to build or improve their own hootches, which grew in size and complexity over the years.  As old-timers finished their tours, new guys moved in and continued work.  One group of our warrant officers had knocked out a partition between two hootches and built a four-bunk apartment suite, complete with a brick fireplace and lava lamps in the lounge section.

When I deployed, I brought a twin-size waterbed mattress from stateside; it was brand-new, weighed about eight pounds, about 10” x 15” x 1-1/2” that fit in the bag I hand-carried, along with my Nomex flight suits and leather boots.   Arriving in the unit, I had no problem finding the lumber to build a frame for my waterbed, flat on the concrete slab, but getting 120 gallons of water to fill the mattress was more challenging. 

Eventually, the solution emerged in the form of the fire truck stationed on the flight line.  This was a converted 2-1/2-ton cargo truck, called a “deuce-and-a-half,” with a 1,200-gallon water tank and a pump.  I “bogarted” the truck one morning when all the aircraft were away on missions and drove it behind my hootch.  By adapting a section of helicopter hydraulic tubing with duct tape, I was able to feed the water by gravity into the mattress, returning the fire truck to the flight line before anyone ever noticed that it was missing.

To my knowledge, that was the only waterbed in all of Vietnam.

Using my waterbed frame as a support, my new hootch mate, Captain Tim, built a bunk bed against the wall over the waterbed, complete with a ladder.  He and I partitioned off the rear twelvefeet of our shed as a sleeping area, with a blackout curtain in the passageway made from a dark green poncho liner.  We wired a pair of low-intensity lights using field telephone wire, and had a cozy little crash pad.

In front of the room partition, we built a day area where Tim installed a chin-up bar.  I had scrounged a broken typewriter, which I was able to fix with safety wire.  At the opposite end of our day area from Tim’s chin-up bar I built a fold-down shelf for my typewriter and letter-writing, with a 60-watt reading lamp overhead.  I could type faster than writing, so letters home were easier to keep up with.

Just outside our hootch front door was the heavy timber bunker which served as the officers’ shelter from incoming ordnance.  Using packets of seeds his wife mailed him, Tim raised a flower garden beside the bunker which he watered daily.  Behind the bunker was a volleyball net, where off-duty aviators sometimes played according to “jungle rules.”  These rules prescribed that each side had a net man, whose job it was to yank the net up, down or sideways as necessary to the advantage of his team.

Assorted Vietnamese came in daily to perform various housekeeping chores for us.  In addition to our papa-san lumber man, we had hootch maids who did our laundry and a barber.

In the officers’ latrine at one corner of our area, the urinal was made from a section of galvanized 16” pipe split length-wise into a trough, with a constant trickle flow of water.  I discovered one day that the hootch maids did our daily wash by stopping the drain of the urinal, creating a long wash basin for scrubbing out our clothes.  Some things you just wish you didn’t know.

The officers’ hootch area was ruled by four dogs.  The alpha male was a big fellow named Zoomer, who had a magnificent, plumed tail.  His pack included a mother bitch called Pig, and two of her offspring.  The dogs jealously guarded our hootch area.  They were perfectly tolerant of the Vietnamese day workers they knew over the years, and American troops were constantly rotating through, so the dogs accepted us all.  But the dogs absolutely did not like Korean soldiers and would snarl at any hapless Korean troop who had to enter our area.  I suppose the dogs reacted to the strong kim-chee aroma that surrounded the Koreans.

Zoomer ruled his pack like a feudal lord, until one fateful day, when he fell asleep under a deuce-and-a-half.  When the truck started up, his magnificent tail got run over, leaving nothing but a raw bloody string of bones.  Over the seven weeks it took for his tail skin and hair to grow back in, old Zoomer hid out of sight in shame almost the entire time.

Beside the volleyball net was an outdoor grill, where our dogs’ favorite event took place: Steak night.  Every month or so, our crafty supply officer managed to trade something or other for several cases of frozen steaks, which our aviators took great pride in barbecuing.  Once the steaks began sizzling, the dogs clustered round like burrs on Velcro.  As fat and bones got trimmed off, the dogs stood on their hind legs begging the scraps.  After a while, the dogs got so sated from gorging on steak trimmings that they quit begging.  Eventually, they quit coming for more, but they would still eat scraps if we placed them in front of them.  Finally, they were so full they wouldn’t even touch a whole steak laid on their paws.

A “dog’s life” in our hootch area was a pretty good existence, after all.  Sadly, I never knew what became of our beloved dogs after we left in January of 1973.

 “Man, you should have seen the babe the Old Man picked up yesterday!”

“Yeah, she was gorgeous, but she’s enlisted.  A Platoon Sergeant.  I hope he doesn’t get in trouble for that.” 

“I thought he was supposed to be married.  I wonder if his wife knows about her.” 

“From the way they got along, you could see they have had a thing going on for some time.  I sure hope the Old Man knows what he is doing.” 

*     *     *     *     *     *

     Monday morning, the First Sergeant pulled me aside and told me the troops were all abuzz with gossip.  He wondered how I wanted him to handle it.  I told him I would clear things up at the morning formation.

*     *     *     *     *     *

     When I arrived in the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood in 1973, my first assignment was an aviation slot, the division G-2 Air.  During the Engineer Officer Advanced Course when I got back from Vietnam, I was in “Cat B” aviator status, meaning I continued on flight status, maintaining my flight physical and instrument knowledge proficiency, but was relieved from actual flying requirements while I was a student officer.

     To resume my “Cat A” flying status at Fort Hood, I was assigned to get my proficiency hours with a sister unit from the one I had flown with in Vietnam.  When “The Cav” stood down in Vietnam and returned to Fort Hood, Charlie Company of the famed 227^th Aviation Battalion was detached and reassigned to the First Aviation Brigade, as the new 60^th Assault Helicopter Company, retaining their callsign as “Ghost Riders.”  My Aircraft Commander callsign in country had been “Ghost Rider 8.” 

     At Fort Hood I was assigned for flight proficiency time to Delta, 227^th.  Serving on General Staff, my duty was running the G-2 Air section, so I had to get my flying hours on my free time.  The only aircraft I was rated in was the good old Huey, so to schedule the 80 hours per year I needed to maintain flight status made things particularly difficult, for D/227’s operations staff as well as for me.

     The G-2 gave me time when I first arrived to renew my instrument qualifications, but from that time on I had to find my own time to meet my minimum requirements, including night flying, instrument time and required periodic proficiency checkrides with an instructor pilot.  That meant Delta Company had to schedule a bird and crew at a time when I was available.  It became a major challenge for us all.

     After a year on division staff, I moved to the 1st Cavalry Division engineer battalion, 8^th Engineers [Skybeavers], to command Charlie Company [Airmobile].  Being a company commander made scheduling my required flight time even more difficult, so the aviation battalion decided to transition me to the OH-58, the scout helicopter which was flown by a single aviator, much cheaper to operate and easier to schedule.

     So, for the remainder of 1975, I got the bulk of my required hours flying the OH-58, mostly on Sunday afternoons when things were quiet in the company.  At Fort Hood in those days, all Army helicopter operations were flown low-level. 

     In 1972, during the North Vietnamese Army’s Easter offensive, the bad guys had introduced the Soviet shoulder-fired heat-seeking missile into the fray.  Suddenly, the aviation tactics that had served the Army so well for years in Vietnam, flying at 2,000 feet above ground level, put us exactly in the kill zone for the heat-seeking Strella SA-7 missile.  We quickly had to adapt to low-level flying to survive.

     In those days, the 1st Cavalry Division [TRICAP, or Triple Capability, meaning one Armored Brigade, one Airmobile Infantry Brigade, and one Air Cavalry Combat Brigade] was the Army’s experimental test unit for developing tactics and procedures for Army forces to survive in the central European theater. Soviet-controlled forces outnumbered NATO/US forces by a frightening ratio, so low level was the only way Army aviation could survive in that environment.  It was termed “nap of the earth” flying.  Low level in those days meant no helicopter could fly anywhere on post higher than 50 feet elevation, with two exceptions:  Over the cantonment area we came up to 200 feet, and a Chinook carrying a sling load could fly where the load was 50 feet up.  Otherwise, we flew so low between the trees that we came up to clear barbed-wire fences and came down to clear under power lines.  This meant even at night, which was scary.

     Besides low-level flight, the Cav also utilized tactical Forward Area Refuel/Rearm Points, better known as FARRPs, at various frequently-changed locations around the huge Fort Hood reservation.  All training flights refueled at the FARRPs hot, meaning the engine remained running and the rotor turning while the crew pumped jet fuel into the aircraft tanks.  It was a wild time to be flying in the Cav.

     When I knew I would be flying, I had the First Sergeant select two or three troops who wanted to ride along with the Old Man.  This was a treat for the troops, and the First Sergeant used it as an incentive to reward our high-performing engineer soldiers.  I would sign for my OH-58 at the post airfield, then fly to a landing pad near the company barracks and pick up the selected troops for a couple of hours of low level flight hugging the varied terrain at Fort Hood.  While it was great fun, sometimes a troop would become queasy at the low-level maneuvers of the little bird.  I tried to warn them ahead of time.

*     *     *     *     *     *

     While I was at the Engineer Officer Advanced Course, I met Kay, an enormously talented woman, at the time working as the Executive Secretary to the Director of the DC branch of Stanford Research Institute, a think-tank for national strategic policy.  She held a Top-Secret clearance years before I got mine.  I only found out later that the FBI had checked me out when she started to see me.

     In the early 1960s, Kay had been enlisted in the Army at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, before attending Women’s Army Corps Officer Candidate School and being commissioned a WAC lieutenant.  After marrying and becoming pregnant, she was forced to resign, since the Army didn’t allow pregnant soldiers to serve in those days.  Sadly, that marriage didn’t survive.

     Kay loved the Army, way more than I did.  While living in Washington, D. C., she had joined an Army Reserve Schools unit, serving as a drill instructor while she worked to get her commission restored in the Army Reserve.  For her two-week summer active duty with her unit, she served as a basic training drill sergeant for WAC recruits at Fort Jackson, SC.

     It didn’t take me long to figure out that being a bachelor officer at Fort Hood was not the greatest life situation, so I proposed to Kay and we were married in DC in 1974.  She resigned from her Reserve unit to come to live with me at Fort Hood, before her commission had come through.  Loving Army life, she immediately enlisted in the Texas National Guard, the 49^th Armored Division.  They assigned her to the 149^th Adjutant General Company as a Platoon Sergeant.

     So, for a year, during which I had become a company commander, she attended weekend drills with her unit in Austin, Texas.  For summer camp in July 1975, the 49^th Armored Division convoyed to North Fort Hood, to train for two weeks in facilities almost 30 miles north of main post.

     Since the AG company took a break on the middle Sunday, Kay got some free time that afternoon.  So, I signed out an OH-58 to go flying that day and picked up two of my troops at the company, leaving the left front seat open.  We flew up to the helipad at North Fort Hood, where Kay was waiting in uniform.  Her commander had given her permission to go flying with me, so I picked her up and she rode in the front seat beside me for a couple of hours.

     I had not told my troops what the story was, because of the noise of the helicopter when I picked them up at the company.  So, they were astonished when we picked up a gorgeous WAC NCO to ride in the front seat.  I had a helmet for her, so as we flew all over post, up and down the Cowhouse Creek ravine and around the hundreds of thousands of acres of the post range area, we talked on the intercom.

     It wasn’t until we landed at a FARRP to refuel that the troops got a good look at her.  While I was pumping jet fuel into the little bird, everyone had to get out of the aircraft in case of fire.  During the wait, Kay took off her helmet and shook out her long auburn hair.  My two troops were too awe-struck to speak to her, so they just stood there gaping.  In those days, she really looked like a movie star.

     It never occurred to me, as we finished refueling and I flew her back to the North Fort helipad, that the troops wouldn’t know that she was my wife.  When I returned to main post and dropped them off at our company helipad, they couldn’t wait to tell their buddies what they had just seen the Old Man do.  Before I had even gotten the helicopter back to the main post airfield to close out my flight, the entire company was abuzz.

     And so, it happened that at Monday morning company formation, this Old Man stood before his assembled troops to explain what was going on.  While the First Sergeant afterward confirmed everything I said, some engineer troops were still skeptical, thinking their commander was up to something.

     How could the Old Man be married to someone so good looking?  Army regulations forbid giving rides to civilians, even if they are married.  And what was he doing with an enlisted WAC, and a Platoon Sergeant at that?  Dang, but he is really up to something!

       Even after the troops got to meet her at later company functions, the Skybeaver troops of Charlie Company, 8^th Engineers, still held the Old Man in awe.  Didn’t hurt to have a great wife.

Guys who wear the RANGER tab frequently make a distinction between “Summer Rangers” and “Winter Rangers,” especially if they claim to be the latter.  There are several reasons why winter Rangers feel superior to their summertime brethren, besides the obvious difference of the temperatures which they endured.  For one thing, there are more hours of darkness during the winter months.  As Ol’ Weird recalls, there were occasionally things that were mildly enjoyable or fun during Ranger School, but nothing good ever happened at night.  Ever. 

The absolute coldest Ol’ Weird ever was, happened during the Florida phase, one night when the temperature went to 17 F.  That may not sound so bad, except that just after dark, his patrol had made a crossing of the Yellow River.  That meant fording 150 yards of flowing swamp, neck deep in icy waters, roped together in the dark so as not to lose the non-swimmer “rocks,” with their weapons hoisted over their heads.  Before they had even gotten up to dry land, their sopping fatigues were already freezing solid, so sixty pounds of gear in rucksacks, soaking wet became ninety pounds of ice. That was one night Ol’ Weird was actually grateful that they never stopped moving, because he surely would have been a frozen cadaver.

Early in Ranger School, Ol’ Weird figured out that the best deal in the world was to volunteer to carry the machine gun.  Two odious patrol tasks which everyone avoided were carrying the machine gun and carrying the radio.

Both were huge dead weight, and neither one usually worked, so it was always an exercise in pointless work. But the M-60 machine gun had its advantages.  For one thing, since it was guaranteed to jam after only a couple of rounds, Ol’ Weird learned he could ditch all but about a 20-round belt of ammo and carry an empty ammo box the whole patrol.  He earned lots of martyr points by saying, “Hey, man, I’ve been carrying the damned machine gun from the start – gimme a break!”  The duty got spread around, so whenever he needed some relief, he just whined to the patrol leader, and got to unload the monster for a bit.

Same thing worked for the hapless Ranger carrying the radio, with one big difference.  When the eight to twelve-day patrols began, the machine gunner left his M-14 rifle locked in the rack back at base camp, while the radio man carried the radio plus his rifle.  So, while everyone else was dragging their weapon through the mud with parts falling off all through the patrol, the machine gunner’s rifle was clean and dry back in the base camp riflerack.

The really bad part came when it was time to jump.  Ol’ Weird jumped with the M-60 in a kit bag hanging across his thighs below the reserve parachute.  [Every Ranger school jump is a night jump.]  He never understood why, but two things were different about jumping at night.  First, the ground came up way faster at night.  And no matter what you did, at night you always hit the ground backwards. 

His worst jump ever was one night in Florida phase.  Army regulations forbid training jumps if the winds on the drop zone exceed 13 knots, steady.  On the night in question, winds were 18 knots, gusting to 25, but the Rangers were going to jump.  So, the DZ (drop zone) Safety Officer cupped his hand in front of the wind gauge and reported “13 knots, steady.”  Blasting out of the antique C-123, Ol’ Weird felt gusts oscillating him beneath his parachute like a gigantic pendulum, and sure enough, heading ass-backwards to the DZ, straight for the trees.

He hit the ground on the backswing in the classic three points of contact, Feet-Ass-Head, and the M-60 smashed into his face.  Being dragged violently, he thought, “This is the end, for sure,” but just momentarily.  Landing just inside the DZ, he was only dragged a few yards before his parachute hung up in the tree line.  He lay there forever [probably less than a minute] feeling blood trickling off his chin.  Finally, he gathered enough strength to pop his quick-release and climb to his feet.  Medics gave him three sutures and two Darvon, and it was back on patrol.  Ol’ Weird has that scar to this day.

Another difference between summer and winter Rangers is that, during the mountain phase, winter Rangers were issued far more gear, including Mickey Mouse boots, heavy duty clothing and heavy mummy sleeping bags, all of which had to be carried in every patrol.  Trouble was, whether it was cold or not, that was a lot of extraneous gear, and in a soaking rain it really got heavy.

• 

• 

• 

The absolute worst thing a Ranger could ever do was to break contact during a patrol.  That earned an automatic 25-point bad spot report, which would almost guarantee he would not get the RANGER tab upon completion.  [Ranger School is the only Army school where just finishing the course does not earn you the award.  Only some Ranger graduates get the tab.]  Seems the “Black Hat” cadre (distinguished by their black baseball caps adorned with their jump wings and Ranger tab) did not want to be out looking for lost Rangers in the wilderness at night.  To ensure that no one ever breaks contact, the procedure is to “send up the count.”  This means the last man in the patrol slaps the man in front of him, saying “One.”  He slaps the man to his front with “Two,” and so on, until the patrol leader at the front gets the right number, or if not, halts and scrambles to find the missing Ranger.  At least once every hour, and more often when he thinks of it, the patrol leader must pass back the word to “send up the count.”

So, there they were, a patrol of fifteen exhausted, starving, delirious Rangers, at night in a cold pouring rain, slogging single file up a North Georgia crag affectionately known as Greasy Mountain.

The terrain was so steep and the night so dark and wet that the only way to maintain contact was for each Ranger to keep a firm grip on the rucksack frame of the Ranger in front of him.  Ol’ Weird was Number Seven from the rear of the patrol, as they slipped and crashed up the freezing mountain mud.

…  Ol’ Weird was jerked awake by the man behind him, saying “Oh, shit.  We’ve broken contact.” 

     “No, we haven’t,” Ol’ Weird insisted.  “I’m holding onto the guy in front, and they aren’t moving.”  Just to prove it, he pulled off his sopping glove and felt the rucksack he was clinging to.  Only it wasn’t a ruck frame – it was a tree branch.  “Oh, man, we’re in trouble now!” 

Ol’ Weird huddled with his six Rangers.  They had broken contact, and he knew his ass was on the line.  During the patrol operations order that afternoon, they had been shown the map and briefed that they would move up to the peak of Greasy Mountain and then follow a ridgeline several kilometers to the objective.  No one in his group had a map, or a radio, or even a flashlight with working batteries.  Just the useless machine gun Ol’ Weird was lugging. 

Since the main patrol was heading for the top of the mountain, if they just kept going up they might sooner or later find the rest of the patrol.  So, he told his lost sheep, “Stay tight.  Send up the count every five minutes.  Don’t worry – we’ll catch up with them.  It will be OK.”  He took off, leading six worried Rangers up the mountain, always up, as fast as they could and stay together.

An hour passed in the freezing rain, blind except when an occasional flash of lightning lit the mountain side.  Up and up they went, desperate to rejoin the main patrol.  Another hour, and up they went.  A third hour passed, and the terrain began to flatten out.  Somebody said, “I hear something.”  Off to their left, down the slope, they could hear crashing around.

In a couple of minutes, they made out somebody coming up the mountain.  Ol’ Weird’s group had passed the main patrol on their way to the top!  As the main patrol passed right by, completely unaware, Ol’ Weird counted until the eighth man passed, then slapped him on his ruck and said, “Seven.”  The count, apparently the first one in hours, was passed up, and no one ever knew anyone had broken contact.

Every man in that group of seven lost sheep wound up getting the RANGER tab, Ol’ Weird included.

“So, Kenny, tell me what ‘airborne’ is all about.” 

*     *     *     *     *     *

I was speaking to one of the regulars at the bar in Fayetteville, NC, that I inherited from my late Uncle Nick, Captain Kenny Wayne.  Kenny was known as a “master blaster,” which is Army talk for somebody who has been a paratrooper for a long time.  All of the regulars here at the bar, known as Nick’s FARRP, are Army guys.  Since I know nothing about the Army, I am always asking them questions.  My name, by the way, is Gil Edwards.

*     *     *     *     *     *

“Well, Gil,” Captain Kenny began, “the obvious answer is that ‘airborne’ means the paratroopers who are qualified to parachute from airplanes.”

“Yeah, I know that much,” I said.  “So, how did you get into jumping?”

“Well, actually,” Captain Kenny began, “I went to jump school back when I was at school.”

“What Kenny means any time he says ‘at school,’” interrupted Major Tony, another regular here at the FARRP, “is, ‘when he was a cadet at West Point.’  He’s trying to be modest, although being a West Point graduate is hardly anything to brag about, especially when he gets to sit next to a Texas A&M grad like me.”

Captain Kenny responded, “Texas Aggies, like the illustrious major here, think they have the supreme pedigree as Army officers.  What I don’t get is why you would ever pay out of your own pocket to go through officer training.”

“You’re just jealous,” Major Tony shot back.

“As I was saying, before being so rudely interrupted,” Captain Kenny continued, “I went through jump school as a cadet.  After I finished my second year, in 1967, I volunteered to go to Fort Benning on my summer leave, to earn jump wings on my own time.”

“So, then, what does it take to earn jump wings?”  I asked.

“First off,” Captain Kenny replied, “you have to be a volunteer.  You can’t order someone to jump out of an airplane.  To become jump qualified, a volunteer must go through ‘jump school,’ a three-week course down at Fort Benning.  Then, to finish the course, you make five jumps from Air Force cargo aircraft.

“Then my subsequent duty that summer was serving as an airborne infantry platoon leader in the 101^st Airborne Division.  I got three more jumps with my troops at Fort Campbell, for a total of eight as a cadet.

“Was that unusual?”  I asked Kenny.

“Back in the 1960s it was,” he replied.  “A few cadets who had prior enlisted service had jump wings before entering.  But most West Pointers went to jump school as lieutenants after they graduated.

“So once my third year, we call it ‘Cow’ year, began, I got to thinking.  I wrote up a proposal that West Point should send all cadets to jump school during their summer duty that begins their ‘Cow,’ year.  I explained that, even though jump school is normally three weeks, a large part of that is physical conditioning.  So, a class of West Pointers could easily complete the course in two weeks.  There was already a two-week summer period for all new Cows (Juniors), called June Encampment.  We all called it June Entrenchment, because it was just a despised time killer.  Since cadets were already in pretty good shape, I said the new Cow class could just as well spend those two weeks at Fort Benning earning jump wings.

“In my proposal, I explained that the Army could save a lot of time and expense by not having to pay lieutenants travel expenses, since cadets would gladly do it for free, just like I had done.  Morale would go sky high.  I did fail to consider that all paratroopers have to be volunteers, because I couldn’t imagine why anyone would not want to jump.  But some people actually don’t want to.  Even cadets.  Beats me.

“Anyhow, I typed my two-page proposal up and sent it up my chain of command, through our Regimental Commander, a new colonel named Alexander Haig, to the Commandant of Cadets, Brigadier General Bernard Rogers.  Both of those guys wound up as four-star generals just a few years later.  Anyway, I never heard anything back about my idea, so I put it out of my mind and went on my way.

“But dang if, shortly after our graduation in 1969, West Point didn’t open up Jump School as an option for summer duty for new Cows.  And a year later it became an option for ROTC cadets as well.  They actually adopted my proposal.  There’s no telling how much money the Army saved by sending cadets to jump school instead of waiting until they are commissioned officers.  Maybe, it wasn’t such a bad idea after all.”

“You know, Kenny,” Major Tony said.  “I knew that jump school was made an option for ROTC cadets in 1972, but I never knew that was your idea. Not bad.”

“Well, then,” I asked Captain Kenny, “what did you do after you graduated West Point?”

“After graduation leave, I reported in to Ranger School at Fort Benning.  Already being jump qualified, I went through on jump status as an airborne Ranger.  From there I went to my Armor Officer Basic Course at Fort Knox, and from there I reported for duty at the 82^nd Airborne Division here at Fort Bragg.  I got enough jumps in Ranger school plus once I got to the division that they covered me for jump status and pay through all of my basic course and leave and travel time.  Counting my two months as a cadet, I already had nine months on jump status when I hit the division.

“There is always rivalry within the paratrooper ranks.  When I was in the 101^st, we put down the guys in the 82^nd by calling them ‘almost airborne.’  You see that red, white and blue painting of the 82^nd patch on the wall there?  The ‘AA’ butt-to-butt in a blue circle on a red square stands for ‘All American.’

When I got to the 82^nd, we in turn referred derisively to the 101^st Airborne Division, whose insignia is the ‘Screaming Eagle,’ as the ‘puking buzzards.’

“My orders for Vietnam came through during the summer of 1970, and I was assigned to the airborne armored cavalry troop of the 173^rd Airborne Brigade, E Troop, 17^th Cav.  So, I stayed continuously on jump status from the summer of 1969 until the summer of 1971, when the 173^rd rotated back to Fort Campbell.  By that time my branch transfer to the Corps of Engineers was getting processed.  So, I spent every day of my time as an armor officer on jump status, and never jumped again as an engineer until I got back here to Fort Bragg.”

Major Tony spoke up, “I always wondered how you got enough months on jump status to make master blaster.  It takes 36 months on status and at least 65 jumps.”

“Yeah,” replied Captain Kenny, “when I got back here to the airborne engineer battalion, I had 27 months on jump status, but I sure did a lot of jumping during the next year.”

“So, Kenny, what’s so great about being a paratrooper, anyway?”  I asked.

“Well, Gil,” interrupted Major Tony.  “Do you remember when you first got here and Chief Rod was telling you about the Cav?  He told you that armies tend to recognize elite units by their willingness to do something completely insane in combat.  When I was in the Mexican Army, their elite units are the horse cavalry troops, who train to attack tanks, artillery and machine guns on horseback.

“But for our American troops, it is the willingness to enter the battlefield suspended from a parachute.  Totally insane in this century.  And I say that as a Special Forces combat veteran.  All Special Forces troops, as well as Rangers, have to be jump-qualified as a prerequisite.”

“Funny thing,” Captain Kenny said.  “You don’t have to be a paratrooper to go to Ranger school, but you do have to be jump qualified to serve in a Ranger unit.  And you don’t need to be a Ranger school graduate to be in a Ranger unit, just airborne.  Another funny thing:  Ranger school is the only training program in the US armed forces where successfully completing the course doesn’t necessarily earn you the course award.  Only some Ranger graduates are awarded the Ranger tab, that yellow arc that says ‘RANGER’ inside.”

“Another funny thing,” spoke up Major Tony.  “The regulations say there are two ways to earn jump wings.  Hardest way is to volunteer for a combat jump, whether you are jump qualified or not.  Primary way is ‘to complete a ground course of instruction’ and then make five jumps.  A jump is defined as to ‘exit an aircraft while in flight.’  It doesn’t say airplane, and it doesn’t say use a parachute.  Sometimes, when a paratrooper, especially a senior officer, has been injured, he can continue to qualify for jump pay by making water jumps.  That means a helicopter hovers over a body of water and he hops into the drink, to be fished out right away by guys in a boat.

“During the Vietnam ramp-up,” Major Tony continued, “I knew of specialists, mostly signal types, who were being rushed from Fort Bragg to fill critical billets in 5^th Special Forces headquarters units.  Since all of Special Forces personnel must have ‘silver wings upon their chest,’ these guys had to be jump qualified.  Their jump school consisted of one afternoon at Sicily Drop Zone, being taught how to make a parachute landing fall for an hour or so, then taking five rides in a helicopter to make their parachute jumps.  Even the ones who were banged to hell by the third jump were loaded with Darvon and completed their final jumps semi-comatose.  They were told they could convalesce on their plane trip to Vietnam.”

“Back to your question,” Captain Kenny resumed.  “The real value of paratroopers is that they think they are supermen.  They have demonstrated the guts to do something, repeatedly and voluntarily, that no sane person would ever do, and they think all ‘*legs’ [* is pronounced with a spitting sound] are inferior troops.  They are fond of saying, ‘Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil, for I am the toughest SOB in the valley.’

“Let me give you an example.  In the 82^nd Airborne Division museum over on post, there is a display that illustrates what I am saying.  During the World War II Battle of the Bulge, when German forces were overrunning our panic-stricken troops far and wide, a US Sherman tank was racing through the Ardennes Forest.  Approaching a young corporal from the 82^nd Airborne standing in the trail, the tank commander yelled, ‘Hey, mac.  Do you know where we can find a safe area? ‘The kid replied, ‘Just pull in here behind me. I’m an American paratrooper, and they ain’t coming past me.’”

 

In memory of Bill and Terry and Eddie and Jerry

 

 

 

Editor’s note: The Nick’s FARRP series was written to remember the lives of some special men, members of the Class of 1969. Four of them were lost as young men soon after graduating from West Point as they were serving their country in Vietnam. The author, Guy Miller, was close to each one of them. One of the them was not only a high school friend, but also a roommate at West Point. The two of them shared a room Cow year (Junior) with another of the men remembered in the FARRP series. Guy was roommates twice with one of the men in the stories: Yearling (Sophomore year) and Firstie (Senior) year. Besides being a West Point classmate, another of the men in the stories served with Guy in the 82nd Airborne Division as young officers. Guy’s hope in writing this historical fiction series was to introduce you to his friends and to memorialize these great patriots. Miss Peggy is patterned after the widow of one of the men in the stories.  Each of the stories is based on real events given to you through the personalities of these men who were close to Guy and who are remembered fondly by Guy and members of the Class of 1969. We hope that you enjoyed meeting all of them. 

“So, Rod, you knew him better than anyone else.   Tell me about my Uncle Nick.”

*     *     *     *     *     * 

I was talking to Rod Jordan, an Army Chief Warrant Officer and Master Aviator, sitting across from me at my bar.  My Uncle Nick opened this bar, called Nick’s FARRP, when he had to leave the Army because of cancers he got from some chemical he was exposed to during his tours in Vietnam.  He died a few months ago and left the FARRP to me.  It is located in Fayetteville, North Carolina, just off post from Fort Bragg.  My name is Gil Edwards, by the way, and I know nothing about the Army, so I keep asking questions of the regulars here in the FARRP.

*     *     *     *     *     *

“Well, New Guy, I’m glad you asked,” Chief Rod replied.  I knew that “New Guy” was his affectionate term for me.  “Your Uncle Nick and Miss Peggy’s late husband Mike and I were known as The Three Musketeers during our days serving together in the Army.”

Miss Peggy was the lady standing beside me behind the bar.  When Uncle Nick opened the FARRP a couple of years ago, he brought her on as his bar manager.  She is now my special guardian angel, teaching me about running a bar and keeping me from getting in trouble with the regulars here.”

“The three of us were in the same Basic Training company at Fort Benning, Georgia, when we enlisted in the Army in 1961.  While we were going through infantry Advanced Individual Training there, some aviation recruiters came up from Fort Rucker, Alabama, looking for people who wanted to go to flight school and become Army aviators.  We had no idea what that involved, but they told us aviators get to fly helicopters, and get extra pay to do it.

“That sounded good to us, better than being infantry grunts living in the mud, so we applied.  The first thing that happened was that they gave us what they called the Flight Aptitude Test.  It was a crazy test that asked questions about whether we ever raced cars, or rode motorcycles, or rebuilt engines.  It showed us little pictures and had us answer what we thought an airplane was doing, and had us chose which arrows would move a dot in a certain direction.

“Of the 17 of us that took the aptitude test, only eight passed.  Then they sent us eight to the airfield to get flight physicals from the flight surgeon.  Everyone but us three flunked the flight physical, mostly because of less-than-perfect eyesight.  Mike, Nick and I were accepted to be Warrant Officer Candidates but had to wait a couple of months after we finished AIT for the next flight school class date.

“During the waiting time at Benning, they made us do menial things, like painting rocks and picking up pinecones.  To get out of those details, we volunteered to go through Jump School, which was actually a lot of fun.  We were in super physical shape in those days, and none of us had any fear of jumping.  Once we were parachute qualified, we volunteered for more schools to stay off pinecone duty.  Mike and I got to go through jumpmaster school and pathfinder school, but that idiot Nick begged to go to Ranger school.

“By the time we finally reported in to Camp Wolters in Texas for warrant officer candidate training combined with flight school, all three of us were hot stuff paratroopers bursting with airborne pride.  Little did we suspect that once we began flight training, the Army would never let us jump again.  Jump wings were a dime a dozen, but with Vietnam starting to heat up, aviators were invaluable.

“Being warrant officer candidates, or WOCs, was like basic training again, only more so.  At the same time that we were earning aviator wings, we were being made into officers, which was a double dose of work and pressure.

The first four weeks at Wolters were hell, but once we started flying, it got a lot better.

“Our primary helicopter trainer in those days was the OH-23, better known as the ‘Hiller killer’

It was weird to fly, because instead of hydraulics, the rotor disk was controlled by gyroscopic precession.  That means the controls operated a pair of paddle blades, which then forced the rotor disk to tilt 90º later.  So, there was always a delay between control input and the aircraft response.”

“Rod,” spoke up Miss Peggy.  “Tell me about my Miguel.  He never told me anything about those days.”

“Sure, Peggy,” Chief Rod replied.  “Being Puerto Rican, Mikey spoke with a slight accent, which sometimes made people think he wasn’t too bright.  But he was always the smartest among the three of us.  Nick was the best pilot, but Mike was the sharpest.  He was the only man in our class who could handle the brain-work of flying instruments well enough to earn a standard instrument rating at Rucker, while the rest of us just got what was called a ‘tac ticket.’.  That meant if we punched into a cloud inadvertently, hopefully we could trust our instruments well enough to keep the bird straight and level and get back on the ground alive.  During the pre-Vietnam days, that was the best they could hope for.

“During the tactics phase at Fort Rucker, just before graduation, our class flew down to the Florida Ranger camp to practice formation flying and to fly the Rangers in air assault operations.  We had been told that the Rangers are always starving, and it was customary to bring candy bars to hand out to them during the flight.  But Nick had been a Ranger himself, and he told Mike and me that what Rangers really need was meat.  So, he bought a case of Spam for us to hand out instead of candy bars.

“So, I handed out cans of Spam to the Rangers on my bird, and their eyes got huge.  They cut off the lids with those twist keys that were attached and began wolfing down the meat.  Damn if one of the idiot Rangers wasn’t so ravenous that he sliced his tongue open on the can edge and bled all over the helicopter.  I always kidded Nick that he proved it didn’t require a lot of smarts to get through Ranger school, but he never thought that was funny.

“Before graduation, the Army asked us our preferred next assignments.  They told us that some helicopter units were being sent to Vietnam, which sounded like a real adventure to us, plus the chance to earn combat pay.  We three volunteered to go, and got sent for transition to H-21s, the old ‘flying banana’ helicopters.

In those days, the Army considered helicopters as transportation machines, same as trucks.  In Vietnam we were assigned to the 8^th Transportation Company [Light Helicopter], flying in support of the Vietnamese Army troops.

“The H-21 was huge, with two rotors, front and rear.  They were designed for the Air Force to use in the arctic to service radar sites and worked really fine in the cold.  But Vietnam was way too hot for them to work efficiently, and a lot of times we couldn’t carry more than five Vietnamese troops at a time.  Sometimes it was so hard to get them flying that we had to hover them sideways into the wind to get both rotors into translational lift.

“In June 1963, the Army closed down four helicopter transportation companies in Vietnam and sent most of us aviators to Fort Benning.  The Army was getting ready to create a special unit to test how the Army could use helicopters to move and support infantry troops in mobile combat.  The unit, called the 11^th Air Assault Division [test], would have hundreds of their own helicopters.  They assigned us aviators to the 10^th Transportation Brigade, a part of the 11^th Air Assault.  As air combat veterans who had already served in Vietnam, the three of us were considered the old men of the unit.  And we weren’t even 21 years old yet.

“In the summer of 1965, the ‘test’ division was renamed the First Cavalry Division [Airmobile], and President Johnson ordered us to deploy to Vietnam.  The 1^st brigade of the division was all airborne, at least for the first year in country.  So, Fort Benning ran 659 Cav troops through jump school in ten days before we deployed.  We loaded 16,000 men and 470 aircraft aboard Navy ships and sailed halfway around the world.  By September we had moved into the 1^st Cav Division basecamp at An Khe, and were becoming operational.

“Lots of people have called the 1^st Cav the “Air Cavalry Division,” but that’s not right.  Only one unit was actually Air Cavalry, which means they fought from their mounts.  That was the 1^st Squadron [Air] – 9^th Cavalry, better known as “first of the ninth.”   It had four air cav troops, each with their own scout helicopter platoon, gunship platoon and aero-rifle infantry platoon.  The rest of the division consisted of infantry battalions with ‘cavalry’ names.  These were actually dragoons, meaning infantry who rode to the battlefield and fought on foot.  Plus, there were all the supporting units, including aviation battalions, helicopter-transportable artillery and engineers, and all the service supporting units.

“I was assigned as section leader of a scout platoon in one of the air cav troops in the 1-9^th.  Our scout helicopters were the old Korean War vintage bubble OH-13 helicopters like you saw in that movie MASH.  Our job was to fly low and slow, hoping to get the bad guys to shoot at us, whereupon the gunships that were covering us would roll in with rockets and machine guns blazing.  We didn’t even have any weapons except for the personal .38 revolver we carried.

“Right away, us scout guys decided that would never work.  So, we duct-taped M-60 machine guns to our skid crosstubes, and tied commo wire to the triggers so we could fire them.

It wasn’t authorized, but, like we said, ‘What are they going to do?  Send us to Vietnam?’ Trouble with the duct tape was that after a hundred rounds or so of machine gun fire, the tape melted through.  We lost a couple of weapons that way, before the maintenance guys figured out a better way to secure the guns.

“Mikey was a gunship section leader in the 229^th Aviation Battalion, and Nick was the principal Huey instructor pilot in a company of the 227^th Aviation Battalion.  I only got shot down twice in 14 months with the Cav.  Both times I got extracted by the aero-rifle platoon, we called them the ‘blues,’ within less than an hour.  Never got hurt.

“We all got reassigned to Fort Rucker by the end of 1966.  They were just starting to get the new turbine-powered OH-6 scout birds as I was leaving, so I didn’t get much time in them.”

“So, Rod, you said my Uncle Nick was the best pilot of the three of you,” I asked.  “Is that right?”

“No doubt about it, New Guy,” Rod replied.  “He was the first man in our class to be able to hover, and the first man to solo, and was the honor graduate in our class.  Nick was just a natural aviator.”

“But, Rod,” Miss Peggy asked, “you said my Miguel was really the smartest one, didn’t you?”

“Absolutely no doubt about it,” Chief Rod answered.

“What makes you so sure?” replied Miss Peggy.

“That’s obvious,” said Chief Rod.  “He married you, didn’t he?”

 

In memory of Bill and Terry and Eddie and Jerry