By Guy Miller

The “Tales from Nick’s FARRP” series are a fictionalized version of real events and are dedicated to the memory of friends and classmates from the Class of 1969.

“So, Tony, tell me what you have done in the Army.” 

*     *     *     *     *     *

I was talking with a tall Army guy on a barstool across from me in Fayetteville, North Carolina, that I knew was called Major Tony Williams.  I inherited this bar, called Nick’s FARRP, when my Uncle Nick died of cancers he got from some chemical in Vietnam during three tours as a combat helicopter pilot.  My name, by the way, is Gil Edwards.  Since I know nothing about the Army, I am always asking questions of the guys here in the bar.

*     *     *     *     *     *

“Well, Gil, as you know, I am a proud Texas Aggie.  I graduated from the Texas A&M ROTC program in 1965 as an Infantry Second Lieutenant.  After my initial infantry training at Fort Benning, I was assigned to a mechanized infantry battalion in the Panama Canal Zone.  Maybe the fact that I took three years of Spanish at A&M had something to do with them sending me to Panama.

“Panama was a lot of fun in the sixties.  In addition to my mech battalion, the US Army Southern Command, called USARSO, also had a leg infantry battalion and an airborne battalion, plus the 8^th Special Forces Group, who ran the Army’s Jungle Warfare School and a school for Latin American officers which included a jump school.

“As a mech platoon leader I got to train my troops in jungle operations.  I had the weapons platoon of C Company, 4-20^th Infantry, which meant my guys had the company’s mortars and heavy anti-tank guns.  When training was slow, I got to go through Jungle Warfare School, earning what the Army called ‘the coveted Jungle Expert badge.’  I also got to go through the jump school down there, earning my airborne wings.”

“Yeah, Tony,” interrupted the guy sitting next to Major Tony.  He was another of the regulars here at the FARRP I knew as Captain Kenny Wayne.  “You didn’t go through the real jump school at Fort Benning.  You might as well have gotten your jump wings out of a Cracker Jack box.” 

“All right, smart ass master blaster,” replied Major Tony.  “I made five parachute jumps and was awarded the very same jump wings you got.  And I got ‘silver wings upon my chest’ over a year before you did.  In fact, I was a ‘flash-qualified Green Beret’ before your cadet ass got to Benning the first time.”  

“Hey, Peggy, would you bring us over a couple more beers?”  Captain Kenny said.  Miss Peggy was my bar manager and guardian angel.

“Nice way to change the subject, Kenny,” replied Major Tony.  “Now, where was I?  Oh, yeah.  Going through all the training down in Panama, I really got to know some of the Special Forces guys, and decided I wanted to become a Green Beret like them.  Infantry branch officer assignments approved my request, but they held me in Panama several months for the next Special Forces Officer Course opening at Fort Bragg. 

“This was late 1966, and all the Infantry lieutenants in the Army were getting sent to Vietnam.  All of a sudden, I was the senior lieutenant in the battalion.  While I was waiting for orders to the SFOC at Fort Bragg, better known as the ‘Q Course,’ they made me Commanding Officer of Charlie Mech.  With only 18 months in the Army, dang if USARSO didn’t pin captain’s bars on me, too.  I had my company command ticket punched before I even got to Vietnam.

“Thank you very much, Peggy.  After graduation from the Q Course, I served in Vietnam with the 5^th Special Forces Group, most of that time commanding an Operational Detachment Alpha, commonly known as an A Team.  We were way the hell back in the boonies, amidst the Montagnards.  They are an indigenous people who live in the mountains of central Indochina.  The Vietnamese look down on them as barbarians, but they were very effective fighters against the Viet Cong infiltrators, whom they despised.

“My specialties in Special Forces were intelligence and weapons.  A couple of months into my tour in Vietnam, 5^th Special Forces Group was beginning to stand down.  So, the Army sent me back to Benning for the Infantry Officer Advanced Course.  While in the Advanced Course, I applied for flight school, since they were still sending aviators to Vietnam.  I got accepted and completed flight school in 1971.  I got in a full year tour back in Vietnam flying Hueys.

“I was at Fort Bragg during 1970,” interrupted Captain Kenny.  “That was when the post started filling up with 5^th Special Forces Group guys coming back to civilization.  After years and y ears of combat in the boonies, some of them had a hard time fitting into ‘the world.’ 

“I remember one day a newly-arrived senior SF NCO was bopping his way through the officers’ housing area coming back from the PX.  As he passed in front of a colonel’s house, a little tiny dog behind the picket fence started yapping at him.  Without even thinking, the Green Beret reached across the fence, picked up the little dog and impaled him on the picket fence, and kept on walking.

“The colonel’s wife was looking out her front window and saw what happened.  Hysterical, she called the Military Police.  The NCO was a couple of blocks down the street when two MP cars descended on him.  He put three Military Policemen in the hospital before reinforcements arrived and subdued him.  The guy never understood why everyone was upset.”

“Yeah, Kenny, I know that’s a true story,” replied Major Tony.  “Unfortunately, some of the most effective guys in a combat zone couldn’t adapt to life back in the civilized world.  Maybe the country needs some place to warehouse these super warriors in between wars, so they don’t disrupt society while they are being kept on standby for the next conflict.” 

“I thought that’s what Fort Bragg is for,” interrupted an older Army guy sitting at the bar, with a huge grin.  Chief Rod, I knew, was one of the regulars in the FARRP.  Actually, his real name is Chief Warrant Officer Rod Jordan, a master Army aviator.  Chief Rod had been best buddies with my Uncle Nick and Miss Peggy’s late husband Miguel. 

“Fort Bragg is a place no one else in the country wants,” Chief Rod continued, “so they gave it to the Army.  All the animals in the Army seem to be assigned here.  You got the airborne and the Special Forces, and over in the old Post Stockade there’s a bunch of gorillas that nobody knows what to do with.”

“That bunch of gorillas,” replied Major Tony, “happens to be a supposedly ultra-secret unit known as SF Operational Detachment Delta.  They call themselves OD Delta, or Delta for short.  They got formed up just over a year ago to be the nation’s anti-terrorism strike force.  With all the acts of international terrorism in the news these days, the Army was tasked to form a unit specializing in counter-terrorism operations.  And these really are the kind of guys who don’t have any other place in a peace-time Army.  But they sure are good at what they do.  Someday, the country will call on them, and they plan to be ready.” 

“Your Special Forces guys must have really made rank fast in Vietnam,” said Captain Kenny.  “In the spring of 1970, my armored cav squadron in the 82^nd got a new Command Sergeant Major, just back from 5^th Group in Vietnam.  He had gone over in 1962 as a brand-new Spec 4, not even a sergeant yet.  In less than eight years he was back as the highest enlisted rank in the Army.” 

“Yeah, Kenny, that could happen,” replied Major Tony, “but a lot of that advancement was the result of combat vacancies.  Fifth Group took a lot of casualties over the years.” 

“So, Tony,” I said.  “Keep telling me about what you did in the Army.” 

“Right, you go, young civilian,” Major Tony continued.  “By 1972 the Army had concluded that I probably didn’t show much promise as a conventional infantry officer, so they decided to let me stay in special operations.  Because of my Special Forces experience and language aptitude, they selected me to enter the Army’s Foreign Area Officer specialty track.  By this time, I had three strikes against me in the eyes of my Infantry branch.  First, I was a Special Forces officer, which they considered some sort of an anti-social cult.   Then, I was an aviator, which was even worse.  And finally, I chose to be a Foreign Area Officer, which guaranteed I would never see another infantry promotion.

“The Army sent me to graduate school for a master’s degree in Latin American Studies.  So, my graduate work was in Latin American political science, geography and history.  Plus, for the degree, besides Spanish, I had to complete university freshman and sophomore Portuguese language, for no graduate credit.  Having seen the handwriting on the wall that I had no Army future as an infantry officer, during my time in grad school I applied for a branch transfer out of infantry into Military Intelligence.

“While in grad school, the Army inadvertently promoted me to major, and dang if I wasn’t accidentally selected to attend the Command and General Staff Course at Fort Leavenworth.  That is a year-long finishing school for officers they plan on keeping around for a while. 

“Some insecure officers in C&GSC freak out over the course work.  Guys were known to barricade themselves in their studies for nine-months, leaving healthy wives climbing the walls.  In my class of over a thousand new majors, we had almost two hundred divorces during the year.  Surprisingly, there were actually several dozen cross-marriages of new divorcees.

“Graduating from Leavenworth in 1976, I was assigned as a US exchange officer to attend the Mexican National War College, followed by travels throughout Latin America.  Then the Army sent me back here to Fort Bragg to be chief of Latin American strategic studies in the 1^st Psyop Battalion of the 4^th Psyop Brigade.  And here I am.

“And I am hoping now to be selected as the JFK Special Warfare Center staff aviation officer.  If that happens, I will get to wear my Green Beret on duty again, this time with a JFKSWC flash, in a Lieutenant Colonel slot.” 

“Well, Tony,” replied Captain Kenny with a sarcastic grin.  “You seem to have salvaged a ‘three strikes’ infantry career OK.  Who knows, the Army might accidentally promote you again to Lieutenant Colonel.”

In memory of Bill and Terry and Eddie and Jerry

Continuation of stories about flying Hueys in Vietnam during 1972.  See part 1, “Smoke”.

Craziest thing I remember about “bombing” was one really windy day around March ‘72 when I was still flying co-pilot, or “charlie-pop.” One Republic of Korea White Horse Division company outpost on a mountain pinnacle east of Nha Trang was really hurting for water, so their battalion loaded a rubber blivet, or gigantic water bladder, in our bird and filled it from a “water buffalo” transport trailer. 

     We took off with maybe a ton of water in this rubber bag on the cabin floor trying to roll around, but it was way too turbulent for us to even try to land at the pad on the pinnacle.  The Korean guide on board insisted the troops desperately needed the water, so he finally persuaded the Aircraft Commander to make a really low and slow pass so they could roll the blivet out. 

So he flew us in, about six feet up, just barely in translational lift, maybe ten knots ground speed, with the bird gyrating wildly in the turbulence.  When they rolled the blivet out, the sudden change in center of gravity almost caused a blade strike on the ground, but the bird lurched upward once the load was gone.  That blivet hit the pinnacle pad like a one-ton water balloon, drenching about 40 ROK troops who wanted something to drink, not a shower. 

We didn’t try that again.

Another mission after I became Aircraft Commander [callsign “Ghostrider 8”], we were carrying a ROK Regimental Commander out to see one of his companies on a pinnacle outpost.  The company had taken a 4×8 sheet of ¾” plywood, painted it white, then in red Korean script painted “Welcome, Colonel Whatever, to 7^th Company, home of the best troops in Vietnam.”  The heavy plywood was nailed to a tree, but as we landed, the rotor wash ripped the nails out of the bark and it went flying up into the whirling rotor blades.  BAM!! 

Terrified, I was certain we had severed a rotor blade or worse, so we shut it down on the spot to inspect the damage.  Miraculously, one rotor spar had hit the plywood sheet absolutely flat, slicing it diagonally as if it were cut on a saw.  Along nine feet of that blade’s leading edge was a line of white paint, interspersed with flecks of red.  Still shaking, I called it a day, flew the commander back to his Regimental headquarters, and returned to our airfield.  When the Ghostrider maintenance section inspected the rotor blade, they pronounced it perfectly safe to fly. 

That episode convinced me for certain that there was a Guardian Angel protecting us from our own stupidity. Funny, though, but that Regimental Commander never flew with us again.

(Another “Guardian Angel” story is called “Pigs and Corn.” You can read that here.)

The Guardian Angel was certainly on duty another day.  Our company airfield was almost adjacent to the White Horse Division command post.  Every day we had one bird assigned on stand-by for the two-star ROK commanding general, in case he wanted to go somewhere.  Usually, it was a completely boring day, doing nothing but sitting around waiting.  Even when the generalactually had us fly somewhere, it was a VIP flight, so we had to fly very smooth and gentle, with no maneuvering.  It was usuallyto some other headquarters, so we always had a large landing pad in an open and level area.  Boring!!

The layout was like a large inverted letter L, with the division headquarters at the tip of the lower bar [a couple hundred yards long]and our airfield aligned with the upright.  At the end of this mind-numbing day-long mission, the only fun part was returning to the airfield.  We called the maneuver a “triple-60.”  The bird took off eastfrom the pad, gaining enough airspeed and altitude to cross the extended centerline of the airfield at 60 knots and 60 feet altitude, whereupon we yanked the birdover left 60º and flew a tight 270º turn to roll out south,aligned for landing on the airfield strip.  That was really fun.

Unfortunately, there was a 155mm artillery battery located in the center of the loop we had to fly. 

Before taking off, we always had to get clearance from the airfield control tower to fly near this end of the airfield, and in particular to be cleared for the “left 270” maneuver, since the tower had communications with the artillery battery and could ensure there would be no firing.

So late one afternoon the “command” birdgot “mission-release” and called the controltower for permission to return to the airfield.  Tower replied, “Ghostrider one-four, you are cleared for left 270, landing south straight in.” 

Somehow, and the investigation never got an explanation why, during the triple-60 maneuver, one of the artillery pieces fired.  Miraculously, the shell shot straight through the open doors of the steeply-banked Huey, not touching a thing. 

However, the sonic boom from the supersonic shell did rupture the eardrums of all four crew members, getting them grounded for several weeks.

Many people question whether there is a God, or whether angels are guarding his earthlings, but I can assure you of this: 

Those who have survived a miracle such as this one, they believe!!!

     I spent the majority of my tour in Vietnam flying in the 60^th Assault Helicopter Company [AHC], callsign “Ghostriders,” under the 7^th Squadron -17^th Air Cavalry, a composite unit. We had around 25 “slicks,” which is what we called our lift UH-1H

Hueys that carried troops and cargo, plus a gunship section of six AH-1G Cobra attack helicopters, the “Gunrunners.” 

     Our mission was to provide helicopter support to the Republic of Korea [ROK] White Horse and Tiger Divisions.  Our company was configured for combat assault

operations, where we inserted or extracted ground troops in landing zones, under gunship cover.  However, the majority of our missions were direct combat support, what we called “ash and trash,” usually routine single ships supplying troops in the field with food, ammunition, water and mail.  We got a lot of flying time on these missions, since they typicallylasted eight hours or more, with several dozen individual sorties.  Occasional missions included medical evacuation of wounded troops, and aerial reconnaissance for upcoming operations.  From time to time on all our missions, the bad guys took offense at our presence, and indicated their displeasure with gunfire, usually AK-47.  The ones shooting at me were mostly bad shots.

     The aircraft crew consisted of two aviators and two enlisted crew.  The Aircraft Commander was an experienced and battle-tested pilot who usually flew in the left seat, and his “charlie-pop,” or co-pilot, usually a new guy, flew in the right seat, gaining experience to become an Aircraft Commander himself one day. 

      In the left rear well, or cabin corner, sat the crew chief, who was the owner of the helicopter, in charge of its maintenance, who always flew with his bird.  In the right well sat the door gunner, who assisted the crew chief and was responsible for the machine guns.  Both the crew chief and the door gunner had pedestal-mounted M-60 machine guns, each with an ammo can holding a belt of 1,500 rounds. Their duties were to watch for enemy fire and to advise the pilots about the tail rotor in tight spaces. On direct combat support operations, we also carried an English-speaking ROK soldier, who relayed to us our missions.

     Since our airfield was located just a couple of miles inlandfrom the South China Sea, whenever we took off in the morning for a mission, the first thing we did was to fly “feet wet” (over the ocean), where the door gunners could test-fire their weapons.  Many troops volunteered to bedoor gunners just because they knew at least once each day they could fire their machine guns.  On routine missions, we sometimes let cooks fly gunner on their days off, and we even had a chaplain who loved to fly and shoot the gun.

     During test firing, the door gunners always wanted something to shoot at, and their favorite target was the sharks that swam near the surface in the South China Sea.  Since a shark is mostly cartilage, machine-gun bullets don’t do any damage, but they surely do annoy the shark.  Most sharks were small, but there was one Great White as big as our helicopter tail boom.  He roamed about 200 miles up and down the coast. After I made

Aircraft Commander (callsign “Ghostrider 8”), I absolutely refused to let my gunners shoot that shark when we saw it.  I figured if our engine quit, I did not want our crew to be breakfast for an angry giant man-eating shark.

     Whenever we took fire, our crew’s priorities were to

1.  Advise us where the fire was coming from. 

2.  Drop a smoke grenade to mark the target for the gunships.

3.  And only then, return fire with the machine guns. 

Our good ones could do all three simultaneously.  Before the mission, they would pull the pins on smoke grenades and reinsert them backwards to hang on the edge of the ammo cans.  They cruised with their little finger through the pull ring, so when they engaged with the M-60, it automatically pulled the pin and dropped the smoke.

     Sometimes out horsing around at the end of a day’s mission,we would practice dropping smoke grenades from altitude to see whether we could marka specific point on the ground.  The Aircraft Commander would fly straight and level and call the crew chief when to drop the smoke, then wing over to see where it went.

     Early in my tour (I wasn’t present for this incident), one of our young warrant officers chose as hissmoke bombing targetan old Vietnamese fisherman out in the Tuy Hoa River, about 10 miles in from the coast.  By the third smoke grenade whistling out of the sky obviously aiming for him, old papa-san finally got mad.  He pulled an antiqueFrench flintlock musket out of the bottom of his boat, hung it under his arm and fired, almost knocking himself out of his boat.  The Huey was pulling a steep left turn when the lucky musket ball punched through the plexiglass roof canopy and smashedthe Aircraft Commander in his helmet.  The ball embedded in the Styrofoam over his forehead, but it shattered his plexiglass face shield, driving shards into his eyes.  Since plexiglass doesn’t show up on X-ray, no one in-country had the technology to safely locate and remove it from his eyes, so they had to air-evacuate him to Japan to take it out.

     My most memorable smoke story happened a few months into my tour.  As co-pilot, or “charlie-pop, I was at the controls flying a ROK regimental commander out to inspect one of his company compounds, located on a pinnacle back in the mountains.  I flew in at 2000 feet above the terrain, and when the company popped a red smoke grenade to indicate the winds at the helipad, I began my spiraling approach down to the company position.  As I was rolling out at the bottom approaching touchdown, the smoke grenade ran out, so the conscientious private on helipad duty popped a fresh smoke.  As I settled into a hover to touchdown, I thought to myself, “That’s strange.  I’ve never seen white smoke before.” 

     Just as the white smoke began getting sucked into the open Huey, the Aircraft Commander screamed, “Holy shit!” and yanked the controls out of my hands to go around.  I had just rememberedthat white smoke is CS, better known as tear gas.  As the aircraft gained airspeed, the choking tear gas in the Huey eventually dissipated, but all aboard were coughing with teary eyes.  The angry Aircraft Commander told the ROK interpreter that we were done for the day and turned back toward our base. 

     In a moment, the ROK came back forward and shouted over the noise, “My regimental colonel say, please, we go back.”  The Aircraft Commander declared there was no way he would take us back to that company.  The ROK repeated, “My commander say, please, please, please, we go back, just for one minute.” 

     Finally, the Aircraft Commander relented, and agreed to land us back at the pad, but this time he insisted on keeping the controls in his hands all the way.  When we touched down, the colonel steppedout of our aircraft and issued a command in Korean.  The ROK private who had popped white smoke snapped to attention on the pad.  A moment later his sergeant appeared and came to attention beside him.  A few seconds later, the lieutenant arrived and assumed the position of attention in the growing rank.  Finally, the captain company commander ran up the hill, still tucking in his blouse, to join the formation.

     When they were all assembled, the colonel gave another command, and all four soldiers removed their helmets and held them upside down in front of them.  Another ROK soldier appeared at the commander’s side, holding the case of CS grenades.  The colonel took one grenade from the case, popped it and dropped it in the helmet of the private, then sidestepped to the sergeant and did the same thing, and moved down the line, dropping a tear gas grenade in the helmets held by the lieutenant and captain.

     As soon as our helicopter’s rotor wash was blowing the concentrated cloud of tear gas directly into the faces of all four of the soldiers who had displeased him, the colonel climbed back into our bird, and his interpreter told the Aircraft Commander, “We go now.” 

     As we lifted off, I had learned a lesson – never fly into white smoke.  I’m sure the entire White Horse Division learned a variant of that very same lesson.

*Same type of aircraft flown by the Ghostriders supporting the ROK troops.  Behind the soldier on the left is the right-side cabin well, post of the door gunner.

Miller, Chicken Coop – 1979

Interested in the prequel? The War That Never Happened (https://thedaysforward.com/the-war-that-didnt-happen-1979/) explains the background for my assignment as the US exchange officer to the Mexican National War College for 1978-79.

 As a US Army Foreign Area Officer in training, my mission was to learn everything possible about my country of specialty, Mexico, including its geography, political system, history, and its Army and officer culture.  All this while attending the final year of their three-year War College program, six days a week during my twelve-month duty there.

My job was to travel as widely as possible in order to learn about every region of the country and every local custom and dialect of Mexican Spanish I could.  When possible, I was expected to bring my family [my late wife Kay and our sons aged 13 and one] along on official orders so they could become acculturated as well.  During my time there, between class field exercises, family trips and official travel, I managed to visit every part of Mexico in detail. 

I traveled in and spent at least one overnight in every one of the 31 Mexican states.

In the Latin American culture, it is particularly important to be able to say, “I know [meaning I have been to or stayed in] your city [or state or country],” especially when it is a place almost nobody has ever heard of.  By the end of my year in Mexico, my Spanish was near-native, although “a la Mexicana.”  In my subsequent travels throughout the Caribbean, Central America and South America, I was always taken by my accent for a Mexican, never once for a North American.  Although the Brazilians all guessed my Portuguese had an Argentinian accent.

In February 1979, I got the opportunity to take my family on a long weekend trip to the southern state of Guerrero, and its famed capital, Acapulco. 

Our class was scheduled for classified briefings on Monday and Tuesday, from which I and the other foreign officer, my twin brother, Rene Emilio Ponce from El Salvador were excused.  [Within nine years of our graduation, Ponce was the four-star Salvadoran Secretary of Defense.  He and I were twin brothers in the Latin culture, having both been born on April 27, 1947; our younger sons were also twins, having been born on April 8, 1977].  So, I went through the American Embassy travel agent and paid in full in advance for reservations at a moderate Acapulco family hotel for those three nights.

As soon as I got out of class on Saturday afternoon, we finished loading into the government vehicle I had available for official travel.  It was a black Ford station wagon, previously used for Embassy security duty, with armored side panels that made it very heavy handling.  We had barely made it into the Mexico City suburbs when the bearing on the right rear axle gave out and began chewing through the axle itself.

I limped the walrus of a government vehicle to a small repair shop, where the mechanic on duty diagnosed the problem.  He said it would be next week before he could get a replacement Ford axle [in Spanish called a “flecha,” or arrow], and that I would have to leave the vehicle until then.  I left my family unloading the government car, while I caught a rattle-trap taxi back to our apartment to pick up our personal car, a VW bus.

By the time I returned with our VW and got it loaded and back on the road, it was late in the afternoon.  The several-hour drive down to Guerrero State would put us in our destination well after dark, but I had no worries.  I had paid in full for the three days reservation in the family hotel, so it just meant we wouldn’t get to see much of the area that first day.

Unbeknownst to me, that weekend was a national holiday in Canada, and tons of chilled Canadians were flocking to the sub-tropical resort of Acapulco for a break from their Arctic climate.  Arriving at our hotel after dark, I was shocked to discover that our paid-for room had already been re-rented out to a Canadian family, and there were no other vacancies in the hotel.

Although I was indignantly outraged, I could get nothing more satisfying from the hotel manager than “Lo siento.”  Too bad.  Even showing him my “paid in full” receipt for three nights meant nothing.  He could offer no suggestions on where I might put my family up for the night, since every other hotel was similarly booked solid all weekend long.

I parked my family in the hotel restaurant to get some supper, while I demanded that the manager find us an alternative place to stay.  After merely going through polite motions for a while, he suggested I might inquire with the concierge for help.

Turns out the concierge had a brother-in-law who had a friend who drove a taxi who maybe knew of somebody with a place we could stay.  So, at 9:00 PM we followed this taxi up into the foothills overlooking Acapulco Bay, where we stopped at an adobe house with two goats in the driveway.  The owner came out and began a dialogue too fast for me to follow with the taxi driver, who then pulled away.

The owner led us around behind his house to a shed with a falling-down door. 

Using a flashlight, he pointed out a cot inside with a straw-tick mattress.  His wife brought out a couple of blankets for us and we did our best to bed down for the night. Our toddler thought it was a great adventure; our 13-year-old not so much.

In Mexico, most windows are merely holes in the wall, occasionally with shutters.  This shed wasn’t so fortunate.  By the light of a setting quarter moon, we stretched out.  Only then did we learn that the shed was actually the domain of the family chickens, who had been rousted out by the owner’s wife.  The indignant rooster flapped up onto the sill of the open window and began annunciating his displeasure at being displaced from his roost.

All night long this rooster crowed in anger at us intruders.  All.  Night.  Long.  We would just begin to drift into sleep when he would decide to resume his tirade at us, three feet from our heads.  By the time the sun finally arose, we were all zombies except our toddler who managed to sleep all through the night!  We adults couldn’t get out of that place fast enough.

The night before while I was making vague threats involving the American Embassy and the CIA, the manager of the hotel had told me to return in the morning, when he was certain he would be able to find us a room in his place.  Sure enough, by the time we staggered back to the hotel front desk, there was an apologetic note with a small package of Mexican chocolates awaiting us.  Plus, a key to a modest room, but at least it did not come with an indignant rooster.

We slept most of that Sunday, occasionally interrupted by church bells.  It was only into the afternoon that we were able to venture out to some of the local open-stall marketplaces and I could pursue my mission of gaining a feel for the culture and wares of Guerrero State.

Turns out the Embassy never reimbursed me the 500 pesos that night staying with the chickens cost me.  Since I had a paid receipt for hotel accommodations for that date, they wouldn’t cover my out-of-pocket costs for my decision to stay somewhere else.  Lo siento.

This adventure has become a permanent part of our family lore. To this day, any time I hear American tourists raving about the joys of a luxurious Acapulco vacation, I can’t help being reminded of the night I had to put my family up in a chicken coop.

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.