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REFLECTIONS on ANZAC Day 2006 Published by kind permission of Ron Rawknee Formerly of 128 Assault Helicopter Company, 1st
Aviation Brigade,
Photograph: Vera HARPER Posted
By Ron Curtis on NOTE: 1
In the Introduction I hope
you have a nice Memorial Day. Please take a few minutes to reflect on the
lifestyle we get to live in The
following is just a tiny slice of the life of one 20 year old kid who
volunteered to serve his country in a hardcore combat unit… Please
say a prayer for the current youths that are in harm’s way serving their
country, and "Lest We Forget", think of the past youths who never
got to come home to reap the rewards of their service to this great country. I am
2½ hours late for work right now as I have a final inspection on a house this
Thursday, but this afternoon I am gonna swing a leg over my Harley and get
lost aimlessly riding in these beautiful Pennsyltucky2 mountains tearfully remembering the ones who never
made it home to their moms, families, girlfriends, and the comforts of
America … Note: 1
Formed up outside FEOFA HQ, Toowoomba “The Gallant 49th Fleet of Foot”
Photograph: Margaret PECK (from the left) Roy ASHMAN, Ron CURTIS, Reg
HARPER, Gerry PECK, George MILLIE [of necessity the supernumeraries remain
anonymous to protect their identity] I had
the great honour on April 25th of getting to march with the Aussie
Veterans and be a part of the ceremonies of Anzac Day in
Photograph: Ron CURTIS (above) Pitch control rod, with its
bullet hole
In
military life you are continually graduating from one level of training and
starting out the next day as a “new guy”. In the Army it is called a FNG or”
f-ing new guy”. You graduate boot camp one day and in the next few days you
start out in another part of your training as a “f-ing new guy” at the bottom
of the food chain again. You are once again the stupidest slime ball (and
treated like one) on the face of the earth as you start out learning new
skills. Some honed their skills with different weapons, learning different
ways to kill, AND how to possibly survive. Others went to learn how to lead
troops in officer candidate school, cook, or type, or drive a deuce and a
half truck. Here I was at the age of 19 heading off to helicopter flight
school, a 9 month combination of officer candidate school and helicopter
pilot training. I
remember talking, after boot camp in Fort Polk, La3, with some of the others that were going to flight
school and thinking that now after boot camp they would treat us like human beings
and teach us how to fly…..HOW NAÏVE AND STUPID of us to think, or even hope
for a luxury like that. We hadn’t even begun to learn what hell on earth was,
None of us were ready for the TAC Officers and instructor pilots waiting for
us in primary helicopter flight school in Notes: 2
3
4
Landing
Zones 5
Out of
237 WOCs7, two were
killed in helicopter crashes and 86 of us graduated and became officers and
pilots. Out of that 86 of us graduates 84 of us were given 30 days leave and
were sent to Note: 6
Warrant
Officer candidates Eighty-four
of us were kings for 30 days. We had made it through a hellish course of
extreme psychological stress, tested the limits of our physical strength,
passed the daily two or three written exams, learned the skills to take off a
helicopter and land it, and learned many of the skills on how to successfully
crash land a broken, and/or, burning helicopter. King
for 30 days and now I’m a FNG in a helicopter combat assault company in some
hot dusty place I can hardly pronounce the name of Phu Loi. A new
guy pilot in a hardened combat unit is even lower than whale poop. Not only
do the other pilots look down on you with distain, all of the door-gunners
look at you as someone who could potentially kill them with stupid mistakes
on the controls of a Huey. You are told in no uncertain terms that all you
know how to do is to pick up the Huey to a hover, fly it around the traffic
pattern, and possibly land it without killing anyone. You have to prove
yourself in combat to get approval with this bunch. Another
new guy and I were the first two new guy pilots our unit had seen in six
months. There is just nothing like being in a terrifyingly scary place,
trying to pick up the tricks of the trade as quickly as possible, and being
the butt of EVERY joke. It is Today
I am flying as a “peter pilot”, or second pilot, in my first actual combat
assault (our primary job) and we have been told it will probably get hot in the
LZs. “Oh
yeah, new guy,” says the aircraft commander I’m flying with today, “We’re
going into Cambodia today, you might want to take a change of underwear,” the
Crew Chief says with a jeer, “that’s if the FNG lives long enough to change
them.” Nothing
like encouragement, I’m thinking as I shakily go through my part of the
pre-flight; I’m scared to death but trying to act nonchalant, and like I even
have a clue about what to do. I feel like the enemy hates me and these guys
I’m flying with today DESPISE me, but it’s just the way it is. There is no
softness in a hardened combat unit, war ain’t pretty, and these two
door-gunners have already seen it all. They know what lies ahead…and they
know that if the aircraft commander gets killed or incapacitated that
everyone will have to depend on some sorry FNG, who is so new that he is
still “urinating stateside water”, to get them back to safety. Our
flight today consists of 8 slicks, four gunship escorts, and a command and
control Huey which will fly way up overhead and coordinate us, and vector us
in with compass headings as we race in at treetop level to our LZs to unload
our cargo of infantry “grunts”. The grunts will be staying behind and
engaging Charlie (the North Vietnamese soldiers) who is infiltrating down the
Ho Chi Minh Trail down through At
5:30 am the cool morning mists at Phu Loi heliport are parted as 9 ‘H’ model
Hueys and 4 Charlie/Mike model Huey gun-ships take off together from runway
27 and turn towards the Northwest. We were on our way. My first of many
combat assaults will be the beginning of the end of my youth and innocence in
this life. We are
headed to a fire support base in a place called Thien Ngon (pronounced: Ten
Yon). It’s just south of the Cambodian border and it is where we will pick up
a load of infantry grunts and take them an hour or so up into Cambodia to a
place close to a ‘ville’8
named Snoul. Note: 7
village It is
dark as we take off and fly up to our in flight altitude of 2,500 feet. We
fly in two diamond formations with each chopper just a bit higher than the
one in front of them; to keep out of the disturbed air of the rotor wash.
While it’s dark we fly along fairly loosely but as the light becomes better
we start to close in on each other. A half a rotor disk is what I am told is
the common distance for us to fly…..that is VERY tight spacing and you have
to have a ton of PT9 to
maintain that close spacing and not run into each other. These guys have been
flying for a year together and to a raw rookie like me it looked like we were
going to kill ourselves before Charlie got a chance to shoot at us. Note: 8
pilot
technique My
aircraft commander is talking about how these days are like a cakewalk
compared to Tet10 of
’68 when he was on his first tour. The guy is a real braggart but he is my
teacher and I hang on his every word. He doesn’t let me fly much on the way
up and he lets me know in NO UNCERTAIN terms that I am a worthless FNG, and
again, this is backed up by the door-gunners in the back. I am scared and
nervous as I have ever been and there is no encouragement whatsoever from
this mob. They’ve seen too much and do not care to have to train or rely on
some rookie pilot. Note: 9
Tet
Offensive I am
getting hit with so much new information, and weird names for things, and
lingo that I can’t possibly keep up with it all. Everything seems so
complicated, from the radio calls to the rules of formation flying, I feel
worthless, and hopeless. The
fire support base at Thien Ngon is right beside of highway 22 which runs up
from the south and winds its way up the few remaining kilometres, or
‘klicks’, from Thien Ngon into Cambodia. It’s called highway 22, but it is no
way a highway like we see in the States, it’s more of a two lane oil covered
dirt track. We reach Thien Ngon around I have
only carried troops once in flight school and they were Special Forces
Rangers who were graduating from their schooling, like us, and were out in the
field on manoeuvres. It was all a short practice for us both. This is the
real thing; these grunts have fully loaded packs and loaded weapons. They are
looking for the kill, this is no longer manoeuvres, Charlie is out there and
he has walked down the Ho Chi Minh Trail looking to take out as many of us as
he can. Many
thoughts go through your mind on your first foray into battle, thankfully as
the troops load up things are happening so quickly that I can’t dwell on the
overall picture but I do get in a quick prayer for my young wife and my
family….and myself. The
troops are loaded up and we take off in single file. As we gain altitude we
form up in two diamond formations with a gunship on each side of the two
formations of slicks. The command and control ship goes up above us and we
fly on northward. The
aircraft commander tells me, “Well new guy, you can write home tonight and
tell mommy you went into Note: 10
Command
and Control The
world for us has shrunken down to what is happening inside our chopper. The
door-gunners are pretty quiet in the rear as they line up their ammo cans and
work their M-60 machine guns up and down on their mounts. The aircraft
commander hands me the controls while he puts a chicken plate (armoured chest
protector) down in his chin bubble, adjusts the chicken plate he is wearing,
slides forward the armoured side plate on his seat, and slides his .38 pistol
over to cover his balls. He then takes back the controls and tells me to lock
the inertia reels on our safety harnesses. This locks us both upright so in
case one of us is killed or wounded, we won’t slump over on the controls. He
then laughs at my puny little chicken plate and says, “If you live long
enough you need to get a larger chicken plate to sit in your lap and another
one to put in your chin bubble, and you might want to slide that .38 around
to cover the family jewels.” I hear a grunt platoon leader bark a command
behind me to “lock and load” and the seven grunts chamber a round in their
M-16s. I hear
the radio call from C&C to one of the gun-ships to fly up ahead of us and
mark the LZ with a smoke grenade. We race on and I hear the lead pilot say he
sees a grape (purple smoke) in the LZ. I learn that a gunship will drop a
smoke grenade in the LZ and the lead pilot has to identify it back to the
gunship. Turns out in the beginning days of combat assault Charlie would hear
the pilots talking over the FM frequency and they would throw out the colour
of grenade that they heard the gunship pilot broadcast he had thrown. This
resulted in some flights flying right into Charlie’s LZ. The LZ
is a large one as this is rice paddy country and there are large open areas.
As we break into the open and see the smoke grenade billowing purple smoke
the door-gunners open up on both sides. The roar of their M-60s is
overwhelming, and deafening even with our ear plugs, and it seems like the
inside of the chopper gets very hot from their fire. Red tracer rounds fly
all over the LZ from our door-gunners and you can see puffs of dirt flying
and tree limbs falling on the perimeter of the LZ. We
land to the ground in a short sliding halt. Before the skids even hit the
ground the grunts are leaping off and running for cover. We are on the ground
only a few seconds and with a lurch we take off back to Note: 11
aircraft
commander As we
regain altitude I see a line of old men and women along with kids leaving the
‘ville’ waving white pieces of cloth. They are running for their lives away
from their homes. I don’t understand this at first and couldn’t stomach the
thought of my grandparents running for their lives away from their homes waving
pieces of white cloth. When I timidly ask the crew why the villagers are
running away I am answered that a sweep of their hootches13 will probably reveal something incriminating from
the North Vietnamese that pass through on their way south. What a life these
simple villagers must live. And the kid we ran down, whose side will he end
up on? I don’t ask the purpose of what we did to him. Note: 12
huts I am
allowed to fly back down to our pickup point and take us to the fuel bladders
to refuel. I do okay without much hollering from the A/C. I hover us back
over to the waiting grunts and they load up. As I go to pick the ship up to a
hover I am amazed at how heavy and slow it is to respond with all the weight
on it. I have so much to learn and some much PT to acquire in a very short
time. I take off with the flight and we turn north to It is
so much easier flying the ship instead of sitting there thinking about
things. Flying a chopper, especially in a formation with other choppers is an
all consuming job. You have to concentrate 100%. A concentration lapse of
even ½ of one percent could kill you and your crew. When you are flying the
ship in formation the other pilot is watching all the gauges to make sure
they are in the green and your job is to keep your rotor distance from the
chalk (we are numbered and called chalks, we were chalk 6 in this formation)
you are flying off of. You line up the near door-gunner’s ‘Christmas tree’14 with the far pilot’s
head. This gives you your angle of flight to the chalk you are flying off of,
and with your vision you have to see the dark line of the tips of your rotor
blades AND his rotor blades. This is how you find your rotor distance
separation. Sounds easy enough, until you add in air pockets, wind, and a
live cargo that moves around, plus the fact that the flying pilot also has to
make quick glances out front to check the spacing out front. Add in the fact
that flying a chopper requires both feet, and both hands doing something completely
unconnected to each other. Top it off that you also have to be thinking ahead
of any emergency procedure that may happen at any time, as well as listening
to the flight radio frequency and ship intercom. A literal handful. It was
all I could do at this point to keep my spacing, altitude, and concentration,
but it made my fear hide for awhile while I flew. Note: 13
a
post where his M-60 is typically mounted When
we got close and went back down on the deck to approach the LZ the A/C let me
fly so I could see what treetop flying was all about. It’s incredible how
much a Huey moves around as it flies. You can’t see it until you are so close
to stationary objects. Nothing you can do but learn to live with it. The
A/C lets me land and take off, and back we head to refuel and pick up another
load; so far so good. It will take two more sorties to get all of the grunts
to the LZ. On the
way back to refuel we get a message that the grunts have gotten into a
firefight and have dead and wounded, and a few prisoners. We refuel, load up
the grunts and race to get back to the LZ. At the LZ we unload the grunts and
then are vectored over to another LZ to pick up the wounded and dead. As we
get into the new LZ we take some fire and chalk 5 gets its engine shot out on
the ground as they are waiting to be loaded with wounded. Chalk 5’s crew runs
to our helicopter at the same time we are being loaded with 4 severely
wounded grunts. The commotion is unnerving. Two of the wounded are screaming
in pain and you can see lots of blood soaking through their hastily wrapped
bandages, at least on the ones that have bandages. One of the shot down
crewmen has wounds to his arm and face. There is no time for a medic to look
at him and we take off, taking sporadic fire as we try to get out of the LZ.
I can smell the blood in the back and I hear the screams of the two wounded
grunts. I turn around and look back and see the wounded chopper crewman being
bandaged by one of his crewmen. I also see my first look at gunshot wounds
and the carnage they do to the soft human body. I almost puke at both the
sights and the smells; this isn’t what you see in John Wayne movies about
war. We up
our speed to 100 knots to try and get the wounded back to an aid station in Upon
arrival back at Thien Ngon we hover over to a small hootch that serves as
their aid station. The choppers are unloaded and we have to get the last load
of grunts back up to join the rest of their unit. We refuel and run over to
pick up the last load. This time we are short one chopper so we must carry
one more soldier on each chopper. The crewmen from the shot down chopper are
all left at the aid station. Again
we unload the grunts in the original LZ and fly a very short distance to pick
up more wounded. As we get near the pickup LZ we encounter more fire and the
door-gunners and gun-ships help to suppress it this time. This time we sit on
the ground and 4 more wounded and two dead are loaded on. It is a horrible
mess back there, blood, gore, and broken bodies and dreams are back there. We
fly as quickly as we can back to the aid station. As we
hover over to the aid station personnel the rotor wash starts aerosolizing
the blood dripping out of the sides of the chopper and spraying it all over
us and the Plexiglas windscreen... We actually have to wipe down the pinkish
spray on the windscreen so we can see and we have droplets of blood all over
everything in the chopper, including us. Once
again we refuel and head back to Word
comes to us that Charlie has fought hard and run, melting back into the
sanctuaries that he came from. We only have a few more wounded and dead to
take back to
Photograph: Ron CURTIS Here
is a photo (above) of a sandal worn by a captured North Vietnamese officer
who stole a bicycle in Rawknee
- “Survivor” Published: 1st July 2006
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