My story is probably pretty typical of what VMO pilots experienced in Vietnam in the mid to late 1960's. I was lucky in that I was assigned to VMO-3, a squadron I had never heard about, but which would change me as a person for the rest of my days. I was to learn about and become a part of the SCARFACE legacy.  I never did get shot down or even wounded, although at times it seemed that either one of those things was imminent.  Coming back to Channel 69 (the Phu Bai TACAN was channel 69) with 7.62 and 12.7 mm holes in the bird was fairly common. I completed  my tour well, if I may say, and came back to the States to become an instructor at Pensacola, and eventually a career civilian pilot.

Now, more than 30 years later, I still think about those absolutely INTENSE, agonizing times that I and my squadron mates had together as gunship crewmembers in VMO-3. I personally got 550 mission credits (about average, for a full tour), and a DFC (not at all uncommon). Coming back to The World two days before Christmas 1968, I was glad to be reunited with my wife and baby son, of course; but even then I knew that I wouldn't trade the RVN experience for ANYTHING. Here's how it went.

About one week before Christmas, 1967, I arrived at Da Nang as an individual replacement VMO pilot. I was a new Marine captain at that time, just out of flight school and a few months at VMO-1, MAG 26, New River. (Thanks to old VMO-6 salts Mike Bartley and John Boden, and others at VMO-1 for prepping me and other New River nuggets for what was to come.)   After checking in at wing HQ, a quick flight in a GV got me up to Phu Bai, where there was a horizontal, near-freezing rain drenching me as I went through the usual check-in at group and squadron.  I was soon slogging around in deep mud, carrying my sea bag and other stuff, trying to find the hooch that the guy in the VMO‑3 admin office told me to go to.

The so called roads between the hooches were just long mud bogs. Walking in that mud with a load of personal gear was like those dreams where you try to run but it feels like you're stuck on fly paper. I noticed that I was one of the very few people out in the weather without high rubber boots. Made a note of that...

When I got to the hooch, I was welcomed by a few pilots who were hanging around in the sack, fully dressed under their electric blankets. Of course, I was the only guy without an electric blanket. (I started a shopping list right then.) It wasn't much of a start, but things brightened up after that, as I started to see a few familiar faces, and to make new friends. Scott Avery, a friend from stateside, had arrived just a few days prior to me.

When I checked in, LTCOL. Glenn Hunter was the skipper, and MAJ. Weldon Munter was the XO. Good guys, both. I flew my first missions with CAPT. Dick Green, who was an assistant OPS officer. I remember taking my first fire with Dick... looking at a tree line close to a position we were rocketing, I saw what looked like dozens of flashbulbs going off. I told Dick, and the next run was on the tree line. He didn't seem to think that it was very exciting, just business as usual.  We took no hits that day, but I was a changed man when we returned.  I'd been shot at, and survived the experience!

Others who broke me in were the CO and XO, CAPT. Bob Perry, CAPT. John Ketchum (Ketch), CAPT. Tom McDonald (Mac), MAJ Joe Sales, MAJ John Diebert, 1LT Dick Ceresko, CAPT. Jerry Koons, CAPT. Tim Bigelow, CAPT. Paul Rollins (Rollo), and CAPT. Wade White. Oh, and last but not least, the incredible fire-breathing, acey-deucey champ, foul-mouthed, incomparable second-tour thousand-mission pilot, MAJ Pete Heiman, who was the very soul of the SCARFACE spirit. I was among the lucky left-seaters who got to watch Pete doing the TAC-A (tactical air controller-airborne) thing with four Huey gunships, a pair of forty-sixes or thirty-fours, two or three flights of VMA or VMFA, a pair of Sandies, a couple of Jolly Greens, and a downed aircrew, not to mention the bad guys on the ground.  He didn't just take control of the situation - he took control of the WORLD until the mission was over. None who heard him on the radios would ever doubt that he could stop the planet's rotation on its axis with just a choice word or two. He was a field Marine's Marine, and a combat pilot's pilot. He was our secret weapon.  The bad guys must have cheered when his second tour was over. If that man EVER walks into a bar where you're drinking, DO NOT let him pay for a drink! (You can even send me the tab.)

Before long, we were all wrapped up in the Tet Offensive, with plenty to do right up the road at Hue. The weather was usually pretty low those days, so some days we couldn't fly at all.  That meant lots of sack time, fully clothed, reading and writing letters under the electric blanket. Other activities on no-fly days included minor squadron duties (I was flight equipment officer, with PFC Gary Porter and SGT Ray Ensley actually doing the work.)  And, of course, over at the squadron operations hooch, there was always a marathon acey-deucey challenge match going on amongst the off duty pilots.   Approaching the ops hooch,  you could usually hear Heiman's voice rising above all the others as he threw himself into the game as if he were strafing the enemy. 

Winter '68 became spring '68, as I and the other new guys became seasoned co-pilots, learning all about the chores of navigating low level around the I Corps area in the UH-1E.  We got to make some gun runs from the left seat, and picked up pretty well on the intricacies of radio communications...no small thing.  At any given time, the lead gun might have had the responsibility of keeping up good running communications with his wingman,  MAG-36 ops, DaNang DASC (direct air control center), one or two ALO's (air liaison officer, the "14") of maneuvering ground units, the artillery unit whose space we were flying through, plus a flight of transport helicopters we were escorting and a flight or two of tactical air (A-4's, Phantoms, A-6's, etc.) we would be controlling when we got to the trouble spot. And trouble spots were our main order of business. Everybody wanted gunships on station everywhere, it seemed.  We were enormously popular wherever we went, and we probably got big heads about it. Who wouldn't?

We worked missions from An Hoa in the south up to the DMZ in the north, and from the coast to about 30 miles or so into Laos. Lots of SOG missions, Marine recon team inserts and extracts, convoy escort, medevac escort, and just general quick reaction to the grunts when they got into a serious bind. We usually kept a section of guns up at Khe Sanh, which was in the lull after the big battles at Hill 861 and Hill 881, and before the siege. We still had some hot fights around there, but they were isolated. There was a fair amount of standby time for the crews there, between shoot'em-ups.  Everybody knew that the tactical situation there was a time bomb: we were very close to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, to Laos, and to North Viet Nam.  The enemy seemed to be everywhere, just not interested in a big fight YET.

So we learned fast and hard about life in a Marine gunship squadron, but we didn’t learn much of anything about the war.  The Marines went ashore at Da Nang in 1965, during my senior year in college.  I was a completed PLC-air candidate then, and had an interest in the RVN situation.  I tried to keep up with it during Basic School at Quantico (I opted for that prior to checking in at Pensacola), and also during flight training in 66-67.  But I just could not get a clear picture of what we were doing over there.  I thought that I would finally get that figured out by being in the middle of it all.  Well, it just didn’t work that way.  All we knew about was whatever was on our plates for any particular day.  And that was plenty to chew on.  Who can figure out the mysteries of Asian politics while trying to stay alert, alive, and effective in the middle of a Tet Offensive?  We got pretty good at knowing all the necessary details, but as for the big picture - forget it!

And some more stuff that didn’t happen: I never saw a USO show, nor did I ever see a single one of those pretty American nurses that Hollywood has since taught me were everywhere in RVN in '68.  Phu Bai was the center of our universe, but it didn’t count for much as far as the rest of MACV was concerned. 

Sometime during the early spring, I made right seat, as a wingman. That didn't last long at all, as the "second increment" guys who broke me and Scott in all started to leave. We were needed as  section leaders.  We were becoming the "old salts", and would be put to the test with huge new responsibilities. Scott and I had become TAC-A qualified and were now leading sections (two ships) and flights (two or more sections).

A new crop of copilots showed up to replace Heiman, Green, Bigelow and the rest. We broke them in as best as we could, doing things the way Pete and the others had showed us. Some were good; others were damned good.  I remember helping to break in Bob Mabey, Ted Robinson, Fred Gatz, and Boo Miller, some of the best of the FNG's that came along in the summer of ‘68. 

Andy Wells and Cpl. Lockwood after destroying the Phu Bai international bridge.

We had some great enlisted crew too... I wish I could remember their names better.  Harry Lynch and CPL Lockwood were among the best. 

Harry Lynch

And I could never forget Gary Porter, my flight equipment shop guy who became a gung ho door gunner. He was an irrepressible cut-up. He and others volunteered for crew duty, partly to just get away from the crap they went through as EM's stuck in the base routine. Sgt Clark had one of the more interesting enlisted  jobs: he was the squadron S-2 NCO.  All crews debriefed each mission with him, giving him all the details as to what we saw and where we took fire.  He would turn in the info to group, where it would be consolidated and passed along.  He was the keeper of the map with all the red symbols on it (enemy concentrations) that we all consulted before each mission.  Seemed like we were always flying right to the red ink.  That's what we were there for.

Running the maintenance side was MAJ Fred (?) Gash, along with Warrant Officer K.D. Box. They did a fine job, and were helped by John Driver, a civilian tech. rep. from Bell Helicopter in Ft. Worth. On off days, 1LT Joe Burney and I flew a lot of post-maintenance test flights for them. Those test flights gave me a chance to REALLY learn how to fly the Huey to the absolute max.  After completing the required tests, I always took a little time to just explore the flight envelope of the Huey, doing auto-rotations and hot approaches, etc.   That bootleg practice gave me the extra edge that saved my butt in combat several times. And again back at Pensacola, two years later, when an engine blew out on climb-out over the woods near Ellison Field.

The squadron was generally well-run, and morale among the pilots was high. We eventually were able to move out of our little screen and plywood hooches into big, air-conditioned metal Quonsets with concrete floors! That was too sweet! At about that time, we started eating on our own side of the runway, too. No more having to stand at the middle of the runway in a group, waiting for the tower to give us a green light to cross over to the Army side.

I do remember a small exception to the good morale that I mentioned: sometime around late summer '68, the word came down from group that the SCARFACE call sign was being deactivated, and that our new call was REENLIST! Can you believe our reaction when we heard that the BEST call sign was to be replaced with the WORST? Well, you know how the captains (and maybe a few lieutenants) actually run a squadron, so we just decided to ignore the directive from group, and kept right on with our old call sign. And what do you know - IT WORKED! There was a little grumbling from the heavies for a short time, but it didn't last. The call sign SCARFACE did. And that meant a lot to the grunts, who (as they repeatedly told us) were always hoping that the gunships would check in with that particular call sign.  We were definitely their favorites, which came from a long tradition of seriously in-your-face, aggressive flying from Scarface crews.  We would not consider leaving the ground troops on their own in a bad situation unless darkness or the weather made it impossible to help any more.  That was the Scarface legacy, and the call sign was our calling card.  When the grunts heard that Scarface was on scene, they flat out knew that they were going to get some "balls-to-the-wall" help no matter what we had to do to give it.  We could even drop out of our gunship role and do medevac, resupply, or take the local CO for a short recon hop. 

I remember copiloting one day with Jerry Koons on a medevac escort mission to a hot area about 20 minutes south of Channel 69.  We got the H-34 in and out OK by strafing and door-gunning the enemy during the pickup, but as we started for home, the team on the ground said that they were getting into even deeper trouble and had just taken a new casualty, a very serious bleeder at that.  The H-34 said he couldn't help; that left it up to us.  Jerry did another run or two on the bad guys, expending the rest of the rockets and a good bit of the fixed gun ammo.  That lightened us up a bit, and in we went, with no high bird to cover us.   To this day, I can vividly recall us sitting in the gunship in the middle of the LZ, with the grunts right around us pressed hard into every little depression in the ground.  Bullets were whacking into the Huey, and a grenade or mortar round went off not very far in front of us. Talk about EXPOSED! But nobody was giving us the WIA we were there to get!  It took some brisk words on the FM to get them to carry him to us, but they got up and did it.  As we started to take off, the hydraulic system took a hit and crapped out, so the flight back home was a no hydraulics affair.  That would have seemed more of a problem, had it not been for the blood that was flying around the back of the helicopter from our new passenger.  Some of it actually came up front and got on the map I had on my lap.  HE was the one with the real problem, not us.  We took him straight to the field hospital at Phu Bai, then repositioned over to the VMO-3 ramp. The bird had numerous holes in it, including around the engine cowling. Once back at the operations shack, I shook my flight suit and little bits of Plexiglas showered out in all directions.  But not a scratch on me.

You never knew when you launched off on your assigned mission just where you would actually get to. The group and the wing OPS guys would call you up in flight any time and give you an entirely new mission 50 or more miles away. I remember working the Hai Van Pass area, and getting an emergency divert to the Rock Pile!  Sometimes we'd be diverted from our diversions.  Everybody in trouble wanted gunships (and their fast-moving friends) as the best solution to an unexpectedly nasty development. 

Crew rest was an unmentioned concept: if it happened, fine, but you couldn't count on it. It seemed that there were never enough gunships around to save everybody that needed saving, so it was our job to dash from one "shit sandwich" to another. We felt very important, and usually very tired.

Most of the time, we successfully turned the tide when we showed up, often with the help of a section of A-4's (the best) or F-4's (not that bad). I also remember controlling a pair of F-100's once, and a pair of F-8's another time.  Skyraiders were not uncommon, and generally did a fine job.  Great loiter time, too.  But for my money, the A-4's were simply the best.  Great combination of quick reaction time, reasonable loiter, and astounding accuracy. But for all our best intentions (and those of our fixed-wing support buddies), sometimes we just couldn't get there in time to do enough. We'd have to leave the scene feeling heartsick and helpless, knowing that our grunt friends, usually recon teams, had eaten the big one. Whole teams would sometimes disappear, never to be seen again. (God bless you, Fudgecake, one and all.)

We all got shot up regularly, but I don't remember anybody getting shot DOWN until right after I left. That was MAJ Fred Gatz, who lost a tail rotor in a fight and drove it on successfully (so I heard). After the war, Fred came back to the squadron (then HML-367) as the skipper.

There were two crashes while I was there that were definitely due to pilot error, neither one in a firefight. One of them sent General Chips (who had just gotten in country) back home with a trashed back. The other was on a post-maintenance test hop - a needless trashing of a Huey.

The most dreaded missions were the SOG missions. It was an Army recon team show, three or four Army super grunts and a few more Nungs. We were inserting these teams near the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos, so they could observe the enemy supply activities, call in air and artillery strikes, take an occasional prisoner, and even spread bogus ammunition around, stuff that would kill the Charlie or NVA who tried to use it. These were very ballsy guys to go that deep into hostile country for a 4 or 5 day hike.