[NOTE: I wrote this preface for my book "Army Aviation," published by Presidio Press about 1987 as part of the Power Series. The book has been out of print for many years but is often available on used book sites like ABE Books.

Preface to ARMY AVAITION

I joined the Army when I was eighteen and it was my privilege and (looking back on it) pleasure to be part of that institution at a critical point in its evolution. That was way back in 1962, and it was the beginning of the current era of aviation, Army style. I got to watch it change, from the inside, and participate to the extent that junior enlisted soldiers ever do: by greasing and guarding things, staying out of the way, doing as I was told, and watching the play unfold.

Back in early 1962, even in the Army, the fight in Viet Nam was barely a rumor; we knew something was happening across the Pacific, but we weren't sure what, and we weren't sure why. Our instructors in basic training and then at the Army Aviation Center mentioned the place from time to time, as an incentive to pay attention. But nobody really knew where the place was or just what kind of fighting Americans were doing there. It was obvious, however, that that was where the action was, and that's what I put down for my first choice when we filled out our "dream sheets" after completing helicopter maintenance school. And that's where I went, back in October of 1962, when you had to have a passport to go. We were the first replacements for the H-21 crews who had already fought there for nearly a year.

The place, back then, was deliciously exotic: new sights and smells and experiences, all seasoned with the ever present danger of Viet Cong (VC) mischief. There were fourteen thousand Americans when I arrived, not a lot more when I left. It was not really our show. This war, we discovered, had been going on for a long time before we arrived, and we were under no illusions about it concluding in the near future.

My assignment was to the 8th Transportation Helicopter Company several hundred miles north of Saigon in a small coastal city called Qui Nhon. Later it would become a big, bustling hub for American activity in the region, but at the time it was a sleepy little place, and there were few of us to disturb its peace. We climbed down from the USAF C-123 transport that brought us and were face to face with a dozen H-21s in fresh camouflage paint, a barbed wire compound, and a few low buildings of local design. That was the 8th Trans, and that was just about all the American war effort for a hundred miles in any direction.

At the first possible moment, several of us presented ourselves at the supply room and drew our flight gear: helmet, flak jacket, knife, survival radio-and a morphine syrette. All this plus the usual field equipment the Army loans its members: steel pot, web gear, poncho, and all the rest. We almost had to take the flight gear back when the first sergeant found out that none of us had actually been assigned to flight status, and could easily be told to do something else. But our enthusiasm must have counted for something, because we kept the gear and were assigned to helicopters in short order. We were officially gunners and assistant crew chiefs. None of us had ever fired a machine gun from the air, and we had had only one or two flights in any kind of helicopter.

The new gunners were piled into two H-21s and transported to a nearby ARVN (as the Army of Viet Nam was always referred to) rifle range to learn the basics of helicopter gunners, something not covered at the time at Fort Rucker's Army Aviation Center. The two aircraft few a racetrack pattern past the targets while we each got our turn to fire, then we landed to see if anybody had hit anything.

Our helicopter took off again for more of the same, and the other H-21 rolled over and thrashed itself to death. Although nobody was badly hurt, it was as much of a lesson as the machine gun instruction.

The 8th had been here for almost a year, and had seen a lot of action and had a fair number of losses, some to equipment failure, others to enemy action. By the time I arrived, the officers and enlisted soldiers had settled down to a routine; they knew the rules and the stakes of the game. They were combat veterans, tested by fire and blood, and the veterans taught and inspired the acolytes, as veterans always have. The 8th was a smooth-running combat operation, improvising like crazy, working hard, suffering with inadequate aircraft and supporting ARVN forces whose combat effectiveness was - well, shall we say - limited. But they had worked out the details of completing the mission they had been given, and they had done it under fire. They had been fighting and sometimes dying, unnoticed by the media and by the public. Now they were beginning to go home.

Although the American public didn't know what we were doing, the aviation community within the Army did. It was an exciting and innovative time for the Army, because aviation was being used in places and in ways never previously attempted, and important lessons were being learned and applied. In a primitive, tentative way, the Army was doing something of tremendous potential benefit. Of course most of us gunners thought little about it at the time; we were too busy and too young. It was simply exciting to be doing something real, far from the routines of safety and convention on the other side of the ocean. But I now know that our leaders were struggling with technical and tactical problems and inventing solutions that we aircrews carried out.

Over the next ten months I flew one hundred and twenty-seven combat missions all over the central part of Viet Nam, a fairly typical score for the time, but far fewer than the hundreds of sorties people would log later. Most were in H-21s, but two were with VNAF T-28s, the converted trainers used for close air support at the time. We carried rice and pigs and smelly nuc mam fish sauce into remote camps and to ARVN units in the field; we collected dead and wounded from landing zones (LZs) so small the rotor wash pushed the trees aside, allowing us to land. We carried frightened and bewildered refugees and sullen prisoners. Once we even carried a reporter.

But the best and the worst missions were the combat assaults against known VC positions, guaranteed to give an adrenaline rush that could last all day. The sheer pageantry of a major assault, with its parade of helicopters charging into genuine peril across the treetops at top speed, escorted by quick and agile fighters from the Vietnamese Air Force, was theater of the highest sort. Below us the landscape flashed. We cranked up our sensitivity as high as it would go - standing still, going fast, waiting for the moment when danger was revealed and the microsecond response was possible. It was an extremely intuitive problem, with absolutely no chance for contemplation or reasoned thought. There was no time to aim the machine gun; you had to play it as a natural extension of yourself, the way people play the piano after years of practice. Trees, paddies, empty fields rushed by in the sights of my machine gun. I will never forget the feel of the curvature of the trigger of that gun, the pulsing rhythm of the weapon when I turned it loose, the brilliant red of its tracers, and the way vegetation trembled under its blast. I also remember a small man in black running for a trench line; I fired at him until the gun hit the stops, a long, steady, careful, angry burst. The tracers danced out to him, and dust flew up around him, but he kept running, untouched. That's the way it was for many of us on both sides; we came back with a bullet hole in the engine compartment that day, but no damage other than to the sheet metal. Lots of other crews were not so blessed.

It was a kind of Terry and the Pirates era, and that made me an apprentice pirate, junior grade. It was great fun for a while; then it got scary in a pattern I later discovered was common. I saw too many dead helicopters, heard too many bullets crack past my door, lost too many of the guys I went to school with to stay comfortable and complacent. Part of the problem was the H-21, a gutless beast.

On my first combat mission, my helicopter, loaded with ARVN troopers, didn't have enough power to clear the trees at the edge of the LZ, and our aft rotor blades had holes punched in them by the tree limbs. We staggered out of the LZ, vibrated to a secure spot, put tape over the holes, and then wobbled home. Mechanical problems caused us tremendous losses, far more than enemy action. During my tour I rode down one total engine failure and was aboard for many partial failures that demanded emergency landings. The H-21 was an accident looking for a place to happen.

It was with some surprise that I went home in one chunk, in 1963, to a country that still wasn't sure where Viet Nam was, much less that Americans were fighting there. We had been, I was told, "advisers," and our combat experience during that early period is still generally unknown.

My next assignment was to a school on the new CH-47A Chinook helicopter, and then to the experimental 11th Air Assault Division (AAD) at Fort Benning , Georgia . The early experiments with air mobility in Viet Nam were expanded to a huge test using the 11th AAD, and it was again my fortune to be a part of a pivotal action at a crucial time. My commander, Maj. Howard Porter, encouraged me to either go to Officer Candidate School or get out of the Army and into college. I got out in 1965, just as the 11th was converted to the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) and deployed to An Khe near my old base at Qui Nhon. My company, I later learned, had suffered great losses in the battles that followed, and many of my friends were killed or wounded. They've always been in my thoughts, and never more than now, as I describe our military heirs and disciples.

As I write this it occurs to me that it is twenty- five years to the day that we flew an assault into the mountains west of Tuy Hoa. into a beehive. Chief Warrant Officer Holloway took a bullet through the head; the young officer in the left seat, who was on his first mission, had to fly back without the help of the instructor pilot (IP) who was teaching him the ropes. The helicopter was full of holes; gas poured from many hits on the fuel tank-this was just before the era of self- healing tanks, and the crew chief used his gloves to plug some of the holes. Still, fuel streamed out onto the floor and ran out into the slipstream. spraying past the hot exhaust. The new pilot managed to get the aircraft back to Tuy Hoa and back on the ground, although Holloway was already dead. His blood covered the floor and had coated the underside of the helicopter like bright red paint. It was three days before Christmas.

I drop by The Wall when I'm in Washington and say "hi" to Holloway. His name is with those of the guys who died early. He wasn't the first, and he wasn't the last. and a lot of my friends joined him in the years to come. While I'm sad that they died, I'm glad that there were - and still are - people willing to risk their lives in the service of our national institutions and traditions. I don't think their deaths were in vain. They didn't attempt to be noble. but what they were sent to do was noble just the same.

Modern Army aviation is based to a large extent on the lessons we learned back then, during those first years in Viet Nam and in the 1964 trials of the 11th AAD. After recent visits to Forts Rucker, Benning, Hood, and Ord, I must say that many things have not changed in fundamental ways in all these years. Even my old Chinook is still alive and well, soldiering faithfully wherever the Army goes, although the new and improved D model no longer leaks hydraulic fluid the way my old A model did. But there are some changes, both in technology and in mission, that make Army aviation a significant player in the great game of war. The attack helicopter, represented in 1963 by a Huey carrying machine guns and rockets, has come a long way in the form of the Apache. The Army now uses aviation in a very bold way, and it is a real pleasure to see how capable the new systems and people are.

It's an honor to tell the story of Army aviation today, and a delight to see how much and how little have changed over the twenty-five years since we tested the new wings of combat operations.

There is still a spirit of commitment to mission, a kind of bright-eyed professionalism and dedication that I remember vividly - a quality I think is unique to Army aviation. And it is also wonderful to see how much improved the aircraft are. with power. armor, and technological additions none of us imagined.

The institution of the U.S. Army is loaded with traditions, one of which is that old soldiers always say that the old Army was the good Army, that things were tougher, better, more virtuous "way back when." You won't hear that from me. The people in Army aviation today are more intelligent and professional than ever, the missions are more realistic, training is far more intense and appropriate, and the systems available to fight with are far more capable and reliable than before. I've seen both. As an old soldier I am glad to say, these are the good old days.