Hamfist Over the Trail (13 page)

In fact, I had attended Dick's wedding, held at the Academy Chapel the afternoon of Graduation Day. Cadets weren't allowed to be married, and it was a sort of tradition that many of the guys who were engaged would get married immediately after graduation. In fact, the Academy Chapel was pretty much booked up for the entire day well before Graduation. I was one of the graduates who had held a saber to form a “saber tunnel” for Dick and his bride, Sally, to walk through.

“Check this out,” Dick said excitedly, “I'm a dad!” He showed me a photograph of Sally holding a beautiful baby girl.

“She's gorgeous,” I said, and I meant it. Some babies look like shriveled old men. This little girl looked like she could be in a Gerber's commercial.

“She was born two days after I arrived at NKP. I haven't even held her yet. I'm going to see her for the first time when we meet up in Honolulu for R&R.”

We sat around the bar in the club for a few hours, catching up. It turned out Vince, Dick and Dave were all in the same squadron, the SAR squadron at NKP. Since the Jolly Greens flew so slow and had very little armament, they needed air support.

That's where the Spads came in. The A-1 Skyraider, better known as the Spad, was an antique airplane that had been the workhorse of the Korean War. It was a propeller-driven, heavily-armed attack airplane that carried a great bomb load and had lots of loiter time. Perfect for escorting the Jolly Green.

Vince, Dave and Dick had already worked several high-profile SARs together, and were well on their way to being highly decorated, just like we all used to fantasize about when we were cadets.

We went to dinner together at a small Thai restaurant off base, and then I asked for directions to the nearest, and best, massage parlor.

“I'll go there with you,” Vince said. “Gotta make sure you get back to base in one piece.”

Major Walters had been right. After the stress of the day, a rub-and-scrub was exactly what I needed.

29

March 2, 1969

I caught a flight on a C-130 back to DaNang, and went in to see Major Walters.

“Are you feeling okay to fly again?” he asked.

“Of course. I made a stupid mistake and turned my back on Delta 43. I won't do that again. I'm sorry I lost an airplane.”

“It's not really a loss. I asked one of the FACs from the Nail squadron at NKP to take a mechanic with him to Lima 44 and look at the bird, and it's really minor damage. The control cables in the left boom need to be replaced, and a fuel line to the rear engine was severed. It'll be good as new in a week, and we'll have a Nail pick the airplane up and bring it over here. As for you, I'd like you to get right back on the horse that threw you. If you're up to it, I have you on the 0300 departure tonight.”

“Sounds good to me, sir.”

I went back to my hooch and took a nap, and woke up in time to have a nice meal at the Doom Club before my flight.

My FAN was Pops Carter. Pops was a very senior Major, and was going to retire after this assignment. He had flown as a Navigator on B-25s during World War II, and had a ton of experience. He was the perfect FAN for my first flight after pretty much getting shot down. At first I felt a bit awkward being in command and directing the activities of someone a lot senior to me. But the Air Force regulations clearly stated that the pilot in command is in charge, and I was the pilot in command. And, I'll admit, I got used to it pretty quickly.

We had a fairly routine mission. The only real excitement that we had was when we went to drop a parachute flare.

For some reason, probably corrosion, the arming wire didn't fully pull out of the flare when we released it. After it left the pylon, it hung there in the slipstream, dangling by the arming wire.

Then, as we watched, the arming wire pulled out a little bit, and the flare started sparking. The arming wire had pulled out enough to arm the flare, but it hadn't pulled out enough for the flare to drop. In another thirty seconds, we would have a flare, burning at who knows how many thousand degrees, hanging right under our wing, which was still full of fuel. We were in deep shit.

Instinctively, I tried rocking the wings left then right. No luck. Then it occurred to me that all I needed to do was generate some G-loading on the airplane, to make the flare heavy enough to pull out of the arming wire. I dove the airplane for a few seconds to pick up speed, then pulled up sharply, generating three or four G's. The flare dropped away just a few seconds before igniting.

We conducted night VR along the trail, and really didn't come up with any targets worth attacking. I stayed well away from Delta 43.

While we were in the AO, we could hear a SAR being conducted on GUARD frequency. It was Jolly 22, and it sounded like he was getting heavy enemy reaction.

All I could think was, shit, Vince, get the hell out of there! What the hell were you doing conducting a SAR at night, anyway?

And then all hell broke loose on GUARD. Spad 1 and 2, Jolly 22's escorts, were getting the shit shot out of them. And then I heard them both go down, within two minutes of each other. And then GUARD went silent.

30

March 3, 1969

Vince had told me that he worked exclusively with Dick and Dave. That meant it was Dick and Dave who had gotten shot down last night.

I couldn't believe it. I'd just been drinking with them the night before. Dick had shown me a photo of his family. It wasn't fair. Damn it, it wasn't fair.

After I landed, I went to the Doom Club to get a drink. I really needed somebody to talk to. The past couple of days had been really intense, and now I didn't even have Fish to talk to, because he was on R&R.

I hung around the bar for a while, nursing a scotch and water. I didn't recognize a soul. No shit – anybody with any intelligence isn't drinking at eight o'clock in the morning. And then, in walked Cliff Bowers.

Cliff and I had been on the Academy Gymnastics Team together, and I thought he had gone to grad school after the Academy. But, here he was, in a flight suit.

“Hey, Cliff,” I called, “Get your ass over here.”

He was as glad to see me as I was to see him. It turned out, he had shown up at the University of Illinois and, as soon as he got there, the Air Force changed his orders and sent him to pilot training.

“Needs of the service,” he said.

“I've heard that. So, what're you flying?”

“I'm flying O-2s out of Hue. I brought a bird in for phase check today, and I fly it back tomorrow on a milk run mission. How about you?”

“Me too. I'm flying O-2s over the trail. I got shot down two days ago.” Even though I wasn't
really
shot down, it sounded more impressive. Or maybe more stupid.

We spent the rest of the day catching up and swapping war stories.

Then I told him about what I heard on GUARD frequency the night before. I was pretty sure it was Dick and Dave. It bothered the hell out of me.

“We've had a bunch of guys get shot down from my unit in Hue. Good guys,” he said. “I'll tell you how I handle it. I just pretend they DEROSed. You know, one-twelfth of our unit DEROSes every month, and we just don't see them anymore. So when a friend gets shot down, I pretend to myself that he simply DEROSed. It works. Sort of works.”

“Maybe I'll give that a try.”

Cliff hadn't checked in at the VOQ yet, and I told him about having an extra bed in my hooch. I was sure Fish wouldn't mind. Cliff camped out in my room that night and we stayed up well past midnight shooting the shit.

The next morning, we went to the Doom Club for breakfast, and then he left to fly his bird back to Hue. It was really great spending time with him, and I told him I would try to get a mission, maybe a local Instrument ride, up to Hue real soon.

Before noon, Cliff was dead.

31

March 3, 1969

Cliff and another classmate from the Academy, Jim Fellows, were both shot down within an hour of each other, both flying O-2s. Their bodies were recovered within hours. Jim wasn't a Covey, but he was a Bully FAC, in our sister squadron. We had hung around with each other quite a bit, after I bumped into him at the BX early in my tour.

It was starting to dawn on me that all of my classmates who ended up getting killed had one thing in common: they had all recently come into contact with me. It became clear to me that I was some kind of Typhoid Mary. Not getting killed myself, but causing those I came into contact with to die.

This had to stop. There was only one to do that. I had to become a hermit. I'd be damned if I'd be the cause of any more of my friends dying. I resolved, then and there, to keep to myself and not get close to anyone from my past.

And I would use Cliff's method of dealing with deaths of my friends. I would carry out this mental charade, and pretend that the guy didn't die, he simply DEROSed back to the world.

I kept my fingers crossed every time one of my friends flew a mission, especially a final, “champagne”, flight.

Speedbrake was scheduled to have his champagne flight, and I was worried. We were all gathered on the ramp, waiting for his arrival, with a bottle of champagne and a fire truck waiting to hose him down after he deplaned. And it was well past his arrival time. I felt sick, a physical pain in the pit of my stomach.

Finally, at least twenty minutes late, he landed, taxied in to the parking area, and got hosed down. After the hose-down, we all went to the bar, and Speedbrake bought drinks for the house.

I was going to miss Speedbrake, but I was sure glad to see him go home in one piece.

One of the guys from our squadron had finished his one-year tour of duty well before I arrived, but he was still in our hooch. I had never run into him until today. I bumped into him in the hallway after returning from the bar.

“Hi,” he said, as he offered his hand. “I'm Buzz Watson.”

“I'm Hamfist Hancock,” I returned his handshake.

He smiled. “Hamfist. Interesting.”

“I finished my Covey tour a few months ago,” Buzz commented, “and now I'm assigned to a special unit here at DaNang. I leave in a few days for a Forward Operating Location in Laos.”

“What are you going to be doing in Laos?” I asked in amazement.

“I was selected for the Steve Canyon Program.”

“What's that?” I asked. I'd heard the term before, but no one had really talked about it.

“Well,” he answered, “I'll be based out of Vientiane, but doing most of my flying out of FOLs. Doing pretty much what I did as a Covey, but I'll be flying O-1s and T-28s, and I'll have a Laotian observer with me most of the time. I'll be flying in civvies, using the call-sign Raven. And, get this, I'll be getting TDY non-availability every day. Twenty-five bucks a day. Really good deal.”

“Sounds pretty cool, but it could get dangerous,” I commented.

He reached into the pocket on the left arm of his flight suit and withdrew a pack of Camels. He took a long, hard look at me, lit a cigarette and took a deep drag. “You know, danger is all relative. I don't know if you knew Moss Mossberg.”

I shook my head.

“He was a good guy,” he continued, “but you wouldn't want to fly with him. A real magnet-ass. Got the shit shot out of himself every mission. Always came back with lots of holes in his airplane. But he never went down, came back every flight. We had a hell of a going-away party for him. He was headed back to the world to get married to his college sweetheart. About a week after he got back, he was walking across the street in L.A., to see a goddam wedding planner, and got wiped out by some asshole drunk driver.”

“Can you picture that?” he asked, “Crossing fucking Melrose Avenue and getting killed, after making it through twelve months over Steel Tiger. So tell me, Hamfist, what's more dangerous – Steel Tiger or Melrose Avenue? I'll bet you a month's pay more people get killed every year on Melrose Avenue than over Steel Tiger. So, what I'm saying is, when your number's up, your number's up. If I'm going to die, I'd just as soon have it happen when I'm doing something I love, something that begins with the letter F. And I'm not really into fishing. In the Raven program I'm going to get six more months of great, balls-to-the wall flying. And I'm going to make extra money to boot.”

He had a point. For us Lieutenants, getting more flying was almost as good as getting more pay. And this guy, Buzz, was going to be getting $25 a day of non-availability pay.

“By the way,” he remarked, as he entered his room, “the best whorehouse in all of Southeast Asia is in Vientiane.”

32

March 5, 1969

Fish came back from R&R and looked really good. He didn't have that thousand-yard stare any more, the look that distinguished guys who had been there too long.

“How was R&R?” I asked.

“Fucking awesome. I went to Sydney, and the girls were incredible. It was so great to see some good-looking round-eyes who know how to speak English, even though they talk a little funny. And the food was great. You really need to go to Australia.”

“By the way,” he continued, “I was so tired when I got there, I passed out when I was walking down the sidewalk my first night. I woke up in a hospital bed, and there was an Aussie doctor taking my vital signs. I said to him, 'Hey, doc. Was I brought here to die?' And he says to me,” at that point Fish was laughing so hard it was difficult to understand him, “No, mite, you was brought here yestadie'. Get it?” He laughed some more.