See end of article for Editor's notes on the unit history for A Troop, 1/9 Cav, 1st Cav Div.

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Recollections of a Novice Pilot in Nam...

by William H. Dunavant, MAJ (R)

I arrived in Nam on 1-12-68, fresh out of flight school, to begin my second tour. I had been down south at Bien Hoa with the 33rd Transportation, and H21 Company, from 8-62 to 8-63. I was attached to the unit for avionics support, but also flew as a door gunner and stand in crew chief.

After waiting all afternoon in the REPO  DEPOT, I was picked up at 2100 hours by a SP4 and driven to the 1/9 Cavalry area at Khe Sahn. While drowning my sorrows at the “O” Club we were scrambled to the perimeter, since the Green Line had been breached for the first time. There I stood in the darkness 'till 0300 with a bayonet for my sole armament, hoping some SOB would come my way. By then I wanted blood. Luckily for me no one appeared.

The next morning at first light I was awakened by the sexiest voice I had ever heard. The guy in the next cubical had received a tape from the lady he was engaged to. She proceeded to tell him, in graphic detail, what she was going to do for him, how long she was going to do it, and how often. I knew then it was going to be a long, long year.

A few days later a bird picked me up and took me out to the Bong Son Plains. I was now a member of “A” Troop 1/9 Cavalry. I met my commander, Major Stone, and was sent to the lift platoon. The first mission I flew was with Captain Beebe, a large man from Texas. We were to make a LRRP extraction. Problem was they were in contact and we had no guns or scouts available. Also, there was no place to land on the hill top where they were surrounded. Beebe spotted a tree stump about fifteen foot high. He hovered over to it, set the left skid on it and seemed to go to sleep, while the five men climbed up the stump and into the aircraft. While this hour or so passed, it seemed, the men were on board and we departed with numerous bullet holes in the aircraft. My introduction to Nam had started.

I flew two weeks with lift and then went to guns. After a few days of boring holes, we had a scramble mission, a Scout bird had been shot down from ground fire. I was flying left seat with Apache Red(1), Captain Branstruder, we became part of a three ship daisy chain; suppressing while lift got the crew out. I was firing the Minnie gun on the break until I expended. The crew chief gave me his M16 and I would burp a clip on the break till the rockets were expended and we returned to base. Of course the skid had to be changed cause I had shot if full of holes, FNG..

I don’t remember if we hit anything that day, mostly I just remember the song “Keep on Choogling” by John Fogerty of Credence Clearwater Revival. Branstruder had it recorded on a continuous loop and it was playing on the intercom. Set the rhythm for the fight I suppose. Branstruder was a country talking individual who could easily be overlooked, but he worked hard at keeping his people trained and up for the fight. I wish I could have stayed in guns longer. I could have learned a lot from him.

Captain Branstruder ended every briefing with, “Lets go out there and kill some of those SUCKERS. Crude but effective

After two weeks in guns Major Stone, brave soul, had me fly with him. After two weeks of scare time he sent me to scare the Scouts.

Problem was the Scouts were at Dong Ha trying to slow the flood of NVA moving south across the Z. They thought two birds could handle the job, but they all went anyway.

I was left behind on the Bong Son to remove the equipment left behind by the troops. Eventually two lift birds showed up and picked up us stragglers and took us to Dong Ha. “A” troop must have been killing more than their share at that time, because the third morning they hit us with artillery at daybreak. Luckily we had a few birds in the air, because everyone on the ground was hit. Scouts lost five men in their cots.

Again I was the rear guard and made sure everything was gathered up and loaded on the lone lift bird as it shuttled between our new home at LZ Sharron, across the river from Quang Tri and Dong Ha. Just before dark, the lift bird picked me and the two EM’s (who had stayed behind with me) and took us to join the troops at Sharron. We were there for the next seven months.

Shortly before I arrived the Scout Platoon leader, Captain Price, they called him “Peaches” because he was so sweet, had been wounded by ground fire and went stateside. That left only five pilots in the platoon. CW2 Kenney Vigneaux was the acting platoon leader. He was a skilled aviator and a thoughtful leader who was well respected by his men.

CW2 Bill Murphy, an ex shake eater, seemed to be the next officer the others looked up to.

CW2 John Jewel, from Nashville, CW2 Mike Bond, and CW2 Jerry Cogdill were the rest. Cogdill was probably the best pilot of the bunch. He liked to fly under bridges and water ski in the H-13. He spotted a North Vietnamese flag north of the DMZ while we were in Dong Ha. It was hung on a twenty foot bamboo pole in the middle of a village. He rammed the pole at eighty knots and came back with about three feet of the pole and the flag wrapped around his skid. A nice war souvenir.

There were fifteen enlisted men overseen by SFC See, a well respected, competent NCO, who had been an instructor at West Point. He continuously displayed his bravery as long as I knew him. Three months later I had two pilots and five EM left of the original group. Tet Took it’s Toll.

The line chief was SP4 Snoops. He could do more with nothing than any man alive. Any time we needed an aircraft he and his men would work their magic so we could fly.

Some of the best gunners in the army were in this group. All could write their names with or shoot your eye out with a sixty while bouncing along in a H13. One of them, Sgt. Strichraht, had forty-five kills in one day while I was in lift. After a couple of days Kenney “Schwartz” Vigneaux, who was acting platoon leader, decided I needed to learn some Scout tactics. He seated me in a H-13, placed a box with a few hundred rounds of belted ammo between my feet, then placed an M-60 in my lap and showed me how to load and fire it and we went flying. The first gentleman we encountered was a tall Chinese in a pointed straw hat with black shirt and shorts. He immediately took his hat off and raised his ID card and turned to run. I accidentally put two rounds in the back of his head and he died on the spot. Surprised the hell out of myself and Schwartz.

We then proceeded with our flight and shortly came upon another gentleman coming out of his front gate, saw us and turned to run for his house. Again by accident I placed a few rounds in his back and he rolled up in a heap on his front step. Pretty good for someone who had never fired a M-60, I thought. Again we proceeded with out flight and came upon a small rice paddy with nine military age males, one older gentleman, and a military age female. Schwartz came right and began circling the group of people. Almost immediately everyone started running. Then all hell broke loose. I started shooting, the other scout bird started firing. We hit all of them in the paddy except one gentleman who died going over the rice dike. The lady was lying in the mud with one leg twitching like she was trying to run. I shot her several more times, but the leg continued to twitch. I still dream about that leg kicking at the mud. I was now the platoon leader in every ones eyes, even my own.

That was my introduction to the Scouts. A few weeks later I had a mission to screen for a CA insertion of a battalion size unit, 1/5 I think. I  was flying an OH6 with a H13 on wing. The first company was inserted ahead of schedule and the point squad had entered the objective, a village and the bad guys had cut them off. No air or tube could be used. A small rice paddy was indented into the village and three grunts were wounded and trapped in it. A Med-Evac was trying to get in, to extract the grunts. My door gunner began suppressing the tree line while the Evac bird turned his tail to the fire, landed and got the grunts out. That pilot had a pair bigger than his bird.

I and my wing were running low on fuel and ammo, so I called for another team and left to refuel and reload when they arrived. When I returned I got there in time to see John Jewel’s aircraft with SSGT Walker as gunner, hovering over that rice paddy trying to shoot the bad guys in their spider holes. Problem was there were a lot of spider holes all around him. Suddenly he began to spin wildly, climbed to about two hundred feet, then descended rapidly and pancake in the paddy about thirty yards from the bad guys. I immediately hovered beside him and kicked out the LT who was flying with me and told him to help the other crew out of their AC. I saw Walker years later on TV at a Veterans rally in D. C., he was in a wheel chair and mad as hell. A good man. SSGT Walker had a compressed spine and couldn’t move. John Jewel and the LT loaded him into my AC and ran to the rice dike away from the fire while I took SSGT Walker to Sharron. I reloaded and refueled and returned in time to see a lift bird pick up Jewel and the LT. After I expended again I went back to refuel and reload. Bill Murphy and another team went out to replace me on station. He was doing the hover over the spider hole tactic when a bad guy gave him a clip up through the left side of his aircraft, hitting his emergency radio and battery, exploding them and sending shrapnel through the top of his canopy where upon Murphy began to exit the area. While he was departing, the bad guys gave him another clip, striking the swash plate and sending more Plexiglas shrapnel into the back of Murphy’s neck. He had twenty-nine hits in his H-13 and his FM antenna was shot off. Another wounded pilot. I think I flew ten hours that day and didn’t take a hit.

After many days of flying first light, last light, and missions in between with nothing happening, I received a mission to cover a LRRP team that had contact with bad guys. I came up on their frequency and the guy was whispering to me that he had a platoon sized unit two hundred yards to his front. I began to hover in that area and blew the elephant grass back to try and find the bad guys. After thirty minutes of hovering and looking I gave up, checked the wind direction, away from the friendliest, and dropped a line of Wilson Pickets and soon had a huge fire. I never found the platoon of bad guys, they must have gone underground, but I began to use fire to burn the prairie between Quang Tri and Dong Ha, after every mission in that area. Over the next several months I removed several thousand acres of cover.

One day while returning from a mission at Khe Sahn I spotted what appeared to be large, green and brown basketballs on a jungle trail. After hovering and blowing them around I realized they were elephant droppings. In my spare time for the next week or two I came back and tried to find the elephants. I finally tracked them to a huge thicket of bamboo. I called in a suspected NVA location and requested artillery fire on the thicket. Soon after the artillery began five elephants came running out of the thicket. One bull had a chain on his foot and pack marks on his back. I and my wingman killed all five of the animals. I returned to Sharron and turned in a spot report on them. Division called the CO and told him we didn’t kill elephants, so I revised my report to read five giant mice. No more comments from division. The Colonel who called John D. Hill had me be his commander of troops at Hood when he got his second star. About six months later another scout pilot spotted the bones and reminded me of the elephants and told me the skulls were intact with tusks, but the jungle had grown to about fifty feet above them.

I rounded up some long bolts and parachute cord, made a grappling hook, and flew to the bones. My gunner stood on the skid and threaded the hook down through the canopy and hooked the skull in the eye hole. I hovered up till the skull cleared the canopy, hovered to the river, and flew back to Sharron. As I hovered up the runway the tusks fell out, but I had them and still do.

When the 1st Cavalry moved into the Ashau Valley I flew daily missions in support of the various units and BDA air strikes and ARC lights. One day after completing a BDA mission I found a power line strung on poles through the jungle. It was on large white ceramic insulators. I got the bright idea to shoot the insulators and cut off their power. After shooting several of them the line was on the ground. Also I began to hear the sound of a radar sweep on my Fox Mike Radio. Knowing the NVA had radar controlling 37mm anti aircraft guns, I began to take evasive action and zigzagged out of the area until I no longer heard the radar sweep. I came to a hover close to a large tree in a small clearing while trying to calm myself down, when suddenly something leaped out of the tree towards me. Not realizing at first that it was a large baboon, I immediately was doing 120 knots down the valley. Two sessions of extreme fear in less than five minutes.

Another mission I flew in the Ashau was to check a suspected motor park. I had a marine Lt. In the observer’s seat. He had a reputation for being a real magnet ass. Meaning every aircraft he flew in took hits. While looking for the motor park I spotted what appeared to be large thatch roofed building dug into the side of the mountain, the ARC lights had blown most of the roof off and I could see large tunnels dug into the mountain.

While I was hovering trying to see what was in the building I began to take fire out of the tunnels. My gunner engaged them and I was trying to hold my position while he suppressed.

Suddenly we began to take fire from the mountain side where we were. A round came through the chin bubble and exploded the pedal tubes on the observers side throwing the Lt.’s feet out of the door of the aircraft. While I was rapidly exiting the area I observed him patting his legs and feet. I asked him if he was hit. He said, “No! But that his feet were really stinging from being on the pedals”.

I returned to the A troop TOC in a bomb crater down the valley and was giving my spot report when we had incoming artillery. I ran to my aircraft and started it, but the aircraft had been hit by shrapnel and wouldn’t develop enough power to lift off. I shut down and we ran to the perimeter bunker. After ninety-three rounds of incoming, a Huey picked us up and took us to Sharron. I didn’t know I could shake that much!!

You never know what will pop up next. I was soon to find out. As the Calvary was exiting the valley, they were down to one company left dug in on a hilltop. I went out to screen to keep them from being surprised by the bad guys. After getting on station the commander of the unit called me and informed me that the engineers had left motion detectors in the valley and that they had movement 5km to the north. I started up the valley with my wingman Jim Filgo from Florida. Enroute to the grid I was given, I spotted a large area covered with what appeared to be flour. Curiosity killed the cat and almost killed me too. I flew into the area of flour and immediately could not see or breath. It was crystal CS. We both pulled pitch to get above the vapors. We were lucky enough to get above it without hitting a tree, a mountain, or each other. Never found out what was at that grid.

Apache One Niner, James Filgo flew wing on me more than anyone else. He was a reddish, sandy haired man from Florida. He followed me through a lot of fire fights and took a lot of hits meant for me, but when I looked back he was always there.

When I first moved to Mississippi I took care of my grandson when he was three and four years old. One day I asked him why he followed me all the time and he replied “Cuz I want to.” I guess Filgo was the same way; he did it “cuz he wanted to.”

He was a good loyal man, and I never had the opportunity to thank him properly.

Captain Branstruder left for the states and a new Apache Red, Captain Harry McCloud arrived shortly after we settled in at Sharron. Red and I had a few beers one evening and were swapping war stories. We decided to run a pink team, a scout bird and a red team so Red could see how we worked. The next day we took off and went North East toward the coast. I was doing 80 Knots, jumping over the rice dikes when I spotted three men running into a patch of brush, about one fourth acre in size. I began to hover over the brush until I found them lying in a trench under heavy brush. I backed off and Let Red make a run on the area. After he expended his rockets, I went back in to see what had happened. I couldn’t find bodies in the trench, but while I was looking Red called and said they had come out the other end of the brush. They had changed out of their uniforms and were carrying fish nets. I gave the order and two Minnie’s and four 60’s opened up. Tracers went everywhere and scared the hell out of me. I did some more hover work and found another body, in uniform, on the other side of the brush, four KIA’s.

Back to boring holes in the sky, shooting water buffalo, burning elephant grass, and following footprints in the mud. I equated buffalo with food and transportation and killed everyone I could find. I must have followed wheel tracks (50 Cal MG) five hundred miles while scouting that year, but never found them that way. They found me a few times though. We were OP Con. To the Marines at Da Nang when one found me. I was following a sniffer bird in the mountains to the west. It over flew some old U. S. positions on a mountain top when the sniffer dropped smoke. I came to the trench circling the mountain top and found it full of NVA. The bunkers were full also. I told my wingman to break right and not fire. He must not have heard me because his gunner began to shoot. The whole mountain top exploded with tracers.

My wingman broke right, I broke left and called in the two snakes over head. Apache Red started his rocket run and had a flame out. He broke off his rocket run and began calling “Mayday, mayday, bird going down”. His wingman was following him. I was following him. My wingman was off on his own somewhere. When Red got a restart on his engine I breathed a sign of relief and turned around to look for my wingman and put in a call for an air strike. I was flying tight against the mountain side to stay out of the fire from the mountain top when the grass flew back and three bad guys behind a fifty caliber opened fire. The gunner was close enough I could count his teeth. Luckily I was doing my usual twenty knots and the tracers were going just in front of my feet. I did a hard left turn and dove down the mountain side. All the above occurred in the space of three or four minutes. Two fast movers arrived about the time I cleared the fifty. I asked them if they could see the smoke on the mountain top. They could and the lead bird made his run and dropped his load on the mountain top. The second bird started his run and the fifty got him before he could drop his load. He broke off his run and headed off to the South China Sea. He punched out on the beach and his bird went into the sea. The fifty didn’t get me at thirty feet, but got the jet at five thousand.

I was supposed to go on R&R two days later and all I could think of while the fifty was shooting at me was “Lord, please don’t let him get me now”. I got to go to Hawaii!

While we were supporting the Marines we were having a lot of luck finding the bad guys in what the Marines had designated the “Arizona Territory.” It was between two rivers that ran out of the mountains, joined and went to the South China Sea. The area was full of NVA and the first three days Scouts had killed one hundred and three of them.

I remember LTC Napier, who had replaced Major Stone when he was wounded, would come to me and ask me how many we had killed and he would always retort, “We’re not paying the price.” I think I was supposed to volunteer to pay the price.

The afternoon of the third day the fire was so heavy we could hardly get across the river. After one attempt I came back to another part of the river and found a company of Marine tanks parked and the crews were swimming in the river. I landed and found the Marine CO, a captain, and asked him to fire his guns across the river, because the bad guys were everywhere over there. He told me he didn’t want to piss them off. I took off and dropped a case of CS along the river just because he pissed me off. Typical of the Marines.

Also, while I was on R&R, Bill Curran, one of my flight school classmates, had been assigned to Scouts and got into a fire fight, (George Diller another class mate was in scouts briefly) his gunner, “Pops” Treadway from Mountain City, Tennessee, was shot through the lungs but didn’t tell anyone and kept firing until he died. Colonel Napier must have been pleased. Pops brother was in my unit in Korea in 1976.

Bill Curran had another man killed on his bird. He had found a bunker complex and returned to Sharron to make a bunker buster; an ammo can full of C-4 with a frag in it with the spoon on the outside.

Enroute back to the bunkers, somehow the pin was pulled and the thing exploded making hamburger meat out of Alvarez the gunner. He was eighteen and from California. A good man.

The armored seats saved Curran and his observer, but the aircraft burned in place.

A short time later, Curran experienced the Hughes tailspin and in the process my favorite torque, Shelley, had his seat belt break and was thrown out at about thirty feet. He landed on a slope and rolled, but messed up his knee bad enough to go home. Bill was hard on his crews.

Vigneaux didn’t get along very well with the Colonel and one day became so frustrated that he punched the Colonel out. He was sent up to Squadron at Camp Evans. A short time later at a dining at division he punched him out again and was sent state side. He only did what everyone else wanted to do.

An example of the Colonel’s leadership. He sent me out to Khe Sahn, which had been abandoned, to make sure it was safe for him and his XO, Fat Frank Alverson, to land and get out of his aircraft. He did this so he could go to Division and brag about his bravery. Commanders were assigned to each Troop for six months to get their ticket punched for promotion. A bad idea.

Another time two doughnut dollies showed up at Sharron and the Colonel took them to his cone-x palace to wine them and dine them. After a couple of hours of this, he ordered lift to take the blue platoon to the beach and set a perimeter and had two red teams flying cover while he and the ladies frolicked in the surf. I wouldn’t let the scouts go.

The next commander was another loser who moved a Vietnamese woman into his hooch. At night the crew chiefs would pee in his helmet. He would dump it out when he came out to the flight line each morning, make a comment about not knowing it had rained and go flying. The smell was terrible, but he was usually too drunk to notice.

The last time I was shot down I was sent to cover a CA. I had Lt. Maloney flying wing. We arrived early and were looking the area over before the artillery prep was to start. We knew it was a Delta Sierra area because it was close to the Ashau and the valley where Major Stone was wounded. We were flying over a defoliated area when we saw a large group of NVA running on a trail, carrying boxes. They were wrapped in large green banana leaves in a brown area. We started killing them and they shot Maloney down. After he crashed I popped up to make a bird down call, came down and turned Maloney and his crew around; they were walking toward the bad guys. They had found a very small place to land. I got the crew on board and came out to tree top level, but had to turn toward the bad guys to get into the wind.

They then proceeded to shoot me down. After I crashed through about seventy feet of trees and was kicking the bubble out of my lap, the artillery F. O. who had somehow gotten into the left seat with me for his second crash of the day looked me in the eye and said “I’ll never get in another G. D. helicopter as long as I live”. Four and a half hours later when a LZ had been cut by our rescuers and a UH-1 came in to get us out, he was the first man on the bird. He was a good old boy from Mississippi.

When we got back to Sharron, Colonel Napier called me into his office and asked me what had happened. I told him and he told me I was lying and relieved me of my command. He put his XO Frank Alverson in my place. I was back to being a peter pilot. Two weeks later he relieved Alverson and put me back as platoon leader. He did this after Alverson was on a mission close to Khe Sahn and found a fifty in some old U. S. positions. He flew back to Sharron and ordered me to go back and take out the fifty. The gun pilots who were going back with me told me that Alverson had put tube on the wrong hill and they had received heavy fire when they started back in and he had chickened out and came back to send me out to do his job for him. I went out, bored some holes and returned to Sharron to the relief of the gun pilots and my crew.

I found a 50 another time, again in some old U. S. positions out close to Khesahn. I knew the bad guys were there, but didn’t shoot and this time my wingman didn’t also. I was circling the hill top trying to figure out what was on top of the bunker with canvas over it. It didn’t take long to recognize it as a 50 on a tripod. I had my torque hit it with a burst and hoped it was damaged enough so they couldn’t shoot us with it as we ran like hell to get away. We put tube on that position.

Marvin Leonard was a brave soul. He was my IP and trained the new pilots as they came in. The attrition rate was so high that we finally resorted to training them on missions. A sad state of affairs, but a necessary evil. I saw in the VHPA book that he had died in combat. He was a good, brave man who had as big a pair as anyone I ever knew.

One of the new pilots he trained was with me the day Chaney and McCain died. We were coming back down the river to Quang Tre. I was down over the river and he was flying over the left bank when he suddenly called, I’m hit, I’m hit. I came right and got behind him. He was hit in the left leg and had no pedal control and was about to pass out. I talked to him as calmly as I could, had him cross to the other side of the river, had him slow to the point where he was about to spin and do a running landing in some tall grass. He did it perfectly and I took him and his crew to the MASH unit in Qwuang Tre. I regret I cannot remember his name, but I think he was from Washington State. I went back and shot tube for an hour where I thought he took the hit.

We took casualties in strange ways. Red platoon had a man standing on the stinger of a snake working on the tail rotor when he was struck by lightning.

I was out close to the beach by the Street Without Joy when I found several places where someone had been digging in the sand. Large wet spots. I tried hovering over the brush trying to find who had been digging, but it was too thick. I started fragging the brush: the first two, no results; with the third one I felt a thump on my neck and blood began flying all over the aircraft.

I found out later there was a large secondary explosion. I had a new pilot in the left seat, I told him to take the controls. I began to try to stop the bleeding, protect the wound, treat for shock, all the crap they teach in first aid. When I calmed down I realized the new guy was flying in circles. I had him hold my neck and I flew us back to the aid station at Sharron. They cut my shirt off me, applied a bandage and flew me to the MASH unit at Quang Tre. They put an IV in my arm and flew me to the USS Sanctuary. I remember a nurse dry shaving my chest. I tried to get her to stop, because I wasn’t hurt too bad. When she got done I was really bleeding then. There were two marines across from me who were badly wounded by artillery. I kept trying to get her to work on them. Then I went to sleep. When I woke up I found they had made an incision in my throat and dislocated the right jaw bone, but were unable to get the shrapnel out of my brain. Eleven days later I got on a bird and flew to an air force base, then another bird flew me to a fire support base with the 101st, then another bird to Sharron. I was back home again to everyone’s surprise.

While I was on the hospital ship the Lt. And my Platoon Sgt, SFC See, one of the finest, most courageously brave soldiers I have ever known, were killed at Lang Vie. The fire base had been overrun by the NVA the night before and they sent a white team out to check for survivors. They were flying H-13’s and found the NVA were in the bunkers on the firebase. The Lt. Was trying to make a frag run on one of the bunkers when a frag was dropped in the chin bubble, wounding Sgt. See. The Lt got the aircraft on the ground and was trying to get Sgt See out of the aircraft when the frag box blew up, killing both of them. Their bodies were recovered three days later.

SFC See had received the Silver Star Impact a few weeks earlier when a Scout bird had found a large complex in a large horseshoe-shaped valley out close to the Ashau. Major Stone took a Huey out to see what they had found. He was hovering over the triple canopy, but couldn’t see anything. Mike Bond, the Scout Pilot, started dropping frags to mark the center of the complex. The whole valley opened up and shot the Huey down. It crashed on a hill side and rolled down the hill. Murphy sat down and Sgt. See ran down the hill armed only with a 38., the aircraft was lying on its side and Sgt See climbed up and into the bird and pulled the crew out and carried them one by one up the hill, all the while under intense enemy fire. Major Stone lost his foot in the action. Bond continued to hover over them and draw the enemy fire until the rest of the troops arrived to extract the crew. SFC SEE was awarded the Silver Star for his courageous actions. He was truly a soldier’s soldier and one of the finest men I have had the honor to serve with. It was a great loss to the unit when he and the Lt. Who had replaced me were killed at Lang Vie.

Scouts was always short of people. I had a Sgt. E5 from an infantry unit volunteer to join us as an observer. I took him out after the other observers had trained him. I gave him a may and told him to keep track of where we were and I flew along the river to the west. We had been out about thirty minutes when I heard a bird down call on the radio. It was one of mine. They gave me a bad grid, but I found them anyway. The crew had already been picked up and weapons was working on the village. I called Red, told him I had a Minnie on board and wanted to help.

He told me there was a boat tied up on the river by the village and asked me to sink it. The Sgt. was sitting in the left seat with a M79 chunkier in his lap. He had been listening to the radio calls, but I guess I didn’t realize how nervous he was.

I lined up on the boat with the minnie gun and burped it one time. I saw the Sgt. try to stand up at first, then he remembered the training he had been given, if you receive fire, return fire. He grabbed the chunkier, turned it forward and shot the windshield out. I turned and went back to Sharron and sent the Sgt. Back to the infantry.

Another E4 who came to Scouts to escape the infantry went through the training to be a gunner. I took him with me to Khe Sahn where we had a mission to screen for a unit close to the border. When we arrived the unit was receiving mortar fire. Counter mortar radar gave me a grid across the border. I found several men hiding in the trees. I told the man to shoot them but he just sat there. After giving him the order to shoot several more times, my wingman did the job and we returned to LZ Sharron. When I asked him why he wouldn’t shoot he told me he didn’t wan’t to hurt anyone. He retuned to the Infantry also.

I was scouting along the river, close to the prison where the French had held Ho Che Mihn, when I found some large rectangular holes that had been covered by thatched roofs. The roofs had been blown off by air strikes, but the equipment was undamaged. One of the holes had large wooden boxes about the size of blade boxes. I was hovering over the hole trying to figure out what they were, they could have been some kind of rockets or artillery tubes? I had a Red team flying cover over me, a Charlie model gun ship down low and a Snake on high.

Suddenly Red, in the low bird, began calling “receiving fire.” He had circled close to the prison and 37 mm was shooting at him. He was balls to the wall trying to get away (Red’s words). The snake made a rocket run to suppress and draw the fire. He was successful, but he set up for a second run, when suddenly he lost a blade and tail boom from a direct hit. The remainder of the aircraft spiraled into the ground and exploded. I made a mad dash to get to them and got close enough to see a blazing inferno that no one could have survived. There was a large force all around me with automatic weapons firing at me from all quadrants. I departed the area and went back to turn in my spot report. Red was already there. Chaney, on his first tour, and McCain, on his second tour, were the dead pilots.

Red lost another Snake shortly after the above. We were working southwest of Sharron, close to the Ashau Valley. The Snake was coming out to relieve a team covering us when we heard their “May Day”. When we got there the crew was burning in the aircraft. Captain Momcelovich and Lt. Reese (a Signal Officer) were the dead crew members. A 50 got them.

Another Snake went down a few days later. They were coming to relieve a team also and a 50 got them. They were new guys and I didn’t know them. Came to the troop one day, died the next.

More boring days followed, thank God, until I was sent to cover an Infantry company who were sent to take a hill overlooking Khe Sahn, from which they were receiving mortar fire.

When I arrived the point man was already on top of the hill. Turned out he was the 1st Sgt of the unit. I could see numerous spider holes all around him with bad guys in them. He didn’t have a radio with him so I tried to land and get him off the hill but he waved me off. As I left a bad guy shot him. I went back to try again to get him, but every bad guy started shooting at me so I pulled back and called the unit CO and told him what had happened and advised him he needed Artillery or air support but he refused and said he could handle it. I offered to take him up to look at the situation, but he refused and said he would take the hill his way. Sad to say they never took the hill and a lot of guys got hurt or killed. I could have gotten the point man out and saved his life, but macho egos got in the way.

Earlier in the year we had a program where a Scout team would go to the units in the field at first light and take the commander along the route they were going to walk that day. Sometimes it was hard to stay in the aircraft with them if they had been in the field for a few weeks. However, this commander could have benefited from that program. It might have saved some lives.

One day I decided to go north up the Ashau Valley. I went by myself for some dumb assed reason. I flew along fat, dumb, and happy just looking at the scenery. I saw hundreds of boot prints in the sand along the river. I know the bad guys were there, but no one showed themselves or shot at me. Must have been too surprised or felt sorry for me. I flew for miles up the valley until it began to narrow. Then surprise, an “E: model UH1 marine gunship was setting on a sandbar, blades untied, three of the flex 60’s still in place. The sand all around it was covered with boot prints, but no sign of the crew. I hovered around the bird at least fifteen minutes, but found no crew, no bad guys, nothing. I got the tail number and left. I climbed up to altitude and on the way back, something I rarely did, when I heard a “May Day” call on guard. A Navy Intruder had been hit on the way back from the North. He said he was punching out. I never saw his canopy, but a few minutes later saw the bird trailing smoke. It went out of sight toward the coast.

I followed as fast as I could and finally came to an old farmer standing on his rice dike. His straw hut and everything around was covered in mud. All of the aircraft that I could see was a strut and one wheel sticking out of the mud. Messed up the old man’s rice crop I guess. I retuned to Sharron and turned in my spot report nothing was ever said about the bird down and I forgot about it. About three weeks later we had a scramble mission for a bird down. Sure enough it was the same bird. We destroyed it with 2.75 rockets. I often wonder what happened to the crew. It was a Delta Sierra area and I don’t think they could have walked out from there.

Another time I decided to go fly alone I went across the river to the MASH unit to see one of my gunners who had been injured. While there, I struck up a conversation with one of the doctors, John Gardner from California. He wanted to look at the area and see how we operated. We took off and I had started up the river when I had a call from one of my birds saying he had found some NVA close to town, so I turned back and joined him in trying to find the two NVA that got away from him while he was killing the third one. I started hovering trying to blow the brush back. The doctor started to get a little excited and wanted to know what I would do if we found them. He didn’t have a gun. I gave him my 38 and continued looking for the bad guys. We never found them; must have had a tunnel in the brush.

The doctor wanted to go back, so I took him back and dropped him off. He told me we were crazy as he got out of the bird.

When I flew last light I went by to check the body. Someone had buried him, but hey had taken his boots first and left one of his feet sticking out of the ground. I use to go by there when I flew to see the foot until the meat was finally gone. Morbid, maybe, but interesting. Also, when I was wounded the doctor took good care of me and also my troops when they were hurt.

Another day I was flying north of Sharron when an Air Force FAC came up on guard. He told me a sniper had a company of Marines pinned down in some rice paddies in the DMZ. He directed me to a bamboo tree line on a rice dike and told me he was in the bamboo. I made a run with the minnie, nothing, turned and made another and the sniper fell into the paddy. I landed and Shelley, my gunner, got out and picked up the sniper's pack and weapon, and went through his pockets. While doing this, he put the man’s helmet on. He came back to the AC, took off the helmet to put on his flight helmet and discovered he had the man’s brains in his hair. After talking to Ralph and cleaning brains out of his hair we left.

Someone always looked after me that year. Time after time I was made acutely aware of this. I was sent out to mark a hill top for a bombing mission. I was in a 13 that day. I came up on the frequency and told the high birds to hit my smoke. I dropped my smoke and about three seconds later the bombs hit. The blast stood the 13 on its nose and I could hear the whoosh, whoosh of the large pieces of shrapnel as they went by. My torque and I almost had to clean our shorts after that. I found out that they were dropping Daisy Cutters. A special serrated bomb that broke into long pieces to cut down large trees, thus the loud whooshing sound.

I am not a deeply religious person, but I know He saved me time after time when I wasn’t smart enough to do it for myself.

The last Scout mission I flew proved it to me again. We were flying missions for the Marines and had an Intel report of a troop concentration in a valley running north into the DMZ. I entered the valley and about a mile in came to a hill side with logs dug into it like steps except they were about three hundred feet wide.

I hovered over them briefly and it dawned on me that it was seating for a large troop training area. About that time the whole valley started shooting at us from all points. I continued up the valley at my usual twenty knots. We received continuous fire for a mile and a half. My wingman panicked and passed me up and left me behind. He took over fifty hits in his AC and I didn’t take a hit. I finally got tired of being shot at and climbed over the ridge and returned to the rock pile and turned in my spot report. I recommended an ARC light on the area. My experience with the Marines was that they seldom acted on anything.

I refueled and returned to Sharron. The next day I went to work in Operations after eight and one half long months in Scouts.

Thoughts: Scout pilots should be trained as scouts prior to deployment into combat. We lost too many good pilots and crew before they could learn the techniques that might have saved them. I flew the H-13, old and slow, but reliable. Also, had the semi-rigid bounce which made it an unstable platform. I flew the OH58 and found it to be too slow to respond under fire and again the bounce.

The OH6 was the bird I much preferred. It was not without it’s faults, namely the Hughes tail spin. This could be overcome by not getting too slow. A better engineered tail rotor would have been helpful. I understand the “D” model 6 has cured the problem with an enclosed TRACTOR tail rotor, whatever that is. Otherwise it was a quick, responsive bird and fast when you needed it.

Weapons systems for Scouts needed to be developed. A lighter flex minnie would be a great help and possibly a flex chunkier.

I wrote this late 2005 early 2006 to let my son know a little of what Vietnam was like in 1968. We occasionally swap war stories and he asked me to write them down for him. He was in Desert Storm with the Texas National Guard, as a flight engineer on CH 47’s.

He is in the Mississippi National Guard doing the same thing. They asked for seven volunteers to go to Iraq in 2003 to support the CH 47’s. The dummy volunteered and headed up the team. While there, his unit was activated. He only had two months to go, but he came back and joined them and went back for his second year.

His 1st Sgt asked me why he was doing this and I told him, because he was a dumb ass, but he’s my dumb ass and I’m pretty darn proud of him.

I’ve never asked him if he killed anyone and he’s never said that he did. I hope he didn’t. It weighs on your mind sometimes.

It took me about four months to write this. Every time I was done with it I would wake up with another memory. Of course my granddaughter was happy though; I was paying her $10.00 an hour to type and retype it..

Hope it doesn’t bore you too much and please excuse the spelling and names that I can’t remember. I think Nha Trang was really Da Nang. We hauled teams out of marble mountains, also flew out of these in support of the marines.

An 06 from branch came to Vietnam and told me I was to be their expert on Scout tactics. I told him no one would like my opinion of Scout Tactics. He left mad and I didn’t go to the Pentagon. Thank God.

Old Cav saying “MY torque (gunner) can tighten you right up,” mostly Branstruders. Just never stops does it.  I’m sitting here in the guard shack watching 60 minutes with tears running down my face. They are interviewing our wounded vets. Glad it’s not my son.

My Chronological History

 

’66 – Graduated from Signal OCS.

’66-’67 – Jump School and Instructor at Infantry School.

’67 – Flight School

’68 – A Troop, 1/9 Cav, 1st Cav Div, Scout Platoon Leader. 555 Combat hours flying H-135 and OH6A. Wounded in head, still have shrapnel in brain (Act a little funny sometimes.)

’69-’71 – Italy (flew H34’s) & Germany (Theater Support Avionics).

’72 – Advanced Course Ft Monmouth, NJ

’73-’76 – Ft Hood, 57th Signal Bn and III Corps CE Staff and 6th Cav Bde C&E Officer.

’76-‘77 – Korea – CO Flight Following Company.

’77-’78 III Corps C&E Staff. Retired September ’78 as O4

Worked 17 years Postal Service in TN. Retired ’96.

Moved to Mississippi in ’98.

Have now found my calling... babysitting for my 3 year old grandson.

Editor's Notes

Edited and sourced from Wikipedia and other sources...

The 9th Cavalry regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division first saw service in Vietnam as an experimental air cavalry unit composed of aero-weapons (Reds) [Click at left to return to original footnote in text above], aero-scout (Whites), and aero-rifle (Blues). Its mission was one of an aerial reconnaissance unit, which would use helicopters and ground reconnaissance elements to locate the enemy. Once it located the enemy it would deploy its infantry assets to engage and destroy the enemy.

During the Vietnam War, the 1st of the 9th Cavalry became one of the finest units of the war, earning 3 Presidential Unit citations and 5 Valorous Unit Citations. The 1/9 Cav fought in some of the most savage battles of the war, and was responsible for approximately 50% of the enemy casualties of the entire 1st Cavalry Division; earning the ominous nickname of "Headhunters" through their combat proficiency.

Historically,  before the Vietnam War began, the regiment had been disbanded (20 October 1950). However it was reconstituted on 1 December 1957, as part of the Regular Army, as Headquarters and Headquarters Troop, 6th Reconnaissance Squadron, 9th Cavalry. On 30 June 1965 it was re-designated as Troop F, 9th Cavalry, and assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division, and activated in Vietnam.

The 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry was the air cavalry reconnaissance squadron of the 1st Cavalry Division throughout the division's service in Vietnam. Eventually, the 1/9th, the Air Cavalry Squadron, included A Troop (Apache Troop,) B Troop, C Troop (Cavaliers,) D Troop (ground recon) E Troop (Lobos,) and F Troop (Peacemakers.) Candidate Dunavant served in A Troop.

As the Vietnam War wound down, the unit was again deactivated, on 26 February 1973, in Vietnam, and relieved from assignment to the 1st Cavalry Division.

On 1 February 1974, Troop C, 9th Cavalry was activated again as an armored cavalry troop and assigned to the US Army Reserve, 157th Infantry Brigade (Mechanized). Initially activated in Bristol, PA, on 31 January 1966, it was later moved to Wilkes-Barre, PA. The troop continued to serve with the 157th Infantry Brigade (Mech) until deactivation on 20 August 1995.