Submitted by: the ole gunny

We talked about many different things that a helicopter is used for but, to those of us that fly and crew them, I think te most rewarding is the successful rescue of an injured person or the life saving assist foran injured fellow human being. It's been stated many times that since the advent and use of the Helicopter that thousands of lives have been saved. That being the case maybe I'll just spend some time and recall a couple of instances that I was involved in while in country (Viet Nam)

It seemed that a normal day of flying did not go bye with out carrying some wounded or dead MARINES but, there were certain missions that really leave more of an impact on you than others. One such mission involved a wounded young girl that we picked up in a remote village out in the bush. It was not uncommon for the VC to torture some of the local children in order to intimidate the others into working for them. This young girl must have been all of 9 or 10 years old and the VC had shot her in the elbow in an effort to "teach her a lesson" if you would, and intimidate the other young children in the area. Somehow we got word about the incident thru a Recon team tha was in the area and off we went. We picked up this frail little body of a person and made her as comfortable as we could in my bird with our Corpsman at her side. She was so small and, in terrible pain. The Doc gave her something to calm her down and she passed out almost immediately. Once we got back to our "Home Plate"the Ambulance was waiting and the Doc cuddled her in his arms and departed the A/C and disappeared into the back of the awaiting transport vehicle. I can't tell you how bad we all felt after finding out that the little girl did not make it. There wasn't a dry eye for several days after this indident and, our anger for our foe rose ten fold. Apparently the trauma of what happened did more damage to her system and she wasn't very strong to begin with. War is certainly hell !!!!

You never know what to expect when you're called out at anytime on a Med-e-vac. I know this will sound a little off color but, getting the smell of dead bodies out of you aircraft is not easy and especially after you've had them stacked in like cord wood. I think that I've said enough.

We were also supporting the Nung, (Mountain Yards) which were conscript fighters that were hired by the South Vietnamese Army to help in their efforts to fight the North Vietnamese Army. These people were damn near primitive and when a helicopter landed they just didn't understand how to approach it or, be around it. They were a strange group. There were several times that we had to move some of them around and when we flew into a remote strip we had to shut down to get them loaded and, then they wanted to fill the insid eof the Helo with as many as they could get in. That included their families and dogs, etc. I can't recall how many that we had on board but all the planes in the flight had to do a roll-off. This happened several times that I recall. Mostly in the II Corps area around Qui Nhon. I've also got to tell you that if you had loose gear laying around in your helicopter that you'd better keep an eye on it because every time you carried ARVNS or Korenas you'd be sure to come up hort of something that you had before the flight. I don't know how many Baseball hats that I lost and the same goes for packs of cigarettes (when I was smoking.) I used to take them out of my Flight suit so that I wouldn't crush them and put them in back of my seat in the A/C, where I thought they'd be safe. Dumb HUH?

(cont. in Vol #3, #12)

"until next time, keep you turns up!!"