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“Yes, sir, looking forward to it.” Just violated Dad’s advice and gave too much information.
“Oh, you are! What exactly are you looking forward to?” he asked as he leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. His OD green T-shirt was wet in the arm pits, and he was wearing flippy-flops. Glad he had his pants on. Now this was getting awkward.
“Sir, I’m looking forward to getting in the air to do the job I’ve been trained to do rather than sitting on the ground. I look forward to learning how to fly as a combat pilot, conducting resupply missions, flying formations, and improving my ability. I’m looking forward to seeing the area from Tay Ninh to Song Be to Long Binh.” Thank God I had gone over to Ops and gotten a briefing from Pops. Major Dickson just glared at me. What the hell had I done?
“Mr. Cory, you are going to be the company training officer. See Mr. Leach and relieve him of those duties. See the XO when you have a plan. That is all.”
I rendered a salute, did an about-face and walked out.
“Shut the damn tent flap!” he called out. Oh, shit. I quickly closed it and moved out. Mr. Leach was flying, so no need to hunt him down. Little did I know that this would be the only time Major Dickson ever spoke to me even though he was around for another two months. Never saw him fly a mission and only occasionally saw him walking around the company area. Took his meals in his tent. Strange man. Some said he already had done two one-year tours in-country and was burned out. Maybe so.
No one had ever told me what a company training officer was supposed to do. I was thinking that I was responsible for training this company. Hell, I was a brand-new pilot. What could I teach anyone? And what was I supposed to be training them to do anyway? I hoped Mr. Leach had his ducks in a row. You could hope all you wanted, but it didn’t make it so. That evening I tracked down Mr. Leach at the Officers’ Club. A short, stocky man, he could have been a double for Frodo, Bilbo Baggins’s sidekick in The Hobbit.
“Bob, I was told by the CO to relieve you of your duties as training officer.”
The look on his face told me he wasn’t going to miss the extra duty. Jumping up, he motioned me to follow him to his tent and dragged a box from under his bed. Several files, a couple of regulations and lots of loose papers were in the box.
“New guy, it’s all yours with my blessing.” Holy shit, nothing was in order.
“Where do I start with this stuff?” I asked as I started pawing through it.
“Start with the regulations. This one. It outlines all the mandatory training that’s required each quarter, semiannual and annually by the US Army,” he said as he pulled out the regulation. “Then look at the division regulation and the USARV regulation. There’s some overlap. If you schedule anything, go to the first sergeant and clear it with him first. Any questions?”
“Not right now. Let me look this over and get it organized and I’ll get back to you,” I stammered.
I’d been handed a shit sandwich, but I wasn’t flying, so I might as well do something. The Department of the Army Regulation outlined what training must be done on a quarterly, semiannually and annual basis. Chaplain’s Call, quarterly; Weapons Inspection, monthly; Savings Bond Drive, annually; Hygiene Care, monthly. The list went on and on. My job, it appeared, was to make sure each class was scheduled, an instructor designated, a location secured, and a roster signed by all in attendance. It was up to the first sergeant and the NCOs to make sure everyone was in attendance. Only one problem: no one had asked them to do it in the past, and so there was some resistance, especially as I had no authority over them. When the chaplain came to visit monthly, he would usually eat dinner and head for the Officers’ Club for poker. I thought he was going to have a heart attack when I approached him about giving a class on moral conduct. Weapons inspections was easy; bring your weapon to the mess hall for chow and have the supply sergeant check the serial number. Eventually I was able to get it moving somewhat smoothly, and on paper it looked great. Maybe the next new guy could have this duty—and sure enough, he got it.
I spent the rest of the evening looking over what Bob had handed me, attempting to organize it. As my tent mates were all on the board for flying the next day, lights out was around 2100 hours, so I put everything away and lay down. Sleep came quick, and I dreamt of pleasant things as I hadn’t been in-country long enough to have bad dreams. As I slumbered, I began to dream about the jet I heard coming in for a landing on our airstrip. It was getting louder and… Holy shit, jets can’t land here!
I was on the floor of our tent with everyone else when the Katyusha rocket impacted behind our tent, followed by a second impacting the VIP landing pad behind the major’s tent.
“Incoming!” I heard as I grabbed my flak jacket and my helmet. I was half running, half crawling to the bunker in my boxer shorts when another rocket impacted with a flash of spraying shrapnel. Diving through the door of the bunker, I plowed into someone in the total darkness of the bunker and got shoved to the other side.
“Hey, watch it, man!” someone said.
“Anyone seen the new guy?” I recognized Lou’s voice.
“Over here, Lou,” I answered.
“This your first rocket attack, New Guy?” he asked.
“Well, yeah, I’ve only been here two days. Is this common?” I asked.
“Yep, almost nightly, and since this is your first, you get to buy the beer. Be sure the refrigerator’s stocked tomorrow when we come back.”
In the darkness, the sounds of laughter could be heard over the sounds of impacting rockets and secondary explosions.
Chapter 8
In the Air at Last, February 21
Finally, after I’d been sitting on my ass for a week, the day came for me to get my orientation ride. It was conducted by one of the two-unit instructor pilots. The day started off with a briefing in the operations tent. Since I’d been hanging out there, it went rather quickly, and then we walked to the aircraft. The crew chief and door gunner were already there, mounting the guns and doing last-minute checks.
Mr. Baker said, “Let’s start the preflight.” And I reached for the checklist…no, I went looking for the checklist.
“Excuse me, the checklist is missing, Mr. Baker.”
“You don’t have it memorized? What did they teach you in flight school?” he asked.
