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The next day, Mom dropped me off at the airport and I went up to the ticket counter to get a ticket. Quantico must have graduated a bunch of new second lieutenant Marine officers, as they were in the airport with their Sam Brown belts. Full of bravado, they were letting the entire airport know that they were going to Vietnam and win the war. Good luck, guys. I was now a chief warrant officer, having been promoted in December. I had shaved off my immature mustache and still had a reasonable haircut. I didn’t stand out in a crowd, and I was in civilian clothes. They ignored me. Good.
The flight to Norfolk, Virginia, from Baltimore was a short hop. I got off the plane and walked into the terminal. The Simmons’ daughter was standing there with shoulder-length blond hair, wearing a blue pantsuit. Damn, I thought she was in New York.
“Hi, Mary!” No hug, no kissy.
“Hi, Dan, got any bags checked? How you been? You look good.” Small talk it was going to be.
“You do too.” And she did. We headed to her car, a Corvair Monza. The drive to her folks’ house was more small talk. She was no longer working in New York but at a local radio station in Virginia Beach and going to school. But I couldn’t figure out what kind of school it was. When we got to her house, her folks and one younger brother and sister were there. They were in high school. This was a big family. The oldest son lived in New York, having done four years in the Army and a long tour in Vietnam, Infantry. An older sister was in college at Shippensburg State. Her dad was a civil servant with the Navy but had served in the Army in World War II and seen plenty of action as a forward observer at North Africa, Sicily, Anzio and finally at Normandy, where he had been severely wounded, resulting in one leg being shorter than the other. He was a quiet man; it was his Italian wife who carried the conversations. He introduced me to whiskey sour cocktails, and I have never had a better one than the ones he made.
I spent a week there. Mary and I ran all over Virginia Beach, which had changed considerably since I was a kid when Dad was stationed aboard a submarine at the base. Back in the mid-1950s, the only hotel was the Cavalier Hotel, which sat about a half mile back from the beach. We would go to the beach in the winter and shoot .30-06 rifles at targets as the place was deserted. Now I was finding that from Fort Story along the entire beach was hotels and homes. At the very end was a restaurant called the Lighthouse, where all the tables were picnic tables, and for five dollars, you got all the boiled shrimp you could eat, poured out on butcher paper. Pitchers of beer were two dollars.
Grabbing a table and placing an order, Mary asked, “So why fly helicopters? Why not airplanes?”
“Since I saw my first helicopter, I’ve wanted to fly them. I was in the fourth grade, I think, or third, and thought it was so cool that they could hover and land about anywhere. I used to draw pictures of an OH-13 helicopter—you know, the one with the big glass bubble that the pilot sits in—landing on a lake next to a log cabin. That was my dream. I’d forgotten it until the chance to go to flight school came along,” I explained.
“But you were in college,” she stated with a puzzled look.
“Yeah, that was a worthless two years. I hated where I was going to school and really didn’t know what I wanted to study anyway. I had been accepted to the University of Kansas School of Architecture and was excited about going, but that fell through.”
“How come?” she asked.
“Seems that as I was getting ready to go, the principal of my high school told my parents that I would be lost at a big school like that and probably flunk out. So they stopped me and told me to go to Eastern Oregon. I hated it there.”
“Why?”
“First, it was a teacher’s college. I didn’t think I wanted to be a teacher, at least not as much as I wanted to be an architect. Second, it was up in the mountains of eastern Oregon, and once the snows came, you didn’t leave there, especially as I didn’t have a car. Third, the town is a one-horse town. It’s a wide spot in the road. The town really didn’t welcome the college students, but sure liked our money,” I explained.
“So why are you going back to Vietnam?” she asked.
“I can tell you I’m not going back to save the people of Vietnam. Those people could care less about us
being there. They would be just as happy to see us get out. We, the South Koreans, and the Aussies are all there to help them, and what do we get in return? Rocketed, mortared and shot at. The Vietnamese will lie to your face and think nothing of it. It’s their culture to save face, even if it means lying to you. Americans are so damn eager to have everyone like us, we’ll believe anything and do anything for people. It’s gotten us in trouble in the past and it will get us in trouble in the future. As far as I’m concerned, trust no one and do only those things that are in our national interest. I’m going back because we’re running out of pilots, and the guy on the ground needs pilots willing to go the extra mile for him. He needs someone who will make sure to get the beer and mail in as well as the ammo. He needs someone that will put him first for a change and be there for him. Grunts have a shitty life, and doing anything I can do to ease it a bit for them is my intention.”
“Don’t you get scared? I mean, being shot at and possibly crashing or worse?” she asked.
“There are worse things than being shot. Fire is worse. The fear of all crew members. We’re supposed to be getting fire-retardant two-piece flight suits, but they’re only starting to arrive. That will help, but not prevent getting burned. Besides, you don’t think about it. If you did, you wouldn’t get in the bird. You think if something happens, it will happen to the other guy. You don’t wish it on them, but that’s the way you look at it. When the shit hits the fan, you’re too busy to be scared, you just do your job. When you get back to the Chicken Coop, you drown your fear in beer. And the next day you do it over again.”
Mary reached across the table and laid her hand on mine. “Just be careful,” she said in a soft, almost pleading voice. Her eyes were speaking as well.
Mary was a good listener. She never judged but would listen and ask simple questions that got me to open up like no one else ever could. After a week, I headed back to D.C. We said we would stay in touch and she would write to me if I wrote to her.
Once I got home, Mom started in about how I should speak to Father Bob. “He’s studying to be a psychologist,” she told me yet again, “and he might be able to help you.”
“Help me? What’s this about? I don’t need any help.”
“Your father said you should talk to someone. You know, about Dave and your crew.” Okay, the cat was out of the bag. Evidently I must have said something to Dad about the loss of Dave and the crew of my aircraft when the rotor head went to pieces. I hadn’t told him about the two recent incidents. He in turn must have written Mom and told her something.
“Mom, I’m fine. I don’t need to talk to anyone. I’m okay.” Joking, I added, “Ah, Mom, we’re out of beer.”
“You’re not fine! You’re drinking too much. And why are you going back there? You’ve done your time.”
“I’m going back because they need good pilots. We’re short pilots with experience that can teach the new guys. And the grunts need good pilots. Now drop it!” Holy shit, it was time to get back to Nam. This discussion went on for another hour. Finally she agreed to drop it or I was going out the door.
The next morning, I decided to head over and see the warrant officers’ personnel manager, located at Fort McNair. Before I got dressed in my Class A uniform, I grabbed a cup of coffee and started to read the newspaper. One particular headline caught my eye. “Helicopter shot down 100 miles northeast of Saigon.” Why would this be newsworthy when it happened every day in Vietnam? The article didn’t indicate who was on the aircraft or what unit it belonged to. I had a feeling that it might have been one of ours, as that was the area around Song Be.
At the entrance to the Warrant Officer Personnel Office, a receptionist greeted me.
“Good morning, sir, how can I help you?”
