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Dorsey started to grab his hat. “Hey, in the company area or out on the Chicken Pen, you don’t have to wear your hat or carry a weapon. If you leave the company area, then yeah, you have to be in full uniform but not carry a weapon. You leave the base camp, you have to be full up. Got it?” Jonesy explained, and they left the hooch and started across the area.
“The latrines are over there along with the shower points. Enlisted latrines are on the left and the officer latrines are on the right. I guess the officers’ shit smells better than ours. Warrant officers don’t care as they use either, I think just to piss off the RLOs.”
“RLOs—who’s that?” asked Dorsey.
“Real live officers. Those are the lieutenants and captains and the major,” Jonesy explained.
“Aren’t warrant officers officers too?”
“Yeah, but they aren’t considered real live officers. They are—how did Mr. Fairweather put it?—technical officers, and the RLOs are tactical officers. Think of warrant officers as specialists in their field, flying the helicopter, and the RLO as a jack of all trades, master of none. You’ll see in the aircraft that the AC may be and most likely is a warrant officer because we have so few RLOs in the company. What the AC says goes. He’s the commander of the ship regardless of rank,” Jonesy added.
“Jonesy, what’s that stench?” asked Dorsey, wrinkling his nose.
“That’s shit-burning detail. Screw up and you’ll be on that detail. Each day, someone, whoever’s on the First Sergeants shit-burning detail, pulls the cans that are under the latrines out and sets them on fire to burn off the shit. While it’s burning, you get to stand there and stir the shit until it’s all burned off. We use fifty-five-gallon drums that are left over from the Agent Orange missions, cut them in half and stick them under the latrines.10 Line them with old newspapers, pour in diesel fuel with just a touch of JP4, and the next day, pull them out and burn it off,” Jonesy explained.
“What’s Agent Orange?” asked Dorsey.
“Some chemical shit that we spray over the jungle and it kills the vegetation. We use one aircraft for that mission and only that one as that stuff is oily and really makes a mess in the aircraft and all under the aircraft where the spray nozzles are. Fortunately I’ve never gotten stuck with that mission.”
They arrived at another hooch. The sign above the door read Supply. It was fairly dark inside due to poor lighting and shelving up the side of the interior walls as well as down the middle of the interior. A wood counter spanned the entire front, preventing anyone from wandering through the shelves. Behind the counter was a desk with a staff sergeant sitting there reading the Stars and Stripes newspaper. He barely looked up.
“Whatcha want?” Staff Sergeant Gibson asked.
“Newbie here needs flight gear. He’s been assigned as my door gunner,” Jonesy responded.
Slowly standing and folding his paper before he laid it on this desk, Staff Sergeant Gibson reached out and said, “Give me your clothing records.” Dorsey handed them over. Gibson opened the file and started looking through it. “You’re an 11B according to your clothing records. You aren’t entitled to flight gear.”
“I was an 11B but was reclassified to a 67A1F, door gunner,” Dorsey replied.
“Who says?” Gibson asked.
“Hey, Sarge, the first sergeant told me he’s my door gunner. If you don’t believe us, call the first sergeant. Jesus,” Jonesy sounded off with disgust in his voice.
“Watch ya mouth there. I got to be sure about this stuff,” Gibson snapped back. He continued to look over Dorsey’s clothing records. Finally, he asked, “Okay, what size shirt and pants?”
“Thirty-two long in the pants and medium in the shirt,” Dorsey guessed. Gibson grabbed what appeared to be a grocery shopping cart and started moving to the back of this hooch. Jonesy and Dorsey could hear Gibson mumbling to himself and hear items being tossed into the basket. Finally Gibson reappeared out of the darkness and began placing items on the countertop.
“Two sets of Nomex flight suits, one pair leather gloves, one flight helmet, one chicken plate size medium. One M16 rifle with two magazines. What size boots do you wear?” Gibson asked.
“Ah, size eleven, but I have two pair of boots,” Dorsey responded.
“Yeah, but they’re jungle boots and you can’t wear them when flying. Come back next week and sign for two pair of all-leather boots,” Gibson instructed.
“Why can’t I wear my jungle boots?” Dorsey questioned.
Frustrated, Gibson gave Dorsey the evil eye and said, “Look, Private, I don’t make the rules. I just follow them. If you want your jungle boots to melt in a fire and fuse to your legs, that’s your business, but the Army says you will have two pair of leather boots to fly with and you will sign for two pair. Sign here for this stuff. You lose it, you buy it,” Gibson said, and Dorsey signed his clothing record, indicating he had received his flight gear. Gathering it up, Jonesy and Dorsey headed back to their hooch.
“What’s his problem?” Dorsey asked as they were walking back. “Is he always such a prick?”
“Yeah, just about all the time. Probably because he’s all alone living in that hooch by himself. You didn’t see it, but in the back he has a CONEX container that’s surrounded by and covered with sandbags. He lives in there. He’s terrified of the rockets and mortars. Comes out for meals and then scurries back into his hole. Has a real shit fit when he’s sergeant of the guard.”
“We pull guard duty too?” Dorsey was surprised.
“Yeah. Ain’t no one else around here that’s going to pull it for us. No infantry to speak of except a company of Vietnamese. There’s a roving guard mount in jeeps, but we have to pull guard around the flight line at night and in the company area. First Sergeant keeps a guard roster and is pretty good about balancing crew time with guard duty.”
“Do the officers pull guard duty too?”
“Are you kidding?” Jonesy responded with some surprise. “They do not pull guard duty. Well, each night, one officer is the duty officer and he checks the guards throughout the night, riding around in the CO’s jeep. And you’ll see the maintenance officers in the Chicken Pen at night pulling test flights, but that’s about it. One night we got hit with mortars and the duty officer, Mr. Cory, drove the CO’s jeep into one of the trenches on the flight line. The jeep tips over a second before a round lands right next to it, spraying the underside of the jeep with shrapnel. If it hadn’t rolled over, that officer would have been killed. Talk about luck.” As they arrived back at their hooch, some flight crews were landing at the Chicken Pen.
