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“I have no idea, Sergeant,” Dorsey responded.
Mumbling to himself, the sergeant turned his attention back to Mr. Reid. “Sir, if you want, the mess hall is open for lunch right now. It’s going to take me an hour to process your paperwork and arrange a flight for you to your unit. You’re assigned to Alpha Company and they’re located at Lai Khe, about a twenty-minute flight from here. You can get some lunch and I should have everything arranged by then. If you don’t mind, could you take the private with you?” the sergeant asked, nodding his head in Dorsey’s direction.
“Not a problem, Sergeant. Private, you want to go get some chow?” Mr. Reid asked Dorsey.
“Sure, sir.” Dorsey got up and headed for the door, holding it for Mr. Reid.
As they went through the door, introductions were made. “I’m Reid,” said the warrant officer, extending his hand.
“How do you do, sir? Private First Class Jim Dorsey. I guess we’re assigned to the same company.”
As they walked towards the mess hall, the game of twenty questions was played. Where you from? Are you married? Got a girlfriend? What sports do you play? Entering the mess hall, they found roast beef being served for lunch and were a bit surprised that hamburgers and French fries weren’t offered, but they were hungry, so they took what was offered. After lunch, they returned to the battalion headquarters.
“Sir, we have you all squared away. You too, Private,” said the sergeant first class. “Harris here will drive you both to the flight line,” he added, indicating the clerk. “A Huey will pick you up sometime this afternoon and take you to your new home. The Huey will have a green triangle on the doors with a lightning bolt through the triangle. Good luck to you both.” Harris came around the counter, picked up Mr. Reid’s duffle bags and headed out the door. Dorsey quickly got the idea that no one was picking up his duffle bags.
Chapter 4
Home of the Infantry
Infantry Hall, Fort Benning, Georgia was a six-story building built in the early 1960s. Attached on both sides were one-story wings with ten two-hundred-man classrooms and ten thirty-man classrooms in each wing. On any day, those classrooms were filled with infantry captains attending the Infantry Officers’ Advanced Course or lieutenants attending the Infantry Officers’ Basic Course, which all newly commissioned infantry officers had to attend be they second lieutenants, first lieutenants, or captains. On the third floor was the office of Captain Jack Oliver, Infantry Branch Representative to the Infantry Center.
“Lieutenant, are you nuts? Do you have a death wish?” asked Captain Jack Oliver. Captain Oliver had already served two tours in Vietnam, both with the First Cavalry Division.
“No, sir,” replied First Lieutenant Dan Cory. Dan was attending the Infantry Officers’ Basic Course as he had been commissioned while in Vietnam and had not yet attended. Most of his classmates were new second lieutenants, with one other first lieutenant who, like Dan, had been a warrant officer pilot when he’d received his commission. The class commander was a prior warrant who was older and had been promoted to captain. Dan was the only one asking to return to Vietnam.
“You just completed nineteen months in Nam as a chopper pilot and you want to return. Hell, son, you’ve only been back in the States three weeks. You still have to finish the Infantry Officers’ Basic Course, and that won’t be over until the beginning of November,” Captain Oliver pointed out.
“Yes, sir, but Branch already disapproved my application for Ranger school, so I want to get back to Nam as an infantry officer now that I am one,” Cory argued.
“Damn right we disapproved your application for Ranger school, and if you drop a packet for Airborne, I’ll disapprove that too. You’re a pilot with two thousand hours of combat flying. We send you off to Ranger school or jump school and you get hurt, we lose an experienced aviator. In either of those, you could dislocate a knee, break a leg or something else. You want to be a Ranger or Airborne, eat a worm and jump off a desktop. Disapproved. Period.” Captain Oliver was becoming a bit upset.
But Cory wa
sn’t ready to surrender yet. He took a different tack. “Look, sir, if I can get back to Nam as an infantry officer and get some ground experience, then I’ll be a better officer. I’m not married. I have no family ties. It just makes sense to send me back rather than some married guy.”
The captain paused to think for a moment. “I can get you back to Nam, but that’s no guarantee how they’ll use you. Platoon leaders are generally second lieutenants, with any first lieutenants being staff or company executive officers. And add to that the fact that several units are coming home and standing down, you’ll probably get there and be rear detachment shit detail officer and not on the line.”
“Sir, you just get me back to Nam and I’ll work on my assignment once I’m there.”
“Yeah, you’ll probably hound the crap out of them like you’ve done to me. I suppose you want to be reassigned to the First Cavalry Division, don’t you?” Captain Oliver said with a slight smile as he adjusted his First Cavalry Division coffee mug.
“That would be mighty nice of you, sir, if you could make that happen.”
“You realize that you’ll be going back before the Christmas holidays, don’t you? If you were going over after the first of the new year, I probably couldn’t make this work. They’re cutting back on sending infantry officers over.” Taking a sip of his coffee and glaring up at Cory, Captain Oliver thought, This kid has to be nuts, but I can’t fault his enthusiasm. “All right, let me work on this since you’re so fired up about returning to the Southeast Asian Games. Now get out and let me get some work done.”
Lieutenant Cory came to the position of attention and saluted smartly with a broad smile. “Thank you, sir, and good day.”
The captain returned his salute. “You too, Lieutenant, and don’t tell your buddies. I don’t want them in here begging.”
Cory walked down the hall to the elevators that would take him to the ground floor of Infantry Hall. Infantry Hall housed the US Army Infantry School, where officers as well as NCOs received instruction on a variety of subjects, to include infantry tactics, leadership, logistics, legal matters under the Uniform Code of Military Conduct, and administration and medical management. A two-hour block of instruction for lieutenants was airmobile operations. Cory found it comical what they were teaching the new second lieutenants in this class. He wrote up his critique sheet on the class, indicating that it was the worst block of instruction. Little did he know that those comments would come back and bite him in the ass a couple of years later.
Chapter 5
Take No Prisoners
Sitting in the left seat, WO1 Ritchie was getting strapped in for the day’s missions.4 His right-seat pilot was fairly new, having only been in-country about a month. Specialist Lovelace, the crew chief, unclipped the fire extinguisher and took up a position on the left side of the aircraft, looking through the inspection panel of the engine compartment for a potential engine fire on start-up. Specialist Mondie, a crew chief on another aircraft that was in maintenance for the day, had volunteered to serve as the door gunner today, and he did the same on the right side of the engine compartment. Fire was the one thing all crew members feared the most, even more than being shot.
“AC panel circuit breakers all in. Radios set and off. Fuel off, hydraulics on; DC panel circuit breakers all on. Nonessential bus off,” Mr. Bob Zuccardi called out, placing his left hand on each item as he called it out. “Throttle set; battery on, fuel on.” With that, he pressed the start button on the collective, and the engine began to turn. “N1 is coming up.” At twenty percent N1, he rolled the throttle past the detent button and the engine fired up as he continued to roll the throttle to full power. “Engine rpm is sixty-six hundred, and rotor is in the green.”
