Archive for April, 2009
Friday, April 24th, 2009
When you first get to Vietnam nobody wants to be around you. The short timers ( guys that have been there for awhile) can tell that your new because your uniforms are bright and colorful. After you have been there for several months everything you wear fades into this dull camouflouge color….that along with your American G.I. haicut sets you apart from everyone. No ones wants you around because they are afraid you’ll make a mistake…a mistake that will cost you your life, and more important to them…theirs. For example….after my first couple of missions I would go back to the hooch and put my M60, and my M16 away for the day. The older salty dogs would sit together and clean theirs. They kept their weapons spotless. I would come back and say ” What the hell…it’ll be OK for tomorrow” …Then it happened… One day on a hot emergency medivac with no gunship support my 60 jammed. I was unable to return fire, I was helpless….and so were the other crew members…because of a newbee mistake… Everything happens in a blur, and we were out of their within a couple of secounds, thank God no-one was hurt that day…but the old dogs had a new guy sitting with them that night and everynight after that…As a matter of fact I can remember becoming one of the old dogs and telling that story to the new guys in country. I can’t tell you exactly when it happened but all of a sudden it was me that was avoiding the new guys because somehow I had made it through the first couple of months in country.
There is so much to learn when you go to war, and there isn’t anyone there to teach you. Sure by the time I got there I already knew how to work on a helicopter and breakdown my weapons…but what about the people of the country? What about the kids with no families just trying to survive…no one taught me anything about this…no one taught me how to tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys…they just gave me a gun and told me what to do. This is the part of Vietnam that sometimes haunts me even today…the innocense of war… from the victors to the victims…there are no winners..only survivors.
Tags: hooch, M16, M60, medivac, newbee, survivors, Vietnam
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Thursday, April 16th, 2009
After basic training I went toFort Eustus Virgina for my AIT which I told you was a crew chief/door gunner on a helicopter. That is were I got my first taste of the helicopter…God it was fun to fly. I’ll always remember the first time I stood next to a huey and heard it take off …I’ll never forget that sound. The sound of a helicopter is the one unmistakable sound of Vietnam I will never forget. That sound can bring back many things…some of which I don’t want to rememeber, but it can also bring back some of the good times I had in Vietnam. Either way it is definately a sound I will never forget. Just the bloping sounds of the rotor blades can take me back to Dak Seang where we were shot down, or it can remind me of the times I actually got to fly the ship. You see every once in awhile we would have to transport some of the higher ups in country, and they never went to close to a fight, so it generally was a pretty safe day. On those days the peter pilot and I would trade nomex tops and I would sit right side and get to fly the ship. The peter pilots were new warrant officers in country and they would fly right side until they got enough experience to have their own ship. The warrant officers love to fire the M60 machine guns on the ships so after we would finish with the brass we would go and low level on a river somewhere and let the warrant’s fire the 60′s…they loved it…and I would get some unauthorized stick time. That very distinct sound can bring back the music of the late 60′s and 70′s… the hot LZ’s and the medivac’s…the combat assauslts and re-supple missions..I can see the kids that use to hang out at the base, I can taste the food, hear the language…with that sound comes Vietnam, and everything that comes with it.
Tags: Add new tag, AIT, combat assaults, crew chief, Dak Seang, door gunner, Fort Estus Virginia, helicopter, huey, m60 machine gun, medivac's, nomex flight suits, peter pilot, rotor blades
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Friday, April 10th, 2009
When I got to Fort Leonardwood in Mo. I quickly realized that there was going to be plenty of yelling and screaming. The Army wants to tear you down so they can build you back up the way they want you. The first of many times I got in trouble was on the very first day. The D.I. came up to this guy next to me named Brieman and asked (actually screamed) ” How much do you weigh Brieman?” He replied,” 240 Drill Sargent.” The DI yelled “When you leave here your going to be down to 140. I want you to pick up your bag and run around this company saying, Rub dub clang clang I’m a big O’ baby tank.” Well that brought a chuckle from me AND 50 push ups. While I was doing the push ups the drill seargent was laying right in front of me watching me. He said ” Chancellor, your going to hate me, but before you leave Fort Leonardwood I’m going to be your best friend…well he was partially right hahaha. I was a decent athelete in highschool so the physical part of basic wasn’t really that hard for me. The pushups, the running, the PT tests all came pretty easy. It was all the mind games that got me in trouble. As an adult today I still hate to be told what I have to do and I hate it when someone starts yelling and screaming. I quess I owe all that to my best friend at Fort Leonardwood.
About half way through basic they began to talk about Vietnam and how we were all going to die there if we didn’t pay attention to what they were trying to teach us. They said surviving Vietnam would be the hardest thing we would ever do, and they were right.
Tags: DI, drill seargent, Fort Leonardwood, Vietnam
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Friday, April 3rd, 2009
“Hey Chancellor, I heard you got your papers for Vietnam.” ” Yea, I did…no big deal, I’ll be back before you know it.” That was 1969, three years after I graduated from Calumet High School and 6 months after my first divorce.
The War? I didn’t know much about it. I knew we were in Vietnam and had people dying everyday…it was all over the news every night…but I was from a pretty tough place called Gary, Indiana where even today it’s known as the murder capital of the world…was I afraid…No…not then…but things would quickly change. At the end of basic training at Fort Leonardwood, Missouri we were given our MOS. For those of you that have forgotten what MOS means it is Military Occupational Specialties. It is a call sign for what you are going to do in the military. Everyone was getting 11B which meant infantry…when the DI called my name he said 67N20. I jumped up and said, “Alright! I’m not infantry.” The DI said, “Shut up and sit down…67N20 is a door gunner on a helicopter.” I was eventually assigned to the 119th Assault Helicopter Company and served in Vietnam from 1969 through 1970…A door gunner on a HU1H helicopter… how bad could it be…Flying in a helicopter sounded pretty cool…twenty year old kid that had no idea what was about to happen to him… going to be a door gunner with a life expectancy of 19 seconds in a fire fight… my life would never be the same.
Tags: 119th Assault Helicopter Company, Chancellor, door gunner, Fort Leonardwood, HU1H helicopter, Military Occupational Specialties, MOS, Vietnam, war
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