Sgt. Mike Viet Nam Humor
- Thread starter AJ
- Start date
I went through this too.
Was "somewhat" out of it.
My DI asked if I was ok and I said, "yea, I think so".
Only reason I survived was a real Doc was near and heard me.
Was "somewhat" out of it.
My DI asked if I was ok and I said, "yea, I think so".
Only reason I survived was a real Doc was near and heard me.
OP
AJ
US Veteran
Well I am back from the frozen tundra of Pa. to the sunny climate of Florida.
I can honestly say I saw some Chief's working and actually getting dirty. However there were some that never left the shop or the Chief's Mess. Just telling their sailors what to do, no hands on.........
I can honestly say I saw some Chief's working and actually getting dirty. However there were some that never left the shop or the Chief's Mess. Just telling their sailors what to do, no hands on.........
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AJ
US Veteran
I got out the West End Dispensary at PI and back to a new platoon after having pneumonia. The Senior DI thought that I was not motivated enough. Actually was still recovering. He sent me to One Day Motivation, to "get me straight". The last course of the One Day Motivation was a low crawl through a ditch filled with muddy water, it was in the low 40's. As I was standing in formation after, I I was coughing, sneezing and shivering, not to mention dripping water. An Officer in dress uniform stopped in front of me and asked me what was wrong. I told him I had just gotten out of the hospital with pneumonia. He turned and told the Senior ODM DI to put me in his POV and take back to my barracks with the heater on high. He did not argue, was real unhappy though. The Officer followed up back to the barracks. There he had a heart to heart with my Senior DI, about how sick I was and how stupid he was. My Senior DI was not happy. Come to find out that the Officer was the senior Chaplin on PI. He checked on me once a week until I graduated to make sure I was better and no one was playing games with me.
Oakland Army Depot, July, 1969, they had two long lines with two medics per line. Blood splatter? No problem, just wipe it down with the same bloody rag. It's a miracle we all didn't get Hep-C.
Welcome back AJ. I'm back too...sort of.
OP
AJ
US Veteran
Have done the same several times in unit deployments, both with needles and air guns. Wipe you with a swab of alcohol and shoot!
Retired W4 ........sort of?
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AJ
US Veteran
Yea, minus about 10" of my colon.
Sorry to hear that. Will PM you. Wife has had similar experience.
My MP company got all 13 SE Asia shots all at once one fine morning while we were out in the woods playing war games. Down in between the long double line of medics in their white T shirts we went, us in T shirts with fatigue shirt in hand ..pfft, pfft, pfft...and every so often someone would flinch and get a big bloody slash on their arm from the damned air gun, and then someone else would see the blood and pass out. What a goatrope that was. Apparently it was a training exercise for some field hospital.
It did not go well. A little later, two guys were rushed to the base hospital in shock, and the rest of us had malaise for the rest of the day. My lymph nodes were so swollen, I felt like I had a baseball under each armpit, and all the energy of a wet sock. A few days later I was in the base hospital for other reasons, and saw on this red wall in foot tall yellow letters the stenciled words:
THE FOLLOWING SHOTS WILL NOT BE GIVEN IN CONJUNCTION WITH.....
The medics had given us two of them on the list with the others we got that day.
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Hard to put a LIKE on that one.
OP
AJ
US Veteran
I've always tried to find a silver lining in a black cloud. There were two from that black day with air guns. And there were only 12 shots, as polio was oral.
1. Both guys hospitalized fully recovered and we all got over our malaise in about two days.
2. We were issued a shot record, a yellow bifold card that listed all our shots with our name and other personal data and a date for the shot. A few years later in 1971-72, my company sent me to South Africa for a project, and I didn't have to get any more shots. Yay! At the end of the project, being a young single man, I wanted to see all I could on the way home, including my bucket list item, the Egyptian pyramids and other ancient wonders there. When I arrived at Egyptian immigration from Kenya, they saw Kenya and other countries I visited stamped in my passport, and said I could not leave the airport and would be quarantined until the next available flight back to the USA.
I was crestfallen, thinking it had something to do with Egypt and Israel being at war at the time. But, I asked why, and the guy told me I might have been exposed to yellow fever in my travels, and therefore could not enter Egypt.
Guess what I had in my shaving kit - Ta Da! That yellow booklet, with a not yet expired record of a yellow fever immunization shot. The guy looked puzzled - I guess that shot was not common - and then with a big smile welcomed me to Egypt. I had a great week there.
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I still have my shot record card. Had to get it updated for Panama, 1985/86.
I was chosen to fly with a young Captain who was the Battalion Safety Officer (REMF). On a dead head formation of 9 ships he said "I'll show you how to fly formation in the 187th." Here is the whole story of that day.
Mid-Air Blade Strike
And We Survived
Here is an incident you won't read in company operations reports or after action reports. There were maintenance logs of the repairs made to the two helicopters but those are long gone. The good old boy's system protected the responsible party, and I am talking about commissioned officers protecting their own.
I was a fairly new pilot in the 187th Assault Helicopter Company (call sign Crusaders) but I had already racked up plenty of combat assault formation flying time. This particular day, late in 1969 I was assigned to fly with a captain who was not in our unit. He was the Battalion Safety Officer of our higher headquarters, the 269 CAB in Cu Chi. He had been in country longer than me but I had more combat flying experience than he. He was designated as an Aircraft Commander and I was not. The mission that day was pretty mundane and involved troop movements in a nine ship formation of UH-1H helicopters. On one dead head sorte (no troops aboard) the young captain declared, "I'll show you how to fly formation in the 187th." We were chalk three in a heavy left formation which put us flying off the lead ship's left side with two other ships flying off our left and four other ships in a V formation behind the first five. Now the Crusaders flew pretty tight formations but the captain was actually over lapping our rotor blades with the lead ship. It was nerve racking considering there were significant up and down drafts that day but that did not deter the good captain from showing off. Suddenly there was a very loud noise and strong vibration. One of the gunners in the rear came on the intercom and said, "I think you hit Lead sir." The captain said, "No, I did not hit him" and then the other gunner repeated his buddy's call. Moments later Lead came on the radio to declare that he had a severe vibration and was breaking formation. One of the gunners said, "See, you hit him sir. I saw it." We had picked up a pretty severe vibration in our airframe but continued to fly for a while. I told the captain that we should land to check things out but he was in total denial. Myself and the rest of the crew finally convinced him to land and he said something to the effect that as battalion safety officer he should go check out what happened to Lead.
Lead had landed in a large field and we landed to his left rear. Leads rotors had slowed down enough by that time that I could see that he was missing several inches from both rotor blades. The good captain shut down our engine and exited the aircraft to walk over to the other helicopter. As our rotors slowed down I could see that we were missing about six inches from both of our blades as well. I thought to myself that it was a miracle that we were still alive! Our rotor blades had contacted Lead's rotor blades so perfectly that approximately six inches of the four blades were sheared off, yet both helicopters continued to fly. By the grace of God the eight people in those two helicopter survive what one would think should have been a complete catastrophe, not to mention what could have happened to the other ships in the formation.
What was really odd to me was that the responsible party was not held accountable. Nothing happed to him and life went on in the war zone as if the whole incident had not happened. I believe if a lowly WO1 like myself had been at the controls that day, I would have been before a Flight Evaluation Board that would have taken my wings away, never to fly again. A lot of life and death things happen in the heat of combat and a lot of screw ups are over looked, especially when everyone lives, but this incident should never have happened. In some minds it really did not happen. I know that it did.
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AJ
US Veteran
Still have mine. This one goes from 1980-1995. I have a second one somewhere it goes from 1969-1980. Oh, the pain!!
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AJ
US Veteran
I was in fixed wing attack aircraft in the Corps. Have seen stuff swept under the rug and some not. Only remember one aircrew losing their wings for a stupid stunt. It was really dumb!!
AJ
He sounds like a ring knocker, protected by the WPPA.
You all really dodged a bullet that day. Overlapping rotors isn't even air show stuff. He should have lost his wings.
There's that yellow - thanks for confirming my memory isn't all that bad even after 50+ years
OP
AJ
US Veteran
I was the recipient of three separate Yellow Fever shots, 27 May 1969, 11 April 1980 and 15 March 1990. Guess I spent to much time overseas..... Lucky me!
