Chickenhawk by Robert Mason, first published by Viking-Penguin in 1983, is now in its 23rd printing. ©1983 by Robert Mason Chickenhawk (Chapers 1-4) Author's Note This is a personal narrative of what I saw in Vietnam and how it affected me. The events all happened; the chronology and geography are correct to the best of my knowledge. The names of the characters, other than the names that are famous, and unimportant characteristics of all the persons in the book have been changed so that they bear no resemblance to any of the actual people in order to preserve their privacy and anonymity. I'd like to put in an apology to the grunts, if they resent that term, because I have nothing but respect for them and the conditions under which they served. I hope that these recollections of my experiences will encourage other veterans to talk. I think it is impossible to know too much about the Vietnam era and its effects on individuals and society. Instead of dwelling on the political aspects of the war, I have concentrated on the actual condition of being a helicopter pilot in Vietnam in 1965-66. The events, I hope, will speak for themselves. I want to thank Martin Cruz Smith, Knox Burger, Gerald Howard, Constance Cincotti, Jack and Betty Mason, Gerald Towler, Bruce and Susan Doyle, and Jim and Eileen Helms for their generous aid and encouragement. I am particularly indebted to my wife, Patience, for her unflagging support in difficult times, both in the writing of the book and in the life that it's about. Prologue I joined the army in 1964 to be a helicopter pilot. I knew at the time that I could theoretically be sent to a war, but I was ignorant enough to trust it would be a national emergency if I did go. I knew nothing of Vietnam or its history. I did not know that the French had taken Vietnam, after twenty years of trying, in 1887. I did not know that our country had Chickenhawk Sampler 2 once supported Ho Chi Minh against the Japanese during the Second World War. I did not know that after the war the country that thought it was finally free of colonialism was handed back to the French by occupying British forces with the consent of the Americans. I did not know that Ho Chi Minh then began fighting to drive the French out again, an effort that lasted from 1946 until the fall of the French at Dien Bien Phu, in 1954. I did not know that free elections scheduled by the Geneva Conference for 1956 were blocked because it was known that Ho Chi Minh would win. I did not know that our government backed an oppressive and corrupt leader, Ngo Dinh Diem, and later participated in his overthrow and his death, in 1963. I did not know any of these facts. But the people who decided to have the war did. I did know that I wanted to fly. And there was nothing I wanted to fly more than helicopters. Chapter One Wings The experimental division authorized to try out [the air assault] concept is stirring up the biggest inter-service controversy in years. There are some doubts about how practical such a helicopter-borne force would be in a real war. -US. News & World Report, April 20, 1964 June 1964-July 1965 As a child I had dreams of levitation. In these dreams I could float off the ground only when no one watched. The ability would leave me just when someone looked. I was a farm kid. My father had operated his own and other farms, and a market, in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and West Virginia. When I was nine he started a large poultry farm west of Delray Beach, Florida. Here, in between chores, I daydreamed about flying to the extent that I actually built tall towers to get off the ground. By the time I started high school my father had switched from farming to real estate, and we moved to town. In my junior year a friend, a fledgling pilot, taught me Chickenhawk Sampler 3 the basics of handling a small plane. The airplane was a vast improvement over my dreamy mechanisms. It worked every time. By the time I graduated, I had a private pilot's license. In 1962, after two years of sketchy attendance at the University of Florida, I dropped out to travel around the country. A year later, in Philadelphia, two very important things happened to me. I met Patience, my wife-to-be, and I applied to be a pilot candidate in the army. I thought I had finally achieved my goal of goals when I arrived at the U. S. Army Primary Helicopter School at Forth Wolters, Texas, in June 1964. I drove through the main gate. Helicopters flitted over the nearby mesas; helicopters crisscrossed overhead; helicopters swarmed everywhere. My companion, Ray Ward, craned his head out the window and grinned. He had also joined the army to fly helicopters. We drove up to a group of concrete buildings that looked like dormitories. A sign out front said WARRANT OFFICER CANDIDATES REPORT HERE. We were impressed. Having gone through basic training at Fort Dix and a month of advanced infantry training at Fort Polk, we thought that all buildings in the army were World War II vintage, wooden and green. I stopped the car. "Hey, this is nice." Ray smiled. "Ask that guy where we should put our baggage." The guy he was referring to was walking quietly toward us, a sergeant wearing a white helmet and bright armbands. But we were no longer trainees and had no need to be afraid. "Say, Sergeant," I asked amiably, "where should we put our luggage?" "Luggage?" He flinched at the civilian word. Neither Ray nor I had on uniforms. "Uh, yeah. We have to check in before five, and we need a place to change into our uniforms." "You're candidates?" he asked calmly, quietly, with the ill-hidden contempt I had witnessed so many times before in basic training. "Uh-huh." I nodded, bracing myself. "What the fuck are you doing driving around here in civvies? You think you're tourists?" Chickenhawk Sampler 4 "You get that car over there in that lot. Now! You will carry your luggage back here, double time! Now, git!" "Yes, Sergeant," I said automatically. As I backed away, the sergeant watched, glaring, fists on hips. "Turn the car around," said Ray. "Not enough time." I backed all the way to the parking lot. "Oh, shit," said Ray. "This is not gonna be a picnic." Neither of us had suspected that the army taught people how to fly helicopters the same way they taught them to march and shoot. But they did. The 120 candidates in our class were known as WOCs-for "warrant-officer candidates." A warrant officer is appointed, not commissioned, and specializes in a particular skill. There are electronic-technician warrants, supply warrants, and warrant-officer pilots, among many other specialties. The warrant ranks-WO- 1, CW2, CW-3, and CW-4--correspond to second lieutenant, first lieutenant, captain, and major, and warrant officers receive the same privileges and nearly the same pay as commissioned officers. When I first heard of the warrant-officer-aviator program, I was a civilian and cared little what the rank meant. All I knew was that they flew. The flight program was nine months long. It began with one month of preflight training and four months of primary flight training at Fort Wolters, followed by four more months of advanced flight training at Fort Rucker, Alabama. Preflight training was a harassment period designed to weed out candidates who lacked leadership potential. If you made it through that initiation, you got to the flight line and actually began to learn to fly. Then they tried to wash you out for mistakes or slowness in flight training, on top of the regular hassles in the warrant officer program. Preflighters ran wherever they went, sat on the front edge of their chairs at the mess hall, and had to spit-shine the floors and keep precisely arranged clothing in their closets. We were allowed to leave the base only for two hours on Sunday, to go to church. It was the same kind of bullshit I had gone through in basic training, except worse. The TAC sergeants assigned us to various slots in a student company: squad leaders, platoon leaders, first sergeant, platoon sergeants, and so on. One of us would be the student company commander. We would hold these positions for a week while Chickenhawk Sampler 5 the instructors tried to drive us crazy and graded our reactions. Unfortunately I was assigned to be the first student company commander. Some seasoned army veterans had volunteered to be flight candidates. Others, like Ray and me, were just out of basic. To be fair, God should have put one of the experienced guys in the company-commander slot. But God, personified in the form of TAC Sergeant Wayne Malone, was seldom fair. My first official act as the student CO was to get the company to the mess hall, four blocks away. Pretty simple stuff. Attention. Left face. Forward, march. Stop. Eat. But Sergeant Malone, his fellows, and the senior classmen created obstacles. They stood directly in front of me, yelling in my face, while I tried to tell the company to come to attention. "Well, candidate. Are you going to the mess hall or not?" screamed a senior classman whose nose almost touched mine.