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I enlisted in the Army in August, 1968. After receiving my Warrant and graduating from flight school in August 1969, I was assigned to the 60th Aviation Company at Ft Meade MD. In March 1970 I completed aeromedical evacuation training at Ft Sam Houston, TX and deployed to Vietnam in April, 1970 where I was assigned as a DustOff pilot to the 45th Medical Company (Air Ambulance).

I do not have a good memory for the names and dates during my Vietnam tour, but I will include them when possible in describing the some of events I encountered that year. The majority of my missions were flown in the III Corps area of South Vietnam with occasional flights into the bottom of II Corps , the top of IV Corps and Cambodia. My call sign was DustOff 23 with the 45th Medical Company (Air Ambulance). I spent the average of 5-6 days a week in the field supporting US military, South Vietnamese military, Korean military, Australian military, New Zealand military and Vietnamese civilians. At times I also carried wounded POW's (VC and NVA) and Kit Carson Scouts to US medical centers. The remaining 1-2 days a weeks was spent at the 45th's Long Binh location next to the 93rd Evac Hospital.

During my tour, the "Vietnamization of the war" was in full motion. When I began my tour about 40% of our medevac missions were US military and allies versus 60% Vietnamese. When I departed country in 1971, that ratio had changed to 10% US/allies and 90% Vietnamese. In addition, the US/allies missions changed in nature from "gun shot and booby trap" wounds to FUO's (fever unknown origin) and non-combat accidents.

I flew 998 combat hours between April 14, 1970 and April 17, 1971. We were unarmed aircraft, covered with air ambulance red crosses and flew about 85% of our missions as a single ship without gunship support. My best recollection is that we averaged getting shot at about once or twice a week. During that year, my aircraft took hits on eight different occasions, was shot down twice and was shot up once while on the ground in an LZ.

During my very first mission as a pilot, I glanced over my shoulder as they were throwing a South Vietnamese casualty on board the aircraft. The top of the skull had been taken off by a large round, and as the body came to a halt, the brains slid across the cabin floor. The 22 year old combat seasoned AC (Aircraft Commander) turned to me, reading my sickened facial expression and said,"Take it from me, you learn not to look back there...". From then on I did so only rarely, but the crewchiefs and medics lived with it daily. They truly were the unsung heroes of that war.

After that incident and about one week later, I experienced "taking fire" for the very first time. It was a night mission. Over one third of my missions that year were at night. I was flying the aircraft and CW2 Rich Ziemba (Aircraft Commander) was in the left seat. As with all AC's, when flying with green new pilots, Rich was apprehensive as to how I would react the first time we took fire. As we were approaching an LZ, several short but continuous bursts of tracer rounds came streaming up at our aircraft. We were blackened out but the enemy was following our sound and the tracers were coming in our direction off the nose of our helicopter. I had forgotten to turn off my NAV (navigational) radio in the excitement, and was hearing the Beatles on AFVN radio singing "Happiness Is A Warm Gun" while simultaneously banking our aircraft left, then right, then left again in an attempt to avoid the tracer rounds. I instantly burst out laughing at the absurdity of it all. Rich thought I was "losing it" and started to grab the aircraft controls, but I told him to flip up (on) his NAV radio. He listened, as did the rest of the nervous crew, grinned and said, "I think you are going to be all right over here.".

CW2 Spitzer and I were on standby at Nui Dat when we received word that another DustOff bird (CW2 Zachman and WO1 Harper) had been shot down during a hoist mission near Ham Tam. The coordinates were near the same place where we had lost a Dustoff ship and three crewmembers to hostile fire while performing another hoist mission a month before. We were the first bird on location, but could not see or identify the colored smoke grenades the securing ground forces were popping for us under a triple canopy jungle. The only way we found them was that the crashed DustOff's tailboom had broken off when they had impacted and had remained on top of the jungle canopy 120 feet above them. We lowered our aircraft about 5 - 10 feet into a hole in the canopy to get as close to the ground as possible, but ended up using our entire cable as they had dropped through 120+ feet of trees. When Zachman came up on the hoist his entire face was gone...I only knew it was him from his name tag...it was like looking at two eyes staring back from a hamburger patty. He had lost his face when his loose "chicken plate" (ceramic chest armor plate) wiped it out as they dropped through the trees. I saw him one year later in New Jersey where he already undergone seven operations on his face and still had more reconstruction to go. Harper broke just about every bone in his body including his femur but also rode up on our jungle penetrator with the help of our medic. We were lucky, all four crewmembers survived and were eventually evacuated from the 93rd Evac Hospital to Japan and then States.

One day, a couple of months later when I was an AC, I was assigned a "stand by" at Tan An. Neal Casperson was my crewchief and Jim Katz (1LT) was my copilot. I do not remember my medic's name or that of the crewchief-in-training. We had been called into a hot LZ west of Cai Le and Cai Be to retrieve several "urgent ARVN gunshot wounds" from a company sized element that was still in enemy contact. They were being supported by 6 Cobra AH-1 gunships, 2 OV-10's, 2 Skyraiders and 2 F-4's. We were just landing when a large automatic weapon opened fire on us. This was one of only two times I ever saw the person who was firing at me. He was a brave man. He stood up in the middle of a covering napalm run and began firing at us. I watched the rounds walk their way across the water and into the aircraft at the same time I watched him disappear in wall of flames from the napalm. The Master Caution light came on instantaneously with the sounds of the rounds hitting our aircraft, along with the sweet smell of hydraulic fluid. Things were hot and heavy that day. I remember one of the walking wounded getting hit, spinning around and floating face down in the water out my cockpit door. Neal had been loading a litter patient when the patient's head took a round and exploded. The entire company of ARVNs, who normally would provide LZ perimeter defense, were all huddled together behind a small mound out my right front (1 to 2 o'clock position). They clearly were losing the firefight. I told my crew to abandon the ship and to take cover. My cockpit door was jammed and Neal helped me out. After a few more napalm and gunship passes a slick landed (shielded by our aircraft) and we loaded the remaining wounded on it. During one trip with a wounded ARVN over one shoulder and my 38 pistol, holster and radio over the other , I stepped into a flooded bomb or artillery crater that went instantly from knee deep water to neck deep water. I held on to the patient, but lost my survival radio and weapon. I did not like being on the ground in a hot LZ, so I returned to our aircraft and inspected it for damage. I returned to my crew and told them that I was going to re crank and try to fly the ship without hydraulics. I gave them the choice of leaving with the slick. They all chose to risk it with me. I re cranked our bird and called the air support to let them know that we were coming out of the LZ. They laid down some suppressive fire while we took off. The controls were frozen and difficult to manhandle due to no hydraulic assistance, but I was so scared, I was able to manage. I remember vividly, just as we hit translational lift, thinking that maybe this was a stupid idea after all. If the engine quit now, we could never auto rotate, now that we had no collective control. Maybe I didn't see all the bullet hole damage during my quick inspection while under fire, and missed a few critical ones. But, it was too late now. We climbed slowly to about 1,000 feet and crossed the Mekong River and made a "run on" landing at a foamed down runway at Vinh Long. After coming to a complete stop, the aircraft was surrounded by a lot of people to congratulate us and inspect the damage. I lost all control of my legs for about 5 minutes and had to remain in my cockpit seat for that time. Later the flight surgeon told me that it probably was a reaction from so much adrenalin in my my system for a long period of time. I was informed that my crew and I were being put in for a Bronze Star and a Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, but weeks later only received a bill for the pistol and radio I lost in combat.

I had another mission with CW2 Stan Shafer near Saigon. A 5 ton truck ran over a Lambretta motorized tricycle wagon with over a dozen people crowded in it. All were killed instantly. The gas tank had exploded and the wreckage had caught on fire. On short approach to a hover, I saw smoldering bodies strewn all over. I had a hard time setting the aircraft down without having the skid landing on a body or part of one. My rotor wash picked up the burnt and smoldering body of a baby missing one leg and one arm. I watched it roll away. After touch down I gave the controls to Stan, opened my cockpit door, leaned out and puked. This was the only time I lost it. I wasn't ready for it. The mission had been called in as a "single US urgent psych ambulatory". Urgents were always liters not ambulatories...and meant loss of life or limb was imminent...we had never heard of an Urgent Ambulatory or an Urgent Psych...it turned out to be the driver of the 5 ton Army truck was the mental casualty from the crash...it all added up, but too late for me and my stomach.

Another time we had a mission to retrieve two US Army KIA's from an OH-58 "wire strike" near Rock City. They had struck the only remaining strand of power line remaining between two towers of a destroyed power line. The aircraft had caught fire and one body had stayed in the aircraft, while the other one had been thrown clear. We retrieved the one body but had to leave the other body behind for a later pick up. It was so hot that our medic had to use a metal rotor blade tie down rod to roll it on a stretcher, upon which it started burning through the stretcher.

Then there was the Navy SEAL team extraction at night on the Mekong River near Ben Tre. We had to hover with the landing light on and one skid on the bank and one over the water waiting for the VC to open up as the team paddled across the river. Thank God it was raining cats and dogs that night and we took no hits. One SEAL, about 19 years old or so, had his shoulder and arm traumatically amputated by a close range RPG round that didn't explode. Our medic used ace bandages and hemostats to stop the bleeding. As bad off as he was, he was one of the better off of his team. He helped our medic and crew chief with the others. He smoked a cigarette on the way to the 93rd Evac and kept wanting reassurance from us that he wouldn't be split up from his team.

There was another time down by Ben Tre when we took fire through the belly of the aircraft as we took off from a village. One of the rounds went through my medics arm and missed my head by a few inches. We lost our instruments and I had to land briefly to check out the bird before flying back to Long Binh. We dropped the medic at the 93rd Evac and red x'ed the bird. I got another UH-1H, preflighted it and returned to the field. We originally had a AP or UPI reporter assigned to us for the week and was on board our aircraft that morning. He got shrapnel in his camera case from the AK-47 rounds. He was supposed to stay with us in the field for the week, but decided he had enough photo's after only 2 hrs and 3 missions.

Then there was a first light LRRP extraction out west of Cai Le/Cai Be in III Corps near the Plain of Reeds. The four of them were hidden in a small (half dozen tombstones) cemetery located in the center corner of four rice paddies. They had been in contact the night before and had some minor non-life threatening wounds...hence the first light extraction. Since there was no cover, I did a "high overhead spiral approach" and came in a little too hot...did a side flare to keep my tail out of the dikes. There was a couple of inches of water over the ground which messed up my dawn ground depth perception enough that when I set it down I still had enough sidewards momentum that our bird slid right up to the mound of tombstones and they just took one step...hopped on board and we were out of there. Needless to say I scared the $@%! out of myself and the 3 other crewmembers...I thought for sure we were going to roll...no one could speak as our hearts were in our throats...but the LRRP guys were whooping it up saying that was the greatest flying they had ever seen...we averted a few short bursts of small arms fire ...and popped back up to 1500 ft ...dropped them off at the 93rd Evac...and then I received my verbal abuse from everyone.