GUTS 'N GUNSHIPS: What it was Really Like to Fly Combat Helicopters in Vietnam by Garrison Mark

Author:Garrison, Mark [Garrison, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Mark Garrison
Published: 2015-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

32.

Crashing a Party of Buffaloes

There’s one other incident involving the pissed off buffalo. One day I was commanding a minigun ship, and winging on another Croc, known as Tricky Dick Harbors at Soui Doui.

Harbors was a tall, slender fellow, who always wore his cap with the bill pulled down low in the front, until it rested against the tops of his aviation sunglasses. This gave the appearance of someone observing the outside world through an impenetrable safe haven of some sort.

WO1 Richard Harbors (Tricky Dick)

Harbors had been shot down in enemy territory on more than one occasion, barely escaping with his life, as he ran through rice paddies, with dozens of enemy soldiers in hot pursuit. The poor, unlucky bastard had also had countless mechanical problems, including outright mid-air engine failures, which resulted in more crash landings.

I think this explains why he was rather suspicious and withdrawn. Who wouldn’t have been? Harbors had come to the conclusion that if something bad had not already happened, it soon would.

On this day at Soui Doui, the operations jeep raced down and rudely interrupted our Lima Charlie siesta, and said we were to scramble immediately to fight the bad guys who had just engaged a LRRP Team.

We quickly cranked the aircraft to depart to the LRRP location, and I hovered by the side of the dirt strip runway, as I watched Tricky Dick take off to the west. I then fell in behind him and we started to gain speed and altitude. All at once, Harbors started to lose altitude, and made a steep left turn down the hill by the Montagnard village as he continued to descend.

He calmly said into the radio, “Going down. Power failure.”

I followed him and watched his touchdown. He put the aircraft into a small clearing covered with native grasses, and several grazing water buffalo.

He did a nice job with the landing, under the circumstances, but he did spread the skids (landing gear) and scratched it up a little.

I immediately noticed two things. The first was that there was smoke coming from the engine compartment, and I worried there might be an ensuing fire. The second was that the buffalo had decided that they didn’t care much for the intrusion. As a matter of fact, they looked downright enraged as they circled the wounded bird.

On the radio, I said, with some urgency, “Trick, get out of that aircraft! It might burn!”

There was a short silence followed by his transmission,

“Pigpen, do you see any flames, or just smoke?”

“Just smoke right now,” I replied.

After a long silence, he said, ‘I’m not goin’ anywhere unless this thing bursts into flames. Then I still might not go anywhere. Can you see these goddamned crazy buffalo down here? They’re flat pissed off. They’ll kill our asses if we get out of this thing.”

I appreciated his plight but the way he said it was so damned funny that I absolutely cracked up in the cockpit.

After what seemed like a long wait, the Montagnards came and got their animals, and we got Harbors and his aircraft out, that fortunately did not burn.

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