Hornet 33: Memoir of a Combat Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam by Ed Denny

Author:Ed Denny [Denny, Ed]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: McFarland
Published: 2016-10-07T04:00:00+00:00

28

CUT ME, CUT ME, GO AHEAD

After hovering there over the dead fire support base, with bodies everywhere and the haunting sound of rotors slapping swirling smoke serving as our Taps for the dead Americans, every fiber in my being ached with pain from being tensed like a spring all night and from the lack of sleep for so long. The last bed I’d been in was all the way back in Hawaii. By the time we returned to Chu Lai, that bad night had left me only wanting my bunk and for sleep to blot out my thoughts.

My hooch was silent, with everyone gone flying. Still fully dressed, boots and all, I flopped on my bed and stretched out, but sleep was a long time coming to me because my mind refused to shut down. My bunk was right next to the hooch door and up against the outside wall. Sometime after I’d finally dropped off, there was a loud banging on the wall, right next to my head. Bang, Bang, Bang.

Something was hitting our hooch wall. I got up and looked outside to see what all the ruckus was about. There were two guys fighting, crashing into the side of the building. I hollered at them loudly, telling them to take their bullshit somewhere else, but they ignored me. I saw the one who was pushing the fight had a knife out, a switchblade knife with about a six-inch blade flashing in the light. The second guy was trying his best to hold off the knife. I hollered a stream of profanity at them again, and the attacker finally looked at me said something in Spanish. I guessed it was to keep out of what was happening, that this fight wasn’t my business.

Horseshit if it wasn’t my business: I was trying to sleep in my hooch right there, so all of their damned noise was certainly my business. Take this somewhere else, you idiots. I sure didn’t want this sort of aggravation. I was way too tired for any of that. Get away from my hooch and cut out all the damned noise, you two fools.

The guy wielding the knife was wearing a wife-beater tee shirt, a little sleeveless strapped tee shirt, and he had ugly tattoos all over him and a stupid-looking bandana of some kind wrapped around his head, like he was trying to look like some gang-member thug, a Pachuco Mafioso, and he obviously was totally out of control, in a violent, hot rage.

They continued and the tattooed guy with the knife soon overpowered the other guy, and the knife blade slowly but steadily sank in the guy’s belly up to the hilt. All of that was certainly my business then. I couldn’t very well stand there and watch one fool murder another fool up against the side of my hooch. I drew my pistol, went down the steps, and screamed at them to stop. The bloody knife came out, and the tattooed guy looked me

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