“Yeah, I know, and good luck with that. You’re too good of a pilot to be stuck in that place. You’re going to waste your time there,” he interrupted.
“Well, sir, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Can you change those orders to send me to Rucker or Savannah?” I asked.
“Shit, Cory, do I have a magic wand? No, I can’t change your orders. If I could, I would have as soon as they came in. No way,” he said. I’m screwed. “Now wait one. There is a way you can change your orders, however,” he added.
Now I was excited. “There is? How?”
“You can extend for six months and stay in Nam.” He was grinning. Did he have something to do with my RFO? I wondered.
“Sir, you’re kidding. Hell! I’ve already had my cherry busted, had a door gunner wounded, had a hydraulic failure and a compressor stall. Add to that, I’m over thirteen hundred hours flying here.” I didn’t mention the aircraft that had gone down with the pitch change horn failure, the one I’d almost ridden in. He knew that was on the score card without me mentioning it.
“Yeah, you’ve racked up some time, but that’s the only choice you have. Think about it.” And he headed to the bar.
Seldom did we discuss business with the CO in a formal setting. He and his XO were easy to talk to, as were most of the RLOs now in the unit. My platoon leader came over and dragged up a chair as I sat at the bar.
“I hear you’re going to go to Fort Ord,” Captain Beauchamp said. He was a new guy, having been with us about two months now. Easy going and very likable. He was an artillery officer from New York City. He wanted to open a haberdashery when he got out. I had to ask him what a haberdashery was.
“A men’s tailor shop” was his response, as if everyone knew what that was. I bought my jeans off the rack.
“Yeah. I guess the only way of getting out of it is to extend my tour by six months.”
“Well, why not?” he asked.
“Sir, I’ve been pressing my luck. Between Night Hunter Killer missions, combat assaults and all the other stuff—”
“Well, extend for some outfit that doesn’t do this crazy shit. Extend for a VIP flight out of Saigon. Your dad is there, isn’t he?”
“Sir, I never thought of that. Shit, I could live good, but I don’t know. I probably wouldn’t do well with all the spit and polish that goes with one of those outfits. I also don’t care to be around field grades that think they’re too good to be with the common grunt,” I said, thinking back to when Mike and I had been asked to leave the “O” Club with Dad that time.
“What did you want to fly when you came out of flight school?” he asked.
“Truthfully, sir, I wanted to fly medivac,” I told him.
“God, you’re nuts. Why?” he asked.
“Well, they don’t fly formations, which, before I came here, I didn’t like.”
“But you do now, and you’re one of the best in formation that I’ve seen.”
“I had a good teacher when I first got here. What he taught me, I’ve been passing on to you.”
“Why else were you looking at medevac?”
“I like helping guys. Grunts need someone who’s willing to get in and get them, especially when they’re in bad shape. I just thought medevac would be a good fit for me. Besides, nurses are with medevac units,” I added with a smile.
“Well, extend for the Forty-Fourth Med Brigade, where all the medevac birds are located,” he instructed.
“I hadn’t thought of that. Sure as shit wouldn’t extend for helping the Vietnamese.”
“Yeah, why not?” he asked.
“Sir, I’m convinced that these people could give a rat’s ass about who the government is. They want to raise their families and grow their rice in peace and quiet. They’d be just as happy to see our asses out of here and the Commies in charge as long as they leave them alone. Look how often we get hit with mortars or rockets and they say nothing to us but didi out of here at fifteen hundred or thereabouts. They know it’s coming, but will they tell us? No way!” Thinking out loud, I added, “Now I would come back to help our grunts. God knows they need it. I could go home on a thirty-day leave and come back to go there. Thanks, sir. I’ll do that right now.” I finished off my beer and headed for the orderly room to fill out the paperwork.
What I didn’t hear was the conversation between the major and Captain Beauchamp. It was something to the effect of “Okay, we got him to extend. Now we just need to get him to change his mind and extend to stay here.” At this point, the US Army was running out of pilots. Flight schools were at capacity, but between normal tours being up and guys getting out, as well as crew losses, the demand was beyond the supply of pilots. We had twenty aircraft in the unit and were supposed to have forty-one pilots, barely enough pilots to put two pilots in the cockpit of each at one time. We had on hand enough pilots to launch only seventeen aircraft. We had never gotten a mission requiring all twenty aircraft, the most being sixteen at one time, which usually accounted for two in scheduled maintenance at the same time and the others down for unplanned maintenance.
“Okay, how do we get Cory to extend for this unit?” That was the question, and Captain Wehr, our XO, came up with an answer: make Cory the unit instructor pilot. Our unit had one instructor pilot, who was also rotating home and out of the Army at the end of the month. We had a new pilot that had attended the instructor course right out of flight school but was so new he wasn’t even being considered for AC. A new instructor pilot hadn’t been chosen, and there were limited choices. Had to be an aircraft commander, and preferably someone who’d previously been a flight instructor at one of the flight schools. However, the major put that last requirement in the toilet, if we had a toilet.
“This isn’t flight school. I want an instructor that can teach how we fly in combat and who has done it. Besides, we have no former instructor pilots.”