Bud Willis' Blog

The planes that flew south the other day were supporting Operation Orange, several miles southwest. It’s still grinding on. I have yet to be involved or to hear any details. 

The previously mentioned all-squadron farewell party for the departing pilots was a huge success. We consume a few cases of beer, colas, and the better part of a chicken farm. There was no steak, but burgers cooked over charcoal are hard to beat. 

The big news continues to be uprising in Danang. The town has been closed to all military traffic. The demonstrators have issued a statement that any U.S. helicopter landing at the I Corps headquarters would be fired upon. (That’s where I landed with General Chuan.) Each day becomes more ludicrous. We can’t even fly over the city we were sent to protect in the center of our own tactical area of responsibility. 

To make things even more skittish for us, because of truck transportation issues, we now have to refuel in Danang after each flight just a few hundred yards from where all this chaos is taking place. We mask all our frustration with constant humor almost as though we welcome the next flaming hoop we’re asked to leap through. Even the most serious career military tight-ass would love to crack a little smile at some of the absurdity. The war is something that we all have in common. We know we are all going to need each other survive it. 

Today, I was part of a two plane detachment to Chu Lai to deliver some generals for a briefing on Operation Orange. We had to wait down there for several hours, so I went over to see some of my buddies from VMO-1 in New River, who had just arrived in country. I felt like a crusty old veteran. They all had a million questions, but I mostly steered the conversation toward what they did on their respective 30 day leave times and kept things light-hearted. We have some really great guys in both these VMO squadrons- no sense scaring the holy crap out of them on their first day in country. They would find out soon enough. They were eager for advice. All I could think to tell them was to fly as often as they could. 

Tomorrow, I am scheduled to go north again to Hue Phu Bai for a couple of days. 

Well, this afternoon I was snapped in. It was a gunship escort of a truck convoy from here to Tam Ky about 30 miles south of here along Route One. So much for the aforementioned TAOR radius! There were two hops: one with Bill Kirby and one with Major Plamondon. I was co-pilot on both, and they were quiet and uneventful. We just flew in circles at a comfortable altitude, flying cover for the convoy for four hours. Kirby and I talked on the intercom, and he gave me a few pointers. Plamondon was as new as I was, and we both figured it out as we went. 

When we finished at 1800, I learned that several pilots had been diverted to Chu Lai to check out some kind of enemy activity down there. They will be gone all night, and I am currently standing in for one of them, which means I will sleep in the ready room in case we’re called. That’s just as well since I don’t have my own bed. I’m still sleeping on Ron’s dirty sheets. Other beds came open, but I decided to stay in Ron’s bed until he comes back because I like his roommates. The downside is that Ron’s bed is filthy. He’s been gone several days and the sand covers everything in hooches. If you don’t make your bed and cover it with a poncho, it gathers a thick layer of dirt while you’re away. He may have some clean sheets somewhere, but I don’t want to rummaging through his stuff. 

The chaplain just brought a big Claxton Christmas fruitcake into the ready room. That shipment took awhile to come from Texas, but you know fruitcake; it’s still okay if you don’t mind trimming off a little mold here and there. Obviously, that Christmas package was not a five day delivery. 

The food in the mess hall is good … no complaints here. No real milk, some sort of dehydrated eggs, no soft drinks, but plenty of meat and fresh vegetables. Tonight, we had ham and pineapple sauce with several other things. Plenty of it, for sure. In this part of the world, I expected to be eating rice at every meal, but I haven’t seen any, which is a puzzle since we flew over severral thousand acres of it today. 

Because of my all-night standby, I’m being told that I have a day off tomorrow. Maybe, I can use that time to stake out a place with my own bed and pillow. I might even find the time to wash Ron’s sheets. 

Couldn’t resist the poker game last night—they were having way too much fun. Some of these guys are a little reckless and don’t like being left out of a hand. If you don’t mind folding bad hands and being a little patient your odds of winning improve considerably. On some of these missions we have to play the hand we’re dealt, but in a poker game we have the luxury of folding a bad hand. Watching their foolishness lured me in. It may look like monopoly money, but it still spends. One of them snagged my bed immediately, of course. I traded needed rest for a sweaty little handful of funny money. 

Operation Orange is picking up momentum. VMO-2 gunships struck a village full of bad guys with automatic weapons. You may know more about this than we do if you watch television. Every skirmish seems to turn up on the nightly news showing a village in flames and a few “innocent” looking farmers with Marines pointing rifles at them. I was involved in a different mission. While I was airborne, I could see the action and heard most of the radio transmissions. 

Tomorrow, there is a squadron farewell cookout for several pilots rotating home. Half of us will be given the day off to attend while the other half totes the load. The following day, we flip-flop. I’m scheduled to attend the first one. I hope we grill steaks for the party, but most likely it will be dead chickens. 

As I recall my tour in 1966, the heaviest rains of the Vietnam War, at least in the I Corps where I served with the Marines, occurred in November and December. In my book,Marble Mountain, drafted from my journal, this is the way I described one of the most hazardous challenges to our helicopter assignments:   

“The monsoon season is upon us, contributing several inches of rain each day to an already saturated South Vietnam. The roads resemble small rivers layered with several inches of mud, and the rivers have spread out into shallow lakes. New waterfalls spill out of the mountains, falling hundreds of feet into crystal ponds below. The rice paddies are one to three feet under water, and from the air, the entire area south of Danang resembles the Florida Everglades.

We joke about the endless downpour and are dumbfounded by it, staring into the rain as if it were a train wreck, and repeating the same thing over and over,  ‘I’ve never seen anything like this!’ Then it rains even harder so it’s okay to say it again.  You can’t see through it — it rains sideways in one direction, and suddenly switches directions, sometimes appearing to be raining skyward, pelting your chin and blowing up your nose. We try to keep things covered with plastic, but it’s hopeless. Paper wilts in your hand, our clothes are soggy, especially our boots and socks, and our new hooch has mold already. Any object with a trace of metal now has rust, and our own skin is a petri dish for strange blotches of fungus that roam from place to place on our bodies. Still, the jokes keep coming, almost as relentless as the blowing rain; the humor being our only defense for our beleaguered sanity.”

Bud 

The most frequent question I’m asked as soon as anyone finds out that I have written a book is, “What’s it about?”  My favorite response, “It’s about twenty bucks,” doesn’t always get me off the hook.  But one of the first things that I learned about writing is that a book should be about a single thing and that everything in the book should be there for the purpose of driving home the author’s point.  My first book, for all the wit and wisdom of its 247 pages was about gratitude, and the second one took nearly 450 pages to explain in full detail my experiences with overcoming fear.

Now, as I organize the mass of material that I have created for a third book called, Naples — The Last Resort, I find myself having to remove dozens of stories that I would love to include but ultimately they don’t have anything to do with the central point which is, (drum roll please) generosity.  No matter how funny the story might be, if it doesn’t belong to the central theme, for the sake of clarity and brevity, it simply has to go.  The most important thing for any writer, speaker or storyteller – to put it simply – is to stick to the point! No one likes to hear rambling stories. We all have those friends who enjoy telling long-winded tales that seem to go nowhere.  Even though we know the answer, we are still tempted to interrupt them to ask, “Is this going somewhere?”

A reader, on the other hand, has an easier solution.  He stops reading the book!

In the fall of 1961, shortly after my 20th birthday, I was struggling through my junior year of college in hopes of becoming a writer. Dr. Ingram’s Shakespeare class was as- signed a project on King Henry V. Instead of the standard college paper, I planned to reenact Henry’s inspirational speech on the eve of his battle with the French at Agincourt on Saint Crispen’s Day. In the middle of my rehearsal, three men walked into my dorm room. One of them was the quarterback of the football team and a good friend. The commander of the ROTC drill team and the student body president were with him. They were all business and told me flat-out that they were looking for a few good men to join the Marine Corps and become officers. “How many are you looking for?” I asked, thinking that they might be putting together a prospect list.

“Just one more … you!” one of them said.

I looked out across the Tennessee Tech campus and saw at least 100 good men that they might have called on, some with twice my credentials. It didn’t occur to me that they probably had already done that. They talked for a while, and I listened with King Henry’s words ringing in the back of my brain …“we few, we happy few, we band of brothers; for he today who sheds his blood with me will be my brother.” This was reminiscent of my Boy Scout recruit- ment except that I didn’t have to lie about my age.

The following Monday at 11 a.m., the four of us sat quietly listening to the spiel of the Marine Corps recruit- ing officer. He explained the “no commitment screening process” that would determine if any of us would even be eligible to be among the few and the proud. I decided to go ahead and take the screening exam that same afternoon, so it would be behind me. I was suspicious when he told me privately that I had scored higher than anyone he had ever tested and was tempted to ask if I was his first. The simple test didn’t break any Phi Beta Kappa ground. Most of the answers were common sense. A few formalities later, and after several pages of triplicate government paperwork, I was an officer candidate. As soon as the summer break began, I was on an all-expense paid trip to Quantico, Virginia, for ten grueling weeks of training.

Quantico is a 385 acre wooded, Marine Corps officer training base located 36 miles from Washington, DC. The FBI Academy is also located there. The PLC (platoon leaders class) summer program allows college boys to complete their officer training without interrupting their college class work, and college juniors could complete the course in one summer over a ten week period without entirely wrecking two summer vacations.

Even though I was an aspiring writer, I must have missed the fine print because this was the most grueling ten weeks of my life. It was a combination of boot camp, outward bound, survival training, and college football practice, with a few West Point type military classes thrown in for good measure. We did all the classic tasks that we’d seen in the movies, like taking weapons apart and putting them back together while blindfolded. That wasn’t difficult for me since I was in the dark most of the time. There were hand-to-hand combat drills with pugil sticks representing bayonets.

The mental and physical torture began every morning at 0400. We started in total darkness with a couple of laps around the “grinder,” which was a few acres of steaming asphalt used for drill instruction and running in formation. More a three mile shuffle than a run, we did this in combat boots, tee shirts, and heavy green utility trousers, guaranteed to make the body fluids flow. Then, we showered like a herd of naked cattle while a skilled harassment expert screamed insults at our every move. “K” Company, 2nd Platoon went to breakfast and everywhere else in formation. We competed against the other platoons 24 hours a day at everything, and each activity was carefully mea- sured, critiqued, and scrutinized.

In 1966 I flew UH1E’s (Hueys) out of Marble Mountain near DaNang, Vietnam.  VMO2 had tactical responsibility for the I Corps area.  Our mission was to provide air support for the Marines.  Our main priority was to get the wounded out of the combat area and into the hospital as quickly as possible.  The defining moments from those experiences could fill volumes, but one stands out above all.

On a typical medevac mission I was called to pick up a  Marine casualty and take him to a specialized facility that treated life or death combat injuries.  I was flying the lead chopper.  I had three others in the airplane, a co-pilot, a crew chief and a corpsman.  There was also a second helicopter; a wingman that provided gunship support in case the zone was still not secure.

I learned early to look straight ahead when picking up the wounded.  Some of the sights were overwhelming and I was a young pilot with no medical experience.  This was not always possible, especially on this particular day.  The young marine was missing a leg, an arm, an ear and an eye. The leg and arm were in a poncho that was also placed into the plane beside his stretcher.  The corpsman was holding  a plasma bag over his only arm and gave him a shot of morphine in his only leg.

The hospital was 15 minutes away.  I had the airspeed redlined while still trying to give the young marine and the corpsman a smooth ride.  Upon landing, the medical staff rushed to assist.  As his stretcher was being carried from the plane something very unusual happened.  The men carrying the stretcher stopped and called the crew chief back.  I could see the wounded marine motion for the crew chief to lean forward so he could tell him something over the noise of the chopper.  In a few seconds the crew chief was back in the plane and gave me the thumbs up for takeoff.  I could see that tears were streaming from his eyes. It was about a minute before he collected himself and spoke into his mike. 

“Captain Willis, do you know what he said to me? He said to ‘tell the pilot, thanks for the ride’.”

The rest of the way back to the base we were all bawling like babies instead of combat tested Marines.  When we landed and shut down I told the guys that I prayed to God that young man would survive to change as many more lives as he had changed with that simple gesture.  Any man who could see through his own incredible circumstances and still have the presence of mind to say “thank you” still brings tears to my eyes today and I can hardly bear the telling of it.

I have told this man times to teary eyed audiences with the message that we should remember to show gratitude and to thank people every day, and to thank God for people like that young marine.

That first month was literally a trial by fire for me. Except for a gunship escort of a convoy, chicken hawk or VIP taxi service, I was a tag-along copilot, watching and learning. All that changed. I was both proud and scared the first day I saw my name on the flight schedule as the pilot of the medevac slick. As I said before, one becomes addicted to the feeling of excitement. The right seat (pilot’s side) of the ambulance is the ultimate test on a busy day. I would be responsible for landing and picking up the evacuees for the next 24 hours. I was also the flight leader, and I would be directing both my gunship-wingman and any fixed wing that might be needed. Thank God, I had sweated through some of these things and had seen the good, the bad, and the ugly way to do them. I will not lie to you: I was scared to death.

                 We were called out three or four times that morning but the zones were not hot, and everything went fine. The afternoon was not eventful until about 1900. We received an emergency call to evacuate three wounded Marines just before dark. Anything coded as an emergency, we consider a life or death situation. When there are more than one or two, it usually means there is a live fire fight. The landing zone they chose for us was a bomb crater on the side of a hill, and the enemy, whoever they were, was shooting directly down on top of them. This made calling in an airstrike impossible because any bomb debris would be directed down on top of our Marines.

                  I wanted to secure the zone before I took the plane in or have them move to another location so we could neutralize the enemy fire and avoid hurting any good guys. Side-hill landings are difficult enough without gunfire. Alternate pickup areas were too far away, and wounded men don’t need the additional stress of being dragged around in the jungle. The best solution that I could come up with was to ask the gunship to have its door gunner shoot the M-60 over the top of the zone and in the direction of the well concealed VC while I tried to sneak underneath his layer of machine gun fire.  None of this was working, and the men were hunkered down in that zone still taking fire. The clock was ticking. I was circling and stalling and trying to think of something while all the while wishing that this was just a bad dream.

                 There was an atmosphere of electricity in the cockpit, and it had formed a thin wall that was pressing against my face. I could feel the tension of the three men in the plane with me. All of us knew that sooner or later we were going to have to go down there where all the shooting was, or somebody else would have to. We also knew that if I procrastinated any longer that it would be dark, and the situation would only be more complicated. I knew my wingman was feeling all the same things for me because we had all been there, and nobody envies the manager of a shit sandwich. Only one man could make this decision.

                   Suddenly, out of nowhere, I made the call. No words were spoken and not a single thing had changed except that I leaned forward in my seat. As soon as I committed, all the pressure from the electricity was replaced by perfect clarity. The cockpit tension and indecision were gone. On the other side of that thin membrane of fear, the world was in perfect focus. My thoughts were crystal clear.  I had stepped through an imaginary wall of fear. Unconsciously, I had “split the needles” and separated the engine power from the rotor mast. We were dropping like a stone toward the landing zone. All my focus shifted to the crater and the tiny opening between the tree stumps on the side of that hill. It was a moment I will never forget and a defining one for me.

                   I asked the wingman to keep some pressure on the high ground while the crew loaded the boys onto the stretchers. Half a dozen Marines swarmed the door to load the bleeding cargo. If we were taking fire, I didn’t know it. My mind was on flying that Huey and nothing else. I looked straight ahead to keep a reference point as I tried to hold a steady hover two feet above the uneven terrain. The rotor tips were only inches away from a pile of rocks on the co-pilot’s side. My wingman had adjusted his strategy and was in a hover a couple of hundred feet above me, distracting the enemy and pouring lead into the side of the hill. His spent shells were falling all around us and littering the landing zone. Our corpsman had the casualties racked in stretchers and hooked to plasma bags by the time the crew chief squeezed my arm to signal all-clear. I did a wingover down the hill away from high ground, and we were out of there. It went quickly and smooth as silk.

                  By the time we landed at the hospital pad, the sun was setting, and darkness, our other enemy, had stolen what was left of the day. The window had closed. I looked at the clock on the instrument panel; the entire mission took less than 25 minutes from the time the call came in until we landed at Bravo Medical. The decision that seemed like an hour for me to make had taken only a few seconds. They were probably the most important few seconds of my adult life.

                 It took years of reflection for me to understand what happened to me on that flight. Fear was the real enemy, and I had been swimming upstream against it until that very day. There came a time when no amount of swimming would overcome whatever force it was that was sucking me into the powerful current that is the Marine Corps. I had read somewhere that fear exists only to the extent that we give sanction to it. I knew the bravery of some of those grunts on the ground and the corpsmen and crew chiefs. I wasn’t about to let them down. A year ago, some of those kids that were too lazy to make their beds back home were now humping 100 pounds of gear through the bush, cooking their own meals, and sleeping on the ground with a tree root for a pillow. I went down in that zone because of my respect for those young Marines. We came out of that zone because my wingman took extraordinary measures to make himself a target and to take care of us. We were a brotherhood, and that was the day that I finally felt like I had become a member of their club.