I
might be of some help as I was the first member of D Troop in RVN.
Jack
Shields
Crusader
67
The
advanced party of the 9th Division
departed Forbes AFB,
Personnel
from 3/5 was the Sqdn Commander, Sidney S. Haszard
(obvious nickname Hap), the Sgt Major and representatives of
the four
Troops and HQ.
I was the representative from D Troop.
My name is
Jack Shields. I was a brand new Captain and the only representative
from D
Troop.
Having a whole two months since graduating flight school, I was highly
inexperienced
and it showed.
We ended
up in Bearcat with a small
area consisting of several concrete slabs the size of GP
mediums.
We
went about scrounging and a wonderful bunch of crusty senior NCOs saw
to it we
got pretty well equipped.
Three of them took off for the
They returned with a deuce and a half, a 15kw generator, lots
of building material and the jeep on a tow bar.
I won't go into how all this
happened, but it did.
Division
engineers were already in place
building roads and expanding
They
acquired a B model Huey with so many mismatched color schemes it had to
have
been pieced together.
I started flying fairly regularly with them and got to
know the area from Long Binh to Vung Tao and East to Blackhorse pretty
well.
I can't
remember for sure the exact sequence
of events so bear with me.
One
task was to build an airfield for D
Troop.
With my trusty Field Manual and remembering a D model had a 48' rotor
span,
I started out.
Any way what resulted was a fairly tight parking area and
a very restricted POL point.
When I asked for more space I was firmly told to
do the best I could with what they gave me.
Picture this, a scrounged M-48 tank
pulling a large section of Bailey Bridge which was used to initially
clear the
area.
It was outside the existing berm and it wasn't unusual to detonate
mines
and grenades in the process.
The finished product was christened the Round
Table.
Some how
during this time Hap acquired
an H-23G and when the three ground troops arrived and were put to work,
he had
me fly C&C. LTC Haszard was in
This is typical of him.
A platoon
leader called Hap to request artillary support as they had come in
contact.
One
round from an SKS.
Hap asked what the Hell he had the M-16 for and to return
fire.
I spent
two weeks flying with the 1/4th Cav
in the Big Red One during Junction City/Manhatten the first few days of
March
67. Flying left seat in a B model gunship we were supporting an
ARVN unit
in contact.
Just as the AC punched off a pair of rockets ground fire hit the
missle on the left.
It blew the warhead apart and the tail fin was still stuck
in the launcher.
It felt like my seat was hit with an overgrown baseball bat and
when
I looked in my lap the fuze and part of the rocket warhead was lying
there.
Honest truth!
The bulkhead between the pilot and crew doors was pretty much
gone but we were able to make it back to Phu Loi.
I was very concerned that the
warhead was sitting in my lap
so I tossed it out but now I wish I had kept it
just to prove it happened. "First mortality check"
D Troop
personnel arrived in country after
the ground troops were already out on patrol.
The first order of business
was to build our WABTOCS.
GP mediums over a wooden frame.
Shortly after
that the choppers arrived and we spent our time getting ready to
go to
war.
We went through the typical learning curve.
One brigade was in Tan An
and we had a fire team there for firebase security.
It took a while for things
to fall into place, but they did.
I was one
of several personnel moved to other
units.
It was called infusion just so DEROS could be spread out.
Hope this
helps fill some gaps.
Be glad
to answer any questions to the extent the fading memory remembers
Jack
Shields
Crusader 67