John Hiemstra
Vietnam Diary
Web Page 7

THE BEST OF CHARLIE HORSE
VIETNAM

1 Dec 71 Camp Evans
Still raining today, nobody flew.

2 Dec 71 Camp Evans
110 is being prepared for the trip to Vung Tau. I’ll be flying it down with Spec 4
Dennis Batchlett flying front seat.  It is still raining with low clouds and poor visibility.

3 Dec -71 Camp Evans
110 is just about ready to go but the weather isn’t too promising.

4 Dec 71 Camp Evans
Denny and I left for Phu Bai today for a Safety of Flight inspection before con¬tinuing on to Vung Tau.  I sure was glad to get away.  We are staying with Don Finn, a friend from flight school.

5 Dec 71 Phu Bai
110 is still being worked on.  Maintenance had to have the historical records sent down before
5th Trans. would accept the aircraft.  Not much for me to now but lay around.

6 Dec 71 Phu Bai
110 has more problems: mast, 420 gear box, and tail rotor, plus other odds and ends. We found out today that Don’s CO hates fraternizing between officers and EM’s. If the major finds out that Denny is sleeping among officers, he would blow his top.

7 Dec 71 Phu Bai
Maybe tomorrow 110 will be ready to go.  These past two days have been great for flying.

8 Dec 71 Phu Bai
Wow, finally we are ready, but the weather is terrible. We got off about 1300 but had to refuel at Eagle (camp) before going to Da Nang and Marble Mountain Air Base.   At Marble Mountain we had a 90° chip detector light, so we spent the night at Marble Mountain. We stayed with the Blue Star people, 48th Aslt Hel Company.

9 Dec 71 Vung Tau
We had a nice flight to Vung Tau. Our fuel stops were Lane (AAF) and Phan Rang (AFB). I stayed with WO1 Joe Silva, of recent fame concerning his escape from certain death in the crash of his Cobra. We went to downtown Vung Tau during the afternoon and were back in time to eat chow at the officer’s mess.

10 Dec 71 Vung Tau
I slept in this morning. During the afternoon Denny and I went to the R&R center to swim in the ocean.  Wow, it was great.  I tried surfing for the first time.  The waves beat me to a pulp, oohhh.  Denny and I then walked to Vung Tau.  A cowboy got away with my watch and bathing suit.  He was a quick change artist.  Good experience, but rather costly.

11 Dec 71 Vung Tau
I am still waiting for 346 to be readied for the flight back to Phu Bai. I fe1t rotten today, recovering from last night’s drunk on Black Russian.  Whew, sweet like chocolate but hits like a hammer.

12 Dec 71 Vung Tau
I am still waiting on 36 to be ready.  I met Ken Cook today.  He is going to fly with me up to Phu Bai.  Ken and I went on a taxi cab tour of Vung Tau.  We saw some very in¬teresting sights.

13 Dec 71 Vung Tau
We got the aircraft ready about 1300.  I took it out with Ken for a short test flight.  I had some fun showing Ken some of the maneuvers we go through.  They really impressed Ken.  We couldn’t leave because POL was down at Vung Tau. We fueled up about 1800 in order to get a good start in the morning.

14 Dec 71 Na Trang
We got off about 0800 this morning. We refueled at Phan Rang and took off for Lane. We got about 2 miles past Na Trang in bad weather when we had a complete commo failure in the aircraft.  We landed at Na Trang without radio contact with the tower.  That was interesting.  It took the rest of the day to get the computer board replace that controlled the radios! We were lucky that a mechanic at the Mohawk unit used to work on Cobras and recognized the problem.  We did make it make it up to Tuy Hoa today.  Tuy Hoa is a beautiful base.

15 Dec 71 Thy Hoa
We got an early start this morning. We were special VFR along the coast for about 15 miles before the visibility improved.  Near Da Nang the visibility got bad again.  We refueled at Marble Mountain.  While there we were nearly blown away by a hovering CH-47.  If it wasn’t for my good PT (pilot technique) ????  We made it to Phu Bai about 1100.  I parked the aircraft in revetments when I found out our company was moving there.  I spent the rest of the day at Camp Evans.

16 Dec 71 Phu Bai
I came back to Phu Bai with Mike Koshiol in the mail truck. While waiting for an MP (Military Police) escort into Hue, I was mobbed by young urchins fighting for the C-rats in our truck.  We threw some of the C-rats into the rice paddy which drew the kids away from our truck.  Our guys are moving in while the Conder people aren’t ready to move yet.  Result--we are sleeping on the floors. I still didn’t fly today.

17 Dec 71 Phu Bai
I flew 1st team with Gary Richardson today.  We worked out at Ke Sanh, QL-9 all day. Shot up some gooks and uncovered a cache of 20,000 lbs of rice.  We got off before daybreak to stage out of QT in support of an ARVN insertion northeast of the Razorback.  The ARVN were mortared and rocketed while in the LZ and PZ. They took KIA”s and WIA’s.  One team went out to Ke Sanh today and killed a .30 cal gun crew as they hid in their bunker.

18 Dec 71 Phu Bai
There was too much rain and fog to fly. Hurrah! We need the time to settle in our new quarters.  I fixed up a room real nice. But then Capt Dobbs spoiled it all by having Bear Byrant move in.  But he is a nice guy.  We have so many new guys that I gave up trying to write all their names down.

19 Dec 71 Phu Bai
I am sitting around reading books, passing the time of day. It’s fine with me.

20 Dec 71 Phu Bai
The rain hasn’t let up at all. It’s interesting to note that the monsoons up here differ from the monsoon in the South in that the rain here is a constant drizzle 20 hours a day while in the South there will be a cloudy morning, heavy rains in the afternoon and a clear, cool evening.

21 Dec 71 Phu Bai
It is still raining.

22 Dec 71 Phu Bai
Ah, we almost flew today. It nearly cleared up this afternoon but then clouded up again. I bought a beautiful Seiko watch today.

23 Dec 71 Phu Bai
Today I flew with Carl Cavaluzzi. We got an early start, about 07:30.  Both 1st and 2nd team low-leveled out to Ke Sanh via the Ba Long River due to a cloud deck covering the mountain tops.  We all got out to the lip of Ke Sanh in the river valley but had to turn around because Ke Sanh plains had a cloud layer on it.  As we were dodging each other trying to turn around, Capt Laster, in the Weather ship, started calling, “Taking fire, taking fire, .51’s”.  He was just inside Laos on QL9.  So we tried to get out to help him by flying at 100 ft and 60 knots over the highway.  We couldn’t make it, but I was sure we were going to find the .51’s by getting a burst of .51’s in the fuel tank!  We stayed down the rest of the day except for one short flight to the DMZ (A2).

24 Dec 71 QTAB
Christmas Eve--and fighting a war! Bob Hope and troupe played at Camp Eagle this morning for a large number of troops, but we were flying! Bob Smith and I had problems all day, real problems.  No sooner had we got up to QT to refuel than we lost our engine tach generator and got a chip detector light on our 90° gearbox. It took all morning to get this fixed. As we were enroute to the Ashau valley, VFR on top, we got the chip detector light again.  This time we went to Phu Bai. There we flushed the gearbox and ran it up. Everything went okay. We matched up with our team at QT and flew out to QL9 at the Laotian border. The scout hadn’t been working 20 minutes when he got a hot transmission oil light, so the team high tailed it back to QT.  The Scout got down fine.  As I was about to set down at POL, we experienced a complete tail rotor failure.  Bob took the controls, we spun one 360 revolution before hitting the PSP and it took another 3 turns before we stopped.  Needless to say the situation could have been a lot worse.

25 Dec 71 QTAB MERRY CHRISTMAS!
We spent the day at QT lounging in the sun as a ready reaction force for an Admiral McCain.  It seems that this guy likes to go up to the “Z” every Christmas to pray for his son (John McCain) who is a POW in NVN. We ate cold “C” rats while a hot Christmas dinner was served in the mess hall. Breaks of the war I guess,

26 Dec 71 Phu Bai
I was kept tied down all day with accident investigation questioning. I was
supposed to fly with Cavalluzzi, so I didn’t do much. The other teams went out
and found a bunch of stuff along the border. Ramsey says he killed three gooks
in a bunker today. Maybe so!

27 Dec 71 Phu Bai
I found out today that I was reassigned to the 11th Combat Aviation Group in
Da Nang as of the 24th.  I spent the day lounging around.

28 Dec 71 Phu Bai
I spent today getting my belongings packed. The guys shot up some more gooks
out by Ke Sanh today.

29 Dec 71 Phu Bai
Today went much like yesterday, a lot of running around getting little things done. The guys are working on beautifying the area by picking up trash and raking the area.

30 Dec 71 Phu Bai
Another day like the past two!

31 Dec 71 Phu Bai NEW YEARS EVE
Herrick was shot at this morning and took some hits in his ship. Jones, his crewchief, killed at least one gook out of the four they saw in this encounter. Later in the day Herrick discovered that a bullet had entered his flight helmet about where his right temple is, zipped along the shell and exited about 6 inchs back from where it had entered.  Later in the day, about 13:15, 26’s team was back over Ke Sanh.  26’s ship took punishing fire from a .51 and had to autorotate to the ground within 6 klicks south of the strip (Ke Sanh). His crewchief was shot dead as soon as the aircraft came to a rest by an NVA about ten feet away!  26’s gunner was also severely injured in the ensuing fire fight.  The ARPs got out and set up a quick defense perimeter, killing and wounding many gooks who were trying to rush the downed crew. While all this was happening, Herrick and the two gun crews, 35 and 43, tried frantically to find 26 since he made no radio call when he went down (the radios were shot out). When Herrick found 26’s helo, he circled it three times in an effort to find an LZ in order to on load the wounded gunner.  As he was hover¬ing down into a brushy opening in front of 26’s helo, gooks surrounding him poured devastating fire into his helo, killing Jones immediately with a bullet through the heart.  Herrick managed to struggle with his OH-6A to within a klick of the strip. As he set the ship down the transmission froze from lack of oil. Herrick and Hodges dragged Jones’s body to a bunker and set up a defense, waiting rescue. The guns placed suppressive fire around Herrick’s position and 26’s position. Bilk (USAF FAC) was on scene, so he had Jolly Green Giants enroute for the rescue. Four choppers were out there but two were forced to return be¬fore completing the evacuation due to damage from ground fire. The last two JGG’s got all the crews out. These guys were really brave. 26 determined that he had landed among a battalion size element of NVA!  The tally for the day; 2 CE’s dead, one wounded, 2 choppers wrecked and two others damaged.  At least 1 gook killed, but probably many more killed or wounded.  I went through my accident investigation board that I was waiting for. Looks like the accident will be downgraded to an incident.

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