Charliehorse Gunner
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It was required to learn how to fly if you were going to sit left seat and pop smoke if needed.
Reason being if the pilot took a hit you had to take over. So here I am getting a crash course, no pun intended.
We were getting ready for a mission, and were waiting waiting for orders.
Sgt. Mike Duffy (Left) and Lt.William (Tinker) Bell right.
We just got done with our mission and flew down and caught the tail end of the show, as you can see we were in the nose bleed section.
But it was well worth it to hear the round eyes talk and the jokes from Bob Hope.
It was great to laugh again, at least for a short time.
Humping the 60 back to the Hooch to get cleaned and Kissed! LOL
Oh Yes! We couldn't get along without these guys.
They could really put it in your back pocket if ya asked them too.
Some were even a little closer.
When we got back our tail rotor or tail boom had a lot of small holes in them!
Thanks Guys.
These are the Patches we use to wear after we earned them.
The Charliehorse patch Vietnam I Corp & III Corp, Laos, Cambodia. And then there is the Scout Patch (Kamikaze) which says Chin Poom or Devine Wind.
Looking back we had to be nuts to do the things we did to earn them. And that's for another day.
This little poem says it all. 3/5 mechanized. Cav Stood Down and went back to the world (Fort Lewis Washington).
But the 3/5th Air Cav. was left to themselves. We became the Bastard Cav.
We used to cover our tail #'s and our Unit Insignia up, and fly down to Da Nang and steal supplies and the M.P.'s use to shoot at us on the way out.
Hey, we're on the same side aren't we
We used to call our attachment to the 101st Airborne as being attached to the first of the worst or 100th and the worst, because we couldn't get supplies.
We ever had to go back to Quang Tri after we abandoned it and dig up a rotor hub for a cobra that we buried because we weren't supposed to have it.
Not part of our TO&E roster.
D-Troop 3/5th Air Cav. (Charliehorse Scouts) Unit Song
Your go-in home in a body bag do da, do da .
Your going home in a body bag do, da, do, da day.
Shot between the eyes, shot between the thighs your going home in a body bag, do da do da day!
You can hear the song sung by us on video. The Walter Cronkite War Chronicles.
(Courage Under Fire D-Troop 3/5 Air Cav.)
This article was in the 101st Airborne newspaper during Lam Son 719.
I hand carved this symbol out of scrap aluminum I got from the aircraft I crashed in (OH-58A 68-16782).
I took me @ 4 months to carve it out. I used my pocket knife to carve most of it.
Then I used sand and my fingers and palm of my hand to do the polishing.
The symbol is Egyptian for Long Life or it could also be a Peace symbol!
I wore this with my dog tags until I got home from Vietnam.
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