# Someone asked me about  my 'college' so here it is..



## greybeard (Feb 7, 2019)

Rather than typing it all again, Ill just copy it from another post from one of the other boards I frequent..
(I don't have a lot of my own pictures left, as I got the box out a few years ago and told the kids to divide them up as they wanted to..most of these are off my old squadron's websites)

4 yrs.
1969-1973
Boot camp in San Diego, then infantry training regiment at Camp Pendleton,, then a few months of aviation school in Millington Tenn, then a few months OJT actually learning hands on aviation ground support at H&MS 14 sqdron Mag 14 @ Cherry Pt N. Carolina, (a fixed wing Group, with A-4s, Phantoms and A6s, then off to HMH-463, Mag 16 Marble Mtn Vietnam for a year, which was a helicopter group and CH-53D squadron, then back to Millington Tenn for instructor duty for the rest of my USMC time.
What did I see?
Nothing much.

What did I do?
What my country _asked_ me to

I have a lot of things hanging on my wall, some papers, lots of pictures, some pieces of metal with colorful cloth but of all the things I earned in life, good or bad..other than my family, these are what mean the most.





The little open window with the M-60 sticking out was pretty much my home almost every day for a year.
I was a door gunner. I had a 'day job', which I did mostly at night, taking care of some support equipment, but flew guns most days. Some nights too or maybe do illumination flare drops.











I went to places like this.
Hills surounding Khe Sahn when it was reopened tosupport Lam Son 719.



and saw things like this
LZ Hope Laos.not aptly named.



Inserted and resupplied little out of the way retreats like this, an arty fire base somwhere near Kilo Pad inside the Laotian border.



One of ours in the distance about to make the turn into Kilo pad to pick up troops to go to LZ Sophie



and I learned which of these was most apt to get you killed and which were just 'not so apt' to get you killed. Only took a couple of days of trips in and out to figure out there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between them. They'd all eat your lunch.



For the helos, it was a meat grinder.



And, I got to work, fly, and fight alongside the finest men I've ever met in my life and none of us gave one flyin uknow  what the politics of the day were or ever looked for any excuse not to be there.


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## greybeard (Feb 7, 2019)

Part of my "day job" when not flying was moving helicopters around, in and out of the big cement revetments they went in at night to protect from rocket/mortars. (You can see them on the left in this picture. USN Seabees built them and they were called Wonder Arches and as of early 2000s, they were the only remnants left of that sprawling USMC base. There's a Hyatt Regency luxury resort  today where the runway, hooch area and helo parking area used to be) 
We did it with a Ford tractor. Notice the tread on the tires are reversed from how a farm tractor normally is done..better traction on asphalt..we never took it off the hard surface and into the sand that surrounded the base. Yes..me. My father was quite proud of this picture, as it was he who first taught me to drive a tractor, and he was a big Ford fan anyway.  I have a only slightly newer version of this tractor today and use it almost every day.



The little vehicle you see in this picture is another piece of the equipment I took care of. An NC-5 mobile generator that supplied electrical power to the helos when testing and the engines weren't running.




It was "cumshawed" (basically ..stolen) from a Navy carrier that brought the helos in from Hawaii. Some hard charging squadron member just drove it into the cargo bay of a 53, closed the ramp, and into Vietnam it flew. (no, wasn't me..happened before I got there) I hated the thing...to get the cycles up high enough, you had to hold the throttle of that old continental gasoline engine close to WOT and I was always afraid the engine would fly apart.  It was a screamer for sure. It was quite old when we got it.
I'll try to dig out & scan a few more later but be warned, the quality after 50 yrs is very poor.


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## RollingAcres (Feb 7, 2019)

Thank you for sharing GB.


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## B&B Happy goats (Feb 8, 2019)

Thank you greybeard, ...it sure was a horrible  political  time then, ...
and even though i hated war....i hated they way you were all treated... as the fortunate  ones retured home  and were forever changed.  You and others went and put yourselfs on the line for our country and set the politics aside,  ...and when you returned , you were treated like trash by the Americans you were fighting for.
I want to thank you for your service to our country and apologize  for the ignorance,  and disrepect you were shown when you made it home.  I am still proud to be a American and have my freedom...thanks to our men and women who served our counrty.


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## Senile_Texas_Aggie (Feb 8, 2019)

Mr. @greybeard, sir,

Thank you so much for posting this.  It was brave and patriotic of you to serve and due the calling of your country.  As Billy Ray Cyrus put it in a song, "All gave some, some gave all".

Senile Texas Aggie


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## SonRise Acres (Feb 8, 2019)

As WWII vets were cheered and kissed and celebrated when they came  marching home, so should you guys. I am sorry you were treated so badly for doing a job most Americans don’t want but one we all want someone to do. I come from a very military family (ancestors to my Dad and siblings, to currently my cousin). I appreciate and am grateful for every second you spent doing what you did for the nation and the world.


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## greybeard (Feb 8, 2019)

I can't really say I was ever treated badly right afterwards or since, except a little off-in-the-distance heckling when I came back into the states thru Travis Air Base Calif. Stayed at Travis just long enough to grab my seabag and get a cab to the airport. 
 I may type some thoughts on my part of the southeast Asia experience later this evening but will say when Saigon fell in '75, I watched it unfold on TV in a USN bowling alley and stood there and wept like a baby. I wasn't the only one.


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## Mike CHS (Feb 9, 2019)

Those pictures came out surprisingly well for being that old.


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## greybeard (Feb 9, 2019)

Mike CHS said:


> Those pictures came out surprisingly well for being that old.


Only 4 are mine. One of the helos, & the 3 of me. Rest are off my squadron's website or another Vietnam era website. I haven't got the top of my scanner cleaned off yet so I can scan any more onto my laptop--it's become a catch-all for anything on my desk..


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## greybeard (Feb 10, 2019)

A few..
When my mother passed away in mid 90s, I found she had kept every letter and card I ever mailed home from my overseas tours. I read thru them a couple years later and realized I wasn't always discreet about things I relayed home. I suspect I gave them plenty of cause for worry & I guess I didn't write nearly enough, but did when I could and felt like it.



("Know Your Enemy..The Viet Cong" it says. I didn't learn much from that, but I imagine my mother didn't like what it said.)

Our base (Marble Mountain Marine Air Facility) was on a coastal plain just South of Danang, 15-20 miles, but like lots of Asia's coastline, there were sudden upthrusts of rock. Near us, there were 2 ancient ones called the Marble Mountains. One had caves in it, and a public Buddhist temple outside and another one for Buddhist priests inside the big grotto.  The US had taken over the place for security, and there was a small detachment on top, with a really powerful searchlight that reached a very long ways out onto the surrounding plain. This was backed up with nothing less than a 106mm recoiless rifle. Being recoiless, it didn't make much noise, but when it barked, things somewhere out on that plain turned out badly. 2 views off one of the 2 mountains.







Some of the guys I worked and flew with. Our luxury accommodations can be seen behind us.
(no, not air conditioned..when you first arrived, the 1st thing you did was search out someone that was leaving and buy their fan from them. Sometimes, it took weeks to find one.Mine was ancient, and a death trap with no guard on it at all)






I can't read what the red signs on our control tower said, but a note on the back of the picture says on says "Fresno Calif" 10,837 miles". It was a pretty common thing to see.......anything to keep some sembelence of 'home'




A CH-46 from the squadron right beside our CH-53 squadron. Their call sign was Purple Fox.  Good bunch of guys and they did most of the inserts and extractions and they had the primary medivac birds.





 We did all 3 sometimes, but most of our work was resupply of ammo, moving 105 and 155mm howitzers and their ammo, as well as anything else heavy that had to be inserted or extracted. We could carry 14,000 lbs externally on sling or 10,000lbs internally. We could 'officially' carry 34 troops, but I've seen lots more than that crowded in.


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## greybeard (Feb 10, 2019)

After a certain number of strike flights (combat missions) we were entitled to 2 days "crew's rest" ..out of country. I think it was in September 1970. I choose to go to Korat Thailand, via a C-130. The back of this photo just says "US Air Base Korat Thailand. No mountans and NO rain!"



I spent those 2 days eating like a king, out on liberty in peaceful tho militarized Korat, and 'immersing' myself in the local culture. It's faded in the picture, but the bottom part of this religious statue is adorned in gold.



Other than that, I suppose I shouldn't go into any details of those 2 days, except an odd thing happened on the USAF C-130 I rode back to Danang. It had a soundproofing fabric covering the sides and overhead inside (something I wasn't used to on CH-53s), and all us passengers were just sitting on whatever cargo they were carrying. I was laid back on a big pile of sling cargo nets and noticed the overhead was getting a big bulge in it, hanging lower by the minute. I motioned a crewman over and pointed up (if you've ever been on a C-130, you know that sound proofing is soundproofing in name only..you can't hear anything but the horrendous HUMMMMM! of those tuboprops.) He looked up at it, brought an empty 5gal bucket over, took a knife and punched hole in the fabric above and that red milspec 5606H hydraulic fluid came pouring out into his bucket. We'd sprung a hydraulic leak at 15,000 ft. He just nonchalantly went over, opened a cap up on the side of the cargo bay bulkhead and with a funnel, poured it right back in 'something'.  I was glad when we landed at Danang...

From the very first time that I flew up into the queson and Ashau valleys, I was struck by how beautiful and peacefull it sometimes appeared. We had sat down beside a river one day, to pick up a platoon of ROKs and I snapped this picture, thinking how much I wish I could just amble on over and see if I could catch a fish.



I knew not to even think about it...

In November 1970, our part of South Vietnam got hit with 2 typhoons and 2 tropical storms all back to back. The war got put on hold and all of Marine Air Group 16 (helicopters) went into rescue mode till almost Christmas. I don't know how many wet hungry Vietnamese civilians, their baggage and poultry we picked up, but it was in the thousands. All of our AO (I corps) was under water it seemed.
This is the major North/South highway (Route1) as we were returning from the Queson Valley sometime in mid November. It was just non-stop dangerous, can't see crap flying all day, every day. The only good thing was, the NVA were wet too. The highway is center, running top to bottom of the photo.




I'm sure most have seen Top Gun and know what it is to request permission to "Break" over the runway. Helos were no different when returning from a day's work. It's nice for the pilots I guess but for us gunners, it was apt to sling us across the cargo bay if we weren't paying attention to our headsets.
A 53 was one of the few helicopters in the world back then that could do loops and rolls.









Scarface (the Cobra squadron's call sign), shows he can do it too. Those guys were our best friends. They provided the hover cover for us when we went into hot LZs. I loved my 50 and M-60, but those rockets, miniguns and belt fed grenade launcher the cobras carried were things to behold.





More on Vietnam later.

While I'm at it..Mike, you recognize these buildings?


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## promiseacres (Feb 10, 2019)

My dad spent 2 tours in Vietnam. Thank you for your service. And sharing.


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## Mike CHS (Feb 10, 2019)

Millington but I never had the pleasure of living in them as I went to "A" school in Glynco, Georgia before our school moved to Tennessee.  But they were a carbon copy of the buildings we had at NAS Whiting when I first got there TDY.  They were used as a German POW camp way back when.


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## OneFineAcre (Feb 10, 2019)

My dad was in Vietnam in 68-69.  Army infantry.
My brother was 11B and I was 13E.
Thank you for your service.


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## greybeard (Feb 10, 2019)

And thank you for yours.


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## greybeard (Feb 10, 2019)

How it began.
A business card.



 

And a forged signature of my father.


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## Mike CHS (Feb 10, 2019)

It's pretty amazing that you have all of those memories on paper.    Almost everything I had is pretty much gone other than a few pictures that still remain.  Between a house fire, more hurricanes than I can count and just 'life' very little tangible items remain.

I've enjoyed your posts on this by the way.


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## greybeard (Feb 10, 2019)

A lot of the credit for that goes to my mother. She kept everything associated with my time in the service. 
I had lots more, but as I said earlier, when all my kids came to visit at one time in 2011, I opened the boxes and told them they needed to take whatever they wanted now instead of waiting till I'm gone.
Sometime in the later part of 1970 or early 1971, I was awarded Sikorsky Aircraft's "Maintenance Man of the month" award. (they build the 53s) Got a nice wooden plaque and a certificate, with my pic and a short blurb in Pacific Stars and Stripes.  I mailed all that home..one of the kids has the plaque but the certificate is here..I can't make out what the date is on the certificate any more.


Of all the things I left Vietnam with, the understanding of just what an enormity combat operations are, still stands out. That part, I can't even begin to describe.


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## greybeard (Feb 21, 2019)

One of the things I framed and kept, for several reasons but the dates on it play a part.
If you look back up at the consent form picture, you will see my date of birth.

My PCS orders, effective 31 May 1971.


 

I turned 21 years old, waiting to get on the plane out of Vietnam at Danang Air Base.
Months before, I had 'put away my childish things' and ways.


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## greybeard (Feb 21, 2019)

Sometimes, it takes a while for paperwork to catch up to ya in the military. I had already been back in the states for a few months at my new duty station at Millington Naval base when this one caught up to me.


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## Mike CHS (Feb 21, 2019)

The majority of my career was on carriers where it often seems they have to write up X number of awards and they often award the mundane.  I got my share but the only one that really means a lot to me was when I was TDY with the FAA after the President fired a bunch of Air Traffic Controllers.  I had a "deal" with several flights of solo student pilots who found themselves in near instrument conditions and unable to find some place to land.  I broke about every rule in the book getting those students on the ground and the FAA watch supervisor had no choice but to right me up with about 3 pages of flight violations.  The Navy in turn awarded me the Navy Commendation Medal for the same thing set of events.


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## greybeard (Feb 21, 2019)

They do seem at times, to do things in the strangest of ways Mike, tho it sounds like you way more than earned the Navy Commendation with getting the students down safely.
One thing we all know, is with alphabet federal agencies, it only takes one oh poop! to offset a dozen attaboys.

I remember when Reagan fired the ATCs over a threat to strike and replaced them for awhile with new people and military controllers. 
I watch/listened to quite a few of Kennedy Steve ATC youtubes (he's ground control). He is/was a hoot to listen to...I think he's now retired.




That's a job I could not do under any circumstances.
How difficult was it to step in and replace the FAA controllers?

If you have any more sea stories, anecdotes or military things to add here, please feel free to do so. Once I click 'submit' on anything (thread or post) it belongs to the community to lead where ever it goes.


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## Mike CHS (Feb 21, 2019)

greybeard said:


> T
> 
> That's a job I could not do under any circumstances.
> How difficult was it to step in and replace the FAA controllers?



That TDY time was actually the easiest two years I had in my career.  I don't remember the personnel numbers but there were 8 military controllers sent to Pensacola TRACON to augment the loss of over half of their personnel (around 40 people).  While we were training, they used really extended separation standards but we were working within a couple of weeks and all but one of us qualified in less than two months.  The average training time for FAA controllers at that facility was well over a year for basic quals.  All of the military controllers had a lot of sea time and we were all attached to flight training commands so the pace of the enroute sectors were slow compared to what we were used to.  The airspace at Pensacola is huge and included all of the enroute traffic between Atlanta and Houston Centers at the time but since we all came from Navy training commands within Pensacola's sector, we already knew the airspace.


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## greybeard (Feb 21, 2019)

Was the equipment at least similar to what you were used to?
Anything like a DASC/ASRT?


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## Mike CHS (Feb 21, 2019)

We all had the same equipment. It was ARTS III back then but we still had NTDS on the ships.  That is one of the few smart things the government has done.  They have a joint program where all of the entities that does ATC military/civilian are all tied together as far as procurement (that is called NASMOD or National Airspace Modernization).  The government agency that I retired as a contractor from was the cog for that.


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## greybeard (Feb 22, 2019)

Mike CHS said:


> We all had the same equipment. It was ARTS III back then but we still had NTDS on the ships.



The USMC version...MTDS was on Monkey Mtn up above Danang, but out on a peninsula. I  remember listening in on the intercom to Danang DASC and the ASRT that kept track of everyone. There was another DASC down at Chu Lai and several ASRTs.  One was on a hill not far from our base, one was at FSB Vandergrift (LZ Stud) and others scattered around the major valleys.





I've heard the comms between the fixed wing and Vandy call 'Mark Mark' but wasn't at that time, sure what they were referring to. We resupplied the ASRT locations frequently. 
There was another communication network that was called 'clear skies' or 'safe skies' that kept us from unknowingly flying into an in-progress artillery fire mission. I know of 2 instances during  earlier part of the war, where aircraft had the pure bad luck of being hit by  105mm rounds as they arced across the Ashau valley.


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## Bruce (Feb 24, 2019)

greybeard said:


> That's a job I could not do under any circumstances.


Me either!

Thanks for the posts guys.


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