Harvey Britt Page

(Harvey Britt Before/After Photo)

 

Tall Tales and Nostalgia . . .
(about things that happened 30 years ago,
or was it yesterday?)

 

I had an earlier tour in Viet Nam, sort of, back 1963 when in-country Marine
aviation was known as Shufly, and operated at Danang. It wasn’t much of a
rehearsal for the real thing, but it counted for something. . .We got an income
tax break. Some of the troops may remember the leisurely pace of Shufly
operations and get all warm inside. Not that Shufly didn’t offer some occasional
excitement because it did, but . . . .

Light years separated 1963 from 30 April 68 when I arrived at Dong Ha in an
Army Caribou on my way to Quang Tri. Dong Ha was on alert and they didn’t want
the Caribou to be a target, so we had to unload on the roll out the rear ramp. I
noticed the perimeter wire had several black objects tangled in it, and normal
people activity was scarce. Everybody I saw was wearing some kind of body armor.
I wasn’t a rocket scientist, but I could see things weren’t the same as I recalled
from 1963. It was apparent the tax break had become serous business in the meantime.

I was offered a ride from Dong Ha to Quang Tri on a duce and a half dump truck,
but I’d have to man the ring mounted fifty caliber machine gun it carried.
There is absolutely nothing in the back of a dump truck to sit on or grab hold of,
but having spent two years in the 7th Engineers before flight school I was
familiar with dump trucks wasn’t I, and of course, this one boasted the
comfort of the ring mounted fifty caliber. So I volunteered and we set off down
Route 1. I learned right away why nobody else wanted a ride, and also that I’d lost
my familiarity with dump trucks. That 6 mile trip took fewer than that many minutes.
I could have logged flight time but I was bouncing so much I couldn’t read my
watch to measure my time airborne. Except for the death grip I had on that 50 caliber
ring mount the truck would have arrived without me.

When we started out the gun was secured, but it came loose and the truck was
bouncing so bad I couldn’t get it secured again, and the driver wasn’t the
least bit interested in my problem. I finally gave up and just let it do it’s own
thing, but I had no success at all in staying out of it’s way. Somewhere during
the trip the shaving lotion in my gear broke and the glass shards worked over my tooth
paste and Right Guard. I never did get used to the sideways glances every time I would
open my gear, until the odors dissipated. I also never got in a dump truck again. One
encounter with Route 1 and a loose 50 caliber machine gun with a box of ammo hooked on
it was enough. There’s another thing. If you never traveled Route 1 south from
Dong Ha you can’t possibly know how powdery that red dirt could get. It boiled up
and got into everything, including hair, eyes, mouth, ears, neck, nostrils, and up
sleeves and britches legs. I’m still convinced that driver had found himself a lamb
and was giggling every second.

My in-country checkout was a 10 hours troop movement and resupply flight with
the Skipper, Col. Steinberg, on May 3rd, and two nights later we took several rockets
on the flight line, (the number 11 comes to mind). The people who were out there, or
in the maintenance area, ought to still recall that night. Couple of birds written off,
maintenance hangar holed, roof and side tin peeled back, squadron gear ruined. But
some of the beer survived, ooorah!!. What the hey, no- body was wounded, Tet was over
and the war was down to a walk in the park, right? Wrong!!!

It was getting to be summer. It was hot, it was dry, it was windy, and we were
living on, wading through, working against, sleeping in, washing off or washing out,
and shoveling into or out from under, a sand dune. We even tried to put the thing in
sandbags, but never even made a dent. Surely I’m not the only one who remembers
Quang Tri in the summertime.

The night of May 30th was exciting. Lt. Harvey might remember it, too. I can’t
speak for the rest of the crew. They didn’t know how green I was, or how many
blessings I’ve counted since. We were medevac standby and got a call to go,
unescorted, about half way to the Ben Hai river northeast of Dong Ha. I’d never
been out there before and it was one of those black nights when instrument time was
legal even without a cloud in the sky. The grunt on the radio, (bless’em), offered
to point a flashlight through a mortar round canister for me to aim at. I asked him to
just set up the standard three-colored light outfit for me that the Corps issued all
ground units in the field. He told me they had just broke contact, Charlie was still
in the area, they had several wounded, no time for small talk, and that I should get on
with it. No point wasting time here describing the full first approach, but the guy
holding the light was waving it like a baseball bat and I only got a glimpse of it every
once in a while. I also didn’t have any other reference because it was so dark,
and I blew the first try real good, probably by six or seven country miles.

Next time around I got the flashlight guy to prop his apparatus against
something solid and that helped, but just as I was rocking forward out of the flare
with no airspeed, no visibility, and a sweaty palm eye-opener that this was no drill,
the radio guy said something about taking fire. Heck, I was miles ahead of him on that
point, all by myself. I don’t know if it was all coming our way or if some of it
was our guys shooting back, but I do know it was right under us. Both engine fire
warning lights came on and the airspeed needle read zero. Lt.Harvey reached up and
promptly pulled the cover off at least one light, which act put something over 6 million
candle power smack in my face. If I wasn’t blind from the dark before I was now
from all that white light in my eyes. He got one engine shut down and all I could do
was milk everything possible out of the other one. The turns would wind down dropping
the generators off-line and turning off all the radios, intercom, and cockpit lights.
Whereupon I’d ease the milk a little and get ready for the crunch, which would
give me some RPM again and bring back the electrical system. Lt. Harvey took
his gloves off and covered the open fire warning lights. They were so hot they melted his
gloves and burned his hands, but it suppressed the lights, giving me some badly needed
relief. I don’t have any idea how long it went on, but I never did try to reproduce
it either.

We finally got enough forward speed that I could relax a little on the milking, the RPM
stabilized on the one engine, and we started to climb. Barely climb, mind you, but
climb nonetheless. The radio guy apologized for not knowing Charlie was so close, and
for bringing us in over him. I thanked him for his eloquence, told him we had a
problem, and recommended he hunker down a while longer.

On taking stock we found we didn’t have anybody hurt, we had no apparent
fire in the engine compartments even though both fire warning lights were on, and
except for being a single engine 46, and my body functions associated with soiled
underwear shut down, we were actually in pretty good shape, considering how we had
very nearly ended up.

By the time we got to Quang Tri the artillery and fixed wing guys had already been
sicced on Charlie. On landing it was "suggested" to us that, since this was
our operation we surely didn’t want anybody else to finish it for us, and as this
other helicopter just happened to be rigged out and handy, hadn’t we ought to crank
it up and get on back out there? You can imagine the bounce in our step as we
aye, ayed, sir, and accepted the offer.

But, after the arty and fixed wingers did their thing we went in under flares
and it was a piece of cake. Except for the zone itself. It was one of those stubby tree
places that had been worked over by explosions . . .You’ve seen them. You know
what I’m saying . . . Dusty shell holes and stripped trees . . . The kind where
three or four feet one way or another makes all the difference, and you’ve got to
wiggle your way down. I’ve often wondered how short the after action report would
have been if we’d gotten in there the first time in the dark amongst all those tree trunks.

The troops went bananas trying to find out why everything worked but the fire
warning lights refused to go out. It took them a couple of days to find a piece of shrapnel
the size of a gopher match head jammed into a wire bundle causing a short circuit. We had two
good engines all the time and didn’t know it. But I remember that zone . . . and devote
another moment to silence.

Another black night there was an emergency recon extract up northwest of the Rockpile,
beyond LZ Margo . . . We found the team and made as "stealthy" an approach as a
46 can make at night. After a successful pickup, and on our way home, the crew chief tells
us the team is short a man, and that he must still be back at the pick-up point. Getting him
out is a story in itself, but I’ll bet he never volunteered again to be the last man
aboard in a night helicopter extract.

Remember the rainy season at Quang Tri? You guys who were there can bear witness. For
those who weren’t there and don’t know, even a sand dune can be saturated. Beyond
that point water won’t soak in any more and, just like on any other soil, it floods.
Only worse. Because it doesn’t stand, it runs, and it ruts and washes with even the
least amount of runoff. Everything suffers as the sand washes from under it, including the
runway, bunkers, sandbag walls, outside storage, blast fences, hooches, two holers, four
holers, water supply points, walkways, parking mat, and roadway material. Absolutely nothing
can stand up to water runoff on a sand dune.

There are other memories. We all have them. Many are forgotten. They dim with time,
and they come and go in a moving collage. These are some of mine. . . . . A night flight
out toward Camp Carroll under a moon, doing 120 Knots and seeing our shadow, full grown,
suddenly appear on rising ground just outside the window. The fifty caliber tracer round
in the left fuel tank that didn’t start a fire . . . Another fifty caliber round cutting
a foot long slit in the side of the bird, impacting the breech of our own left fifty with the
gunner leaning over it. Getting lost looking for an evac in mountain valleys under a low
overcast and finding a landmark 4 clicks inside North Viet Nam. The co-pilot’s collective
shot in two amid a cockpit full of AK 47 rounds . . . A blanket of incoming tracers at night,
job not done yet, wingman single engined by enemy fire during a night hot recon extract, wingman
eventually going down . . . Sheet of tin through the blades on top of the Rockpile . . .
Eight rounds in the aft transmission, pressure gone and landing in Indian country. Bullet
bouncer under the rudder pedals taking three AK-47 rounds. Dog house and some of it’s
contents swiss cheesed by an exploding round . . . Arty round impact under the rotor
blades, flying home with strike damage to the blades and rotor heads . . . A helmet jammed
between the wheels on the right landing gear. Was a head in it when it got jammed there?
. . Taking hits going into a zone on a troop insert, the crew chief saying he didn’t know if any
of the troops were hurt because they all hit the deck. Who told them the
bottom of a 46 was any thicker than the sides? Co Roc . . . Arc Lights . . . Mortars in the
zone . . . Spector . . . Puff , . . The New Jersey . . . The "Hills": 689, 881 North,
881 South, 950 . . . and the others . . . Ashau Valley, Hawk, Co Co Va, Happy Valley . . .
Loose arty ammo crates in the zone . . . Cam Lo, Da Krong, Con Thien, Gio Lin, Top
of the Rock . . . hovering over a canopy, the hoist or a sling load down through the
trees . . . LZ Shit Sandwich, Base of the Rock, Stud . . . Vandergrift LSA blown
up .. . inserts . . . extracts . . . elephant grass higher than the rotors . . . one wheel
or the ramp against a slope so someone could get on, , ,or off. . . . the rain
and the fog. . . resupply . . . hot refuel . . . Air taxi up a slope in the clouds to get a
medevac, take fire and climb out IFR, didn’t always work . . . And the grunts . . .
the tired . . . the gaunt . . . the dirty . . . the wonderful, our reason for being, grunts.
And the wounded . . . always the wounded . . . Thank God for the corpsmen, the
only real volunteers ... and Vandergrift Med, Charlie Med, the Repose . . . the Sanctuary . . .
the others . . . And still in the end over 30 Chatterbox helicopters lost and more than
70 of our names on The Wall, including those from Rocky Darger’s and Woody
Goble’s crews, both flying my wing when they went down . . . both having tried
to protect me and my crew . . .

And so it went . . . on . . . and on . . . and on . . . with my last combat flight being
on 13 May 69 with Lt. Whitfield. I was never hurt, nor were any of my crews. But people all
around me were hurt. I still don’t know the price of that, but there must be
one . . . . . . . . .

Such was the lot, and the distinction, of the Marines I was able to serve with
in 262 at Quang Tri. No different than Marines anywhere. It’s just that these were
the ones I served with.

Danang was rocketed the night I was there on my way home. My hang up bag was
shredded and my footlocker had been shipped that afternoon. I was left with the
flight suit I had on. When I got to Riverside Air Force Base I learned my footlocker
had been sent to Travis by mistake. It took three months to get Customs to release it, and
I had to pay shipping myself. In the mean time I had thirty days and some travel time,
but I was still in my flight suit. On my way to the Riverside BX to buy some clothes, a
long haired flower child with a beard, and in a torn T-shirt and shower shoes, told
me I smelled bad. I remembered seeing similar clothes and faces picketing my
mother’s home when my younger brother was killed in an F-105 on his 100th
mission over the "North", the last one required before his rotation. So this was what
it was all for? My Viet Nam tour was over. Like so many other returning
Marines, my heart sank.

Thanks, you Chatterboxes, for me it really was the best of times and the worst of times . . .

Harvey "Blades" Britt

I picked the following off an old Canadian TV documentary on World War One
aviation. It’s probably over 80 years old now, and was surely held close by the flyers
of that time. But, to me, the ring of it fits the experience we know as Viet Nam. I don’t
think they’ll mind if we use it, our situations being so similar. . . . . . Can’t win the
war as a lone force, but willingly, repeatedly, risking everything in an effort to help
someone who might. . . . . . .

 

Friends ain’t supposed to die
until they’re old.
And friends ain’t supposed
to die in pain.

No one should die alone
when he is twenty one.
And living shouldn’t make you
feel ashamed.

I can’t believe how young
we were back then.
One thing’s for sure we’ll never be
that young again.

We were daring young men
with hearts of gold.
And too many of us
never did get old.

 

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