...was the topic on our VietVet helicopter crew forum.
Aside from the couple of “Which one?” and “Getting’ shot at, same as everybody else,” pretty much every one of us had a variation on the same story.
Here’s mine.
Got up before dawn and stumbled out to preflight in the dark (there was a One-Shot Charlie who earned his pay by plinking at pilots preflighting the mast and the rotor head). Finished up and met up with the rest of the crew at breakfast, where we grabbed our cans of lunch and filled our canteens with the colored sugar-water (“What flavor is it today?” “Red.”) the mess bunch insisted on calling “Kool-Aid,” and yakked with the CO about Christmas. Before we left, he said, “Everybody’s flying swing ship (outpost resupply missions, aka, Hash and trash, Pizza delivery, being an olive-drab taxicab) today. If you don’t make it back in time for chow, we’ll save some turkey for you.”
Long story short. I flew the Kien Giang Swing, which meant we landed at Ca Mau and picked up Mermite cans full of turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes and veggies, cans of cranberry sauce, boxes of pastries, and cans of coffee and mail – letters and packages – and then flew to every mud fort A-Team outpost and Marine Tiger firebase in the western Delta. We must’ve made fifteen trips to deliver it all, including a couple of “one-skid on the platform, the other hanging over a 500-foot dropoff” landings at some radar sites located in the Seven Sisters Mountains. We flew for eight hours, not counting the multiple refuels and loadups. Never did stop long enough to open our C-rat lunches.
When we got back, Ops called us on FM to tell us the chow hall was open for refills on the colored sugar water, and that was it – our dinners had been Mermited to an A-Team outpost down the road that somebody left off the original list and the crew flying the local swing had squawked until the oversight was rectified.
*shrug*
We sat on the cargo deck of the Huey and broke open our Cs.
“What did you get for lunch?”
“Ham slices. You?”
“Boned chicken.”
“Ham and eggs.”
“Turkey loaf.”
*grin*
We each took a spoonful from our cans, then passed them right until everything was gone.
Finest kind of Christmas dinner -- *finest* kind…
Aside from the couple of “Which one?” and “Getting’ shot at, same as everybody else,” pretty much every one of us had a variation on the same story.
Here’s mine.
Got up before dawn and stumbled out to preflight in the dark (there was a One-Shot Charlie who earned his pay by plinking at pilots preflighting the mast and the rotor head). Finished up and met up with the rest of the crew at breakfast, where we grabbed our cans of lunch and filled our canteens with the colored sugar-water (“What flavor is it today?” “Red.”) the mess bunch insisted on calling “Kool-Aid,” and yakked with the CO about Christmas. Before we left, he said, “Everybody’s flying swing ship (outpost resupply missions, aka, Hash and trash, Pizza delivery, being an olive-drab taxicab) today. If you don’t make it back in time for chow, we’ll save some turkey for you.”
Long story short. I flew the Kien Giang Swing, which meant we landed at Ca Mau and picked up Mermite cans full of turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes and veggies, cans of cranberry sauce, boxes of pastries, and cans of coffee and mail – letters and packages – and then flew to every mud fort A-Team outpost and Marine Tiger firebase in the western Delta. We must’ve made fifteen trips to deliver it all, including a couple of “one-skid on the platform, the other hanging over a 500-foot dropoff” landings at some radar sites located in the Seven Sisters Mountains. We flew for eight hours, not counting the multiple refuels and loadups. Never did stop long enough to open our C-rat lunches.
When we got back, Ops called us on FM to tell us the chow hall was open for refills on the colored sugar water, and that was it – our dinners had been Mermited to an A-Team outpost down the road that somebody left off the original list and the crew flying the local swing had squawked until the oversight was rectified.
*shrug*
We sat on the cargo deck of the Huey and broke open our Cs.
“What did you get for lunch?”
“Ham slices. You?”
“Boned chicken.”
“Ham and eggs.”
“Turkey loaf.”
*grin*
We each took a spoonful from our cans, then passed them right until everything was gone.
Finest kind of Christmas dinner -- *finest* kind…
Slept until noon Xmas Day, 9 to a 10 X 20 classroom, in the Univ of Seoul Music School building in Yong-Dong-Po. Sleep was interupted by an air raid by "Bed Check Charlie" dropping mortar shells in our motor pool (soccer field) from his old bi-plane. He damaged a couple of trucks while we lay in a trench on a hillside and watched. Stayed up and had canned turkey dinner, got a gift box from the Salvation Army and went back to work about 11 PM.
It was my 14th day in Korea. To my knowledge Christmas Day was the last air raid of the Korean War.
Super-sonic fighter jets trying to shoot down a 65 MPH bi-plane at 200 feet altitude is an amusing sight.