John, pls see
the attached, your photo on the pilot’s prayer I made years ago to ha=
ng
on my wall.
BTW I learned a few things from Ron=
I
didn’t know. For the benefit of others, Ron Hefner was back seat and I
was front seat in a cobra when we were shot down in 1969, John was fire team
leader and we were his wing ship, Graham Stevens was John’s front sea=
t.
When we went down hard in a jungle clearing John landed nearby to help, at
great risk to himself I might add.
John recently found Ron for the fir=
st
time, and I went to see him a few days ago in Newton, Alabama just outside
Dothan near Ft Rucker, our first conversations since the event 40 years ago.
What started as one glass of red wine got out of hand, and I learned a few
things I didn’t know.
When we lost our tail rotor, Ron sa=
ys
the aircraft nosed over and went out of control. Who knows, maybe something
happened to the stabilizer on the tail boom. Ron said he had the cyclic all=
the
way forward at one point with no response. When we started spinning Ron was
closer to the mast center of gravity, I was further out in the front seat, =
I do
remember being thrown out in my shoulder straps and the turbine surging as =
we
would spin around, stop for a second or two as the tail fin caught some air,
then flip around again and again, but I have no memory of impact. Ron says =
he
saw in the mirror that I had passed out, so that squares up.
Ron told me at impact the aircraft =
did
half a cartwheel flip nose-to-tail before all the moving parts stopped movi=
ng,
and I never knew that. While my canopy door was pinned to the
ground on the left side, Ron’s opened the opposite way so I figured he
just opened his canopy door and climbed out, but he said the severity of the
crash jammed it up, so he got out while I was still unconscious by shooting=
a
hole in the canopy with his pistol and hammering to break a hole he could c=
rawl
out. He was trying to break a hole to drag me out when John and Graham arri=
ved.
Ron has a vivid memory of me rousing and looking up at them when Graham pul=
led
out his pistol to break a hole and says my eyes got wide as saucers, maybe I
thought they were going to shoot me but I don’t remember. Graham has
always said his pistol fired accidently when he whacked the canopy to break=
a
hole – and he missed me – but maybe he intentionally shot a hol=
e to
make it easier to break through to drag me out. I’ll have to ask him =
to
think it through again.
I told Ron that Graham Stevens told me when he
visited me in the hospital in Vietnam that he counted 14 bullet holes in a
1’x2’ panel just under the cockpit and I asked Ron if he knew
because Stevens was, well, rather excited at the time. Ron said Major Dunsford, our new CO, told him later there were more =
than
70 holes in the aircraft, but it was lying on its left side so there may ha=
ve
been more on the other side. That had to come from Ron or Graham or John,
though, because we were the only ones on the ground, and when we left in th=
e medevac and John and Graham took off out of the clear=
ing,
our broken cobra had to be destroyed to keep the weapons, munitions and rad=
ios
out of enemy hands. John says he made one rocket run on the aircraft, then
broke off to follow us to the Lai Khe hospital,
trying to find out how bad off we were. Meanwhile John turned the destructi=
on
over to Pete Atack, Rebel 51, fire team leader =
of a
pair of Huey C-model gunships flying cover, who hit it with miniguns
and then rockets to fire it up until the fuel fire consumed it. So nobody e=
lse
would have counted bullet holes so I’m unsure who reported it to Majo=
r Dunsford other than John, who was fire team leader. S=
ounds
like a lot of holes to me.
I learned a little more from Pete Atack last year when I identified him for the 1s=
t
time. He said the enemy had a .51 cal anti-aircraft gun hidden in that area,
that he frequently took fire there, and that he took hits keeping the VC aw=
ay
from us on the ground. I knew they were in the area but didn’t know t=
hey
were that close. Ron told me he remembers hearing their fire so he knew they
were way TOO close. Pete says when our medevac =
took
off the VC rushed the broken cobra but he hit them with miniguns
to keep them back until he could fire it up.
Ron says he and I were flown separately to the =
24th
Evac hospital in Long Binh=
,
that he was unsuccessful in finding me, he was evaced<=
/span>
soon to Japan for a couple days then to Walter Reed hospital in Washington =
for
9 months being treated (how?) for back injuries but no surgery. Meanwhile I=
was
in the 24th Evac for a couple weeks,=
then
Japan a couple weeks, then to Ft Benning hospit=
al for
a couple months. During Ron’s Walter Reed long stay is when they found
his less evident neck injury. No surprise to me, I discovered my own neck
injury about 3 years ago when arthritis formed around an old injury, just t=
oo
subtle to be noticed amidst more aggravating injuries at the time.
Ron went back on flight status and stayed in the
Army long enough to retire and go on to do other things. He has had about 5
surgeries over the years on his back and neck, and now all his neck vertebr=
ae
are fused together. But he plays golf at Ft Rucker 3-4 times a week.
Now maybe we can arrange for the 4 of us to get
together for the 1st time in 40 years.
_________________
Terry Garlock