My First Flight in Vietnam

Ed Gulesserian, a Mohawk driver who was up in I Corps in the latter part of the war, sent me a note about his first flight in Vietnam.  It wan't in an OV-1 though, but rather a CH-47...

April 25, 2017

I'm helping organize a reunion in Nashville for my Vietnam Chinook unit.  My focus is to get the pilots to come.  After 49 years, it's time.  

Got a letter today from CW4 Vern Mattie, the pilot that took me on my first flight in VN.  Back then he was a very senior warrant officer near the end of his second tour.  The unit pilots spoke of his skill and composure with reverence.  New pilots called him "God" (not to his face).  It's a cliché, but I'm sure he had forgotten much more about flying than I knew at that point.  I thought I had done well in flight school but I quickly learned I was a long, long way from being combat ready.

It was the second day of the Tet 68 attacks and my third day in VN.  That first flight was one of most dramatic days in my life; seven hours of intense flying; in and out of  a dozen Landing Zones carved out in the mountains and plateaus in the Central Highlands (west of Kontum and Dak To), near Laos and Cambodia.  Tracers in the air from both US and NVA.  Much of the fire came from areas near the LZ perimeters, and it was hard for us to tell who was who.  

There was no time for an orientation flight.  Pilots were needed for missions.  Vern Mattie and I were paired that first day and we were flying missions minutes after we first lifted off.  I watched him do "magic" with the aircraft time after time.  The first time he gave me the controls was several hours later to finish an approach into an LZ.  I remember the tracers arcing through the sky around us.  Over the radios, I could hear that others in our unit were in similar situations.  Vern Mattie never got anxious of ruffled!  At times it seemed surreal. 

As the day progressed, I guess he thought I was at least marginally adequate as a pilot so on the last mission of the day he gave me the controls for the entire approach into an LZ.  (Anyone who remembers the ridges around the Ben Het Special Forces camp just east of Laos knows exactly where we were.) 

The standard procedures for an approach were the same all day.  As we turned toward the LZ for the approach and raced toward it, the entire perimeter opened up with suppressive fire to cover our approach, hover time (seconds), and hasty departure.  (Five seconds in a hot LZ is an eternity; longer can become fatal - particularly since at that moment you're the most visible and high value target in the area.) 

This time the suppressive fire coming from the LZ perimeter was everywhere with some of the tracers arcing right past us.  My first thought was that it was poorly coordinated friendly fire.  Vern Mattie grabbed the controls, threw us into a steep turn, and sternly told me "Son, those are the NVA and they are trying to kill us!”  (How did the NVA not run out of ammunition?)

So I guess that first day I was both clumsy and naive.  And it no longer seemed just "surreal".  Everyone who has been shot at with lethal intent remembers it with total clarity, and it was no different for me.  Your life views change instantaneously and profoundly.  Thus began my steep, steep learning curve.  My standard from that day was to somehow learn to fly missions as well as the consummate professional beside me.  I've never forgotten that lesson.

Lots of other stories (362 days to go at that point) but the letter today [from Vern] made that particular day seem very recent.