By CHARLES BLACK
Enquirer Military Writer
PLEIKU, Viet Nam - I got back here from Duc Co just in time to meet Capt. Robert C. Debardalaben, Capt. James Lybrand and Capt. Walter Urbach of the 17th Aviation Company (the Caribou company which has been flying record hours in support of the 1st Cavalry Division) and eat supper with them.
They were just back in from
what must be the most wearying flights available in Viet Nam - radio
relay
missions.
When an airmobile division
goes into the field it is not the easiest thing in the world to keep up
with,
as the frustrated press corps in Viet Nam has finally realized after
trying to
cover it from inaccurate and outdated information available at Saigon
press
briefings.
The key to the division’s
ability to conduct coordinated combat activities over an area of
several
hundred square miles (aside from its air capability, logistics
achievements,
etc.) is communications. The men in charge
must be able to talk to each other.
This implies that some
efficient radio operations are being handled and the Caribou-laden
radio relay
is part of the communications net. A
CV2 loads relay equipment on board, long antennae are thrust out the
open cargo
door like fishing poles, communications specialists climb in and the
plane
takes off and climbs to about 10,000 feet over An Khe.
Here it throttles back to
about 75 m.p.h. and describes sedate circles for periods of up to eight
hours,
then its place is taken by another aerial switchboard.
The Caribou thus becomes the world’s tallest
radio antenna. (I never thought to ask
if the pilots fly clockwise or counterclockwise, but I assume they can
mix them
up to kill the boredom.)
I absolutely refused to
accompany anybody flying a radio relay mission. I
once spent 14 1/2 hours on a Caribou flight from Calcutta to
Saigon, and there just didn’t seem to be anything to add to my
portfolio of
calluses by inspecting a cylinder of air over An Khe for one third of a
day.
I did unbend enough,
however, to allow Capt. B. D. Silvey and CWO2 Gerard Keeler to get me
into a
CV2 loaded with gear and technicians who were simply going to fly to An
Khe and
load into another bird.
I didn’t trust them. Right
up until landing I thought they had
pulled the elaborate kind of practical joke Caribou pilots indulge in
on such a
universal scale and that I was stuck for eight hours.
However, they made a nice straight-forward flight from Pleiku to
An Khe.
Aboard the plane were some
old friends of mine from the 13th Signal Battalion who were suddenly
full-fledged flight communications crewmen.
S-Sgt. Arthur C. McCullough,
Sp4 Gennaro Cappasso and PFC Wilbur C. Wells, all of A Co., showed me
the
elaborate relay equipment which they use to pick up messages and flash
on to their
destination and which extends the range of radio communications many
fold.
Sp4 Nelson A. Hendrickson,
the crew chief from the 17th Aviation Co., kept reassuring me that we
weren’t
up for the whole night, and when we landed I thanked him for being the
best
friend I had aboard. The men up in the
pilot end kept implying over the intercom that this was probably “going
to be
the longest mission on record. . . we have updraft and can glide a lot
to
conserve fuel.”
Maj. Chuck Siler, the 1st
Cavalry Division public information officer, picked me up in a jeep. As we bumped along over the road around the
Golf Course toward the press camp he showed me one of the most
impressive
entries in the “Viet Nam Mail Call” field.
All of these letters sent to
1st Cavalry men are welcomed more than the writers would think
possible,
particularly with the troops being subjected to news reports about the
antics
of a few people who have a better break than the riflemen here do and
are using
it to hurt their country. The letters
of support and friendship far outweigh the idiocy and brutal
callousness of the
other demonstrations.
The letter Maj. Siler showed
me came from the Junior High School in Bluefield, W. Va., and it was
signed by
every student and every teacher. It was
several feet long and had more than 600 signatures to a warm note of
support
and a wish for well-being.
The letters to the troops
have been coming in great numbers and the troops have been lining up at
bulletin boards around An Khe to read them.
They are tangible answers to the questions raised in a soldiers’
mind by
the well-publicized hoopla of the “protesters.”
It must be understood that the demonstrations, signs, etc., have
a damned bad effect on morale in this fight.
They are not taken lightly by a boy who has just gone through a
bad day
in the brush and seen his friends carried to the evacuation choppers on
litters
made of poles and ponchos. He is a very
vulnerable boy then and he deserves better than the scurvy answer which
a few
people serve up on signs.
With the letters sent from
the real people back home he gets a better, infinitely better,
indication of
what the citizens of his country feel about this contribution to his
fellow
man.
Maj. Siler told me that there was a possible move under way to send the Second Battalion 12th Infantry, commanded by Lt. Col. Earl Ingram, to an operation over around Boon Song where a Special Forces Camp had been hit by the North Vietnamese division which has operated in that area.
As usual, multiple ambushes
had been established around the camp which were sprung by the relief
forces. The siege on the camp had been
broken but intelligence reports indicated another buildup was under way
and a
joint American-Vietnamese operation was planned to forestall it.
I had been to Boon Song a
few days before the attack on it - one of the officers I admire more
than
almost anyone who has been on duty in Viet Nam, Capt. Paris Davis, was
seriously wounded and a good non-commissioned officer I had met was
killed in
the attack - and I felt very involved in the events over there near the
coast.
The wounds suffered by Capt.
Davis, three machine gun bullets which he survived and is recovering
from, were
the fifth, sixth and seventh wounds this officer received in a single
six-month
tour in Viet Nam.
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