Vietnam, 1970. Tay Ninh Province. This is the only war story I allow myself to tell civilians because it was so much fun and I like to relive it: I was in the radio/communication division for the Rangers/Long-range Reconnaissance Patrol. One day, my partner and I hitched a helicopter ride to the fire support base with our gear. Flying at about 5,000 feet, I was sitting behind the pilot on the helicopter floor with my feet hanging over the landing rails. It was just me, my traveling partner and two door gunners. A light load.
The door gunner touched me on the shoulder and informed me: “Hang on. The pilot wants to teach the co-pilot how to fly this thing.” The pilot put the helicopter into a tight spiral. The deck I was sitting on was no longer horizontal, it was perpendicular to the ground. I was looking straight down at the jungle with nothing under me. The only thing keeping me in the helicopter was the force of the spiral and centripetal force.
Five minutes later, he leveled the helicopter to the tree tops. A spectacular piece of flying.
After a rapid decent, we began flying at 100-plus mph, hugging the tree tops. I had to pull my legs in, as he was literally hitting the tree tops with the landing rails. He was flying the chopper like a Ferrari race car, in and out of gullies and between trees. We did this for 10 minutes. Another piece of spectacular flying.
