It was Thanksgiving Day 1968 in the Mekong Delta. My pilot, Capt. Jerry Hare, and I left Special Forces Camp B-43 under a lowering sky, pleased with our good fortune and mouths watering at the prospect of Thanksgiving dinner at Binh Thuy Air Base.
It was to be a matchless feast: fresh turkey dinners, including stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie flown in direct from the States. I cannot remember precisely why Jerry and I got to go, largely because I muddled my memory with a fictional account many moons ago. In my story, Jerry and I won a coin toss between pilots and crew chiefs respectively. Looking back on it, this seems unlikely, but it made for a fun scenario, laced with irony, when you consider how the day turned out for me.
Our Air Force Tactical Air Control Party (TACP) provided air support to U.S. and Vietnamese ground and naval forces in what was known as the 44th Special Tactical Zone. As forward air controllers (FACs), our pilots overflew this ground, consisting of three provinces, everyday in the O-1 Bird Dog (a Cessna 170 with a rear window) noting any changes that might reveal enemy activity. Airstrikes were most often scheduled based on observation and intelligence. But if something untoward was spotted or help was needed for troops in contact, and a FAC was airborne nearby, he would rush to the coordinates, jets would scramble and hit the enemy.
Crew chiefs, as a rule, did not fly airstrikes, but if we were on board for periodic maintenance or a personnel matter on the big base, the pilots did not drop us off. We went along for the ride, and I invariably got sick from the g-forces by repeatedly circling the target.
The two of us took off in the morning, and wouldn’t you know it? We put in an airstrike en route …before dinner. It was for the Vietnamese Air Force. They did not celebrate Thanksgiving. No one was shipping fresh turkey dinners for them from California’s Travis Air Force Base—where I had begun this adventure five months before, not 45 minutes from my hometown. They put on quite an airshow in their A-1E Skyraiders, to include hammerhead turns, barrel rolls, loops, the whole shebang, before diving on the target. Who knew if they destroyed anything? A rain squall that sent us all home and by then I had vomited the last of my breakfast.
“Hey, Mike! How about some rock and roll!”
Jerry was high on combat and did not turn to see me slumped in the seat, my pallor as green as the Bird Dog’s cockpit. He switched to Armed Forces Radio in Saigon and suddenly the Rolling Stones were grinding “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” into my headsets as we dropped to the deck and skimmed the Hau River, a tributary of the Mekong, in full chop. It was not a “…gas, gas, gas.” To this day whenever I hear the song it takes me straight back to Nov. 28, 1968, when the updrafts from the river and Mick Jagger depleted my entire stock of air sickness bags—normally reserved for Vietnamese and our own army observers.
On arrival, the flight-line van picked us up—a rare treat for me as I normally walked to the base cantonment area about a mile away. Jerry was forthright when the driver asked if he was going to the officers’ mess, me to the enlisted area. “No way, we’re family,” he told the driver. We walked into the new dining hall in the Red Horse barracks area where the tables were laid with white tablecloths, place cards, and little paper cups of dinner mints.
Some friends from stateside and my few weeks on the base waved us over to their table.
“Jesus, Vouri, you don’t look so good. Whatcha do to ‘em, Captain?” one of them said.
“Oh, we put in an airstrike, and his tummy is a little upset, but he’ll be fine.” But I was anything but fine. As we shuffled through the chow line, fragrant with roasted turkey and savory stuffing, I struggled to keep my mind off my stomach. I really thought I was going to make it until a server plopped a dollop of mash potatoes, followed by a ladle of gravy, on my plate. I bolted for the latrine. My friends were kind enough to take my plate to the table. But in the end, I pushed it away. I never took a single bite and spent the rest of the dinner hour outside.
We had enough daylight after dinner to make it back to Cao Lanh. As we strode into the radio bunker in the compound, those who lost out on the Thanksgiving repast were hanging out eager for details, which Jerry was happy to supply, reciting from his place card in detail.
“What about you, Mike?” The question was meant to funny. They knew about the airstrike and my penchant for filling airsick bags.
“I liked the dinner mints.”
Some coin flip.
– Mike Vouri