CHAPTER 5 - The Dangerous Calculated Risk

The Risk-Taker

I've always been a risk-taker, even as a kid—driving my parents crazy with reckless stunts. I knew punishment awaited, but I didn't care. It's simply who I am.

When I was 13, my brother Ricky (11) and cousin Oran (18) lived on Maxwell Street in Carleton, Michigan. One day, Ricky and I walked across the street to Oran's house and the three of us ventured into the wooded area behind his house to climb a massive tree—I'm talking at least eighty feet tall. I dared Oran to cut it down with a handsaw. I climbed the tree to the top and after about 45 minutes of sawing through that enormous trunk, the tree came crashing down.

I was eating an apple when I began to fall. Ricky laughed as I screamed through the air, convinced I might die. Then I hit the ground—and we had a blast. All three of us took turns riding the falling trees down.

Years later, Ricky joined the Marine Corps, following in our dad's service as a Marine in World War II. He volunteered for Forest Recon, training as special forces and jumping out of planes. When he told his Commanding Officer about this tree-falling stunt, the officer just laughed and said, "You'll make it, soldier."

The Extension

That's who I was—a kid from the little town of Carleton, Michigan, always taking huge risks and pushing the envelope. And as I served my 14 months in hell, risking my life every day, scared that I'd go home in a box, I forged ahead just like I always had. The same reckless courage that sent me falling from treetops would be the only thing keeping me alive in Vietnam.

I was assigned as a door gunner to the 7th of the 1st Air Cavalry—we called ourselves the "Black Hawks."

The Army offered me a choice: volunteer to extend my combat tour by two months (making it fourteen months total), and if I had less than 150 days remaining on my two-year draft commitment when I returned, the government would grant me immediate release. I'd fly into Fort Lewis, Washington, a free man.

Most soldiers would've refused to add even a single day in a combat zone. But I saw the logic clearly. If I left on schedule, I'd get thirty days of leave, only to be shipped straight to Fort Polk—the humid nightmare of "Tigerland." My assignment there would be training the next wave of young men, sending them into the jungle to die. I couldn't accept becoming the one to teach scared nineteen-year-olds how to march into rice paddies, knowing what I now knew.

So I took the calculated risk. I chose two more months of uncertainty with the 7th of the 1st Air Cavalry—dodging mortars and firing the M60—over the moral certainty of feeding the war machine back home. I traded battlefield pressure for complete freedom. I signed the paperwork, extended my tour, and committed myself to surviving those final, high-stakes days.

Hornets and Near Misses

Being a door gunner wasn't like the movies. Most days the air stayed calm. We weren't constantly diving into massive firefights. Instead, it felt like flying through swarms of hornets—short, sharp bursts of enemy fire from nowhere, forcing us to bank and evade. When I did fire the M60, targets were usually distant enough that the distance created a psychological buffer. I can't imagine the raw terror of ground combat, where the enemy's face is visible.

Then one day, that distance disappeared. We received an emergency mission: drop a generator—critical equipment—to a ground unit that needed it immediately. As we approached the landing zone (LZ), something felt wrong.

Our pilot radioed the plan. "We're going to fake the landing and pull out right before we hit the ground."

It was brilliant. We dropped fast, pretending to commit. The ship screamed as the pilot pushed the Huey beyond its limits, banking so hard and so low we nearly flipped. Just as we pulled out, the ground erupted below us.

The Viet Cong had been waiting, timing their mortar strike for our predicted landing. The pilot yelled over the radio, "Get ready on the come-around! We're doing it fast—throw the generator off right before we touch down!"

We looped back, the pilot flying like a fighter jet, compensating for the heavy load. We dumped the generator and were gone before the enemy could adjust. That pilot knew exactly what they were waiting for—and he used our own ship to bait and escape the trap.

My hands wouldn't stop shaking. My heart hammered so hard I felt it in my throat. I kept seeing that ground erupt, kept hearing the mortars, kept feeling the ship nearly flip. For a moment, I thought about my mom's kitchen back home—the yellow wallpaper, the smell of morning coffee. People sitting at breakfast tables with no idea what we were doing out here.

The Deadly Mortar

After I extended, every flight was a countdown to freedom. But the war wasn't finished with me yet.

In a bizarre twist, even with every other day off, I occasionally pulled ground duty. On one of my scheduled rest days, I found myself standing bunker duty—three men watching a section of perimeter. I was on top of the bunker with my M16 when, around 3:00 AM, all hell broke loose.

Mortars rained down. Pure instinct took over—I dove off the bunker without even grabbing my rifle. I landed half in, half out of an empty steel barrel and immediately knew I was badly hit. I was bleeding heavily and felt myself blacking out. I crawled out of the barrel, dragged myself through the sand around the perimeter, made it to the nearby dirt road, and passed out.

I woke up to pure agony.

Doctors were scrubbing rust from the barrel out of my wounds. The injury meant mandatory 30-day bed rest—the ultimate, if agonizing, fulfillment of my extended contract. I was immobile, but I was free. I wouldn't be training recruits at Fort Polk.

When the Master Sergeant visited, he promised a Purple Heart I never received. But the Army did formally acknowledge my service: I received the Air Medal for Valor for enduring enemy fire for a documented 167 hours during my fourteen months as a door gunner.

That medal was real documentation of my time in the "Hellhole"—recognition of the cold fear and hot adrenaline of dodging mortars and laying down fire for the men on the ground.

After 30 days of bed rest, I was healing but restless. My body needed recovery, but my mind needed work. I heard about a shortage of PRC-25 radios and asked if I could help at the airfield. The First Sergeant, knowing my interest in electronics, said, "That's a great idea!"

I found the guy "Pinto" in charge and learned they couldn't get replacement parts. I spotted 20 to 30 radios stacked against the back wall, all waiting for repairs. "Why don't we take a part from one and try it in another?" I suggested. By day's end, we had four radios working. For a few hours, I felt almost normal—just a guy fixing things, using my hands for something other than a machine gun.

The next day, the First Sergeant already knew about the repairs. We fixed more radios, though eventually we hit the limit—most needed the same part we didn't have. He said, "Anyway, you did good work."

One day off, I visited the PX and picked up a radio with several bands. I'd listen to AM out of Saigon. Every morning at 7:00, we heard "GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM"—a brief moment of normalcy that started each day. Robin Williams later immortalized that greeting in the 1987 film.

Within a week I was back in the Huey. The radio repair work had been a welcome detour, but those days dragged regardless. I needed to stay busy.

The NCO Club and the Whistle Stop

As a door gunner in the Black Hawks, we had better duty schedules than the infantry. We flew every other day, leaving time to recover and decompress. We made the most of it.

After a run, we'd head to the NCO club—a dim, smoke-filled room where the jukebox blared and the air hung thick with cigarette haze and cheap whiskey. Vietnamese women danced on a small stage, their movements slow and hypnotic under colored lights. We drank heavily, the alcohol burning down our throats, trying to convince ourselves we were still alive and free. It was a necessary escape, however brief.

But reality imposed a strict limit. Even on days off, we couldn't truly party or drink carelessly. We had to rest, stay sharp, and be fully ready for the next mission. The difference between a relaxed night and a fatal error was a split second. The crew understood: life was constant calculation.

That routine shattered one afternoon heading to the mess hall.

Shots rang out. Someone was shooting from the water tower. Everyone scattered, realizing instantly the sickening truth: the fire came from inside the wire. It was one of our own—a soldier who'd reached his breaking point, turning his weapon on his comrades.

The base descended into chaos. Eventually, the chaplain talked the soldier down, convincing him to surrender. But the relief was short-lived. Military Police swarmed the area and, in their fury and fear, dragged the man out and beat him nearly to death.

It was terrifying and gut-wrenching. The enemy outside was predictable, but a shattered mind inside was not. I often wondered what became of that man—and what the MPs did to him after. That incident was a raw reminder: the war wasn't just in the jungle; it was in the mind. Sometimes the most immediate danger was the man next to you.

Helpless at 1,500 Feet

Something was up—we had to be at the airfield at 4:00 AM. We flew the Huey up to 10,000 feet to contact Saigon over the radio. Our orders: pick up a full-bird colonel—the "Back Seat."

We landed with the rotors still turning. The colonel jumped in, harnessed up, and said, "Hello, boys," over the radio. He gave coordinates, and we headed out. As we flew, he told us shit was hitting the fan across the Delta. Suddenly, we were taking rounds.

One shot flew through the ship and struck the colonel in the shoulder. It nearly took his whole shoulder off. When he'd boarded, he'd acted like John Wayne. Now he was screaming.

The crew chief and I tried to help. We stripped off our shirts and worked to stop the bleeding, but it was hopeless. The pilot radioed an emergency, asking for the nearest hospital. The colonel screamed. He looked at me and said, "Tell my family I love them."

By the time we reached the hospital, he'd bled out. The screaming had stopped. Only the sound of rotors and wind through the open doors remained. I looked down at my hands—covered in his blood. The Huey's floor was slick with it. The crew chief and I sat there, our shirts soaked red, staring at nothing. I will never forget that day. That man died a horrible death.

Over the following days, I couldn't get the memories out of my head. I couldn't stop thinking about the poor colonel and his family. They never knew exactly what happened—I did. The military told them almost nothing. Just that he died in action and was a hero.

I kept thinking about the times we took fire and got orders to stand down. We couldn't shoot back. We just had to take it. What kind of war is that? What were we even doing there?

Over 50,000 young men died in what they called a "conflict." Not a war—a conflict. Like that makes it smaller. Like that makes it hurt less.

I got out of that hellhole. Fifty-six years later, I'm still here to tell you about it. But I can still see that colonel's face. I can still feel his blood on my hands.

And I still don't know what any of it was for.