Originally Posted by
tgtaylor
Back during the Vietnam War I served with the 1st Air Cavalry Division and we did so many air assaults that we were awarded the Air Medal. You supposed to get a oak leaf cluster for each 25 missions but we (ordinary infantrymen) never got any oak leafs – apparently the count was kept only for the senior officers because I've only seen battalion majors and colonels with oak leafs and I had made as many as 3 air assaults in one day! The choppers would ever land or even hover. As the “jumping off” point was reached I would get up off the floor and hop out on the skids holding on the the chopper with one hand so that I wouldn't fall off. Fast forward to about 10 years ago I was working near the Pleasanton Fair grounds. After sitting all morning in an office I usually spend my1 hour lunch breaks walking and one day they had a “Stand Down” for homeless vets at the fair grounds so I walked over there to check it out. They had a vintage Huey from the war there and it appeared incredibly small from what I remembered. I couldn't see how a squad of us got into it. Of course I was decades older and a few pounds heaver but still...
Logging oil and gas wells in the Gulf of Mexico in good weather we would put our tools on a crew boat for transport and take a helicopter to the rig – about 100 miles out in the Gulf. Usually the rig personnel just started pulling the pipe out of the from the hole and that meant that we could get something to eat from the Galley and some sleep before being awakened that our tools have arrived and the pipe was out of the hole. Once started we couldn't stop until the job was done because with the drilling pipe out of the hole no drilling was going on. But during bad weather – weather that prevented the helicopter from flying - we went along with the tools on the crew boat – about a 100 foot vessel. I can take the swaying to and fro in rough seas feeling nauseous but as soon as the boat makes that first jump out of the water on the large swells I make a bee line for the head where I remain for the duration holding on to the sink with both hands and dry heaving. This went on for hours, like 10 or more, until the rig was reached at which time the Captain would cut the motors and try to maneuver under a sling that was dropped by a crane operator on the rig. I could tell by the sound of the motors where the position of the sling was over the deck. At the precise moment I would run from the head and out onto the deck would get a bead on the sling swinging latterly across the back of the boat and, again at the precise moment, run and grab a hold of it and wrap it around both arms so that I wouldn't fall into the Gulf. That was the go single for everyone else. As soon as I was on that sling the sickness would pass.
Thomas
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