For the 20-year-old gunner of a UH-C1 “Firebird” gunship helicopter, the September 1969 day that came to be known as Black Monday began with a routine mission to bring infantry into a waiting landing zone.
As the infantry approached the landing zone, the jungle erupted in gunfire from North Vietnamese forces in concrete bunkers -– they’d known the Americans were coming. Helicopters on every side burst into flames; some careened to the ground. On the ground there was chaos as the infantry was overrun.
The gunships, loaded with fuel and weaponry, flew into the fray. They weren’t meant to land. The gunner’s pilot landed anyway.
American soldiers immediately ran for the chopper, some loading it with wounded, others gunned down before they reached it. The gunner knew the craft couldn’t take off with the load, believed no one on board would survive the battle, but still took them on.
The pilot tried to take off but could only bounce. He yelled for the gunner to throw off the rocket pods. After jumping out to do so, the gunner sat on the very edge of the floor, his feet hanging out the side, as the pilot tried again.
The North Vietnamese closed in; the pilot still couldn’t get high enough to clear the jungle. He tipped the blades forward and headed toward the trees. The prop chopped the forest apart like a gigantic weed-whacker.
The helicopter made it back to safety, unloaded, and refueled. The gunner and his crew flew back to battle.
More than 40 years later, the gunner, Gene “Wally” Waldrip, told this story sitting on the deck of a lake home near Pomme de Terre Lake. He and nine other Vietnam War veterans gathered there this past weekend for the biennial reunion of the “Boys of the Summer of ’69,” as they call themselves, boating around the lake, relaxing, and sharing their stories with a pair of next-generation veterans.
“We are our own best therapists,” said Randy Thomas of Springfield, the reunion’s host this year. “Just sitting and talking with one another, releasing. It takes a combat veteran to understand a combat veteran.”
Joining the Boys were Thomas’ son, Aaron, and Aaron’s West Point roommate, Brook Hilton. Both are veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan and say that although location, culture, objectives, and time separate the conflicts, some things, like the bond between soldiers who fight together, never seem to change.
“Listing to these guys, it sounds exactly like what we talk about,” Hilton said. “It’s all very similar.”