God’s Own Lunatics

Because of the origin of the phrase, you might think that tag is reserved for Vietnam helicopter pilots. And you would be wrong.

Joe Galloway, a correspondent legendary among Vietnam vets, speaking on behalf of the grunts he traveled with and learned to love, was expressing their admiration and respect for helicopter crews in combat. “God’s Own Lunatics,” he said, referring to the Dustoff or Medevac, gunships or ride out of hell announced early by the distant, escalating thumps of “wop-wop-wop” coming to take their brothers home, undeterred by the fire they took approaching the LZ.

Every war is different, has its own flavor and norms and mores, its own operating style, its own expectations of each other, its own lingo and setting and tactics. So, I don’t know everything you as an individual member have experienced but I do know this. Whenever and wherever you flew helicopters in combat as pilot or crew, you were exactly what Joe meant when he said God’s Own Lunatics.

When I think back to my first Vietnam tour as a green Cobra pilot, I am reminded of the opening paragraph of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens:

      It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

I was a 21-year-old, trying to figure out the chaos and contradictions called Vietnam. Many of us felt this way. We were the new kids on the block when initially assigned to our combat unit.  The “old guys” had nicknames for us - newbies, FNG’s etc. - but soon we would be the “old guys.” You simply became one, or your luck ran out and you didn’t. That’s the reality of war.

Every helicopter crew generation from Korea to today has earned Joe’s moniker.  Each of you had your own adventures doing your duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, or South America, or God knows where else, doing crazy things like flying with NVG’s. 

Each of us signed up.  I could tell a long story on my own journey from having to join or get drafted in 1968. Losing your draft deferment back then had consequences. I had no idea then I would become one of God’s Own Lunatics.  

Whether a Warrant or Commissioned Officer, new pilots in Vietnam all started green with a lot to learn, like this, put into words of his own style by a friend. “You wanna’ know what I think? It don't really matter what I think. Once that first bullet goes past your head, politics and all that shit, just goes right out the window."

 Helicopter crews in Vietnam went through some major battles with more excitement than we wanted, like Dak Tho 67-68, Tet of ’68, Lam Son 719, An Loc 1972.  These were touchstone battles of the war, but in between major battles the daily life in every unit brought tests of our skill and courage, sights, sounds, smells and horrible and wonderful memories that would change us for the remainder of our lives.  

After Vietnam I was privileged to be a founding member of the 160th, and I had the thrill of flying in an under-rated hot little skirmish in Granada named Operation Urgent Fury. President Reagan pulled the trigger to interrupt the Commie troublemaking in Granada, and to rescue about 600 American medical students there at risk of becoming hostages. I was the lead AH-6 Little-Bird Gun pilot. We had four AH-6C Little-Bird guns and six MH-6 slicks with crews, delivered to the Granada runway by C-130s, each carrying two of our birds. 

The Grenadian’s and Cubans had blocked the runway with bulldozers, so ahead of us Rangers had to do a hop and pop - below 500’ with no reserve chute - to land and secure the runway. They hotwired the dozers to drive them out of the way. When we started offloading a sniper popped a few rounds at us, but the Rangers quickly took care of him. We prepped the aircraft, cranked them up and then we got busy. It wasn’t quite a cakewalk.

Several SEAL Teams were part of the operation. Four SEALs were lost in an airborne insertion with boats in a rainstorm, bodies never recovered. One of the SEAL missions was extraction of the Governor, but after arriving at the Governor’s Mansion they were surrounded by a superior force of Grenadian and Cuban troops and held off several assault waves including BTR-60s, a big 8-wheeled Soviet APC with heavy machine guns.

My team was tasked to take two Little-Bird guns to the Governor’s Mansion to relieve pressure on the good guys and try to get the Governor out. We never got there. As we passed the Radio Free Grenada building at about 100’, I didn’t know a SEAL Team was pinned down there, and I looked down to see a BTR-60 uncomfortably close with a shit-load of Cubans. And then the fun started. My windshield shattered, and my tip path plane went to shit. I broke left and got on the deck, slowed down to about 20 knots and egressed back over the water. I thought about ditching, but, hey we were still flying, so I limped it back to our base at the end of the island, shut down, and listened to the whish/whish of the blades with all the holes in them.  The blades looked like Swiss cheese.  I had one hit on the blades just behind the D-spar on the leading edge. A half inch closer and the blade would have come apart. 

When the BTR engaged me, the distraction of the BTR-6 trying to knock me down was what the SEAL Team needed to slip out the back door and E & E to the coast with their wounded.  The SEALs found a small boat, handy for them to complete their escape with bad guys hot on their tail.  They managed later to call into the command center, and at midnight we launched a MH-60 and my two guns to go get them. 

The Blackhawk found them about a half mile offshore, dropped a repelling ladder and the SEALs began to climb up to the 60. If you have never climbed a and aluminum caving ladder (which is about 8 inches wide) under the rotor wash of a MH-60, I promise you it’s almost too much for one man in decent shape, but one of those SEALs gave me the treat of an amazing sight as he climbed that ladder with a wounded man over his shoulder. I had worked with these guys for years and knew how tough they were, but I still marvel at that memory. They made it, all were recovered, and we returned to base (RTB’d).

Later we were on a beach that borders the St. Georges Bay. A Marine Sea Cobra AH-1 had been shot down earlier in St Georges, and his wingman was trying to provide cover for the CH-46 that was trying to get onto the island to rescue the downed crew. The Cobra was at about 2000’, and probably took hits to his mast, likely from ZSU-23’s.  We watched the blade fly off, flexure plate and two blades, The Cobra nosed down and into the water, no sign the crew got out.  Worst thing I’ve ever seen.

I’ll spare you my thoughts on recovering the body of a friend from his Black Hawk, but I would say Grenada for me was completely different and just the same as Vietnam. In both places some of our friends never became “old guys.”  They gave their last full measure of devotion as their luck ran out. The youth, the life, the blood, just ran out and they never got to live out their lives, never knew the joy of watching kids grow up and missed so many other things. For those of us who are left, their faces are frozen forever young, and even though we feel guilty that we lived through it and they did not, we know their actions “were in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon themselves, their units, and the United States of America.” God’s Own Lunatics.

Can any of us adequately describe our combat experience when a civilian with genuine interest asks, “What was it like?”

Here’s what Hoot said in the movie, Black Hawk Down. “When I get home and people ask me, 'Hey, Hoot, why do you do it, man? What are you? Some kind of war junkie?’ I won't say a goddamn word. Why? They won't understand. They won't understand why we do it. They won't understand that it's about the men next to you. And that's it. That's all it is.” 

And now it’s not only the men next to you, but also women, too.

So, be good to each other. We are the ones who lived through it. For those who didn’t come home alive we should make the most of it. We should be good to each other and every one of us should be proud to be part of our special club of God’s Own Lunatics.