The Homewrecker

Shortly after Buddha's birthday truce on May 30, we were working in Recon Zone Alpha. Since the truce had been broken less than one hour after it officially began, Major Dolin requested and was granted a free fire zone. This meant that we were now allowed to kill anything that moved and burn all structures. Our primary tool for burning grass thatched hooches was the white phosphorous grenade. This story is about what happened the day I ran out of "Willy Petes".

I was flying With Jerry Gauthier that day. If you remember Jerry, he was a big, amiable buck sergeant. He hadn't been in the A/O much yet, but his coolness under fire had made him one of my favorite observers. We were really getting into our little pyrotechnic show. We counted 22 "hooches" (they were really just bunker camouflage) burned with a half hour left on station when Jerry said "Hey boss, we're out of willy pete".

Now consider this before you judge me too harshly for what happened next; I was there to destroy hooches; I WANTED to destroy hooches, and by god, I was going to destroy hooches. Some dim bulb lit up in my brain, and I said to myself "Hey, these things are only bamboo, they oughta tear out of the ground real easy".

The loach skid fit real nice under the roof of the low structure (it was just a bunker cover, not a real hooch), but when I started pulling pitch, I discovered it was tied down a lot better than I thought. At about 110 percent of power, all hell broke loose. The chopper shot up about 20 feet and took a hard right. We did a full 360 before I could get the collective down enough for the tail rotor to be able to handle it. Bamboo scattered all over the place, with some of it stuck in the belly of my newest and best loach.

As we sat there hovering over the newly exposed bunker, I sneaked a look at Jerry's face. I don't think I have ever seen more abject terror. Funny thing was, he always wanted to fly with me after that. Go figure!!!!!!

Now what I didn't realize until 30 years later was that Garry Dolin had witnessed my little feat. In fact, he swears up and down that I did more than one such demolition job. I hereby categorically deny that I did more than one! Let's see now, what did I do with my stack of bibles?

Marcus A. Pryor
Banshee 16 B 2/17 1969