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    Taking Fire: The True Story of a Decorated Chopper Pilot
    Taking Fire: The True Story of a Decorated Chopper Pilot
    Taking Fire: The True Story of a Decorated Chopper Pilot
    Ebook333 pages5 hours

    Taking Fire: The True Story of a Decorated Chopper Pilot

    By Ron Alexander and Charles W. Sasser

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Taking Fire is the incredible memoir by one of the most decorated chopper pilots to emerge from the Vietnam War.

    Nicknamed "Mini-Man" for his diminutive stature, a mere five-foot-three and 125 pounds in his flight boots, chopper pilot Ron Alexander proved to be a giant in the eyes of the men he rescued from the jungles and paddies of Vietnam. With an unswerving concern for every American soldier trapped by enemy fire, and a fearlessness that became legendary, Ron Alexander earned enough official praise to become the second most decorated helicopter pilot of the Vietnam era. Yet, for Ron, the real reward came from plucking his fellow soldiers from harm's way, giving them another chance to get home alive.

    In Taking Fire, Alexander and acclaimed military writer Charles Sasser transport you right into the cramped cockpit of a Huey on patrol, offering a bird's eye view of the Vietnam conflict. Packed with riveting action and gritty "you-are-there" dialogue, this outstanding book celebrates the everyday heroism of the chopper pilots of Vietnam.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateApr 1, 2007
    ISBN9781429970143
    Author

    Ron Alexander

    Ron Alexander lives and teaches in Oklahoma.

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    • 5/5
      Thoughtful and candid, well written interesting subject. If you enjoy this genre you’ll love this book.

      1 person found this helpful

    Book preview

    Taking Fire - Ron Alexander

    1

    The way I ended up in Vietnam as a helicopter pilot was by looking for a way out of Vietnam. I was a smartass kid a little brighter and a little more cunning than the average turkey off the turnip wagon. At least that was how I figured it. My old granny always said when you weighed 125 pounds soaking wet with a squirrel in your pocket and stood all of five-three and three-quarters, it wasn’t brawn that put you on top of the ant hill. Brains was the only thing that kept you from going around armpit high to the rest of the world.

    Actually, I might not have been that bright after all. It was my idea to join the U.S. Army in the first place.

    Tell you what, I said to my high school buddy, Randy Huntzberry.

    What? Randy said, biting.

    Let’s join the army.

    I thought you were brighter than that, Ronnie Alexander.

    Randy and I had graduated from South Hagerstown High, Hagerstown, Maryland, in the spring of 1963 and started at a local junior college that fall. After the first semester, we were both eager to get out of Maryland and see how the other parts of the world lived. We might not have been so anxious if we had listened to the low and steady storm rumble of Vietnam over the horizon. But when you were eighteen years old, you never listened anyhow. The dark clouds had not yet appeared. Besides, I couldn’t have picked Vietnam out on the map if it were the only country on the map. For all I knew, Vietnam was a town in Texas or New Mexico.

    Hey, I said to Randy, sensing his hesitation, joining the army is better than hanging around this one-horse burg and watching them roll up the street every night.

    It took him a few days to make up his mind. Let’s do it, he finally agreed.

    "We’re out of here, partner."

    We trotted down to the local induction center and enlisted on the buddy plan as ground-pounding infantry soldiers. E-1 grunts—first pay grade enlisted, earning about seventy-something dollars a month. By the time we were halfway through boot camp, I had already decided double-timing in the rain and sun, digging foxholes, and getting smelly in the woods was for suckers. I looked around for a way out.

    Randy, let’s volunteer for the airborne, I suggested.

    What?

    "At least we fly to wherever we’re going instead of having to walk," I argued.

    "But we have to parachute!"

    We both volunteered for airborne training after basic training. Turned out Randy was colorblind. Couldn’t tell his reds from his greens. Airborne rejected him. I ended up alone in front of the gate at Fort Benning, Georgia. THROUGH THESE PORTALS PASS THE FINEST AIRBORNE SOLDIERS IN THE WORLD. A column of sweating troops jogged by chanting a Jodie call.

    "Two old ladies lying in bed;

    One looks over to the other and said:

    ‘I wanna be an Airborne Ranger,

    I wanna live a life of danger . . .

    Airborne! Airborne! All the way!"

    It began to seem the more I tried to get out of things, the deeper I got in.

    Soldiers called summertime Fort Benning The Frying Pan. Appropriately. Damn, it was hot. Black Hats—parachute instructors—ran us through outdoor sprinklers six or seven times a day, clothes and all, to keep us cooled off. In between showers, it was balls to the wall starting at five A.M. every day. Double time! Hut! Don’t let a Black Hat catch you walking anywhere, anytime.

    "What are you doing, Leg?" Leg, spoken contemptuously, meant non–airborne personnel. Get down, Leg! Drop! Drop! Give me fifty!

    Yes, Sergeant! Bellowing it out.

    "Are you stupid? Don’t you know my first name? It’s Airborne! Got that, Leg?"

    Airborne Sergeant! All the way!

    Assholes and elbows in the front leaning rest position. My company’s Black Hats were Smoky Jackson, so dubbed because he brought down smoke on everybody, indiscriminately, and Drop-Drop Estelle. It was obvious where he got his name.

    Drop, Leg! Drop! Drop! Give me fifty push-ups.

    Drop-Drop was one of the original Rangers and a Korean combat vet. He wore the scrolled Ranger patch on his left shoulder rather than the new Ranger tab. We held the guy in total awe. He had been there, done that, collected the medals. In Korea, the bones in his left forearm had been shattered by a bullet and replaced with steel. When he scowled down at me in formation, I felt like a Shetland pony confronted by a Budweiser Clydesdale.

    "This ain’t kindergarten. How old are you, Leg?"

    Nineteen, Airborne Sergeant.

    Huh! Jesus, they get younger and smaller every year. We’ll have to strap a ton of lead to your ass to get you to fall out of the sky.

    Airborne Sergeant! All the way!

    When it came time for our first parachute jump, we were more scared of Drop-Drop than we were of the jump. Better to bail out and crash on the drop zone than to turn chickenshit and face the man mountain’s contempt. Because everything was done according to the alphabetical order of our last names, Alexander was one of the first jumpers in the stick. Adrenaline pumped through my veins like water through a fire hose.

    We shuffled belly button to asshole out the open door of the C-119 Flying Boxcar, stamping our boots and shouting to build up courage. Out that terrible door into nothingness. The roar of slipstream in my ears. The positive opening of the T-10 parachute that turned baritones into tenors if the harness wasn’t tight enough.

    As expected, I was the last man out of the air although I had been one of the first into the air. I hung suspended in a thermal and watched in exasperation as heavier jumpers passed me and landed on the DZ, their ‘chutes collapsing. They formed in ranks and looked up at me with amusement. Drop-Drop stomped back and forth. He pointed his finger up at me and shouted in make-believe rage.

    Get down here, Alexander! Do you hear me, trooper? Get your bantam-ass down here right now!

    That was the first time he called me trooper instead of Leg. He grinned when I finally did my PLF on the ground and trotted up. I was now a member of the elite airborne forces. I had leaped—-fell—out of a perfectly good airplane and lived to bullshit about it.

    We graduated after making four more jumps that same weekend. Drop-Drop and Smoky pounded blood-wings into our puffed-out chests.

    I’ve been dropping you guys for three weeks, Drop-Drop said. It’s your turn to drop me.

    Awright! somebody shouted. Drop! Drop! Give me fifty!

    Which hand?

    Your left. The arm with the steel in it.

    He did fifty push-ups so fast he was a blur. Then he bounced and switched hands and did another fifty with his right hand.

    2

    DECEMBER 11, 1961

    Arrival of the U.S. escort carrier Card in Saigon had received little fanfare. A war was on, and America was in it—but only in a small way. So far, the only role the U.S. military played was in advising and training the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) in its struggle against Communist insurgents from North Vietnam. After the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the country had been divided by treaty along the seventeenth parallel into two separate nations: the Communist People’s Republic of North Vietnam, with its capital at Hanoi, and the Republic of South Vietnam, a democracy with its capital at Saigon. Wily old Ho Chi Minh vowed not to rest until Vietnam became a single nation ruled under communism. His National Liberation Front (NLF), whose guerrillas became known as Viet Cong, began infiltrating South Vietnam to foment its overthrow.

    The appearance of the Card in Saigon that December morning heralded a significant reshaping of America’s low profile in Indochina. Strapped to the carrier’s deck were thirty-two U.S. Army CH-1 Shawnee helicopters—big, dual-rotor craft well suited to carrying troops into battle. They would be piloted by Americans, demonstrating a newfound American willingness to aid South Vietnam in combat operations, particularly with aviation support.

    In the space of a few years, however, this first modest inclination would explode into an enormous national commitment that would bring about nine million U.S. soldiers to this tropical land and claim 58,000 American lives. It would be a war unlike any other ever fought by the United States, lacking conventional battle lines and waged mostly by small actions against an elusive enemy. At times, it would encompass an almost phantasmagoric fluidity, characterized by rapid shifting of men and weapons across sodden lowlands, jungle-clad mountains, and lush valleys, insertions and extractions of troops in response to a jack-in-the-box enemy. The prime agent of all that movement would be rotary-wing aircraft, helicopters, the first of which clung to the deck of the Card.

    Vietnam would become known as the Helicopter War, a concept of airmobility that was just taking shape in 1961. Some military planners saw the helicopter as catalyzing a revolution; others believed these relatively slow-flying aircraft would fare poorly in the rigors of war. The fighting in Vietnam would be the acid test.

    3

    I drew orders out of parachute school to the 82d Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Clerks checked my GT aptitude scores. You had to have a minimum GT of 115 to become a parachute rigger while 110 got you into Officer Candidate School. Riggers had to be smarter than officers. My GT was 122.

    Alexander, Ronald? You want to go to rigger school and learn how to pack parachutes?

    I hesitated. What are my options?

    The clerk shrugged. It was no hair off his balls either way. You can stay with the company and walk in the woods, mud and rain and eat C-rats. Or you can be a parachute rigger and work normal hours in an air-conditioned building. You get a chow break and two coffee breaks a day. Come four o’clock, you’re off-duty.

    What a deal. Sign me up. I had this man’s army dicked.

    By the time I returned to the 82d as an honor graduate rigger, the rumble and black clouds of Vietnam on the horizon were drawing nearer. LBJ had not yet sent combat troops, but a lot of rumors were floating around. Since the 82d was a reaction force, trained to drop our socks, grab our cocks and be ready to go when the balloon went up, we expected to be the first on line. By April 1965 I could at least pick out Vietnam on the

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