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David Mitchell
You've heard me describe the mission I flew for my first year in Vinh Long. It included a so called "Obsserver" in my left seat. He would be one of our platoon enlisted men - usually a Spec-4 or Spec-5, sometimes maybe a Staff Sergeant. They were non-pilots, sitting beside us looking out their door and carrying a CAR-15 fully automatic rifle. They also carried bags or strings of 4 different types of grenades which they would fling out the door as we hovered low over VC hiding in a bunker. These were our constant companions throughout or two-hour sorties - twice, and sometimes three times a day as we alternated with another team of our Scout pilots.
But I had two unlikey "passengers" for two very different days in the air.
We had a new chapel built directly acrsoss the dirt street in front of our hooch, and a new Catholic priest assigned to the base. He quickly found his way over to our hooch - the nearest group of people to his chapel and quarters. He found out I was Catholic and we began some regular convrsations. As he became more familiar, he learned some of the details of our crazy mission.
One morning, as we were getting off of the truck on the flight line - getting ready to board our ships and prepare for take off - I was met by Father Donahue (who had been driven individually in our CO's jeep) and informed that he had requested to be my "Observer" for a day.
I was caught completely off guard!
I tried to question him but quickly realized this had all been arranged and permitted by our CO. I explained to Father Donahue that he would be carrying a weapon and that I might expect him to use it. He reassured me that he would. I didn't like it one bit!
Long story short - we flew the entire day out in an area to our northwest called "the Tram". This was an area out near the corner of Cambodia and the Gulf of Thailand where large groups of North Vietnamese troops crossed over at night on their way from Cambodia to the "U-Minh Forest. But fortunately, they almost never entered this area by daylight. We flew the whole day without any sightings whatsoever. Whew!
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On another occasion we were met with an Australian TV news team. It was decided that they wanted to put a cameraman in my back seat - which was a tight squeezed space (most of the back was taken up with our mini-gun ammunition box area on one side of the back seat).
So off we went on our next sortie with this guy all strapped in on the back seat floor with his legs hanging over the side of the ship, and his movie camera in hand. He had a radio headset on to communicate with us and his ground crew. Good thing - because he didn't last 20 minutes of our start-stop, fast-then slow flying (remember my first 3 days) before he started vommiting and needed to get off the ship. We droppd him back at the pickup point and resumed our mission without him.
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