“Vinh MŶ”
Late August 1970. I was a 21-year-old Army helicopter pilot in Vietnam. The war was going badly for me. I’d been under fire numerous times. I’d lost good friends. I was tired, hassled by military banality, fearful every day of the unknown, the random violence that erupted in an instant, making me wary, and weary far beyond my age. The tension and ambivalence I felt about the war had made me cold, cynical, an angry man. Prior to Vietnam I’d been a happy, carefree youth, hopeful for my future, confident that the world was a good place, that what I did mattered. The war had changed me, defeating my optimism, turning me into someone I hardly recognized: I joked about human suffering; I shared negative outcomes with fellow pilots; I developed a mordant sense of humor that even then I knew I’d need to change if I survived to go home to family and friends. The crux of it was that the war in Vietnam made me doubt the human capacity to love, the compassion I’d always assumed was present in everyone, and especially in me. I no longer recognized the man in the mirror, and I didn’t like the fellow very much.
But one belief I still held onto: we never know what connections and benefits might accompany the routine things we do. Some call it the butterfly effect; some refer to ripples on a pond, their widening burbles spreading all directions, touching lives undreamt and unknown. Even in war these things happen, perhaps especially then. Indeed, in times of greatest stress and tension we most need to follow our instincts, paying attention to the inner voices that guide us, too, in all directions, like those benevolent ripples.
That steamy August day I’d been assigned to fly for a detachment called U.S. Army Vietnam. USARV was a liaison between the U.S. and South Vietnamese military. My day was filled with routine air transfers of equipment, mail, documents, beans, and bullets to several locations around northern I Corps, the northernmost area of the then Republic of South Vietnam, near the DMZ. The USARV mission was a good one, with nice people, easy flying, and a laid-back list of clients. I logged five flight hours in my Huey, refueling twice. By 1600 hours, four p.m., I’d finished my last sortie. During a previous leg, my company operations had radioed, advising me that the commanding general, the big boss, had ordered all ‘his’ aircraft on the ground by five p.m. A storm was brewing, and the general didn’t want it to damage his aviation assets. I responded to my sergeant in operations.“Roger…on the ground by seventeen hundred. No problem.”
Continuing with the USARV mission, I carried more materiel, ammo, hot chow, the usual stuff an army needs to do its job. The day slipped by with more of the same, an easy mission. But, as I’d often in my newfound pessimism joked with colleagues, an easy mission could turn nasty in a heartbeat. At four-fifteen, the USARV people released me, and I headed back to home base at Camp Eagle. Looking forward to a shower, dinner, and a cold beer at the club, I aimed my Huey that direction, with plenty of time to gas up and tie things down by five o’clock.
Then the aircraft radio sputtered. It was the USARV fellow calling back. He had another mission, a medevac flight down the coast. A young Vietnamese woman was in labor, he explained. The baby was breech. “If she doesn’t get to a hospital soon…”
I checked the time: four-twenty. I checked the gas gauge: it showed enough fuel for about forty minutes of flying. I did the math. A flight down the coast, flight back to the hospital in Hue,’ off-load time, back to base, then time to gas up… No way would I make the general’s curfew. Fuel was iffy as well. Also, a look to the east sent a chill up my back: the storm was close, and getting closer. My finger hovered near the transmit button to send my regrets. I had to decline the mission. Besides, a nagging irritation swept me, a self-indulgent simmering about why those people hadn’t called sooner? Didn’t they know about the girl’s condition all day? Am I responsible for their poor planning? Good Lord, she’s been pregnant for nine months! It was the cynical me pressing forward, unattractive and unbidden. The USARV fellow called again.
In that moment I heard the urgency in his voice, felt the tension between my old compassionate self, and the new calculating me that I was still unsure how to live with. I wavered. I had orders to be on the ground soon, orders from the general himself. I’d done the damn mission all day, and I’d done it well. I was tired; my crew needed rest; fuel was low; the war was wrong. I didn’t need the aggravation. Still, a young woman and her unborn child needed my help. I looked at my crew. They all nodded yes. I called the fellow back, telling him I’d fly the mission. Down the coast I went, old, altruistic me battling the new, hardened veteran who wanted to protect himself.
The little village was called Vinh MŶ.It was a fifteen-minute flight from Hue.’ I battled a fierce headwind flying down, but that was a comfort. It meant a healthy tailwind flying back. I located the village, landed my Huey there, and watched as the frightened girl boarded the helicopter. I took off, wind gusting, dollops of rain like half dollars smacking the windscreen. It was ten till five, and the storm was nearly on top of me. The sky was the color of a day old bruise, and the wind was on its hind legs. Pulses of lightning, and the boom and crash of thunder chased me up the coast to Hue.’ As I’d suspected it might, in a heartbeat, my easy, simple day had become filled with danger and difficulty.
The first glitch of many came at the hospital in Hue’ where they wouldn’t accept the girl. No room, the orderly said. With one eye on my pregnant patient, one on the gas gauge, I pleaded with him, but he wouldn’t budge. Angry and chastened, the storm getting stronger by the minute, I took off, flew to the ARVN military hospital inside the old Citadel, where yet another gatekeeper turned me away, saying they didn’t accept women, much less pregnant ones. Angry and desperate, fuel gauge dipping below reserve, I took off into the storm toward Phu Bai, and the American military hospital. To my great relief, the 85th Evac accepted the girl without question. A torrent of rain dousing my windscreen, I watched the orderly in soggy fatigues wheel her inside.
With the gas gauge on empty, and half an hour late for the general’s deadline, I took off, headed back to base, and landed. I secured the aircraft, made my peace with the general, and went to the club. With my fellow pilots I cursed the war, nursed a beer, and waited out the storm. It blew out around midnight, and the next day was like any other. I forgot about the girl, and my trip down the coast to Vinh MŶ. At the time, the experience with the bureaucracy and banality of it all fueled my cynicism, that the war was stupid, an unnecessary use of my time, and a danger to life and limb. I felt good about rescuing the girl, but the feeling faded, and I went back to my sullen outlook. Later, back home in Ohio, I was to hear the rest of the tale.
After the war I was anxious to fly again, to add hours to my logbook. Flying was one of the few positive outcomes of my time in Vietnam, though there would be others, as I was to find out. In September 1971 I joined the Ohio National Guard aviation section.
At that time the Ohio Guard had a medical helicopter program called the Medicopter. It was good duty, with a dedicated staff, good equipment, and a mission I enjoyed, rescuing people by air from highway accidents and medical emergencies.
I was assigned Medicopter duty one Friday night in the spring of 1972. The Medicopter staff consisted of two pilots, two crew members, and two civilian medical personnel. The doctor was a fellow named Stuart Roberts, a member of the ER staff at The Ohio State University Medical Center in Columbus. That night, the Medicopter crew was in the ready room, eating pizza, telling war stories. As I waited on a call, I sat across from Doc Roberts who was chomping pizza, listening to one tall tale after another.“There I was,” and “Listen to this” and “This is no crap…” Shared experiences of war passed from one veteran to the next.
When my turn came around, I began describing a rescue mission for a pregnant girl in Vietnam. The tale included a warning from my commanding general to be on the ground by five o’clock, a flight down the beach, slamming doors at hospitals, fuel exhaustion, high winds, the vicissitudes of war. On and on I went, my emotions over memories of that day making my voice quake. It was the conflict I’d felt between the old, compassionate me, and my cynical self seeping out, another brush with the guy I still saw in the mirror, after a year home from the war. I mentioned the storm, the edict from the general, fuel depletion, and how all those factors reflected the overall thrust of the war with its maddening, inhumane demand to choose one path over the other, good over evil, right over wrong. I’d debated the same things that day, whether to press on, or to ignore the feelings of compassion and leave the girl to her fate, humanity be damned. With levity, and a sense of bravado, I regaled my fellows, boasting about my dismissal of the general’s order, my bravado in the face of danger. Telling the story, I tried to be the hardened warrior. But my voice and emotion betrayed me, and I began to sound like my old, caring self, the guy I once was proud of.
Halfway through the tale, Doc Roberts sat forward. His brow furrowed, and he leaned in my direction to listen better. Roberts had been posted to Vietnam doing an internship. All I knew about his duty there was that he’d been in country about the same time I was, but I didn’t know where. Roberts listened to my story about the pregnant girl, and he smiled. He put his pizza down, and interrupted me. “Was that in August of ‘70?”he asked.
“Yeah, Doc. Why?”
“Girl from Vinh MŶ, down the coast a ways?”
“Yes…”
“Big storm that night?”
“Big storm,” I said. “…in fact, I was late getting…”
“I delivered that kid,” Roberts said.
Chills peppered my arms. “You delivered..?”
“I remember you landing on our pad with her. I thought you were nuts to be flying in that weather, but…”
“You delivered that baby?”
“Yep. Baby boy. Mom and kid did fine. We made junior a crib out of an empty rocket box, and they went home the next day.”
Tears pooled in my eyes. I couldn’t speak. The room was silent as a nave. I thought back to that August afternoon, the girl, the weather, the mission, and my own inner conflict that almost turned me around. Ripples spread in all directions. I’d accepted the mission, rescued the girl, and an intern named Stu Roberts took over from there, and saved two lives. Maybe three; I saw that angry pilot who’d made those choices, saw him battle his harsh, judgmental self, watched him make a decision that might have been his reason for being in Vietnam in the first place. At that moment I began to like the fellow again.
