Heroic Veterans (#2)

The 2nd hero that came to mind was a fellow NCO that was my roommate at the NCO Academy in 1977. His name was Marty.

Mary was the most unpretentious person that I’ve ever met, most of the time you wouldn’t even know he was there, but you always felt that he opened his heart to everyone and anyone. He was an incredible athlete, setting academy records for running the most miles. He ran every day – I wish I could remember the actual number of miles, however, it seems that his goal was 20 miles per day. The only thing that seemed to exceed his total quantity of running miles was the total number of ribbons on his chest. I’d swear that there were rows of ribbons from his chin to his waist. Marty never talked about his awards, and when asked, he’d usually respond with: “Ah, it’s nothing.”

One evening at the Branding Iron (the academy awarded me the Commandant’s Award and nicknamed me the Branding Iron Kid), Marty finally had enough “loose-juice” to answer some questions regarding his awards.

Turns out that Marty was a flight mechanic on a Jolly Green helo in Vietnam. He kept the bolts tight, oil and fuel topped off, and acted as a load master, ensuring that the loads on the helo were within the CG balance limits. His particular helo was used extensively as a search and rescue tool in Vietnam (as I’m sure, many others were too).

Once a pilot was downed, the FACs (forward air controllers) would try to locate him, the A-1Es would suppress enemy activity around the downed pilot, and Marty’s helo would go in and pluck out the pilot. I remember (vaguely) two stories that Marty revealed to me.

One was the time that his helo was part of a two-ship looking for downed aircrew in North Vietnam (not a nice place to fly). The other helo had landed to extract a crew member and became disabled (how, I don’t remember if parts broke, or it was weapons damage). In any event, Marty’s helo landed near the disabled helo as it was getting dark and fuel reserves were low. Both helo’s spent the night in North Vietnam, on the ground, protecting each other and the aircrew that they were rescuing. I don’t remember the specifics of how repairs were made, but I do remember that Marty played a significant role in successfully getting both aircraft off the ground and back to their home base.

The second story that I remember was the time that Marty’s helo attempted to rescue a downed pilot in hostile territory. The helo crew couldn’t get the pilot to use the sling, as he was hunkered under a bush and drawing a lot of enemy small arms fire. He’d have been a sitting duck target, hanging onto that sling. So the helo pilot decided to land in a clearing, on the edge of which the downed pilot was hiding. It was expected that the downed pilot would run up the ramp on the back of the helo, while the helo crew suppressed local small arms fire. However, the pilot was so frightened, he froze in place and wouldn’t move. After a bit, Marty jumped off the ramp, ran over to the downed pilot, threw him over his shoulder, and carried him back to the ramp of the helo – all the while the enemy was peppering the area with small arms fire. Now, that action alone is heroism in my book. Yet Marty was not proud of his actions, nor of his awards and medals he earned while saving that pilot’s life. When I asked him why he felt that way, it was because Marty was scared out of his wits, too. He figured that the only way his pilot was going to get Marty out of that clearing was to get the downed pilot on board! So, he did. They managed to lift out of the clearing and returned to their home base with the rescued crew member

Marty is another vet that did incredibly heroic things at great risk to his own life, yet did it for reasons other than being a hero and earning awards, medals or any other kind of recognition. A true HERO in my book.