Flyboys of Vietnam, Gray and Grounded in Iraq
By KIRK SEMPLE
ORWARD OPERATING BASE DANGER, Iraq, Feb. 20 - The seasoned pilot was recalling a different war in a different place. "Every time we went in, we went in hot," he remembered. "You were fighting your way in and fighting your way out."
The pilot, Chief Warrant Officer James G. Freeman, was 23 when he began flying Huey helicopters in the Vietnam War in 1970. His missions with the 116th Assault Helicopter Company often involved dropping into a battleground to unload soldiers after helicopter gunships had "prepped" the zone with a torrent of rockets and machine-gun fire.
"There were a lot of bullets flying down there," Mr. Freeman recounted dryly during an interview. He was seated in a trailer on the airfield at Forward Operating Base Speicher, an American military base near here and his home for the next year while he is deployed with the 42nd Infantry Division of the New York National Guard, based in Troy, N.Y.
Mr. Freeman is now 58, with wry creases spraying from the corners of his eyes and a penchant for menthol cigarettes. As a member of the Guard, he has been deployed for events including the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y., and relief and recovery missions after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the crash of T.W.A. Flight 800 in 1996 and the attack of Sept. 11, 2001.
Now, 34 years after his yearlong tour of duty in Vietnam, Mr. Freeman is back in another war.
He is one of five helicopter pilots from the New York National Guard who flew Hueys in the Vietnam War and who have been deployed as Black Hawk pilots in northern Iraq with the 42nd Infantry Division. The five pilots, all together, flew thousands of combat hours in Vietnam and survived being shot down several times. In this war, however, they say their responsibilities have kept them largely earthbound, as younger pilots rack up the flight hours. And they are not very happy about it.
"I'd rather be flying," grumbled Chief Warrant Officer Thomas McGurn, 57, one of the pilots who is at Base Danger helping to coordinate daily aviation schedules for the brigade. "This is kind of a bummer."
Only two of the five veteran pilots have flown since the bulk of the brigade arrived in Iraq last month.
Mr. Freeman, a retired Suffolk County police officer who lives in Stony Brook, N.Y., has flown once. Chief Warrant Officer Steven M. Derry, 53, a New York State correction officer in Wilton, N.Y., has flown twice. The others have not yet been tapped, but expect to fly sometime this year.
All five are members of a headquarters unit for the division's aviation brigade, which includes four aviation units from around the country and a maintenance battalion from Brooklyn.
For now, the five men spend their days at desk jobs or hanging out in their khaki flight suits, like caged, graying lions. Their command and control responsibilities, rather than their comparatively advanced ages, are the reason they are not flying as much as other pilots, the men say.
Mr. Freeman has taken to calling himself "a staff weenie." And Chief Warrant Officer Herbert A. Dargue, 57, of Brookhaven, N.Y., who is serving as a liaison between the division headquarters and the aviation brigade, said, "I'd rather get in the action than sit behind a desk."
About 5,570 American troops who are 50 or older have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, nearly all of them members of the Guard and the Reserves. Although there are mandatory retirement regulations in the military that can apply anywhere from 55 to 62, depending on a soldier's length of service and other circumstances, there are no age limits on the battlefield.
This war is qualitatively different from the war these men experienced in Vietnam. For one, there is far less combat. The Black Hawk's primary mission is to ferry personnel and supplies from one base to another - battlefield circulation, in military parlance - and the helicopters only rarely face enemy fire.
And the military they once knew is just a distant memory. There are women flying helicopters now, there is no alcohol, and there is a deluge of unfamiliar acronyms and new, unyielding rules.
"The rule used to be: take off in the morning, come back at night, get drunk, and do it again the next day," Mr. Freeman said. He remembers flying Hueys full of alcohol to bases in Vietnam. By comparison, the bases in Iraq are completely alcohol-free.
Chief Warrant Officer Ronald P. Serafinowicz, 56, who is also a liaison between the division headquarters and the aviation brigade, said the experience of being back in combat had resurrected his past.
"You live your life, and memories fade. But when you're back in it, suddenly the memories come back, and you remember all your missions," said Mr. Serafinowicz, a longtime Long Island resident who moved to Arizona a decade ago.
But for all the war stories the men can share, they do not romanticize the experience. For all their desire to fly here, they do not feel the need to relive the trials of their first war.
"I lost more friends there - young guys who never got to live a life," said Mr. McGurn, a Yonkers native who is a Westchester County police officer in civilian life.
There are other Vietnam veterans in the military here and throughout Iraq. Still, looking at these men standing among soldiers who could be their grandchildren in a war that, like Vietnam, does not have overwhelming public support, the question practically leaps from this reporter's mouth: What the heck are they doing here?
They each give a variant of a remarkably simple answer: obligation.
They signed up for the National Guard, so when they were called up they had to go, even if they did not want to.
"I'd rather be at home cutting the grass and playing with the grandkids," said Mr. Dargue, who flew in Vietnam in 1968 and has racked up 20,000 piloting hours in his career.
All five pilots say they have remained in the National Guard for the camaraderie, the pension and, above all, the love of flying.
"They let you fly an $8 million machine," Mr. McGurn said. "I always wanted to fly as a kid." |
