Mister Morgan

Morgan had visited Korea one cold morning in December of 1962 when the troop transport his family had ridden across the Pacific had anchored off Inchon. Cold, inhospitable, no fucking way. “What else?”

“The Philippines for one.” 

There were a number of Pilipino kids that in his high-school class at International School Bangkok and no, they didn’t get along with the Americans very well—and he didn’t speak Tagalog. “It that it?” 

“There’s a post in Korat, Thailand but it’s out in the boonies.” 

“Seriously? I graduated from high school in Bangkok in ’65 and I speak the language.” 

“You speak Siamese? Then it’s settled.” 

It all happened too quickly. One minute he was flying combat missions and earning Air Medals, the next minute he was on his way by chopper to Camp Coryell near a town called Buon Me Thuot in the Vietnam central highlands—wherever the fuck that was. There he would fly ‘non-combat’ missions until his transfer paperwork came back from HQ. They said it would take a few weeks or months. Okay, how bad could ‘non-combat’ be?

A week later, Morgan was standing at ease in front of a First Lieutenant at his new base. From the looks of it, the kid behind the desk hadn’t started to shave. “We need you to deliver hot chow to a forward outpost.” 

“Yes, sir. They must really rate to get hot pizza delivery.” 

“They said you were a smart-ass. It’s not pizza.” He wasn’t smiling. First Lieutenants smiled even less than Captains. 

My reputation precedes me. Great. Morgan’s old unit, A Troop of the 7/17, was an ‘air cavalry’ or ‘cav’ troop working mostly intelligence missions. Someone bragged it was Custer’s old unit—not something he would be proud of. Apparently, this outpost was the same kind of G2 unit. 

“Then what?” 

“You don’t need to know. Return the empty containers and don’t open them—going or coming.” 

“Yes, sir. So where is this place?” Morgan was almost afraid to ask.

“Here.” The Lt. pulled out a map and pointed to a tiny spot to the Southwest. It looked like it was north of the blue line—in Cambodia.

“Tuy Duc? Isn’t that a couple of clicks into Cambodia?” 

“Just south of there. Bu Prang. We have a listening post on the hill. Our maps show it on the Vietnamese side of the border. You need to get there and back on a daily basis.” 

“So, how many ships?” So far, all of Morgan’s cav missions had been with gunships flanking on either side of a four-ship lift formation. If something went wrong, there were plenty of eyes to see where they went down, and plenty of troops to insert to protect the crew until everyone was rescued. 

“Just your UH1.”

“So if something goes wrong?” 

The Lt. hesitated. “Any other questions?” 

I’m fucked. That’s why the Captain back in Pleiku was grinning. He thinks I’m a coward for taking the assignment in Thailand. 

So, note to self:Don’t volunteer for an unknown bag of shit thinking it’s somehow better that the leaky bag of shit you have on your lap. 

Later that afternoon, Morgan was introduced to his copilot and crew: CW1 Cook and Corporals Travis and Smith. With almost seven months in-country, CW2 Morgan was senior, so he would be aircraft commander. That would make it easier. He hated to be flown—he would rather fly. 

He and Cook and the crew chief took a long, hard look at the UH1-H—the Army’s latest troopship helicopter. It had already seen a thousand hours but had a pretty clean log-book—no red ‘X’ notions and only a few patched-over bullet holes. The only thing special on the flight deck was an encrypted radio—the first he had seen outside of training. 

“Travis, you know how to program this crypto rig?” 

“Yes, sir. I’m doing it now. It won’t take a minute.” 

“Should we test it now?” Morgan watched as Travis pushed a black paddle-shaped device into a panel in the radio console. 

“The frequencies won’t be live until midnight. Want to test it then?” Travis smiled. They both knew damn well that everyone would be asleep at midnight—even those who had been lifting beers in the clubs.

“We’ll do a radio check in the morning. By then, HQ will have gotten around to making the change too.” Morgan was used to the snail-paced way of doing stuff in-country. 

“You’re probably right. I’ll see you in the morning. Lift off?” 

“After breakfast. Say 08:00? The fog should have burned off by then.”

“Yes sir.” Travis saluted and went back to work buttoning up the radio. 

Based on past experience, Morgan had grown to respect the enlisted flight crews. Having the crew chief and door gunner in the aircraft on missions really added to their ‘incentive’ and ‘motivation’—as the Army put it. If the ship went down, they went down with it. 

Morgan and Cook left the chief working on the radios and walked over to the operations shack talking over the mission. “Did you see the mountains down to the south?” Cook pointed to a dot labeled ‘Don Maitre’ on the map.

“I saw some hills—nothing higher than a few thousand feet; we should be able to climb over those. What’s the weather supposed to be like?” 

“Anyone’s guess—probably low clouds in the mountains. We don’t get the Seattle KOMO weather team out here.” Cook glanced up into the ever-changing clouds. 

Morgan grinned. “I guess we’ll have to play it by ear.” He had flown in the mountains between Pleiku and Ahn Khey through the infamous Mang Yang Pass, but rarely if ever in bad weather. Tomorrow they might have to do both—solo. His old cav troop had taken almost any excuse to postpone their G2 missions. Around here, you had to expect shit to happen and be ready to duck.

About this time, Morgan heard the first ‘clump’. Incoming. Morgan instinctively dove under the table. Cook just stood there and stared at Morgan as if he had lost his marbles. Before Morgan could reach out and pull Cook to the floor, the round impacted, shaking the entire building. Before the dust settled, Cook was under the table with him.

“How could you tell it was incoming? They’re always firing mortars or artillery around here,” Cook said, wiping off his face with his sleeve. 

“Incoming is ‘thump, whiz-bang’, outgoing is just the opposite.” 

“How’s that?” 

“You’ll learn. Duck.” Morgan tucked himself in closer to the logs that made up the wall of the reinforced bunker as another round hit nearby. 

“Holy fuck! Someone have a personal vendetta with you Morgan?” 

“Seems that way. You guys must have hit their refrigerators.”

Cook’s confused look persisted.

“Never blow up their refrigerators. When their beer is warm, they get feisty.” Morgan told Cook the North Vietnamese Army, the NVA had their own home bases with refrigerators, mail from home, movies and generators. There was an unspoken rule: “You don’t blow up our refrigerators, we won’t blow up yours.”

“Gotcha. I’ll keep that in mind.”