War Stories from CPT Gary Brown - 1966
Told by Eric Brown his son
.....................................................................................................................................................................................
My dad has told me of some stories while he was in Vietnam, but I don’t know really who he was with or the specifics.
What I do know is of one occurrence where he had been in the Huey looking for a door gun that had fallen off another chopper. He sent his crew out to find the missing gun In the tall grasses, telling them that if “he saw any Charlie, he would yoyo up and down since they had no radio contact. And if he had to perform the maneuver, they better be on board by the second YO or they would be walking back. Well they found the missing gun in the grass just as he noticed a group of enemy soldiers approaching in the distance. Mission was accomplished, and all returned to the base. This might have been during Return to the Devil's Playground
Another time he told me of himself and another hiding under a truck during a mortar attack. After a few minutes they realized it wasn’t such a good spot to be…under a fuel truck. So they dashed into a nearby bunker.
We also know that he did take fire, at least twice that he has told us about. Once when a round went through the floor, and into the wall behind him. He had been bent over for a moment when the shot came through. Upon returning to base, he said they placed a string from one hole to the other, and when he sat in the pilot seat the string was up against his flight helmet. The other time he was flying the grass hopper looking thing (OH-23G), on some patrol that was to measure enemy impact craters to determine the size and type of artillery. He said the chopper was hit in the tail rotor, only inches from the hub. He said if the round had hit the hub, he would have lost control of the chopper.