Remembering Chuck Weseman
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Although somewhat vertically challenged, Chuck always sat tall in the back seat of a Cobra.
As XO I didn't get to fly in daylight hours too much so a lot of my missions were at night, usually as number one gun. One night Chuck and I were alerted to help a unit under attack. The unit in question was an infantry company set up earlier that day in a circular fire base with an artillery battery of 105's, tubes leveled and full of grapeshot. Engineers had helped with bunkers, overhead cover and wire.
The firebase was designed to entice the VC/NVA to attack and attack they did. Establishing radio contact with the unit commander we were told anything outside the flares was fair game. Flares? What the unit had done was put railroad flares on top of every bunker which clearly established where the friendlies were. Getting right to work our gun team just worked the perimeter to a froth. Chuck would poop out some rockets and I would hose anything outside the flares with the minigun and chunker. It didn't take us long to expend our load, so being relieved by a Diamond Head (25th Avn Bn) team we went back to rearm and refuel.
By the time we were ready to head back out the other Cobra broke and couldn't make it back out. Chuck and I looked at each other and said "Let's go". We called Operations, gave them the situation knowing that a backup Cobra would join us. When got back to the unit the firefight was still going on; so Chuck and I went back to work. But this time Chuck just set the Cobra in a nose low attitude, pooping off rockets as necessary while I continued to use the minigun and chunker to good effect. Finally the unit commander came up on the net and released us. Said we did a good job since the enemy was shooting at us with 51's WITHOUT TRACER. They thought we were really brave but all we were was ignorant of the threat. Chuck got a DFC for his actions.
This is just one example of Chuck's can do attitude. I never saw him without a smile on his face. He was always ready to accomplish the mission be it flying or fixing our generator or just helping out wherever he could. He was a GOOD TROOP.