Same Place
also see Togetherness now and Army Habit
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I became acquainted with Terry Hansen about September 1967. We were waiting to start a flight class at Ft. Wolters Tx.
We didn’t visit too much then. He and about 7 or 8 other students were about 5 to 7 years older the most the other students. These men had for the most part come to school from active Army units they had been with before flight school. They for the most part kept to their veteran group. This changed when we got assigned to our classes flights training.
When we were assigned flights and quarters it turned out that Hansen was just across the Hall.
Hansen was very studious as were the other veteran students. He was not the type to
screw around, play grab ass and disrupt others. I never heard him complain about anything or anyone.
When we graduated flight school and got our orders I could not believe we were going to the same division. We met up in San Francisco and on the same plane to Vietnam. Quartered in the same tent at the replacement depot. On the same oil soaked CH 47 to Cu Chi. Had to stay in some 25th Avn Bn a couple days and finally taken to D Troop, 3/4 Cav area. Put our gear on a couple cots and reported to the commander. He assigned Hansen to the lift platoon and myself to the gun platoon.
From then on we saw each other frequently but only enough time to say hello then on to other things. Hansen had been a food service NCO so guess who got the Food Service Officer job.
I don’t know if he was at the An Duc extraction but I think he probably got shot at several times and maybe shot down once doing night LRRP extractions.
When all the C model guns were taken I was given the choice of going to the lift platoon or to the light scout platoon, I chose the light scout platoon. Hansen asked me several times about flying in the light scouts and I told him what the pros and cons were, the biggest pro was not doing night LRRP extractions.
Hansen got the OH6 transition and flew some with the other LOH pilots. Then one day Lt. Odom told me to fly with Hansen the next day. Started the day with an easy simple recon. I told Hansen that the next mission he would fly and I’d sit left seat.
The second mission was in the area of the Mushroom. We had just got there when we got hosed real good by about 20-25 NVA. (I have always thought the NVA were much better marksmen than the VC.)We went to the ground and exited the LOH, I was thinking the engine had been destroyed.
Hansen and I both had leg wounds, mine was somewhat serious ( 360 days in a hospital recovering). The crew chief, Larry Kellum helped Hansen get me out of the LOH and behind a little cover then he started firing his M-60 into the area we had taken fire.
Hansen kept trying to apply a tourniquet to my leg. I told him to stop, just put on a bandage and get his weapon and be ready for an assault by the NVA. I felt they would probably try to kill us or take us prisoner. And they probably didn’t want too mess with a couple of wounded pilots.
Kellum was covering us on the ground, our cover ship, a Cobra piloted by I believe Lt. White was doing so much firing into the target area I actually thought he might be doing a high hover and shooting from there.
Somewhere in all this I realized the LOH’s engine was still running. I told Hansen to see if he could get to the LOH and get enough rpm’s to fly us out of the area. He tried and he did. Got back to Cu Chi. It was not until the next day that I found out Hansen had been wounded also. He came to see me and he was using crutches.
I never saw or talked to Hansen again. When I was released from the hospital I was assigned to the Aviation School at Rucker and Hansen went to I believe the 101 st Airborne.
Years later I tried to find him, took a long time but I found his wife living in Tennessee, she told me he had died about four years earlier.