Info Sheet - Gary A. Jones
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I didn't arrive at D Troop from B Company until late June 1969. I was WIA in mid-September, so I wasn't there very long. My platoon leader was "Buddah" Tom Sinclair, who took over the platoon from someone else, whose name escapes me (Odom), who got shot down in flames (and survived). At least that's the story I recall, after 30+ years. We also had an Aussie pilot, John (can't remember his last name, I think it was Evans) who flew "the Iron Butterfly" (LOH) and was shot down three times in LOH alley, before they refused to give him another helicopter to fly. My crew was Steve Snoddy, crewchief, and Rocky Rhodes, gunner. Rocky started to fly us out when I got hit down south of Cu Chi on a last light mission. I've never had the guts to find them or contact them. Something about survivor guilt, I guess, although neither of them are on "the wall".
I have been in the National Guard for over twenty years, currently pushing Shithooks around for the past ten years. Since they can't find any "kids" who want to fly, they keep us old guys around (probably for laughs). There was a guy in our Guard unit who was a D Troop Blue, having transferred from the Little Bears. His name is Jack Orr, an American Indian. I didn't find him in your 1968 picture, so he must have been there before you were.
He was with the Little Bears when "Spooky" the Asian Brown Bear mascot was just a cub. Jack has retired from the Guard and is now a Native American Shaman in Reno, NV. He and I used to talk about the old days in the Troop, when he wasn't getting drunk and telling me that, as an Indian, he would have to kill me when the fighting started again between the whites and the Indians. He really was a great guy. Let me know if you know of him.
Anyway my name is Gary A. Jones, and I was a 22 year old (old fart) LOH pilot who was transfered from B Company, 25th Aviation Bn, 25th Inf Div, on June 25th, 1969. The story I was told that D Troop was down aircraft (LOH) and pilots due to combat losses, but my feeling was they transferred me because I was a pain in the ass, and didn't like taking orders, especially stupid orders. So I and my LOH, and I think a crew chief, ended up coming over to the Centaurs. They even loaned me the B Co. CO's jeep to drag my shit over to the Troop just to make sure there wasn't any delay.
There were two slick pilots already with the Troop, who were classmates of mine in flight school: Randy Meade and Ralph W. "Sandy" Sandmeyer.
I did OK in the Troop although my first body count was an ARVN who was in a patrol along a river to the west of Cu Chi. We didn't know the patrol was down there, and as we flew over they popped smoke, I saw the flash, thought it was a muzzle flash and told my crew to open up. Shortly after that we did take fire from the ARVN patrol, but who could blame them?
On 12 September 1969, I volunteered to take a last light mission for my platoon leader, who had been flying all day, and his crew hadn't had a chance to eat. Also, last light was a good time for body count, and I think Bob Forringer and I were tied for highest body count that month. We were working an area south of Cu Chi, south of the highway, in an open rice paddy area with a small stream and one large, dead tree. As we flew by the tree we saw a naked guy (he had been taking a bath in the stream) trying to pretend he was part of the tree. We opened fire on him and I think Steve even threw a grenade at him, wounding him. I then violated the LOH pilot's rule of never staying in one place too long.
As I flew around the tree for about the third time, one of the guy's buddies jumped up out of a hole, stuck an AK47 in my door and pulled the trigger. I don't think he actually stuck it in the door, but it felt like it, and my crew chief Steve later told me the guy was "really close". Most of the burst went by, but one bullet him me in the leg, bounced off my chicken plate, and went through my right bicep, before exiting out the bubble over my head. I guess I was lucky it didn't bounce the other way, into my head. Anyway, it blew me off the controls, and Steve yelled at Rocky to take the controls and Rocky grabbed the sawed off broomstick we had for the gunners cyclic, pulled a hand full of pitch, and away we went. The higher we climbed the better target we became, and by this time the rest of the NVA company had come up out of their holes, and feeling they had nothing left to lose, started hosing us down pretty good. It looked like the 4th of July with all the red, white and green tracers. I grabbed the controls and put us back in the rice paddy a couple of hundred meters from where we had first been hit.
Steve and Rocky got out with their M-60s and started shooting while the Cobra was making runs overhead trying to keep us from getting killed. There was blood (mine) all over the cockpit but I didn't seem to have any broken bones and I knew if we stayed there we were either going to be dead meat or POWs, neither of which really appealed to me at the time. So I got the guys back in the LOH and we started to low level out to the west.
The Cobra said it looked like we were leaking fuel, we had been belly deep in the flooded rice paddy and water was draining out of the bottom of the LOH, but I didn't know that at the time. Also, I was starting to go into shock, and was saying really stupid things on the radio, I saw a dirt road ahead, and slid the LOH in on it. I shut the aircraft down just as a Little Bear C&C slick was landing, probably called in by the Cobra.
After I shut the helicopter down, I walked (stupid macho shit) to the slick and got in. A Sergeant Major handed me a gauze bandage from the first aid kit (like what am I supposed to do with this?) and off we went to 12th Evac. I was operated on there and then medivaced to Japan a few days later for more surgery and eventually went home via Air Force medivac, to the San Diego Naval Hospital for unbelievably good food and really painful physical therapy.
After convalescent leave, I was reassigned to Ft. Ord, Fritzche Army Airfield, where I remained (with a really bad attitude) until I ETSed on 31 March 1971. I returned to school and graduated from UC Riverside in 1972, got a job as a juvenile probation officer for Riverside County, got married, and "settled down" as much as any of us ever did.
In 1975 I transferred to the El Dorado County Probation Department in South Lake Tahoe, joined the Nevada National Guard in 1977, had a daughter, Erin, in 1980, transfered to the District Attorney's Office as a DA investigator in 1981, and will retire from almost 30 years of law enforcement on the 4th of July, this year. (That is one long, run on sentence).
Gary A. Jones
Diamond Head/Centaur