By Richard Toops, Greyhound 16

My friend, Richard Toops, sent me his opening speech from their last reunion. I thought it was great and have to share it with you all!

Well, for those of you who don’t know me…I am Richard Toops, Greyhound 16, and I think by now most of you know my wife, Trenda. We met on a blind date through my secretary when I worked for the Department of Commerce, and the last 47 years have been our happily ever after. We both have been looking forward to this Reunion and being with you all for a long time.

We will be having our Tribute for our 38 brothers on the last night of our Reunion. But tonight, I want to reminisce and have a Tribute of sorts to you brothers who are here tonight. John Podlaski, the man who wrote the Best Selling book “Cherries” said, “Helicopter crews were held in the highest regard and seen as “saviors” by us infantry soldiers…….at times, watching in awe and disbelief while pilots and crew braved enemy onslaughts to transport, rescue, supply, and protect those on the ground. Helicopter Crews were always there when needed – losing many of their own while performing in this role.”

Today I want to talk about our 240TH Assault Helicopter Company and these 3 words…… Brave …..Courageous….and Daring….. that exemplify great attributes. Miriam Webster Dictionary defines the word Brave as, “showing mental strength to face danger.” Courageous, “as firmness of mind and will.” And Daring, willing to seek out risks, bold, fearless, adventuresome”. We were BRAVE……. We were COURAGEOUS…… We were DARING……. Yes, guys, we are a lot of superlatives………the guys in this room all had someone shooting at them, and still did their job, look around your relatives and friends.

We were shot at, shot up, or shot down. In WWII the average battle time for a soldier was 14 days…..14 days believe it or not……Well, In Vietnam it was every single day…(365 days) ..26 times more risk….Every single day LIFE was hanging in the balance. But with all that, we were not concerned about ourselves, we were concerned about our crews, our brothers and our passengers. When one of our own was killed or wounded it broke our very being to the core. We cried, yelled, screamed, cursed, and then got drunk…..All we wanted to do was to try and forget for a while then get back out there and avenge our brothers.

We saw death more times than we care to remember. We saw death on both sides……… we experienced the enemy shooting at us, and by the grace of God did not get killed ourselves…. Some in this room crash landed in the jungle and waited to be rescued for what seemed like forever, while the bad guys continued trying to kill us. We had Engine failures, tail rotor failures, We had high freeks and low freeks, helicopter fires, hydraulic failures, and had to make running landings…………… We saw our buddies wounded, and heard them……screaming in agonizing pain, and saw them die in front of us. Death was with us every day.

Remember what it was like to fly ammo to a surrounded unit of the 25th Division and then hover above the trees, dumping the ammo boxes below as quickly as we could while we hunkered behind our chicken plates, or slide armor plates, trying to dodge bullets?

How about life and death choices we had to make, like flying a couple of Special Forces at the end of a ladder several miles in War Zone D because they were being shot at and there was no time to let them climb up the ladders into the helicopter.

At times we tried to fly with a NOGO WARNING. For those of you here that don’t know what NOGO is..NOGO means NOGO. (that’s a gauge on our instrument panel that said don’t go, your load is too heavy and crashing will be imminent). I remember one time we had 20 South Vietnamese troops aboard and we were trying to get them out of the bush at NHE BHE before the tides came in. Our NOGO was on. There was a single tree right in our path as we desperately tried to get enough lift to get up and over. We did… just grazing the top of the trees.

These are all true stories…and there are so many more I could talk about. Death, wounds, and more. Mentally and physically are just words now, but back then, they described our normal daily life in Vietnam. We were all so much younger then and could cope with it……. We made everyone think it anyway…. And I will say, when not flying, most of us did have fun. When we were not flying, we were a bunch of fun-loving guys, enjoying what we did. We Played cards till midnight, poker, hearts, and spades. We Told a lot of stories of our stateside adventures before Nam. (some true, some I questioned.) We drank a lot of Pabst Blue Ribbon, probably too much. But it made things we faced and dealt with, easier.

How many of you, after having a few drinks because you were not flying the next day, were woken up at 5 a.m. the next day and told you were flying? Headache City…I remember one time being the OD, “Officer of the Day”, and waking someone up in the morning to go fly only to get a 38 pointed at my face? In time we all knew who the guys were to be careful around. Then in the evening one of our guys would get his guitar out and we would sing late into the night. Bill Seaborn was the guitar playing/singer during our time. We were…….. a fun bunch. I would like to think I am still that young man in Vietnam but now I know as of three months ago, I am not…..I want to be that guy again, but I am not him…

We live on Cedar Creek Lake in Texas and this summer I was standing out on our dock at our house, and decided I would jump off the dock and into the water as my daughter and granddaughter had been doing for the 10th time this particular day. As I stood on our dock, I looked into the water, (which was only a foot or two below where I stood). The water was calm, and it looked refreshing, I started to jump, but suddenly I froze with the fear of jumping. My heart was beating fast and I was close to an anxiety attack……Simply put….I was scared of jumping into the water……..WHY?….WHY was I feeling this way? that which I had done all my life and most of the 30 years we had lived on the lake. Life and its fragile strings had caught up to me…… I was no longer a young Greyhound pup in Vietnam, but an old Greyhound ……dog… I was afraid,….. fearful…….I was embarrassed to even feel this way. I eventually told myself, afraid or not, I would jump, and jump I did. As I flew through the air I felt sick inside, I was still afraid. I hit the water and told myself I had made my last jump. I could not rid myself of the fear. Even in the days I spent in Vietnam except twice, I was never so fearful…Sometimes because we are Vietnam vets, people look at us and think we are big brave guys who are not afraid of anything. Well,….. I am not that…To be perfectly honest, I am just an old guy who is afraid to jump in the water. What had happened?….What happened to me? Fear…We all dealt with it in Vietnam, but we were younger then.

What is fear?….. It’s just being scared of something, which we younger Greyhounds realized and dealt with. Just like in Vietnam. Each of you out there handled fear over and over again. We were only concerned about our mission, but eventually fear grabbed us when we did not expect it. The rest of the time we were not concerned about fear, we had a job to do and that consumed our thoughts and our actions. We just went out every day doing our job.

Back to my original statement. Were we Brave, Courageous, and Daring? Heck yes, we were. Did we flaunt our superpowers to all, you bet! After all, we were the masters of the sky. We know among ourselves that we were all these things, whether anyone else accepted it or not…We were Brave, we were Courageous and we were Daring. ….. And best of all, we are still…….that bunch of fun-loving guys, but we have changed…..we are older now. We are no longer as indestructible as we once thought, now to keep us going, we need rest, we need pills, Dr visits, and hospital stays. …..we walk a bit slower, well maybe a lot slower…We are grumpy, ask our wives……We get tired, have aches and pains, and sometimes we don’t want to do anything. But guys, I know we are still who we were……. In our hearts and minds, we are still those Brave, Courageous, and Daring Soldiers of yesteryear.

I look out….I don’t see a bunch of old guys, I see Door Gunners, Crew Chiefs, and Pilots. One, our Door gunner, Buster Barker, (standup Buster) along with God saved my life. Buster, although severely wounded himself, under hostile fire, pulled Bill Seaborn and me out of a shot-down Huey in a Vietcong Basecamp before our Huey was hit again with 2 RPG rounds as it lay on the jungle floor……

This is what 240th door gunners do, they protect us, our Huey, and everyone else in it. Please stand up all you door gunners out there. (Clap).

When I looked out there, I do not see a bunch of old guys, I see our Crew Chiefs…….and folks these back seat guys breathed the life in our Hueys, every single day and at times, late into the night….they were getting our ships ready to fly. Will Rogers said he never met a man he didn’t like, well we pilots never met a crew chief we didn’t like. If we were flying it was because of the Crew Chief. During the missions, they flew with us and manned an M-60 Machine gun. When we were shot down, Jimmy Lance, our Crew Chief, (who is not here tonight) while severely injured…., and under hostile fire, crawled back in our Huey and shut it down to prevent a fire. and then helped Buster in getting Bill and me out of the Huey. (Stand up Crew Chiefs). (Clap)

When I look out there I don’t see a bunch of old guys, I see our pilots, ….The best America ever had..All flying for the mission, no matter what came their way; hot LZ, cold LZ, taking fire or not, it did not matter, mission first. Always going to finish the job. NO, was never an option. Our Aircraft Commander that day when we were shot down, Bill Seaborn, was my friend, he asked me to do something I had not done in months, wear my Chicken Plate on my chest, not under me as I had done for almost 6 months, I did not have to wear it but he was my friend and I listened, I feel like doing what Bill asked me to do that day also saved my life………… I am proud to be one of the pilots in this room.….Stand up guys….(Clap)…

The 240th Greyhounds…….We could go into a Pickup Zone or Landing Zone, not knowing what was there but ready to do our jobs. That’s brave. We could take fire From the Viet Cong or North Vietnamese Soldiers and shoot back with adrenaline flowing, that’s courageous. We could go into the firestorm of bullets and attempt to rescue our fellow soldiers, now that was absolutely daring.

We were everything that can be said about helicopter crews and more. Did we ask for it? Yes, we all volunteered for it. Did we expect any praise, no….we wanted it though if just for us…so we could feel needed…. feel like somebody special… But most of all we wanted it from our fellow crew members, and we got it tenfold. We channeled each and every move we made for us and our guys, our unit…..our brothers……in Vietnam we knew we only needed each other to survive…. All of us have a special bond.

No one will ever understand, except us. Not the world, not the civilians of the world. This is why these reunions are so important to us. Be proud of what you did guys, we were all these things. Everyone of You out there…..we were all Brave, Courageous and Daring…….you Know….. It’s great to be humble…. but all you relatives out there, these guys were heroes…the real deal….and always will be.

Guys, we can go back to eating humble pie when we leave Branson……but today, and during this reunion, we will relish who we were……. What we did……. Who we helped…….and who we saved. We were Brave, Courageous, and Daring………Flying through the skies of hell and back, all this from a base in Vietnam called Bearcat.

Be proud,……..you were the backbone and workhorse of the Vietnam War. Now…….going Back to my fearful water jump. I had fear as I looked in that water, I still do…but I am old now….but,…..I am so glad that when I look back on Vietnam I can be happy in knowing I could harness that fear like all of you did and do those Brave, Courageous, and Daring things that made us Greyhounds and MadDogs, and Kennel Keepers.

In wrapping up…. Friends……and Relatives out there, When these guys step on some dock and don’t jump in the water, just remember the days when they did even more dangerous things and didn’t bat an eye. When one of our guys was wounded which totaled several hundred guys during our 240th existence, we got mad and our hearts were wounded…… When one of our 38 who were killed, POW or MIA, ……… a part of us was lost forever on the battlefield, …..never to return.

Through it all we grieved, cried, cursed……in the end, they were still gone. We picked ourselves up and continued on, doing what we loved doing. Flying….yes but most of all still being Brave, ….Courageous ….and Daring …..in a helicopter called Huey.

Be proud of being a Greyhound, Maddog, and Kennel Keeper. We were………. and always will be the best to have ever flown……no questions about it….You, my fellow brothers, have earned it, and you deserve it.

F I N A L E… To my forever brothers in arms, the 240th Assault Helicopter Company…I salute you…….GO GREYHOUNDS!!! And leave the Flying to us…….

Richard Toops contributed an earlier article to this website recalling one of his missions when his ship was shot down. Click on the link below to be redirected. Use the back arrow key to return to this page.

https://cherrieswriter.com/2020/04/26/the-incident/

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