In Dallas Texas famious for many things a mounument to an airline that was funded by the CIA called Air America.Tinkerbell read all the aviation books he could get his hands on before he took his first flying lesson.Tinkerbell saved his Christmas money, moed yards, delivered newspapers, and pumped gas and washed car windows.And most of all I took out the family garbage and helped my mother with grocery's and as a reward she would buy me an aviation magazine.One day I decided to cut out a coupon out of a aviation magazine for an introductory flight lesson at the local airport.It was to launch me a a mission of all missions for little Tinkerbell.

     Ok so in the nineteen sixties when Tinkerbell was growing up he went to catholic school for most of his education except for the last couple of years in high school when I went to public schools before enlisting in the U.S. Army, although not a fantastic student Tinkerbell did pick up on a good set of practice for reading and writing and numbers.If you have a good basic training then you can kinda get a better idea of what your lacking in or whats not only your best subject but your worst.

     There was alot of stuff going on in 1965 and 1966,67 and 68 and it was not all reported on what today is the cable news network. When Tinkerbell went to public high school to finish his high school education he was able to go to electronics class and learn about the science of light from learning from a wave tank in phisics lab.And take field trips to see," 2001 a Space Odessey". In July 1969 when Tinkerbell graduated and joined the U.S.Army NASA  landed on the moon they declared a national holiday for that event and Tinkerbell was in the process of induction and going to Chicago. One of the movies was,"Bullet"with Steve McQueen Tinkerbell did not see this movie untill after he came back from Veitnam.

     The war in Veitnam that was going on on our TV set was far far away from the corn fields and farms and slow moving Missisippi river and Tinkerbell thought about the John Wayne Movie's and yearned for adventure and to put his airplane and aviation knowlege to work.In 1969 warrent officer cadet training was canceled and Tinkerbell had to sign up as a mechanic! A thing about a movement in destiny for my aviation and life career.

      The best book I've ever read about the veitnam war is a book called,"Dispatches" my Dad worked for the Moline Daily Dispatch newspaper for 55 years. In the beginning of the book Mike Herr the author tells of sitting in his sweltering flat in Siagon smoking a dube and stareing of an old map of Indo-china on his door and he thought to himself that this was an old map!

      All though my parents and siblings watched the evening news at supper time with a portable TV in the kitchen it was only very recently that we started doing this.Usualy we would eat our supper together and my father would demand that not too much rediculus idle chit chat came from our heads with supper on the table.

     That was the way that it was,Veitnam in 1965 67 and 68 and into 1969 was 9000 miles away and they didnot have too many or any celular phones at the time.

     The Army at the time was differant then the army of today it was a draft army thay called it, you could enlist and you could get drafted and there were career soldiers sprinkled through out some officers some enlisted men.

     When Tinkerbell went for his first airplane ride on a fishing trip in Canada and his first flying lesson soon after that, he was amazed at how kinda alien it was,the climing of the airplane, the depth of altitude against the trees and landscape and yet however scary it seemed it was the epidamie of cool!

     On Tinkerbells first flying lesson he walked around the airplane with the flight instructer and he pointed and called out the things that should be checked each time before you went up.On the taxi and runway with the engine running Tinkerbell could not believe how loud it was when the flight instructer had me advance the throttle with the airplanes nose into the wind the little training plane vibrated and shook and the propeller spin had little designs in its motion of the blades.Climing my ears popped and later you learned to chew gum to relieve the pressure and then you got from lift off to cruise level where the engine and propeller noise were reduced and you were really in a cool atmospheric chariot and a big grin on my face.

     Veitnam at the time was worlds away and to Tinkerbell his idea of the future was becomming a pilot and this seemed to him to be a natural thing although he had the same rudamental trouble with learning the knowlege of flight as anyone else.Differant then other people Tinkerbell had been reading aviation magazines and would day dream that he'd be a hero at the controls of an aircraft rescuing people or bringing in medicene in a snow storm.All the things a sixteen year old or seventeen year old with girls not the first thing on his mind, would think about.Tinkerbell thinks today that knowing that you want to do something is a big help in wheather or not your going to make it through precarious stuff that lifes throws at you.

      On Tinkerbells dream sheet a section in your army records Tinkerbell said that he'd like to be in Army Intellegence and stationed in Sweden.Tinkerbell also thinks that this got somebody mad and that I was some kind of smart ass!

      First lets stop here for a moment and tell you that I wanted to tell my story for the reason that thirty or so years ago I couldn't and I thought that this would be a big help to my friends who liked me but there may have been something in the air that spelt danger!

      Learning the values of life were and are a special little blessing that many people are not lucky to find out about until its almost too late and with the financial crisis looming and three wars Iraq,Afganistan and the Border wars with our neighbors.And a time when people are quoting out of books like"The Fall Of the Roman Empire", Tinkerbell is taking a chance that his words would be used aginst him and others but he thought that at this stage of his life when mental health and shelter means so much as much to him as his precious spaceship renderings and this apparent closeness of an asteroids trajectory that his story should be told as there seem to be many meaningless personality's on the veiwing screen of America and the world veiwing screen.

     Lets jump back to after I came home from Veitnam and was working on the Grand Planet Airship Company my Dad and I were talking out in the front yard and we were discussing politics my dad told me that for years he voted straight Rupublicain ticket and that was a way to beat the bad guys  he said we had a roof over our heads and food on the table and that at the time Tinkerbell was learning was a most important thing.(Cr.late 1970's).

     Tinkerbell spent two tours in Veitnam one tour was one year and the second was six months.18 months in all in a combat zone and my first days there were a mixed feeling of new smells and strange language and adventure on every turn.

      Towards the end of the Veitnam conflict there is a famious snapshot that made all the covers of magazines around the world of a little crying Veitnamese girl running down the road with all of her clothes burned off in a Napam attack in Trang Bang Veitnam Trang Bang was just down the road from where Tinkerbell spent his first year working on helicopters in the hot humid weather and every once in a while quite unauthorized, flying milk run's and combat assaults with the 25th Infantry aviation company. Cu Chi Veitnam a tourist destination for people that go to Veitnam today to find out about the war.Was famious for its VC tunnels which ran underneighth the base.Overran in 1969 it was once a rubbertree plantation which had been defoialted with Agent Orange.It was a full fuctioning base camp when Tinkerbell was there and overhauling Huey's and Loche's(low observation helicopters). When Tinkerbell first went in he wanted to fly but was assigned to maintenance a good mechanic that could read and understand maintenance manuals was sorley needed in the Veitnamization of what was Kennedy's and Johnson's war was now Nixion's.Crawling around beatup old wornout Huey's giving them new lease's on there precious life to the South Veitnamese.Flying these little unauthorized sorte's got me away from the camp and a look at Veitnam. Fooling around with the flight crews low leveling over rice paddies and flying into Siagon to eat lunch at the enlisted mans club were treasured days and moments.Then one day in a combat assualt with ARVIN solders(South Veitnamese),We had a hot LZ (Landing zone).And with my M-60 machne gun almost cut to pieces a young Veitnamese girl with a baby in her arms standing in the door way of her hootch (house).When the excitment calmed down my partners and I thought that we had been set up and that someone was trying to, in the lingo, give us a black eye! Later to back this up we heard that these spi's were known to be in a gambling game sometimes known as "Vegas",and through this game the enemy could find out anything they wanted to know not only about Army stuff but about you! Strange that the little potable TV in my Mom and Dads kitchen didn't report that! 

     So I was only nineteen and after the excitment of the incident at the hot LZ with the girl and the baby in her arms stareing right at the smoking barrel of my M-60 machine gun,my head was swimming.Who would want to do that to me? I treated my hootch maid and all other Veitnamese with respect! To set that up! What, Tinkerbell wondered was happening? 

     I tried to come back to reality I did not smoke pot yet,I did not smoke pot in high school or in my first year of Veitnam and I didn't drink very much at all and I truly loved life,one thing was for sure no matter how homie the place was it truly was a long way from the corn feilds of Illinois and Iowa.

     When I talked to the head maintenance sargent and told him what had happened and he demanded that I stop flying that i'll get my head into water that was too deep.Shattered Tinkerbell's heart was in his throat soon his first year would be up and he was going home for leave and then back to a new place in Veitnam a place where you can go downtown and go to the beach!

     My first thirty day leave was at Christmas time and I rented a car when I came home but it snowed 30 inches and it was stuck in my dad's driveway most of the time.I had a little time to reflect I was going back to Cu Chi and then on to my new duty station where I had signed up with the aviation unit of the 5th special forces even though I was not in the special forces.I was with a girl for only my second time on leave and I did not have too much on my mind except the immediate future of war.Thats the truth, takeing young men out of their boyhood and sending into a combat zone where killing is an everyday experiance is not what I thought the human race should be up to in 1971 but there we were smack in the middle of giant poop wreck and only Nixions army to bring an honorable peace!

     At this time of the ten thousand day war as Veitnam is sometimes refered to as they had started pulling out troops just as at the time troops were comming home Tnkerbell was going into the malstrom.Troop reductions had changed everything. Cu Chi was deactivated and security duties were placed on the indivigual units despite their own duties of their basic jobs when the United States started announcing troop withdrawals.When Tinkerbell showed up at his new battalion headquarters in 2 corps (a designation for which part of South Veitnam you were at ),He was told that the 5th special forces in Nha Trang had been deactivated and they had other openings in other helicopter units where did I want to go.But Tinkerbell knew the rules,he was assigned a duty station," Nha Trang". not a duty unit for his second tour and after going to the PX and buying a bottle of Wild Turkey for the personnel clerk at battalion headquarters, I was assigned to a VIP aviation company in Nha Trang.

       Nha Trang had a Buddist temple all though off limits to U.S. personnel and a beautiful beach with big houses and down town and lots of girls.But as I said the amount of troops that were in Veitnam before this were now very much so, reduced.Before Tinkerbell left for 2 corp he stood at the end of the airfield at Cu Chi staring at NUi Bow Dinh the black virgin mountain in the distance and wondered if we were going to be knee deep in Chinese troops like had happened in Korea years before. 

       All though what they call an organizational maintenance the new unit at an airforce base 13miles North of Cam Ron Bay, Tinkerbell didnot do much flying he worked on inspection and maintenance of a special detachment that also had fixed wing aircraft.He had a hootch maid introduce him to a girl and he helped pay her rent(she already had an american baby from another GI that went home).After work Tinkerbell went downtown to see her we had a good time in her little one room apartment.She was telling me all about Veitnam and I'd tell her about America most of the time it was really cool! There was something about this communication between souls and young people the same age, and she was cute!

      My six month tour was slipping by fast and then one day a spanish crew cheif asked if I would take a mission for him while he went to the P.X .I jumped at the chance but when I arrived on the flight line to preflight the Huey with a big grin on my face and asked where are we going I got a officers retort,"you don't want to know"! I was hurt and thought the officer was a little calious to me and we started the flight with just the minimal communication.

      As I remember it it became apparent that we were headed into the interior and flying over mountanious valley's and the wop wop wop of the rotor  blades becoming never ending I remember testing our guns when suddenly two Phantom jet fighters came streaking by us and circled then they kinda set up a moving formation around us.Tinkerbell took a hard look at these guys cuase it almost looked like they were going to shoot us down. Phantom jets! What were they doing here and what were they doing? Then out of the corner of my left eye I saw an army camoflaged cargo plane flying below the hill tops almost into the trees I lost sight of it! My adrenlin was picking up now I looked at the horizon and the Phantoms and thought to myself "MIgs"!? Holy Jesus!

       Lamsong 719 was an undiscript hill top in Laos near the Ho Chi Minh trail and near the provincial capital on the Veitnamese side of the border called," Dong Ha".Tinkerbell thinks he got it right, its been thirty years although in 1971 you did not always know the places that were to become infamious! At the time of our arrival into Dong Ha there was a massive pitch battle going on not far from there across the border in Laos and when our little Huey (it was getting smaller by the minute as this mission progressed),set down on the landing pad outside a big house building of sorts in Dong Ha and like any good door gunner I jumped out while the helicopter blades were at flight idle and still turning and took a good long pee.Lost in my world I jumped to reality when next to my left arm another stream pf pee came close to me and as I jumped away and look back I noticed the three stars of a commanding army general in the U.S. Army."Sorry son" he said somthing to the effect," I had to go too"! "Lets get out of here now"."Brother", I thought to myself sometimes you just got a feeling.

      Riding back I kinda wondered with all that brass on board if they didnot know that I was a pilot,I thought about the crew chief that decided to go to the P.X. and deep insde of me I was then sure that they did know I was an undercovered pilot in a mechanics uniform and that made me think about the community of danger  we mite have been about and were in.Migs!,for Christ sake I thought this is something out of a action comic book!

     I couldn't wait to get back on the ground and I was kinda muted and a couple of days later I was called to battallion headquarters and inconspicuiously shown a battlaion readiness board that showed the lost helicopters that the battalion had incurred over this area in a week they had lost over 100 and there was lots of missing personnel,When I jumped a Huey to ride back to Nha Trang I thought about the personnel clerk that I bought the Wild Turkey wine and the guy to assign me to Nha Trang I wondered what he thought. did I had some sort of inside information! After going back to the barracks and getting my paperwork straighten out to go home which was my reason for going to battalion headquarters I went to see Peter breath and my friend Gilbert  and tell them what I'd seen on the battalion readiness board Peter breath said that Kurt your going to have to tell the first sargent.Tinkerbell told Peter Breath that he was still new in the unit and didn't quite know how to go about it so Peter said that he would. As I lived right next to the orderly room where the first sargents office was I could hear screaming in to the phone talking to someone in Siagon saying man you got to let people know! Who told you they asked the first Sargent? Tinkerbell told me the first sargent retorted,Oh they retorted back." they know who that is".

      Lansong 719 was a mess they have some secret videos about the massacre that insloothed on the hilltop Tinkerbell thinks that what the enemy did also was shut down inter - communication between internal units all over Veitnam the 100 down helicopters were such a big hit.Tinkerbell after he came home and thought about it he thought that it was the death of Nixions honorable peace in Veitnam.

      True story! And very much burned inside my memory later on the TV we saw the 1973 Paris Peace accords signed and the little girl in Trang Bang with her clothes burned off running down the road, The drama of Apollo 13 unfolding and the Fall of Siagon.Later after America was out of the war the Chinese army did try to invade the new Veitnam fighting off Chinese troops with captured American helicopters.

      Tinkerbell still lived off and on at grand pa's house I worked on the Grand Planet Airship Company there and noticeed the house address was 719!

 

     The UH-1helicopters in the form of the A-model varients and then the B- model D and H models and an M model operated with the army all through the south asian war of the 60's and 70's built by Bell helicopter which was the company that also built the X-1 rocket plane that broke the sound barrier in level flight with Chuck Yeager at the controls. The Huey's cost between $200,000 dollars and $300,000 dollars each.To one flight battalen which lost over 100 in number during the time of troop withdrawal at the time,had its numming effect on the plans of an honorable settlement.The Veitnam civil war which had already started when Kennedy brinked the Soviet and Chinese foreign departments and as the experts say made the cold war colder.Ended.

       Air America which much of its operation were accorded to the famious Flying Tiger Airline which served much of Asia with cargo flights and Air America which was partially funded by the Central Intelegence Agency was disbanded.

        Today after investment in Military and aviation technology the U.S. Army has a new series of Helicopters called the Blackwawk,instead of costing an average of $275,000 dollars each the average about $3.5 to $4.5 million dollars each in this age or new age of the volunteer Army.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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