It wasn’t the smartest decision I’d ever made, and if you really want to know, it was all John Wayne’s fault.

Oh, I don’t mean John Wayne the man. What I’m talking about is John Wayne the image, although it’s rather difficult to separate the two.

I just couldn’t go home after a year in Vietnam and tell my friends that I’d only been a lousy clerk in a maintenance battalion. Man, I just had to be a hero.

At least that’s what I was thinking when I walked into my First Sergeant’s office and volunteered to stay in Vietnam an extra six months if they’d let me transfer to a combat aviation unit as a helicopter door gunner.

Like I said, it wasn’t the smartest decision I’d ever made.

The 62^nd Maintenance Battalion in Pleiku was touted as the third most well-protected compound in Vietnam, and our record of zero casualties to enemy action bore out the claim.

But who wants to tell that to friends back home?

To be able to say, however, that I was a door gunner in a combat helicopter unit – now that was something to write home about! Everybody knew that the door gunners were heroes. In the barracks at night you’d hear the talk – all about how dangerous their job was and how they seldom went home in one piece . . . if they managed to stay alive at all.

And while waiting in line at the Camp Schmidt Post Exchange, we clerk-types willingly stepped aside for any helicopter crewmen who happened by. They had, after all, earned special treatment because of they job they had to do.

So you can see, can’t you, that I just had to volunteer?

About a week before signing the extension papers, I drove over to Camp Holloway Army Airfield to deliver some records. Just inside the front gate and to the right was a wall imbedded with several hundred small plaques, and you could see where there was plenty of space for more.

Each plaque bore the name of a soldier who had been killed in action.

A little bit further down and to the left, just across the street from battalion headquarters, was a replica of a Montagnard tribal chieftain’s hootch. About halfway up its steep, thatched roof was a sign that read, "Welcome to the Central Highlands and the home of the 52^nd Combat Aviation Battalion".

Beyond this the road curved to the right, then back to the left. On the left was a wooden control tower and rows of helicopters parked in "L"-shaped bunkers. On the right was a row of wooden barracks, each surrounded by a chest-high wall of sandbags. The fourth building in the line had a sign out in front that read "189^th Assault Helicopter Company – The Ghostriders".

Ominous.

The feeling as I walked into the company headquarters hootch was purely John Wayne. There I was, surrounded by truly courageous souls, standing in the presence of the uncommon – and I was just a clerk.

Never – before or since – have I felt so utterly humbled. It was at that moment that I knew I would be one of them, no matter the price. And I felt intensely proud.

Remembering my reason for being there, I handed the sergeant the stack of records I’d brought. He grunted an acknowledgement and dismissed me with a wave of his hand without even looking up from the papers he was studying.

I kept standing there.

After a very pregnant pause, during which I quickly reviewed my life until that moment, the sergeant looked up and, scornfully I thought, said, "Well?"

I almost fainted on the spot and seriously considered running for the door. But my courage held just long enough for me to clear my throat a couple of times and mumble something about wanting to transfer to his outfit.

The sergeant smiled a crooked little smile – and suddenly I wasn’t just an ordinary clerk anymore. Certainly not someone to be dismissed with a perfunctory wave of the hand.

I was somebody!

He began telling me about the "Ghostriders", stressing the all-volunteer aspect and that most of the members already had served a tour in Vietnam and were now on extensions.

Afterwards I visited with some of the gunners in their "hootches" ("We don’t call them ‘barracks’ here," he said) and found even more reasons to sign on with them. Back where I was a clerk, everything went strictly by the book. We were made to stand three formations a day, pull KP, shine our boots and salute all the officers. Here, however, there were no formations except for the non-flight-status personnel. They had civilian KPs. "Hootch maids" (Vietnamese women) did all the cleaning and boot polishing. And it was considered a serious faux pas to salute any officer beneath the rank of lieutenant colonel.

The sense of comradeship – of purpose – was delicious after the drudgery of being a maintenance battalion clerk.

I gave myself a week to think it over. Seven days to decide if that was what I really wanted to do.

In that week I had to polish my boots seven times, stand 21 formations, pull guard duty twice and take my turn once as "barracks orderly".

The decision to extend and transfer really wasn’t all that hard.

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