TBS 2-67 Cruisebook_Updated_7Jan23

positions as the Grunts called for them, until we were
“Winchester” (code for “out of ammo”) and released by
the FAC to RTB (return to base). Landing at Chu Lai and
parking the jets and debriefing the mission at Group
Headquarters we were back in the Ready Room and boy
howdy was there a lot of pilot talk about this one.
And the days and weeks moved on and more missions
were flown in support of our troops. My time at Chu
Lai with the Tomcats was a great experience in
building my career in the Marine Corps. My roommate
Pete Oatis had to eject from his A-4 while flying a close
air support mission for the grunts in ElephantValley
when the bad guys hit his aircraft with gunfire
damaging the ailerons during his pullout from an
attack run. The ejection damaged his leg badly but he
ended up staying in-country doing mission briefings
for his fellow fliers. He is lucky to be alive. And we are
glad of that. I pulled an “all-nighter” as Ready Room
Duty Officer and after being relieved at 0600 caught the
transport six-by back to my hooch for a nap. About an
hour or so after I hit the rack I was awakened by loud
explosions . My reflex action was to roll out of my rack
and under it for protection. The explosions didn’t last
long and I fell back to sleep. About 10 AM I woke up
and got dressed and caught the shuttle six-by truck
back down to the flight line. It was all bedlam and was
explained to me that there had been a rocket attack
and several aircraft were badly damaged. I missed the
whole show catching ZZZs from the all-nighter. I felt
“guilty” for not being there to help.
There were many other missions flown through that
summer of ’69 and many lessons learned in the flying.
That time came to an end in September after I returned
Second Platoon
from R&R with my wife Ginger in Hawaii where I got to
meet my new daughter, Jessica (JJ for short) who was
born 17 March, about a week after I arrived in-country.
The Corps is an outfit with many traditions and one of
them is re-assigning pilots to other (non-flying) jobs so
to build their experience and knowledge in how the
Corps operates. I was re-assigned to Wing
Headquarters in Da Nang to work in G-3 Flight
Operations. My job was taking ground Marine’s
requests for air support and assigning them to
appropriate aviation units. I shared the desk with a
Warrant Officer A-6 Systems Officer (not a pilot) named
Rex (can’t remember his last name) and we worked
pretty well as a team. We had odd shifts around the
clock so after I was trained-in we only saw each other
briefly to do the daily turnover and when we were off,
sometimes 6 hours, sometimes 12, we did other things
besides just sleeping.
Toby's Story is continued at the end of this section.
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