Watch that First Step!

UH-60 Blackhawk 

It is around 0200hrs in the morning, during the summer of 1984, Somewhere over Fort. Stewart, Georgia. I am aboard a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter enroute to an LZ (Landing Zone) that has been pre-determined by those planning this mission. We were briefed regarding every step that we would take on this mission; a CALFEX (Combined Arms Live Fire Exercise), during the OPORDER, or 'Operations Order'.

At the time, I was the junior member of a two-man Scout-Sniper team serving in the 1st Ranger Battalion (Airborne), 75th Infantry Regiment. Our mission during this exercise was to provide sniper and intelligence support to Alpha Company, 1st Battalion (Ranger), 75th Infantry, during the first phase of the exercise, by doing advanced reconnaissance missions (such as the one we were currently engaged in), stay-behind missions, where we would initially move with the unit and then unobtrusively move away from the line of march and establish hide positions in order to place harassing fire on any enemy soldiers attempting to overtake the unit from behind, as well as any other specific misisons directed by the company commander.

On this mission, we had been assigned four 'line puppies', or line infantrymen, to provide security for us for the duration.

We had loaded into the Blackhawk, from which the seats had been removed in order to make room for the six of us and our equipment, sometime after midnight on the apron just outside the marshalling area located on Hunter Army Airfield, located just on the outskirts of Savannah, Georgia.

Our route included a number of 'false insertions', where the aircraft briefly touches the ground and then takes off again, or simply drops to a low enough to appear to have landed on radar. The point of this is to confuse the enemy who is certainly monitoring the flight route via radar. You cannot send a quick reaction team to every single possible landing zone. Or, at least, we hope not!

I was lying on the floor of the helicopter, with my feet towards the tail, listening to the pilot's chatter over the CVC headsets. It was slightly chilly, but not uncomfortable. The pilot's were intermittently chatting amongst themselves, and with the tactical air controller, exchanging headings, air speed, altitude, and other navigational information. The stars floated by lazily outside the open doors along the sides of the aircraft. The vibration of the engines was lulling me into a drone-like drunkard's tightrope walk between sleep and wakefulness.

Suddenly, the aircraft lurched. I was instantly awake and alert (and scared shitless; around this time, Blackhawk helicopters had been raining from the sky, and I didn't have any great interest in becoming a statistic). I still had the CVC headsets on, and could hear the pilots discussing the in-flight emergency as calmly and dispassionately as they would discuss the merits of one car wax over the other.

I quickly looked in the direction of the crew chief, who had been squatting in the doorway, gazing down at the earth streaming past, a few moments ago....to see what his reaction was, and to tailor my own accordingly, I suppose... to my shock and dismay, he was gone!!

The pilot's were discussing who should have command control of the bird, and by now the helicopter had gone into auto-rotation. The stars whipped by outside the open doorways on either side of the aircraft as we death spiralled towards the ground, which was coming up much faster than I was comfortable with. At what seemed to me to be meer feet above the treetops, the pilots had apparently arrived at a decision as to who should be piloting the aircraft, which was well, as I was on the verge of grabbing one of them by the throat, Warrant Officer or no! The bird smoothly pulled out of the dive, and in a few seconds, we were climbing back up to cruising altitude. My heart was hammering a hole in my chest, and judging by the size of the eyeballs on the other rangers on board, none of them were particularly happy, either.

We turned our attention to the crew chief, who was dangling at the end of his 'monkey harness', and looking none to happy for the experience. We had the pilots slow to a hover while we winched him back into the aircraft, then we were on our way, and still on schedule!

I was shitting pickles, to be honest... Of course I wouldn't let it show, none of us did, but I didn't really know what the hell had just taken place, I didn't know whether it was actually a problem with the aircraft, a pilot error, some sick kind of a joke, or what... but what I did understand was that I wanted theFUCK OUT OF THAT BIRD. NOW!!

We made a few more false insertions, and then the co-pilot informed us that our insertion would be coming up next, and gave us our time-out (how much time we had before we would be touching down/exiting the aircraft). Annoyingly, they were still conversing with about as much emotional content as though they were discussing thier tax returns. Although this should have put my mind at ease, it had the opposite effect, and I wanted to get the hell away from both of those lunatics as soon as it was feasible to do so.

I looked from one ranger's face to the next, to see if anyone else looked as shit-scared and unsettled as I felt (my asshole was puckered so tight, you couldn't have dragged a piece of greased dental floss through it with a tractor!). I noticed that each one in turn looked as ferocious and confident as possible. (I know I looked exactly the same way...). I also took notice of the fact that each was checking out the faces of his buddies to see if any of us were scared... so everybody got a good fright, not only me. Wonderful. I still wanted out of the helicopter.

When we got the five minute warning, we moved to our designated disembarkation places, seated in the door of the aircraft, three to a side. The senior sniper was directly to my left, and one of the security grunts was on the left side of him.

There was a nylon webbing safety strap strung across the open door at chest height. We were not supposed to touch this until directed to do so by the crew chief. I watched the ground streaming by under us, and waited for the wheels to touch down so that I could unass the damned aircraft, and get back on the ground.

We were to fly in low over the trees, flare and land a relatively small distance from the tree line, where we would hop out onto the ground, fan out, and drop into a prone position until the helicopter lifted and flew out of the area. We would then rise to our feet, and move to a spot just inside the tree line where we would establish a perimeter, and acclimate to the area by silently listening for any sign that our arrival had been noticed. After a little while, we would move out and continue on with our mission. We were supposed to establish a hide postion overlooking an enemy position and relay information of intelligence value back to the TOC (Tactical Operations Center) for a day or two, after which we would move to another location and look for targets to engage in support of our mission. That was the plan (short version).

None of this was going through my mind at the moment. What was actually going through my mind was something like, "I can't wait to get the FUCK out of here!" or something similar.

We were flying at treetop level, when I felt a bump, and the aircraft thudded and bumped. I reached up and unhooked the safety strap and hopped out, expecting to feel the ground under my feet. As I unhooked the safety strap, the senior sniper gave me somewhat odd look, but didn't have any time to react bewteen that moment, and the moment I hopped out of the aircraft.

As soon as I hopped, I knew I had fucked up pretty royally. I should have felt the ground. I didn't. I remember thinking something like, "Oh......shit!", for a second, then I noticed the helicopter as it tracked across the sky from high to low, moving from above my head and behind me, down across my field of vision, and disappearing between my feet..... a second or two later, it reappeared from above my head and slid down between my feet until I lost sight of it.... I realized that I was turning end over end, and was just about to come up with a plan to deal with this when I hit the first tree branches.

Georgia pines are very tall. They have a number of branches up top, but get sort of naked down below. I started hitting branches, and richocheted from branch to branch like a pachinko ball for a few seconds, until centripetal force pulled me against the trunk of a particularly obnoxious pine tree, and I fell and scraped down that for awhile. This didn't turn out to be anywhere near as much fun as it sounds, and just when I was starting to make a little headway in my efforts to push myself away from the damned thing, I hit a fairly large branch, face down, as I fell. The branch was about as big around as my calf, and it hit me just across the waistline. I jacknifed, and broke my own nose with my knee, taking a small chip out of one of my front teeth in the process.

The weight of my rucksack (between 80 and 120 lbs) pulled me over forward, and I fell most of the way belly up until the backs of my legs, just above the ankles, caught another branch, which flipped me over like a pancake and dropped me face first, rucksack on top, onto my belly on the ground. I landed partially on a root, and bounced my face off the ground a good one. I lay there for a few seconds, snorting pine needles and dust and drooling blood until I regained my senses, or part of them. I gingerly moved a few things around, and figured I had broken my nose, barked up my shins and arms and my right side a bit, I felt as though I may have broken a rib or two (it turned out to be three), I could feel that tooth wiggling a bit, and I'd bitten a chunk out of something inside of my mouth. To add even more fun and enjoyment to the mix, I had been skewered by two sharp pine branches. One in the leg, and one just under the arm. I pulled them out of me, got to my feet, and moved to the tree line, where I kneeled on one knee, and tapped my helmet with one hand and gave the senior sniper a thumbs up, indicating that I was 'okay!'.

He made a hand signal to the pilot, who was simply sitting where he had touched down, rotors spinning, and ran over to my position and asked me if I was injured. I told him that I was fine. He asked me if I needed a MEDEVAC, and I told him that I wasn't hurt except for a few bumps and bruises, and that it was nothing to worry about. He looked at me strangely for a few seconds, then asked me, "What the fuck was that??!!"

"I was securing the LZ!!", I replied, to which he just shook his head, and ran back to the front of the helicopter and waved off the pilot. As the thuk-thuk of the rotor blades receded, the rest of the guys in our detached unit moved over to where I was kneeling, and we counted heads, and established our perimeter. The line puppies were giving me a wide berth, and staring at me as though I had a chicken on my head.

After a period of time, which I cannot remember... things began to get a little fuzzy here.... we started moving towards our destination where we were to set up our hide position. I started to hallucinate, and loudly announced that I saw a member of our battalion standing in the swamp in his dress green uniform. (He wasn't there, and we are supposed to enforce a strict light and noise discipline policy when we are moving to contact when in the field. Obviously, something wasn't exactly kosher with Bear).

At some point a few hours later, I apparently stood up from our hide position, and started walking off on my own. I don't remember this part, but was told that I was digging in my pockets, and trying to deposit a non-existent quarter into a tree trunk. When I was asked to explain my actions, I claimed to be buying a 'coke' from the 'vending machine'.

At that point, a MEDEVAC was summoned, and I was dusted off to the base hospital where the docs discovered that I had a severe cerebral concussion. I don't remember anything after kneeling by the tree line, and claiming to be securing the landing zone. The rest I have put together through the accounts told to me by the other guys who were there.

I spent a few days in the hospital, and a few more recuperating at home.

For the next year or so, whenever we would prepare to make an airborne jump, the riggers would tease me by pretending to not want to give me a parachute, saying I didn't need one.

The training NCO put me on the order of merit list to attend HANO school as a joke (High Altitude No Opening) as opposed to HALO, or HIgh Altitude Low Opening.

They explained to me that the bump I felt that night as I thought the helicopter landed was a thermal updraft of air which was rising as it blew across the open landing zone and hit the tree line.

Seems like they should have let me know about these things.

You can trust me on one thing that I learned that night; There sure are easier ways to get to work!!

Bear in a Blackhawk