Montauk, NY, Resident Will Be Inducted into Veterans Hall of Fame

I have a unique connection with the guy about whom these articles are written.  Even though I wasn’t an officer, after serving 28 months with the 225^th Surveillance Airplane Company at Phabulous Phu Hiep By The Sea as a Photo Lab Tech (84G20), working in the Orderly Room for several months and flying many missions as a flight-follow observer, I wanted to return home having experienced the famous low pass that others had experienced when they left the Company.  So, on my last duty day as a Phantomhawk, I was assigned to a flight-follow mission with a warrant officer named Mr. Drago.  As I recall, it was a warm and clear morning on June 11, 1970, when I crawled out of my bed (I had packed my stuff over the previous days) and reported for my pre-flight our briefing.

There was nothing remarkable that I recall about that flight, except that I was going home when it was done!  Now, you must remember that this was a dumb thing to do...volunteering for a mission on my last day in country!

I remember clearly coming back to Phu Hiep from Qui Nhon one early evening on a Huey.  In those days we just went out on the tarmac, put our thumb out and hitched a ride on anything that was heading to Phu Hiep.  (No TSA to fool with in those days!)  Anyway, I got on this Huey that had several other passengers on it already, we lifted off and headed south.  A little while into the flight we turned right and headed west.  “What’s up?” someone asked and the pilot said that another chopper had landed with hydraulic problems and was on a little airstrip out in the toolies; we were going to pick up their passengers.

Well, as we were heading west to our objective, this guy was sitting next to me in his khakis, obviously on his way to Cam Ranh to get on a jet to head back to the “world,” muttering to himself “I don’t wanna die!”  This was not an unusual comment I think we all had near the end our tours.

Anyway, to make a long story longer, we got to this little airstrip at dusk, after flying over at least one fire fight where we saw our red tracers going one direction and the enemy’s green tracers returning the other, we landed up in the hills where the landing strip was only illuminated by only two jeep headlights.  We picked up the passengers that included some GIs and a couple of ARVN officers and we slowly took off for Phu Hiep in our overloaded Huey, while all the time our khaki-clad GI was doubting he was actually going to be on jet going west in a few hours.

We were all grateful that the trip ended uneventfully.

Anyway, back to my last day in Vietnam...  Mr. Drago and I completed our mission.  I said goodbye over the radio to my friend CPT Larry Stallard, who was flying one of the missions we were following.  I must have said to Mr. Drago that I wanted a low pass, so we headed west out over the Pacific to a radar installation (it looked like a big, white golf ball sitting out in the ocean), climbed to a bazillion feet altitude and dived toward it.  Pulling up at the last possible moment, I had gotten my low pass!  What a rush!

We then headed north to Cam Ranh and touched down on the Air Force runway, taxied over toward the terminal, I got my gear out of the Hawk, said goodbye and thanks to Mr. Drago with a salute, and headed for the terminal and home.

I didn’t see George Drago until many years later at a Mohawk Association reunion (I don’t remember which one) and we have remained in touch ever since!

Click on the links below to see what now LTC Drago (US Army Retired) has been up to all these years.  I am so very proud to have served with him in the 225^th, as I am proud to have served with the finest group of men in the United States Army so many years ago!

http://easthampton.patch.com/groups/politics-and-elections/p/montauk-resident-will-be-inducted-into-veterans-hall-of-fame

http://www.nysenate.gov/report/2013-veterans-hall-fame-award-recipients

http://bit.ly/Zd06qK