A story from my trip to North CarolinaFollow

Ok, now that I have your attention, be advised that this is not a tale of my adventures with Tacosid since I am still trying to figure out my account/password for yahoo pictures. While those are indeed worth viewing, this is actually a story related to me by one of those friends I visited in Fayetteville. He says for as often as he gets together with old friends who were there that day, none of them have, to his knowledge, retold this story, much to his amazement.

Roger back then was a company commander for one of the 82nd Airborne's attack helicopter battalions and had gone down to Panama for Operation Just Cause to oust Noriega from power. This particular morning he had been tasked from higher-ups to scope out the LZ for an air assualt that was to secure a soccer field from which they'd launch operations to take various government buildings that were suspected to contain Noriega's loyal troops.

He headed out with another pilot, a senior warrant officer, and arrived on station about a kilometer away from the field. Roger, who was the mission commander, was not flying, but was operating the aircraft mounted magnification device afixed to the rotor head. He glassed the area for a while and couldn't see any activity. He called over the tactical frequency that the LZ was cold and the mission had a green light.

So the Blackhawks, which had been circling out over the ocean began to move in towards the soccer field in seven aircraft chalks (a manuever where seven birds fly in formation and land simultaneously) out of a flight of twenty-eight aircraft. Just as the 'Hawks are touching down, the entire LZ gets lit up with small arms fire from every available crook and cranny from angry Panamaians intent on denying the Americans the opportunity to land.

Roger listened to the radio just explode with chatter as radio silence was broken:
"I'm taking fire from the left!"
"I'm hit! I'm hit!"
"Gunner, enemy up front! Shoot him! shoot him!"
"Enemy fire, right!"
"Number 1 engine losing oil pressure!"
"Taking fire from that red car!"

He tried to identify this red car someone was talking about, but for the life of him couldn't see from his vantage point. Meanwhile, while all this excited chatter was going on he could hear rounds striking the birds as they were landing making pinging and clanking sounds over the radio.

Just then, it was if everybody took a collective breath for a second after shouting at the top of their lungs for the past fifteen seconds, when all of a sudden the lone female pilot in the squadron screamed over the net in a high pitched voice, "I'm taking it in the rear!"

There was this pregnant pause where Rog could hear over the radio the ping of bullets still hitting the Blackhawks and nobody was saying anything. At that moment everybody bust out laughing over the freq. Bullets were still pouring into the aircraft, but nobody could say a thing for all the guffaws and cackling that was going on.

The rest of the LZ insertion went off without a hitch, they called in gunships to protect the rest of the chalks inbound and the pre-combat jitters were finished.

Funny story.

Totem

Boys.

Golden!

It was a better story in person...