We have been learning about Cottonwood’s Dave Harris, who was mostly raised by his grandma in Torrance and Redondo Beach, California. Dave dropped out of school at 17. His grandma signed on his behalf in May 1968 enabling him to join the Army and avoid criminal charges.

He completed Basic Training at Fort Ord, California, and then Advanced Individual Training (AIT) at Fort Lee, Virginia, where he learned to operate fuel and oil lines.

The Army issued Dave deployment orders to Vietnam and assigned him to the 71st Aviation Company in Chu Lai. He talked himself into an assignment as a Huey door gunner within a couple weeks of arrival.

He described some of the unpleasant aspects of life at Chu Lai.

“The other guys filled you in pretty good. They said, ‘Hang your boots in the air so nothing crawls in there.’ We had hootches and you built a little sleeping area in there, so you slept under mosquito netting. We had rats and cockroaches. The rats were about this big. (Indicating about a foot) One time I was sleeping in my bunk and I heard a crunching sound. I turned the light on. This was when I smoked and cockroaches had eaten half of my cigarettes! We didn’t have many snakes coming in. We had scorpions a couple times, but they said if they hit you, they’d only make you really sick.”

Dave explained that the wet monsoon season brought the misery of daily rain and more unwanted visitors.

“We had homemade showers, big tanks overhead that they’d fill up. Our showers didn’t have the drain system that you’d want. Venomous sea snakes would come through our Company because we were that close to the ocean. I was going to take a shower once and there were four heads popping up in the water. I went back and grabbed my M-16. Guys asked, ‘Where are you going?’ I replied, ‘There are sea snakes in the shower!’ I started shooting and the captain came down. There were the four snakes floating on top of the water and the tank is leaking. He yelled, “What the hell’s going on here?” I replied, “Sea snakes!” He said, “Well, you could have just shot at them and not at everything else!” (Dave laughed)

Dave described how flight crews received their daily assignments.

“It was posted on a board and every night you’d check the board to see where you were going the next day or who you were flying with. After a while I flew with the same pilots and the same crew chief. So, we all got to know each other pretty well.”

He explained his pre-flight responsibilities as door gunner.

“We had these things called the Hero Box. It would hold about 3,800 rounds of 60 (ammo). I’d make sure mine and the crew chief’s were full and make sure you’ve got spare weapons in case something happens and you’re downed. I had an AK-47, a shotgun, and a Thompson. I grabbed whatever was handy. Every once in a while your 60 would go down and you couldn’t repair it. We had to have something to be firing back. My crew chief carried a BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle). You could always tell when his gun was down. You’d hear a ‘boom, boom, boom, boom.’ (Dave chuckled) That thing was loud!”

Dave also had specific flight responsibilities as a door gunner. The helicopter crew; pilots, crew chief, and Dave, all wore flight helmets connected to the aircraft’s intercom system.

“My job was to watch for any planes and watch the back side the pilots couldn’t see. When you leave, you hear a, ‘Clear left.’ That’s the crew chief. And I’d look for the same thing and give, ‘Clear right.’ Then the pilot would take off. One time we were flying up by Danang and were pretty high. I was looking down and wasn’t paying attention. I looked over and (Dave chuckled) Fox 4, a strike jet, was right next to us. That guy was so close I could see that he needed a shave. He flipped me the peace sign and I said, “Oh, by the way, there’s a jet on the right side. (Dave laughed) That shocked me. Your other job, if you got shot down, was to unstrap the Peter pilot (co-pilot) and 1st officer because they couldn’t get out of their seats quickly unless you unstrapped them.”

He also had directed duties as a door gunner

“You see muzzle flashes on the ground and you open up. I’ve seen a lot of muzzle flashes. My pilots told me, ‘If you see VC (Viet Cong insurgents), you shoot. (Dave laughed) I don’t want to hear you telling me, ‘Hey, there’s some VC down here and they are carrying guns.'”

Sometimes Dave’s crew would operate from a forward base for days.

“We had two fire bases where, if we were flying all night, dropping flares for them and stuff, we had our own pads and our own bunker. Sometimes I stayed out there for 15 days. They had their own fueling stuff up there and we pumped it in our helicopters. Most of the time, wherever we were, the pilots never shut down the helicopter so we could make a getaway. You’d just go from one fire base to the other fire base.”

Dave flew as a Huey door gunner for almost a year before a Monday mission that went horribly wrong.

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