Letters From War: Combat Boots and Pickle Suits

By Don Harward.

Combat boots is probably a familiar term to many, but what about “pickle suits”? It’s a somewhat dated term, but I suppose I am somewhat dated also, which, I’ve come to appreciate, is not necessarily a bad thing. Pickle suit is the name given to the old one-piece green Nomex flight suit, which we all used to wear (and many still do). These days, “pickle suits” have become mostly tan or coyote-coloured flight suits festooned with a wide range of battle dress items.

For many years, I have worn such familiar one-piece flight suits as I’ve walked out the front door of my house, hotel, temporary housing and, on some occasions, the flaps of a tent. A flight suit is always comfortable and seemingly never out of style. Heck, it has set a style of its own that has even drifted into and out of mainstream fashion from time to time.

For me, the pickle suit is more than just clothing; it is my organiser. My pen is always there on my left upper sleeve; indeed, the one I’m wearing at the moment has a big black blob from the pen I left there the last time I washed the suit. My wallet always sits in the right lower leg pocket, my cell phone and comb goes in the left lower pocket, and important papers sit in the cool slanted zip pocket located just under the nametag.

When I am preparing for work, on top of my pickle suit, I wear a protective “vest” containing many layers of Kevlar cloth, which is designed to stop low velocity bullets and bomb fragments. Inside a pocket—and outside the Kevlar on my front—is a “class four” hard armour plate, cleverly contoured to fit my body. This solid, heavy mass can stop not only a 7.62 mm bullet, but also the much nastier 5.56 bullet. The little 5.56 mm devil has a 62-grain bullet with a tungsten steel core that will drill a nasty little hole through most armour plate and render its wearer wondering why he or she just got shot. My plate stops both—even after multiple strikes (which would be an extraordinarily bad thing)! Outside the vest is the “Mollie”, which is a network of nylon webbing to which we attach various pouches. I carry two double M4 carbine thirty-round magazines, a first aid pouch, two tourniquets, two pistol magazine pouches, a grenade pouch, a radio pouch and another pouch crammed full of every imaginable extra, including my GPS and all-weather matches.

I carry a helmet bag and a runaway bag over my shoulder to and from my helicopter. The runaway bag is not some childhood hangover, but a smallish sack filled with extra ammunition, medical stuff, a change of socks and underwear, a space blanket, a built in water bladder, some money and other things I might need in a jam. On my right upper thigh, I carry a pistol securely retained in a drop leg holster from which I can draw it quickly and snap off two shots in only a second or two. In my right hand, I carry a trusty Colt M4 carbine with a double thirty-round magazine locked into the magazine well. On the back of my head, I wear an old ball cap. Also desert tan in colour, my cap is a little dirty and slightly worn, and has a black and white flag sewn to its front. Around my neck, I wear my wife’s scarf and sometimes I catch the scent of her perfume from it.

Even though my pickle suit and other essential battle dress gear or “kit” are very familiar to me, one day, their appearance caught me totally by surprise. I was walking across the ramp away from my helicopter after a particularly hairy mission on a foreign border and was lost in thought about the preceding few hours. We had carried out one of those pre-dawn takeoffs for a very early strike designed to catch the bad guys off guard.

It was still early morning and the sun was still coming up. As I walked, I was in one of those “thousand-mile stares” when I happened to glance down at the ground. The angle of the sun caught me just right to cast a deep shadow. For a moment, I stopped and looked at the shadow. It was as if it were another person—the kind of person one might see in passing who catches one’s eye and makes one stare. The shadow was bent forward under the considerable weight it was carrying, with lots of bulges and protrusions all over. Perpendicular to the upright shadow was the all too familiar silhouette of the M4 carbine the figure carried. With its well-known triangular front sight post and “birdcage” flash hider, the weapon is simultaneously feared and loved the world over.

As I gazed upon this figure, it suddenly hit me—it was the silhouette of a soldier. I’d seen it a thousand times in the “grunts”—weary from several days of fighting—who I’d carried in the various helicopters I’d flown. I’d seen it in soldiers at home in the US, in Europe, Asia, Southwest Asia, and too many other countries to mention.

Then the second realisation hit me. It was me I was looking at; I was the soldier! As we navigate through this obstacle course called life, we sometimes forget who we really are. Then come moments of clarity when we see the naked truth and it all suddenly makes sense. So it was for me—there on the ground in that slightly bent-forward shape, I saw the real me—a soldier, still…

A few hours earlier, Steve and I had just taken off from the coalition base from which we were launching the assault. The LZ we had been to was situated at ten thousand feet—that’s right, we made a combat assault landing at ten thousand feet—and we did it in a Huey! This was a feat in itself, but the worst part was that it was the only LZ in the area. Had the bad guys been lucky enough to clock one of us on that very narrow little landing spot, then the guys on the ground would have been on their own because there would have been no way for anyone else to come in and pull them out. It would have been a blood bath—and CNN would have absolutely loved it!

I remember looking behind me, as we flew, I could barely see Beano, the medic who was crewing our aircraft, scanning outside through the open right door. His M4, with a grenade launcher attached, moved about at his side in the wind. On the floor were four troops secured under two cargo straps. As well as having removed the doors, we had stripped out all the seats, dropped all our extra junk and even reduced our fuel to a mere one thousand pounds. All of these measures were essential in order to give us enough of a power margin to land at that height at our weight.

In front of us, the formation was well spread out as we climbed. Normally, we would have been flying much lower, but the valley floor sat below at around three thousand feet, while the landing zone sat at ten grand and the peaks soared well above that. Several ships were maintaining position in a formation called a “combat spread”, which gives an aircraft a general position, but allows room for quick manoeuvre should one or more aircraft be engaged by ground fire. There wasn’t a lot of cockpit talk; it was pretty much all business, but the command radio frequency was alive with radio calls and code words. Each time I heard one, I would mark it off on the “Execution Matrix” that listed the code words—in sequence—of the various waypoints and mission tasks. I noted on the last call that there weren’t too many entries remaining before the one marked “Arrive LZ.”

So far, so good, as the several flights of assault aircraft drew ever closer to their destination. As we flew level at about nine thousand five hundred feet, the jagged mountains at our twelve o’clock were a menacing stark contrast to the smooth desert floor a mile and a half below us. The troops in the back looked at me every time I looked aft. For all we knew, these might have been the last few moments of our lives, but it didn’t matter. This thing was in motion and nothing was going to stop it. I heard the code word for “gunship overhead landing zone,” which also meant that “Chalk 1” from the lead flight would be in the flare to land. (We call aircraft in a formation “Chalk”; the first is “Chalk 1,” the second is “Chalk 2” and so on).

This was the most likely time to run into trouble, but we heard Chalk 1 call clear of the LZ as Chalk 2 flared for his landing. Four ships were to land in the first flight before us; we were Chalk 2 of our flight. We were positioned two minutes in trail behind the lead flight. I was on the controls and it would be my approach and I knew I had to nail it. The overhead photos showed it to be really tiny—barely the size of our aircraft—but what the overhead photo didn’t show was vertical features; it all seemed flat.

Another code word—the one designated for “last aircraft clear.” I lifted my hand off the collective and looked in the back. I held up two fingers and yelled, “Two minutes!” I paused for a moment and looked into their eyes. I always do that because it makes it more personal for me. I do better knowing there are human beings in the back and that they are the reason I am here.

We approached the landing zone, which was ahead and to my right. We were flying on the right side of a very narrow box canyon in which the LZ was about two or three hundred feet below the ridgeline on a small outcrop of rock. The solid rock wall to my right seemed impossibly close, and while I set up on approach, the winds were already buffeting us. There could be no excuses; this had to be perfect. I watched as “Lead” flared and thumped down. He was on the ground for barely a second before I saw troops sliding out of the aircraft. The guys on the left side had to be careful not to fall right off the cliff to their deaths as there was drop of five hundred feet or so on that side of that LZ ten feet or so from the skid! I warned Beano (names have been changed to protect the innocent) about the drop. I couldn’t see him anymore, as he was busy cutting the straps we used to secure the troops.

As Lead pulled up and then dived down the slope in a hard left turn, I set my power and rode an imaginary glide slope down. I always imagine a string extending from the tip of my nose to the touchdown spot and I adjust power as necessary to stay right on it. At 50 feet above the ground, I started the flare. Sliding forward in my seat allowed me see just over the nose as it rose to block my view in the deceleration. Steve was calling power, “fifty-five… sixty…sixty-five.” Just as he said seventy, the aft skid touched down. I lowered the collective about half way, and the Huey rocked forward and slid maybe three feet.

Before we had even stopped, the shooters were getting off. I heard a “Let’s go” from the back, and pulled in power. The eighteen hundred plus horsepower of the Lycoming 703 answered eagerly and we leapt off the ground. “Two’s clear,” Steve called on the radio. I cranked the cyclic left and reduced power. The rotors bit into the thin air and the aircraft came around quickly. We dived to gain airspeed down that steep slope—losing altitude like a brick covered with hot butter until a slight tug aft on the cyclic ended our rollercoaster ride and we rounded out several hundred feet above the valley below at about a hundred and twenty knots.

“See anything…? We take any fire or hits?” I asked. I got a satisfying, “Don’t think so; we’re clean. Let’s get out of here.” Above me, Mike in the gunship was covering our departure. If anyone had fired on us, his team would have made mincemeat out of them. Through the greenhouse (the tinted Plexiglas window above the pilot’s head), I saw the gun bird pull up and turn away to cover the next ship’s arrival. As always, Mike—a former Apache pilot, with a killer’s instinct—was doing a great job. He was all over it on that mission and ready for a fight.

Before I took off that morning, I had prayed a simple prayer for protection—my head bowed and one hand on the dusty nose of my aircraft. As we cleared the LZ and headed for home, it seemed my prayer had been answered. Of the more than fifty reported enemy, either they hadn’t been there, or they were unwilling to fight. They could have pressed an attack and destroyed one of our aircraft on the LZ and it could easily have been mine. But this day, there had been no fight. This day, peace had prevailed and we all got to go home one more time.

To a soldier flying a mission, it really doesn’t matter if a fight is the final outcome. Exactly the same mental gymnastics are required before starting the approach. You have already prayed and you continue to do so. In your mind, it’s all go, even if the 12.7 mm round blasts out your windshield—and you—on short final. You are prepared for anything to happen, and although you are more scared than most people will ever be, you press on anyway. Maybe that’s why, in Vietnam, one Army aviator after another persevered with their missions and continued to land, despite seeing other ships in their formations getting shot to pieces. In the end, a soldier just does what he or she was sent to do. The heart is racing, the adrenaline is flowing and one is overcome by a state of “hyper-awareness” as if the world had slowed down. Bullets or not, bodies and minds still pay the price.

Such were my thoughts as I stared at my shadow that day. That silhouette had seen and felt the danger on many occasions in the past. Some days, that shadow had bounced in happy elation over tough mission accomplished successfully; other days had not been so kind. But on this day, my soldier’s shadow rested—motionless and thankful.