SAIGON, Republic of Vietnam — Larry
Liss graduated from flight school in 1966 with a set of Army aviator wings and
orders for Vietnam.
“We stumbled out of a plane in
Saigon,” he recalled. “I remember going to Camp Alpha.”
Camp Alpha was a military transient
camp at Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon. The camp was where many U.S.
servicemen were quartered temporarily while awaiting assignment and transportation
to their permanent units.
“I remember going to this place,
then I had orders for the 162nd Assault Helicopter Company, the ‘Vultures,’ out
of Phuoc Vinh,” Larry said. But first he went to Phu Loi Army Airfield, some 25
miles north of Saigon.
“I can remember hanging out at the swimming
pool. It must have been the Officers Club. Dion, which was somewhere close, was
getting mortared. I remember being in the pool, having a drink, smoking a
cigarette, and looking at the flashes of the mortars,” he said.
*****
Phu Loi Airfield had been a
Japanese airbase during World War II, when Vietnam’s Vichy French colonists
were allied with Nazi Germany. As an ally of Germany, the Japanese Empire had
access to Vietnam.
Allied prisoners of war had built
the Phu Loi Airfield. After the war, when the Free French came to power in
Paris, French colonial military forces used the airfield in their fight with
the Viet Minh, who were seeking Vietnam independence.
*****
Larry said he was at Phu Loi for a
couple of days before going on to Phuoc Vinh. “One of the other guys from my
flight school class was there, too. We both got in about the same day.”
 |
| Larry Liss standing beside armed helicopter. |
Flying with an assault helicopter
company in Vietnam gave pilots a wide range of experience. One day they could
be carrying soldiers into a hot landing zone on a combat assault; the next they
could be carrying supplies on a “Pigs and Rice” mission.
Larry said, “I flew a lot of back
and forth, back and forth, just carrying stuff. I had no idea what I was doing.
I was just flying. If I was told to fly here or there, I would go. I remember
one day, this guy named Lenny Ellenstein, who had me go to Pennsylvania
Military College, then ended up being part of the Judge Advocate Corps. He was
a lawyer.
“I was flying him and we’re talking
and kibitzing over the microphone, you know, ‘blah, blah, blah,’ we were
outside a place called Duc Hoa and we got shot down. I was at about 200 feet,
maybe a mile out, and we got shot down. I should have probably come in a little
higher. I was hot dogging, showing off for my friend,” Larry said.
“There were Viet Cong units in the
area and we had to evade. Man, it was bad. We could see them. We finally made
it into Duc Hoa. It took us a day and a half to go a mile. We had to hide and
duck. It was really scary,” Larry recalled.
He flew for the 162nd Assault
Helicopter Company through the end of the year and then received orders assigning
him to a Pathfinder detachment as assistant commander. Larry and his detachment
would mark helicopter landing zones for Operation Junction City.
Larry wasn’t sure why he was
selected, though he thinks it may have been because, while stationed in West
Germany, he led a group of soldiers into Czechoslovakia during a snowstorm and
photographed a mobile radar site. He recalled being on the radio with a general
officer and reporting the site. He was told, “There is no mobile radar site.”
“Weeks later they confirmed there
were mobile radar units along the border,” Larry said.
This and other missions had
enhanced Larry's reputation as a scout. “I just had this reputation,” he said.
“Brent Artley and I wound up in
this unit with the 173rd Airborne Brigade. We were in Junction City two days
before they jumped. We were already on the ground. I was there until April 8,
then got pulled out,” Larry recalled. “It was rough. It was really rough. We
got eyeball-to-eyeball 3 or 4 times with North Vietnamese units.”
His next assignment was with the II
Field Force (Vietnam) Flight Detachment at Long Binh, near Bien Hoa Air Base.
Larry remembered his first day at
the flight detachment, the day he signed into the unit.
“I had always been used to
operating pretty independently. I was never part of a bigger unit. I had my own
platoon right on the border in the Bavarian Alps. I operated totally
independently,” he said. “When you spend winters up there, you get pretty
scruffy. If some senior officers are going to come, then you get shaved, get
your uniforms washed, get all cleaned up until they leave.”
Larry had just spent two months in
the field working as a Pathfinder in Operation Junction City. He remembered he
hadn’t gotten any rest and was always on the move.
“We were always reconning. At night
we would lay out Claymore mines. Every other night, they tripped the wires and
came into our perimeter, and we got into some intense firefights,” he said. “I
carried a Colt shotgun with me, a CAR-15, one of my favorite weapons, and a .45
and a Beretta .25.”
A CAR-15 was a Colt Automatic
Rifle-15 Military Weapons System, a shortened version of the M16 rifle used by
U.S. and allied soldiers during the Vietnam War.
Larry liked the CAR-15 so much, he “brought
it with me everywhere.” During the Cau Song Be rescue on May 14, 1967, Larry was
carrying the carbine the two times he got out of his helicopter in the hot
landing zone and helped South Vietnamese soldier board his Huey.
“When I walked into the
headquarters at II Field Force (Vietnam), I was still in my jungle fatigues. I
walked in scruffy; I had a scruffy growth, which was about two weeks old. I
hadn't had a chance to take a shower,” he recalled. “I had just been picked up
at Tay Ninh by helicopter, a II Field Force helicopter, and just got dropped
off there.”
He remembered walking into II Field
Force (Vietnam) Headquarters.
“This was a pretty big headquarters
for Vietnam, a lot of staff. I had the Colt shotgun strapped over my back, the
CAR-15 going the other way, the .45 was back, behind me on the hip,” Larry
said.
“When I walked in, I thought, ‘Oh,
my God,’ because everybody was all spiffy and all the uniforms were all starched
and their shoes were all shiny. I took about 10 steps and I felt so
embarrassed. I remember saying to myself, ‘Why should I be embarrassed? Fuck
them.’ I had an attitude right away.
“I walked in and then I sat with
some major. The first thing the guy says is something like, ‘How could you let
yourself come here and present yourself like this? What are you doing? How
could you come in here looking like that?’”
Larry, who was a captain, told the
major, “I just came out of the field.”
The senior officer said, “You’re an
officer. You’re supposed to be an officer and a gentleman.”
Larry said he “just sat there and I
looked at this guy, and I told him, ‘Fuck you. I just came out of Junction
City. I still have blood on my uniform. I haven’t had a chance to shower and
shave, and get a new uniform. I just got picked up by one of your helicopters.’”
Larry said the major jumped to his
feet, screaming: “You don’t talk to a superior officer that way.”
“I told him, ‘You’re not my
superior officer if you don’t realize what I just went through, if you don’t
have any empathy for me, it’s like fuck you. You want to send me back, send me
back.’ Then he left me in the office for about half an hour.
When the major returned, a sergeant
accompanied him. “Go with this sergeant and he’ll get you new uniforms and
boots, and get you taken care of, whatever you need and you’ll be taken to your
villa, which is on a place called Cong Ly Street. He said, “When you’re cleaned
up, come back.”
 |
| Larry receiving Distinguished Flying Cross. |
“He said, ‘Captain, you should
thank God you’re here, because you’re going to be able to take hot showers, you’re
going to be able to eat real food. You’ve still got nine months to go on your tour,
so enjoy yourself.’”
As a pilot in the VIP flight detachment,
Larry regularly flew Lt. Gen. Fred Weyand, II Field Force (Vietnam) commander, about
two times a week from October 1967 through February 1968.
*****
General Weyand later would succeed
General Creighton Abrams as commander of allied forces in South Vietnam,
overseeing the withdrawal of the U.S. military from the war. From October 1974
through September 1976, Weyand served as U.S. Army chief of staff.
Shortly before his death in February
2010, Weyand sent a note to the U.S. Army, asking that awards presented to the helicopter
crews for the May 1967 Cau Song Be rescue be considered for upgrades.
CONTINUED
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