NRA Lifer shoots himself in leg holstering his gun, wait for it...during a safety class

And he got yelled at when he got back - fer real

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Well duh he wasn’t following the orders of his superiors

Yeah, that’s why cav units wear yellow accents and arty units have red accents, to show their inferiority to the units with baby blue accents.

LOL

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Pretty much.

I figured the guys that are sent to become hamburber meat were the most expendable.

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Actually, the date is wrong in that writeup as you can verify on Wikipedia. It was 1965, not 1967 and it was the 14th, not the 11th. It was the Ia Drang I campaign, and Ed “Too Tall” Freeman, d/b/a Ancient Serpent 16, had as his wingman Bruce Crandall (Ancient Serpent 6) and they BOTH flew all those sorties together that day and both received the CMOH on the same day. I knew them both, and they were straight-up guys. Crandall is still alive… I spoke to him on the phone several years ago when he was living in AZ.

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I actually knew Crandall better than Jones because he was my company XO back in Georgia before we all shipped over as a division. And he was played by Greg Kinnear in the movie We Were Soldiers.

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I figured it might not be 100%, given the final thought having that contard fear of journalism rant.

Well Cav and Arty are support… :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

You’re not supposed to die and the most money is wrapped up in Infantry and SF type units (aside from aviation).
Your mincemeat theory is obviously one of misconception.

I think I saw a doc about this - he fucked up the helo blades in the trees but somehow it stayed flyable and the officer in charge was almost going to court martial him - not kidding

if this is not the same story it is very similar - almost has to be the one

the guy in charge did not give a fuck how many he saved - un fucking real - like equipment ment anything

There’s so many shitty officers like that- only caring about his hand receipts.

They’re the type to have a recall formation on a 4 day to PMCS the motorpool.

Since I know more of this story than y’all do, I’ll offer some clarification.
MAJ Crandall was the CO of Co.A / 229th Aslt Hel Bn and CPT Freeman was the platoon leader of his 1st Plt. Crandall could have ordered Freeman offa the rescue effort but instead he elected to join it. Both were experienced Huey pilots who’d done at least one prior tour in RVN

Between the two of them they went thru six or seven helos in doing this rescue, largely because of protocol…if you’ve taken small arms fire of any sort the helo is grounded as soon as it lands in order to inspect and assess the damage. Ditto if you’ve had a blade strike. There was only one blade strike in total, the rest was small arms fire. Only two of the six helos were deemed unflyable in these assessments although all of them needed patching up which was done later. Co.A had by TOE 20 UH1Ds in its stable, and had crews to operate 16 (four platoons of four,) allowing for some helo downtime as a normal constraint. The day after this operation Co.A had only 13 helos that were fully combat ready so it could only field 3 platoons. The operational slack was taken up by the other two (B & C) companies or by our sister battalion, the 227th either by loaning aircraft or by the battalion or brigade S3 officers in mission scheduling. My company (Co.D) was unaffected because we were gunships flying a different model of helo.

In short, mission readiness of the 11th Avn Bde was not compromised due to a good TO&E and plenty of equipment.

HOWEVER, the brigade’s Morning Report and especially the battalion’s Morning Report would have looked like shit, and consequently there was probably some ass chewing at some point.

Keep in mind though, the battalion CO was a LTC who, although he’d been to school and had his wings, had very little rotary wing experience and was a converted line officer (infantry.) In short order, his staff pointed out to him how good he’d look at the officers’ club, being the CO of a bunch of “cowboys” like these, and he should be putting their asses in for decorations instead of vamping on them. And by the second or third day he’d changed his tune.

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Sounds like nothing that a few gallons of Prop Wash couldn’t clean up.

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*snort