Vietnam revisit lays to rest some long held war-time 'demons'

Chuck Kinnie:
Vietnam veteran.

The first time that Chuck Kinnie visited Vietnam, he was 23 years old and the pilot of a Flying Egg or Loach (OH-6) helicopter that he would maneuver low and slow over the jungle canopy 100 feet below in an attempt to draw enemy fire. One of his two crew members would then mark the spot with a colored smoke flare while Kinnie quickly got out of the area so that a more heavily-armed Cobra gunship helicopter could buzz in and attempt to take out whatever Viet Cong were still hiding on the ground below.

"I was with the 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry or reconnaissance division of the U.S. Army (Airborne) 1st Cavalry Division assigned to III Corps just north of Saigon," now Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam's largest metropolis, said Kinnie. Currently he is the owner and operator of Shasta Gas Propane, Inc., on East Street in Anderson, a business he started from scratch 12 years ago.

"We thought we were some pretty bad dudes back then. We wore the black Stetsons like (Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore) the character Robert Duvall played in (the 1979 film) Apocalypse Now," Kinnie said while reminiscing about his war experiences and showing a visitor some of his Vietnam era momentoes.

Awarded a Purple Heart in 1971 after he was wounded during an intense ground-to-air/air-to-ground battle, Kinnie's Light Observation Helicopter (LOH) sustained enemy fire a total of 23 times during the 18 months that he spent as a soldier pilot in service to his country.

"I thank God that I was never shot down and I never lost a crew member, although two of my crewmen did earn their Purple Hearts while flying in my aircraft," Kinnie said. "In fact, we only ever lost one guy from our entire unit while I was there," he added.

Although Kinnie's version of the war - flying back after each day's mission to a mostly secure airfield in the middle of a rubber tree plantation, sleeping on a cot each night and waking up to fresh coffee, breakfast and newly-polished boots each morning - was very different from the infantry soldiers who slogged through the wet jungles day after day only to sleep in their clothes for weeks at a time, often while huddled at the bottom of some hastily-dug foxhole when it became too dark to see anything at night and hoping that the nearly-constant barrage of mortar shells and enemy rifle rounds fired by enemy soldiers into camp wouldn't find an ammo dump or sleeping buddy nearby, Kinnie still suffered from post traumatic stress syndrome following his tour of duty.

"I don't know if I can say I was carrying any regrets or ghosts, but even after getting saved in April 1972 and attending Bible college and starting my own church in Alhambra, Calif., where I pastored for three years, I eventually resigned my pastorate because I was having some pretty serious anger issues," Kinnie said.

"I think there are a lot of men out there who are in the same shape I was in," Kinnie said. "Don't get me wrong, I really love my life and my job now, but I left some really close friends over there who didn't get to come home. There is some guilt associated with that," Kinnie continued.

Flash forward some 39 years from his wartime experience, Kinnie, now a grandfather several times over, was reading a veterans magazine recently when he chanced upon an advertisement from Military Historical Tours, Inc., of Woodbridge, Va., offoring a guided tour of Vietnam. He quickly signed up and made the necessary arrangements to go back.

"I wanted to see the country as it is today. There were 15 guys on our trip (May 9-26), three of whom were from either the 5th Cavalry or 7th Cavalry. We also had one Medal of Honor recipient, James Sprayberry," Kinnie said of his travel companions.

"We flew into what we used to know as Saigon, and from there we visited all of the sites that I flew out of" including Quan Loi Plantation, Phuoc Vinh, Bien Hoa and Tay Ninh.

But it was on a day trip to the A Shau Valley, about 30 miles or 50 kilometers southwest of Hue in Thua Thien Province, where the highlight of their visit took place.

Located adjacent to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the A Shau Valley was strategically important durnig the war as a major infiltration route into South Vietnam used frequently by the North Vietnamese Army, Kinnie explained.

In 1968, two years before Kinnie even arrived in the battle zone, a scout helicopter similar to the one he flew had been shot down while looking for any missing U.S. soldiers following a heated battle in the A Shau Valley.

"Even though I didn't know them, I knew the names of the three-man crew because they were from my same unit," said Kinnie, who joined with the others in trying to locate the long-missing wreckage.

"The position that had been reported down turned out to be some 400 yards away from where a Montagnard villager led us to see the crash site," Kinnie said, using a French colonial term meaning "<I>mountain people</I>" for the indegenous tribes people named <I>thuong</I> or <I>highlanders</I> in Vietnamese and Degar in English.

Previously heavily overgrown with shoulder-high and razor-sharp elephant grass, large portions of the region had recently been burned as a way to clear the land for farming, the village elder had explained.

Although all the pieces of metal had long ago been recycled by the Degar tribes living nearby, Kinnie and his group were able to quickly locate two non-metal pieces of aircraft wreckage that he could positively identify as coming from a LOH/OH-6 helicopter.

"The first piece we found was an 18-inch by 24-inch piece of fiberglass reinforced with porcelain that a gunner would sit on to keep from getting shot in the butt," Kinnie said.

A lot of helicopters carried such gear, so it wasn't until a second piece of wreckage was located.

"I could tell from its shape and color that this second piece was a bit of fiberglass from the air intake cowling that we called a doghouse. As one of the guys turned the piece over, I saw a feint rectangle of yellow paint that identified it as from a Bravo Troop, 1st of the 9th LOH helicopter," Kinnie said, as emotion constricted his throat and turned his words into a whisper.

"At this point, my knees went weak," he continued in a barely audible voice. "I realized that I was holding a piece of the aircraft that my three Bravo Troop members had been in," he said.

Since their trip was not officially sanctioned by the United States of America, removal of any wreckage prior to an archeological dig to find any human remains that could be forensically identified was prohibited.

The three American visitors photographed the pieces of wreckage, carefully marked their respective positions with a portable GPS (geopositioningsatellite) device and recorded the information for the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command headquartered in Hawaii but with branch detachments in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos.

"That group is tasked with locating MIA sites, conducting the archeological digs, recovering any remains and - after DNA testing to positively identify any human remains - return those remains to family members for a proper military burial.

Sadly, the Vietnamese government only allows 100 forensic archeologists into the country at one time, so there are 92 similar sites and the archeologists can typically visit only 12 to 16 sites each year, Kinnie said.

"I do have the names of the three men who were on that helicopter, but since their remains have not yet been located and IDed, I don't think it is appropriate for me to release them," he added.

Sadly, the downed pilot's father died just six months ago, not knowing whether his son had somehow survived the crash.

Kinnie intends to report on of his recently-completed visit to a group of Vietnam veterans and anyone else who might be interested during a July 16 program at the VFW Hall in Redding.