No, this isnt a story about a resister...but it is funny.......

Sometime in early '69, somewhere out in boonies of Leatherneck Corner, the Gunny comes to me and sez, 'get me a chopper, I got 3 'In Country' R&R's to get out'. Being the good FAC Man that I am, and wanting to get my buddies outta there, I had a '34' inbound about an hour later. All operations normal, Pop-a-smoke on call and the old bird drops into my LZ, where upon I dispatch my 3 lucky buddies onto the bird.
Now things start to get funny....
The pilot revs her up for lift-off, you can see her rising off her shocks, but after a few seconds, she sets back down. Next thing I know, the crew chief is booting one of my boys off the chopper. The pilot once again revs her up and this time he gets about 2 foot off the LZ and then plops her back down. Off comes another one.... Well things are getting touchy now, theres only one of my guys left on the bird when she revs up and strains to get altitude. She is now about 4-5 foot up, when I see the crew chief push my last guy to the hatch, and try to push him out....but this is Mike Knowland in the hatch, a tall skinny spindly guy and he's got ahold of the hatch frame with his hands and his feet and isn't lettin loose for nothing. They struggle in the hatch for a few seconds, by then the pilot had enough altitude to drop the nose, and down the side of the mountain they went. I wasnt sure what was gonna happen next, but if the bird was goin down, Mike was goin with her....needless to say, the bird picked up enough airspeed to get some lift and I got one of my three buddies off for in country R&R.
A week later, when he got back, we had quite a good time laughing about his close call with going airborne. It turned out to be my only interaction with the '34's during my tour, thank goodness.... Guess they weren't that suited to the highlands.
So if you were a crew member of that bird drop me a line, I'd like to laugh along with you.....

Semper Fi

'Jody'