Iowa Veteran Describes Experiences as a Helicopter Pilot in the Vietnam War

Iowa veteran Lieutenant Gerald Berry, a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War, describes his experiences. His duties ranged from delivering mail to troop insertion and extraction and picking up wounded.

Gerald Berry from Des Moines was captain of the Simpson College football team. Prior to graduating in 1967, he was contacted by his father. 

"I got a call from my dad, who I hadn't seen probably twice in the last six years, and he wanted to do lunch. Most of the way through I said, 'Well, dad, what did you want?' He said, 'Well, you know, I'm a Marine from World War II, you were born on the day that I crossed the beach at Iwo Jima, and if there's a war and the Marines are involved you need to attend.' So, I don't know what impact that had on me but I had to go anyway so I went down and joined the Marines."

Lieutenant Berry arrived in Vietnam for his first tour of duty in January of 1969. 

"One of the interesting things is as you walk down the stairway, because it wasn't jetways back then, there was another crowd that was cheering, going crazy, because they were going to get on this same airplane, their time was up in Vietnam and they were going home. So it was kind of an eerie start to this whole thing. You had 13 months to go, they were just completing. And they were cheering like mad. They were going home."

As a Sea Knight helicopter pilot. Berry's routine included everything from flying mail to picking up wounded to troop insertion and extraction. In November, he dropped off a small reconnaissance patrol at a remote landing zone expecting to pick up the Marines several days later. 

"We get a call that said they've been spotted and the North Vietnamese Army was moving in on them and wanted to know if we could come back and get them. So of course you're going to do that. But by the time we got back, which was maybe only three or four minutes out, they were pretty much taking a lot of heavy fire. So we decided I'd go in and make a pass. We couldn't get in."

The Cobra gunships escorting Berry's helicopters made strafing runs until they ran out of ammunition. The crews even made a few passes with empty guns to keep the enemy away from the small group of soldiers who were pinned down by enemy fire. Berry dropped in and hovered as the men were pulled on board.

"By the time we flew out of there I was the only guy that wasn't injured. My co-pilot had been killed, he had been shot and the crew chief was wounded, the gunner was wounded and I think three of the recon people were dead and two were wounded. So it's one of those things you kind of always remember and you always have, you always wonder why you were the only one that didn't get touched or anything. So it has always been kind of a tough memory sometimes in that regard. It was a tough mission."

"Nobody gives you a break. It's like you lost a few people, you may not fly the next day but I'll promise you the day after that you're going to be flying. It's kind of hard to explain how that moves, it just moves and a week later maybe somebody else gets shot, wounded or something, and they're gone or they have a crash and they're gone. So you just move on."