Helicopters

[Bill Farnie]

Andy

I think the problem that men experienced with the 101st was when the 1st Brigade was the only unit in Vietnam. From July 1965 until December 1967, when the rest of the division arrived in country, the 1st Brigade was under operational control of many other divisions or Corp commands and earned the nickname the ?Fire Brigade? for either the entire brigade or regiments of it saw action in all the CTZ?s at one time or another. They were sent where MACV thought they were needed and Tom can tell you more about that. When I joined the 101st in September 1968 the division had been in country together for almost a year, although the 3rd Brigade was in III Corp when I got to my company, and it had become an Airmobile division which meant that we had our own air assets for re-supply to anything else you can think of brought to the field by copter. I never experienced a problem with re-supply or mail unless the weather was just too bad to fly in. Since the division HHC handled everything for us, we didn?t have those problems like others have talked about because for the most part, the 101st had Opcon of its own brigades which included the aviation units. Officers, well they?re a different story although most of the line officers I had were o.k.