Voices that Inspire

What inspires you? From WFSU Public Media, here is this week's Voices That Inspire. My name is Greg Jones. I served in Vietnam in 1972 as a co-oper helicopter pilot. I was a captain at the time. I graduated from West Point. This is kind of in a way an iconic story of Vietnam where you hear about the life expectancy of a helicopter pilot as three hours or five hours or something like that. It was something, you know, it's kind of an urban legend. And I was assigned to fly with a gentleman who, a pilot who I didn't particularly like to fly with because he did things like flying low and slow over enemy territory and stuff. And we asked him, why do you do that? He says, well, so they can shoot at me and I can find him. We didn't think that was a very efficient way to do it. And that day I was assigned to him and we were waiting to be called to take off. The company commander came down and he had a Jeep and he had a brand new second lieutenant with him. It just arrived in country. He just dropped his bag off at the orderly room. He said, we want him to fly and go out in the AO and get some stick time, get, you know, oriented and stuff. I said, oh, fine. And found out about an hour later that they had been bounced on a mission and sure enough the pilot had flown low and slow over a plantation and got shot out of the sky. They survived the crash, but they were killed on the ground by the North Vietnamese. And this young, loose-second lieutenant had not been in country, had not been in the helicopter more than an hour. After that, you always wonder, you know, why not me? Somebody had a plan for me. Discover more Vietnam stories at wfsu.org slash Vietnam. You are listening to voices that inspire, produced by wfsu public media and partnership with our local community.