LTC. Michael Adkinson
U.S. Army Ranger – Assault Helicopter Pilot
11th Aviation Battalion - 116h Assault Helicopter Company
Stinger 96 & Hornet 3
Cu Chi, Vietnam
March 1963 – 1983
U.S. Army Ranger – Assault Helicopter Pilot
11th Aviation Battalion - 116h Assault Helicopter Company
Stinger 96 & Hornet 3
Cu Chi, Vietnam
March 1963 – 1983
“It’s been all fun and games, but when I get off this plane, I’m gonna be in something I’ve never been in before…my dad was in the same moment…going into Utah Beach on D-Day. That changed his life”.
Michael Harold Adkinson was born in the small town of Troy in southeastern Alabama in August of 1944. The Adkinson family lived in the very small agricultural town of Ariton, Alabama but the closest hospital was in Troy. When Mike and his brother and sister were growing up, Ariton had a population 600. “When I was back down there a few years ago and was talking to one of the guys he said they were up to 600 people”. Not much has changed in 81 years.
Mike’s dad, Harold was the captain of the Class A state champion basketball team at Ariton High School in 1943. As the United States prepared to enter World War II the draft was on and Harold and nine of his buddies were all headed to basic training after graduation. The Army wanted the boys immediately and they were supposed to walk across the stage, receive their diploma and walk right on to a waiting U.S. Army bus. The principal was able to obtain permission for a picnic to celebrate graduation and winning the state championship. “They graduated, had their picnic and then the Army bus was sitting out there after the picnic”.
Harold went to basic training and came home for a month of vacation before he deployed. He wasted no time and proposed to his high school sweetheart, Carolyn Baker, and the couple headed straight to the courthouse to tie the knot. Unknow to Harold and Carolyn, he would be preparing for the largest amphibious invasion in history; D-Day.
Harold and his high school buddies managed to stay together in the Army and were all part of the 331st Infantry that landed on Utah Beach on June 6th, 1944. Harold was badly wounded but survived his injuries. Five of his buddies never returned. “That effected the rest of his life”. Harold was a great athlete but when he was finally discharged from the hospital “he couldn’t do what a father would like to do with his son”. Sadly, he passed away at the age of 41.
His mother Carolyn had Cherokee ancestry, but that was a family secret Mike didn’t learn “until I was a young adult”. Mike’s grandparents had a big influence on Mike during his formative years. His grandfather, Granddaddy Baker, who was a teacher, interviewed Civil War veterans and those interviews are in the Library of Congress. “He was a great person in my life because I learned so much from him. He was very principled fella, very religious”. He owned a service station and Mike spent a lot of time working there.
Mike’s house in Ariton had a big garden just like everyone else in town. The house was located between both sets of grandparents. “I could walk out of my house and go through our garden to visit the Bakers or go this way and go through their garden and visit Grandmother and Grandaddy Adkinson”. He spent a lot of time with all of the grandparents, and he remembers the great home cooking of his grandmothers. His grandfathers were very different people. Granddaddy Baker was a minister and Mike recalls, “I didn’t see Granddaddy Adkinson in church except at his funeral”. Mike recalled Granddaddy Adkinson distilled his homebrew of white lightening. He called it mush.
Granddaddy Adkinson didn’t work. His son, Jack, ran the farm. “He was a big strong redheaded guy, and he smiled all the time”. Jack was a star pitcher and hitter for the local semi-pro team. Mike remembered him as always laughing and smiling. “Probably the funniest guy I’ve known in my life”.
Ariton had plenty of farms. “We have a lot of peanut farms, poultry farms and we grew the best pecans in the world…and corn”. Mike’s dad owned a service station that he bought from Grandaddy Baker, and he and Mike’s uncle owned a chicken farm. His father sold the service station, and they closed the farm due to disease.
12 miles away was the town of Ozark, population 12,000. “That was the county seat for Dale County”. One day there was a knock on the door and three men wanted to speak to Mike’s dad. Mr. Williams ran a construction company and was the head of the Quarterback Club. They supported the sports teams at Carroll High School in Ozark. When the Quarterback Club found out about local athletic talent they would visit with the athlete and family and offer to help them move to Ozark by giving them discount pricing on housing recently constructed by Mr. Williams. They had heard about Mike’s baseball and basketball ability, and they paid a visit to the Adkinson’s. Mike’s dad saw the opportunity to improve life for his family and he said yes. In the summer of Mike’s 16th year, the family moved to Ozark.
Mike went on to play football, baseball, basketball and track at Carroll High School. “It was a wonderful experience and really good people. Ozark was the kind of place we would go Christmas shopping when we lived in Ariton”. Mike got a job at the local men’s clothing store in Ozark where he worked every Saturday. He graduated in 1962 with a class of 100 students and was voted Best Dressed.
“I grew up in the small towns of Ariton and Ozark…I learned a lot about people”.
Mike headed off to Troy State in Troy, Alabama. There was no family money to help pay for school and although he received financial assistance from the college “it was really tight”. After a year at Troy State, one of the seniors talked to Mike and suggested he join the military. It was 1963 and the Vietnam War wasn’t really on the radar, but there was a draft. The senior pointed out that if Mike fulfilled his military requirement and then completed college, companies would be more likely to hire him and put in the time to train him knowing they didn’t have the worry of Uncle Sam drafting him.
Mike decided this was a good idea and went to see the Army recruiter. Mike took some tests, and he was offered a job in the military as air traffic controller. Mike accepted the offer and now had to tell his mother. “I went home and told my mom what I was going to do. Of course, she was not happy with that, but she accepted it and she took me down to the bus station in Ozark and put me on the bus. I can still very clearly remember her standing there waving as we rode away” to Fort Polk in Louisiana for basic training.
The first stop was the Central Recruiting Office in Montgomery, Alabama. Mike and 13 other guys met each other and sat around “drinking cokes, eating peanuts and jaw jackin’”. They all got along great and were ready for their big adventure. Then the recruits heard a sergeant bark, ‘Adkinson! You’re in charge’! Mike learned that every time they got off the bus, he would have to make sure they got back on the bus. Now that Mike was in charge, the other 13 fellas decided they weren’t happy with his authority and regularly let him know so. “That was my first experience with leadership, a designated leadership, and it wasn’t fun”.
They arrived at Fort Polk and were given uniforms, haircuts, physicals, vaccinations and a bunk. For the next eight weeks of basic training Mike and the other recruits went through all of the physical and mental tests that come with bootcamp including the unrelenting pressure of the drill instructors. The next stop for Mike was Advanced Individual Training (AIT) at Fort Rucker in Alabama where he was trained to be an air traffic controller. After graduating Mike was assigned to Fort Riley in Kansas as an air traffic controller.
After being on the job for a while Mike spotted opportunity. Most of the air traffic controllers were married and didn’t want to work the night shift. Mike knew the night shift had very little activity and was not demanding. He thought if he was the full-time night shift operator, he could also get a job during the day in the local town of Junction City. Mike spoke to Sergeant Graham, pitched his idea and the Sargeant agreed.
Mike soon found a job at Sandy’s, a local hamburger joint. Mike was a hard worker and made himself very valuable. Life was going along nicely until one evening when Mike walked into the Control Tower and he found Captain Ivy sitting at his desk wearing an arm band that said OD, Officer of the Day.
The captain started talking and seemed to know a lot about Mike. Ivy told Mike that he was married, had several kids at home and he wanted to be promoted to Major. To do that he needed a master’s degree. He told Mike it was a two-year process, but he was going to take a correspondence program (precursor to on-line education) and do it in eight months with Mike’s help. He wanted Mike to take half of the classes with him. Mike would read the material and take the tests.
Mike agreed and “I would frankly say I enjoyed it…you can’t complain about learning…and he was such a good guy, and we developed such a good relationship”. The duo knocked out the course requirements in eight months and now Major Ivy, was very grateful. He asked Mike about his future plans and Mike said he would likely end up going back to Ariton when his enlistment ended. Major Ivy firmly told him, ‘No, you’re not. You have an obligation to yourself and everyone else to do more’. He told Mike he saw great leadership qualities in him. He convinced Mike to apply to Officers Candidate School (OCS), handed him an application with his name on it and letters of recommendation from several pilots. They submitted the application and Mike was accepted. “It changed my life”.
Mike left the control tower as a Private First Class for Officers Training School at Fort Benning in Georgia. The school was physically and mentally demanding. The curriculum included learning about chemical warfare, nuclear warfare, learning all of the aircraft in the Air Force and all of the ships in the Navy. Six months later at graduation, Mike had his bars pinned on, walked off the graduation stage and found Major Ivy waiting to congratulate him.
Toward the end of OCS the candidates received presentations on different career options they could choose after OCS. The Rangers made a presentation and told the men Ranger School was extremely difficult with an attrition rate of over 50%. They were promised it was rough, tough, high risk and adventurous. “They were gonna end up with the strongest, meanest, most gutsy guys who could withstand pain”. The Airborne school also made a presentation. Mike applied for both. Much to his surprise he was accepted for both and learned he could go to Ranger School first followed by Airborne School.
“It was nine weeks. Three weeks at Fort Benning, three weeks of mountain training in the mountains of north Georgia for mountain navigation and patrols and three weeks in Santa Rose Sound in Florida for swamp training and beach landing training. It was very, very hard. It’s the first school I’d been to where there was an attrition goal. They were hard and harsh”. The patrols reflected real life conditions. “The swamps in Florida had alligators and (water) moccasins and lots of things that could hurt you real bad”.
In Ranger School every candidate has a Ranger Buddy. No one went anywhere alone. Mike and his Ranger Buddy Mac always volunteered to walk point. This was the most dangerous spot in the patrol, and you were responsible for finding the path forward for the rest of the squad. This often involved maneuvering around the very large, exposed roots of Cyprus Trees. The rainfall that year had been lower than normal which resulted in swamp water with contamination levels higher than normal.
The swamp was often very dark and the water very murky, so it was very easy to unexpectedly bump into the Cyprus Roots which were very unforgiving. Patrols lasted five to 10 days and the squad often moved at night making visibility even tougher. Mike and Mac ended up with numerous cuts on their legs which became infected with Jungle Rot. Their legs swelled and the pain was intense. Their Sargeant lookedat their legs and called in a helicopter to medevac them to a hospital. The good news was both men fully recovered. The bad news was they didn’t complete the course and the rest of the men graduated. The only way Mike and Mac could earn the right to wear the coveted Ranger Tab was to go back and complete Swamp Phase. Both men repeated the phase but this time they taped padding on their legs before they led the patrols.
In the summer of 1965 Mike graduated from Ranger School and went on to Airborne School. During a break from airborne training Mike saw President Lyndon Johnson on national television explaining that he was sending the 2ndInfantry Division from Fort Benning to Vietnam. “I sat my sandwich down, went to the pay phone, put in a coin…and called Military Personnel Assignments”. Mike said he was at Fort Benning and he wanted to be in the unit deploying to Vietnam. He was told that was not possible because he was slated for a priority assignment as a training officer for new recruits at Fort Leonard Wood.
Mike spent the next several months as a training officer and very frustrated he couldn’t get in the fight. He told his boss he wanted to go to Vietnam as part of the newly formed Special Forces. His boss advised him against it, but Mike persisted. His boss gave him the opportunity and Mike took all of the required tests. Within a week and a half he learned he had passed but, he wasn’t going to be infantry. He was going to be a helicopter pilot.
The Army was learning the best way to move soldiers around the battlefield in Vietnam was by helicopter. Parts of Vietnam are mountainous, and other parts are flat plains that flood during monsoon season. Either terrain was not well suited for armored vehicles or trucks to transport soldiers. This created a real demand for helicopter pilots.
Mike was told to report to Fort Wolters, in Mineral Wells, Texas for flight training. “I didn’t give a hoot about being in flight school, but my boss told me, ‘get your attitude changed. You have the ability to do it. You gotta do it’. With that sage advice, Mike adjusted his attitude and reported to Mineral Wells on March 13, 1966. Just like that, Mike’s life changed drastically and put him on a path to accomplish things and have experiences that a kid from a small Alabama town of 600 could never have imagined.
The first day at flight school Mike stood in line in the hot Texas sun waiting for his room and roommate assignment. The Army did things in alphabetical order and the men lined up accordingly. Behind him was a fella by the name of Briganti. “I’d never seen anyone who’s last name ended with an “I”. In uniform, Mike looked like a by-the-book 1stlieutenant. He had a sharp crease in his pants, a high and tight haircut and a professional spit-shine on his boots. Frank was from the motor pool, not an infantryman. Frank looked more like a model for a rummage sale than a by-the-book lieutenant.
They couldn’t have been more different. “He was my first Yankee (friend). He was Italian and had never been out of Connecticut. He didn’t know there were real people in Alabama. He thought it was the place where they took all of the garbage. I was his first rebel and southern friend”. They had a lot of fun making fun of each other and then thought, we may end up as roommates…and they did. The two have gone on to form a lifelong friendship. “We just really stuck with each other”.
Mike and Frank had a great time in flight school and then headed off to Fort Rucker for two more months of flight training. Fort Rucker was only 30 minutes south of Mike’s hometown of Ariton. He felt right at home and was often able to visit his family. “First time I took him (Frank) into the garden and showed him all of the vegetables he said, ‘where’s the mac and cheese’? We got along really good and we were experiencing everything from two different perspective. Me from the southern perspective and him from the northern…New England background”. Their relationship grew stronger as time went on.
The boys knew they were headed to Vietnam but didn’t talk about it much. They both knew the high casualty rate for helicopter pilots in Vietnam. They completed their training in November and Mike was scheduled to deploy in December. Frank suggested Mike come visit him in Connecticut before he shipped out. “I flew up to Hartford, Connecticut and it was colder than I wanted it to be. I met a lot of his friends. His father was a great guy.
During his visit Mike attended a father and son dinner at a local club. “I don’t know what the club was, but it was like a VFW”. The ladies from the kitchen would come in with big bowls of salad and rolls, and then the pasta and sauce and more pasta and more pasta. We had a big Italian dinner that memory stuck with me because that was a very special occasion”.
The time came for Mike to go to Vietnam and Frank drove him to the airport. The ticket agent from American Airlines asked ‘one way or round trip’? Frank said, ‘the Army only reimburses for one way’. Mike said, “I am coming back”. It was a sobering moment.
The boys agreed to keep in touch. Mike boarded his plane to San Francisco where he changed to a military charter. He recalled there were roughly 250 guys dressed in uniform, 10 lieutenants and two captains. “We were all going to Vietnam and that’s what the chatter was all about”. The mood changed over the next 20 hours. “We started off as a congenial, upbeat, positive environment…but the further we got the more serious it got and the quieter it got”.
Mike arrived at Camp Alpha located at the Ton Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon. Camp Alpha was a series of temporary tents that housed soldiers between their arrival and receiving their orders. Mike was ready to get into the action and started quizzing the guys in the personnel tent on where the most active areas were. They didn’t see Mikes bars and didn’t realize he was an officer. They explained there were several types of assignments. There were low risk VIP flight detachments, Medevac flights supporting the wounded and hospitals, cargo flights moving supplies from point to point and three units supporting the infantry in direct contact.
The next morning Mike went back to personnel fully uniformed including his Lieutenant’s bars. He went back to see the same GI he spoke to the night before who was surprised to see he was an officer. He asked Mike if he would like a VIP detachment. Mike asked about the three combat detachments. He was told the conditions in those areas were especially rough, under constant fire and had no sleeping quarters. Mike said, “that’s where I want to go”. Bewildered, the GI stamped Mikes assignment and wished him good luck.
Mike took a helicopter up to a combat base in Bein Hoa. Mike asked about the four companies supporting the infantry and he was told the roughest spot was in a newly established base in Cu Chi. The base had been there only two weeks, and they were taking steady mortar fire. Mike requested an assignment at Cu Chi and an hour later he was on his way. Mike recalled it was so hot it felt like he was three inches from the midday sun.
Mike decided to write to his good friend Frank Briganti. He told him he was based in Cu Chi where it was full of palm trees, and they were a short walk from the beach where there were lots of great bars. Mike didn’t hear from Frank and assumed he checked out where Cu Chi was, learned it wasn’t the resort area that Mike had portrayed and threw the note in the garbage. A month later Mike returned from a mission and he was told, ‘There’s a new pilot here and he’s pissed and he wants to talk to you’. It was Frank and he had requested an assignment at Cu Chi based on Mike’s description. It eventually became a big joke they laugh about to this day. Frank settled into the second platoon, and he flew Lift Ships which were Huey helicopters used to transport troops and cargo.
When Mike first arrived, he was informed that he would be a pilot for a lift platoon that resupplied the troops in combat. Mike was looking for action and requested to be in a Stinger Platoon and pilot a Gunship. Stingers were assault helicopter providing support to troops in contact with the enemy. Pilots needed at least six months of experience flying in-country to qualify as a Stinger pilot. Undeterred, Mike asked who could make an exception and was told Major Patterson. Mike had learned that Major Patteson was also a Ranger.
Just before Mike arrived, two gunships had been shot down and three of the four crewmen were killed including a pilot, Lieutenant White. Mike knew there was an opening and he wanted it. That evening he located Major Patterson sitting in his poorly lit hootch with a cigar in one hand and a pen in the other. He was clearly distressed as he wrote condolence letters to the families of the dead airmen. Mike knocked on the hootch door and Major Patterson said come in.
Mike said he was reporting for duty and he wanted to discuss his assignment. Mike said he was slated for a Lift Platoon and his preference was Gunships. The Major and Mike had a long conversation and Mike eventually said, “Sir, you’re a Ranger. You know the training that I have been through that’s not part of flight school…that’s created a lot of confidence and assurity with me that I can handle tough jobs and tough assignments. The Major listened quietly and said, ‘Mike, I’ll talk to you tomorrow’.
The next morning Mike reported for orientation with the other replacement pilots. Mike was told to get his pilot’s gear. Major Patterson wanted him to take a check ride in lieu of orientation. During a check ride the check pilot tries to unnerve the pilot being tested to assess his or her ability to act calmly and make decisions under pressure. Mike passed the test, and Major Paterson gave him his chance.
Mike reported to his bunk to find that he was bunking next to Lieutenant White’s bunk which still had his mail and personal effects on it. “It took me weeks to be accepted into the unit. I worked really hard and volunteered for every mission that I could get on. I was tested by the conditions of the environment and showed that I was a person that had the stability and the mental capacity not to be upset and to stay calm and collected and that went a long way”. Mike was quickly promoted to Aircraft Commander and then shortly later to Team Leader putting Mike in charge of a two aircraft team. “That’s how gunships operate. The one in charge carries out the mission, flies to the target. The second ship protects the first ship.
Mike felt the need to show his capabilities and that he wanted to learn. “I put my name on the list to go on every mission. I wanted to be real good and the way you learn is to practice. The way you practice is to participate”. “When I became the Platoon Commander, I was in charge of how many ships were going out and who would be on them. I went every day”. Most pilots flew four out of every seven days.
Mike’s crew consisted of George Kathy his door gunner and Teddy Horn his Crew Chief. “We believed in each other, and we had a level of respect and admiration that you just don’t get in other environments... they were totally dependable and taught by their actions”.
“I don’t remember the first one (mission). I was just so proud to be in guns”.
An assault helicopter was heavily armed with a 40mm grenade launcher in the front, rocket launchers on the side with 9 to 24 rockets and machine guns. It required a four-man flight crew. The pilot, the co-pilot, the crew chief and the gunner. The crew chief and the Gunner have different jobs on the ground but the same job in the air – manning the 60mm machine guns on each door. They were always scanning for targets. The gunners were attached to aircraft by straps which prevented them from falling out, especially if they were wounded.
During a battle the helicopter crew has their hands full. There were three radios and an intercom. The air crews and GIs on the ground learned to talk in shorthand to give instructions. Everyone needed to recognize the various voices to keep up with the action.
Mike’s approach to using his gunship was different than most pilots. His infantry training, airborne training and Ranger School training gave him the knowledge and confidence to use his gunship “as a foxhole I could take anywhere”. Mike thought of himself as an infantryman using the helicopter as another tool of the infantry. “Before I got there the tactics of gunships were to operate at 1,000 feet and they wouldn’t come down from 1,000. At 1,000 feet they were out of range to be hit” by enemy fire. “I said…I can’t see it well enough from up there”.
After Mike had proved his mettle as a gunship pilot, he had a discussion with the other pilots and asked them to support him in changing the tactics from operating at 1,000 feet to something much closer. Mike wanted to be closer to the treetops. Initially there was great skepticism, but Mike asked, “ride with me and let’s try it”. They agreed and when they saw Mike’s tactics made it possible to take out the enemy and save the troops on the ground who cheered as they flew off, the other pilots signed on to Mike’s approach. “I wasn’t hitting an area, I was hitting a spot”.
Mike was shot down 11 times. “Let me define that”. Shot down means that the enemy has taken an action that effects the crew or the aircraft that forces the helicopter to land somewhere other than the base. “Of the 11 times I got shot down, I’d say six of those were yawners…no rounds fired. We were just fine”. Of the other five, “I’d say in that we were landing in a place that the VC were still there and shooting at us”.
On one occasion Mike’s aircraft was shot down and two crew members were wounded. A rescue helicopter attempted to pick of the crew, but it too was hit and had to abort. It took close to an hour, but the crew was rescued after more firepower was called in to overpower the enemy.
On August 26, 1967 Mike and his crew were shot down for the 11th time near Horseshoe Bin along the Mekong Delta. On that mission Mike was flying near the treetops looking for any sign of VC activity. Suddenly the aircraft was hit several times. The VC were right under the aircraft, and they continued to take fire. The engine stopped, and Mike had to auto rotate the helicopter in order to land it safely. The crew chief, Johnny Holdman, was shot in the leg, the co-pilot was shaken up and Teddy Horn worked to get the machine guns out of the aircraft to use to hold off the enemy.
Johnny Holdman was bleeding badly from his wounds and Mike tried to apply a torniquet with Johnnys belt while balancing his M16 on his shoulder. Suddenly Johnny pushed Mike to the side, grabbed Mikes rifle and shot two VC standing behind Mike. “We then knew we were in trouble”.
Mike called on the emergency radio for a rescue ship. One gunship heard the distress calls and emptied as much ammo as possible to lighten the aircraft to pick up the four men under siege. “They got 10 to 15 feet of the ground and the VC opened up again”. The pilot George Price took a round to the face. Luckily it went in one side and out the other with minimal damage. The rescue was aborted. The command came through to find a bunker or bomb crater to take cover because the artillery was preparing a barrage. Despite a sustained and lethal artillery barrage the enemy remained active and another attempted by the rescue attempt was aborted.
The order came to “dig deeper” because they were sending A4’s to drop bombs. The bombing “went on for 10 minutes”. Finally, there was silence and another rescue attempt was made. A resilient enemy again thwarted the rescue attempt. It was getting dark “and we were in their house”. A call came over the radio telling Mike, “Right now, we don’t know how we’re gonna get you out, but we’re going to get you out”.
Then a voice came across the radio advising there was an infantry unit in the area, and they could be there to provide support in 30 minutes. As the infantry group drew closer, the North Vietnamese heard them and fled into the darkness without another shot. Many years later Mike learned there was an extensive underground facility 100 to 150 feet underground with living facilities and cooking capability. “For years after, sounds (of that battle) would pop back in my memory…I still have sounds and smells…” that trigger the memory of that long day in the jungle.
In December of ’67 Mike’s tour of duty was coming to an end. One afternoon the call came in from troops in contact in need of air support. Mike and the other helicopter crew in his team flew at tree top level to get to the troops as quickly as possible and radioed for them to pop smoke. Troops pop smoke to indicate their position. “They would always pop two different colors…and I could see where they were”. The different colors marked the edges of their locations. On this day the colors were blending together but the air was still, and Mike was confused by the movement of the smoke. As he passed overhead, he quickly saw the problem.
The U.S. ground troops had split into two units, surrounded the enemy and were now firing on friendly forces. Mike radioed the ground commander to cease fire and advise they were firing on their own soldiers. Mike settled the helicopter above the area where he thought the enemy was and he used the rotor wash to move the jungle canopy so he could get a better view. Mike saw the enemy below was trying to set up a machine gun to fire on his helicopter. In a very unconventional tactic Mike gave the order to empty the box of grenades on board both helicopters into the enemy area. Helicopters do not typically carry grenades, but Mike and his team had been in several situations where they thought they would have come in handy and they started carrying grenades for such a situation. “We dropped the grenades into the holes where they were. They stopped shooting”.
A few days later a Sargeant arrived at the base camp in Cu Chi looking for ‘Stinger 96’, which was Mike’s call sign. The Sargeant told Mike he was from the ground troops in the friendly fire incident Mike helped identify. ‘The boss wanted me to come get you. Our unit is having a pizza and beer party today’ and they wanted to thank Mike for his help. Mike said sure and when he arrived the ground commander introduced him and thanked him for the help he gave the troops. He told the men that Mike was headed back to the real world. What happened next was emotional for Mike to recall. PFC Garcia approached Mike and showed him a picture of his wife and new baby. ‘If you go home, I might never see that baby’.
“That night I couldn’t sleep. I kept seeing Garcia”. The next day Mike told his boss what had happened and he “was gonna do another tour right here”. The boss said, “I’m glad to have you”. Mike knew what it meant to the guys on the ground to hear the sounds of a U.S. helicopter gunship approach when they were pinned down and in real trouble. He had a strong sense of duty and responsibility to keep they boys safe and that was much stronger than his desire to go home.
During his second tour Mike was the Gunship Platoon Commander. On January 29, 1968 Mike went above and beyond to help combat troops in deep trouble. His aggressive tactics resulted in saving the troops and Mike received the Silver Star. The Silver Star Citation read in part:
“As Captain Adkinson marked and supported the insertion of numerous gunships into an extremely hazardous landing zone, the helicopters suddenly came under intense enemy fire. By rotating his gunships, he gave close fire support to the ships and flew numerous low-level orbits which drew the enemy fire away from the landing zone. He then continued to cover medical aircraft and kept a continuous barrage of fire in front of the friendly troops. He spotted a large Viet Cong force moving toward the friendly lines and he took them under rocket fire killing 45 insurgents. Although his ship received numerous hits, he continued to support ground troops and was of immeasurable value to the successful completion of the mission.”
By the end of Mike’s second tour, which lasted six months, he possessed a wealth of knowledge. “I had been there so long and knew the area so well I knew I couldn’t be easily replaced because I had so much institutional knowledge. The boss wanted to promote me to Operations Manager, so I agreed to stay”.
Mike did get some downtime and rest. He spent his first 30 day leave in Australia, although his mother wasn’t happy to hear that. “Most afternoons we would go down to the beach and lay in the sun…taking our towels and ice bucket and cold beer…”. The Americans were very popular. “They identified you as an American and boy, then everybody wanted to talk to you…”.
Mike was the Operations Manager which meant he planned each mission and decide when he would fly. Mike didn’t have to continue to fly missions, but he wanted to help the troops in need of help. Toward the end of the third tour, the Company Commander and the Battalion Commander wouldn’t let Mike stay for another tour. They also had agreed among themselves that if Mike went down one more time, Mike was going home. The last time Mike was rescued he didn’t go back to his base, and his flying days were over.
Mike received another 30 days leave and he came home to Ozark to see his family and friends. The reception here was quite different than in Australia. His family and close friends were very happy to see him. However, there were others who had a negative view of the GI’s influenced by the news media coverage of the war. For example, the television reports that frequently portrayed the troops and the events of the war in a negative manner.
One night Mike and his friends went out for a hamburger. At the restaurant Mike’s friends introduced him to some of their friends as a buddy from school who was home on leave from Vietnam. Although they had never met Mike before, “That was a real negative”. Mike remembers being asked if he liked killing babies. “They didn’t know me from Adam’s house cat” but they decided everyone involved in the war was bad as they had seen on television.
“I’d been there about two and a half weeks, and I was getting sick of it. What the news was reporting was not true. They were misrepresenting what was happening over there and giving a very negative and untruthful view of what was happening. They said we were killing babies and that’s not what was happening. So, after a couple of weeks I said, ‘mom I can’t take it’.” Mike cut his leave short and went back to Vietnam.
When Mike returned to Vietnam his boss asked him if he would like to go to the Philippines to participate in a new school called Survival Evasion Resistance Escape (SERE). A lot of pilots were being shot down over Vietnam and the Air Force wanted to teach them how to evade the enemy until they could be rescued and if they were captured, how to survive. He thought Mike would be the perfect person to test the school curriculum – a pilot who was really a soldier at heart.
Mike went to the school for 10 days and he participated in the exercises simulating a downed pilot. He was able to successfully evade the local Philippinos that had been hired by the Air Force to find the pilots. Mike figured that his best chance of survival was to hide during the day and move at night. It took Mike four or five days to get out of the jungle without getting caught.
He returned to Fort Benning in Georgia in 1969 to command a training company while he waited to start the Army Infantry Career Course. This is a one-year course for Captains to learn more about Army tactics, doctrine, the organization of the Army, war gaming “and a lot of physical training”.
At the end of the class Mike was contacted by the Assignment Officer. He told Mike, although he was doing a great job but there was a problem. To stay in the Army and have a career Mike needed a college degree. The Army offered to send Mike to college, pick up the cost and continue to pay his salary. Mike thought this was a great idea and he applied to Auburn University and was accepted. He was able to complete his four-year degree in less than three years.
Mike’s graduated from Auburn and his next duty assignment was in Hoffenberg, Germany. The Army asked him to transfer into a mechanized infantry unit where he would be the Operations Officer. During this tour he was promoted to Major and selected to attend the Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Missouri.
This was a real honor and acknowledgement by the Army that Mike had a lot of potential for further advancement. Only 30% of all majors get selected. “That’s a yearlong course and it was a good year. Going to school was fun and being around a whole bunch of good guys….who had one or two tours”.
When Mike graduated in 1978, he was assigned to the consulate General’s office in Iran. Mike was hoping for a combat assignment but there wasn’t a war going on. As luck would have it, Mike’s class leader at flight school, Gary Luck, called. Gary had done a tour in Vietnam with the Special Forces and was now commanding the Cavalry Squadron in the 101st Airborne Division. He had been tasked with bringing the entire unit to Germany for training exercises with allied countries and then bringing it all back to the states at the conclusion of the training. He was short one good leader to turn around a problem unit and he was calling Mike to offer him the job. “He was a great man and a really good leader…so that was a real honor for me”.
Over the next year Mike helped to move the Squadron to Germany and back. The mission was successful and at the end Gary told Mike, there was ‘a new brigade commander of the second brigade, he has taken over and he wants a new operations officer’. Mike asked, “What’s his name”? ‘Colin Powell’, was the response. Mike was interviewed and was selected for the position. He was told to meet Colonel Powell at the golf course at 10am Saturday morning. “I got some clubs and golf shoes and spent six or seven hours with the brigade chaplain out on the golf course learning how to putt and tee off”.
Mike recalled Coin Powell as a very caring commander. “He spent a lot of time talking to soldiers, wherever soldiers were”. Colonel Powell would tell his staff what the mission was and then give them the latitude to execute it out.
Mike was part of a mission to test the ability of Army Air Assault units to work in Arctic conditions. To do that they moved a brigade sized task force with all of its equipment to Camp Drum in upstate New York. “January of 1979 turned out to be the coldest winter ever recorded for Camp Drum”.
At the conclusion of that assignment Mike volunteered for a special assignment to learn strategic planning. Up until that time the Army had been spending a significant sum with a consulting firm for their assistance in strategic planning. Congress decided to develop strategic planning capability within the Army. “I got into the program and received a lot of good training” at Columbia University and Pepperdine University. Mike helped write the Strategic Plan for the Army Chief of Staff. “Everybody liked it”. The Harvard Business Review learned what the Army was doing and came to interview the team. This assignment ended in1983 and Mike elected to retire from the Army. Looking back Mike recalled one of the best aspects of the military was the training and the exposure to leadership. He didn’t have the same experience working in the corporate world.
Mike used his strategic planning and leadership skills working for the New York Stock Exchange. For the next six years helped develop the strategic plan. Mike recalled the morass of bureaucracy that made implementing change exceptionally difficult. He left the company in 1989 and went into the publishing business. He published a personal computer magazine and internal communications for RJR Nabisco and the ’96 Olympic Games. He also did some work for Andrew Young when he was mayor of Atlanta. Young wanted to get the word out that Atlanta was a great place for a tech company headquarters. Mike successfully developed magazine and email communications for a wide variety of technology businesses.
“In civilian life I had a lot of good jobs…but I didn’t have the consistency anywhere else in my life that I had”, from those teams in Vietnam. “They never gave negative surprises. They never gave priority to self over others”.
Over his long military career Mike received numerous awards for his heroism. He received a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars with a “V” for Valor, 5 Distinguished Flying Crosses for various acts of heroism or an exceptional achievement, and 73 Combat Air Medals. Pilots receive a Combat Air Medal for every 25 hours of combat flight time. Mike was told that he had accumulated the most combat flight hours of any U.S. aviator as of that time.
Mike survived a lot of close calls with the enemy but couldn’t evade the effects of Agent Orange. “I have a lung disorder (COPD) because of the Agent Orange. The C-130’s would drop it, and we knew they were gonna drop it, but we didn’t know where and when”. Mike recalled times they flew through Agent Orange rain. “It was not like water. It was almost like a light coating of oil. It just covered your windshield. Of course, the windows were open so it’s coming in on you and you’re breathing it”.
Some of the combat he experienced in Vietnam has stayed with Mike through the years. “For a long time…. portions of what happened then, sounds…would pop back up in my memory. It does now, but not often at all, but it does…sounds and smells. Burning food has a similar aroma to powder burning, bombs”.
Like many veterans, the relationships he developed with the men he served with are among his most cherished memories. “The experience of working with people that you knew that you trusted, and you had confidence in, is still to this day one of the most satisfying things (about Vietnam). Was it dangerous? Yeah. Did you think about it? No. You just enjoyed being a team that was getting something done. You took pride in how well you did it”.
Mike, your stories teach us a lot of about gratitude, accountability, putting others before yourself, the strength of real friendships and of course, sacrifice. Many are. Lucky to have known you.
“I’m going to be a helicopter pilot, and I am going to take whatever jobs and get in positions that do the most I can do to help soldiers who are in trouble, help soldiers that are in contact, help soldiers who are being shot at. The ones being hit”.
Michael Harold Adkinson was born in the small town of Troy in southeastern Alabama in August of 1944. The Adkinson family lived in the very small agricultural town of Ariton, Alabama but the closest hospital was in Troy. When Mike and his brother and sister were growing up, Ariton had a population 600. “When I was back down there a few years ago and was talking to one of the guys he said they were up to 600 people”. Not much has changed in 81 years.
Mike’s dad, Harold was the captain of the Class A state champion basketball team at Ariton High School in 1943. As the United States prepared to enter World War II the draft was on and Harold and nine of his buddies were all headed to basic training after graduation. The Army wanted the boys immediately and they were supposed to walk across the stage, receive their diploma and walk right on to a waiting U.S. Army bus. The principal was able to obtain permission for a picnic to celebrate graduation and winning the state championship. “They graduated, had their picnic and then the Army bus was sitting out there after the picnic”.
Harold went to basic training and came home for a month of vacation before he deployed. He wasted no time and proposed to his high school sweetheart, Carolyn Baker, and the couple headed straight to the courthouse to tie the knot. Unknow to Harold and Carolyn, he would be preparing for the largest amphibious invasion in history; D-Day.
Harold and his high school buddies managed to stay together in the Army and were all part of the 331st Infantry that landed on Utah Beach on June 6th, 1944. Harold was badly wounded but survived his injuries. Five of his buddies never returned. “That effected the rest of his life”. Harold was a great athlete but when he was finally discharged from the hospital “he couldn’t do what a father would like to do with his son”. Sadly, he passed away at the age of 41.
His mother Carolyn had Cherokee ancestry, but that was a family secret Mike didn’t learn “until I was a young adult”. Mike’s grandparents had a big influence on Mike during his formative years. His grandfather, Granddaddy Baker, who was a teacher, interviewed Civil War veterans and those interviews are in the Library of Congress. “He was a great person in my life because I learned so much from him. He was very principled fella, very religious”. He owned a service station and Mike spent a lot of time working there.
Mike’s house in Ariton had a big garden just like everyone else in town. The house was located between both sets of grandparents. “I could walk out of my house and go through our garden to visit the Bakers or go this way and go through their garden and visit Grandmother and Grandaddy Adkinson”. He spent a lot of time with all of the grandparents, and he remembers the great home cooking of his grandmothers. His grandfathers were very different people. Granddaddy Baker was a minister and Mike recalls, “I didn’t see Granddaddy Adkinson in church except at his funeral”. Mike recalled Granddaddy Adkinson distilled his homebrew of white lightening. He called it mush.
Granddaddy Adkinson didn’t work. His son, Jack, ran the farm. “He was a big strong redheaded guy, and he smiled all the time”. Jack was a star pitcher and hitter for the local semi-pro team. Mike remembered him as always laughing and smiling. “Probably the funniest guy I’ve known in my life”.
Ariton had plenty of farms. “We have a lot of peanut farms, poultry farms and we grew the best pecans in the world…and corn”. Mike’s dad owned a service station that he bought from Grandaddy Baker, and he and Mike’s uncle owned a chicken farm. His father sold the service station, and they closed the farm due to disease.
12 miles away was the town of Ozark, population 12,000. “That was the county seat for Dale County”. One day there was a knock on the door and three men wanted to speak to Mike’s dad. Mr. Williams ran a construction company and was the head of the Quarterback Club. They supported the sports teams at Carroll High School in Ozark. When the Quarterback Club found out about local athletic talent they would visit with the athlete and family and offer to help them move to Ozark by giving them discount pricing on housing recently constructed by Mr. Williams. They had heard about Mike’s baseball and basketball ability, and they paid a visit to the Adkinson’s. Mike’s dad saw the opportunity to improve life for his family and he said yes. In the summer of Mike’s 16th year, the family moved to Ozark.
Mike went on to play football, baseball, basketball and track at Carroll High School. “It was a wonderful experience and really good people. Ozark was the kind of place we would go Christmas shopping when we lived in Ariton”. Mike got a job at the local men’s clothing store in Ozark where he worked every Saturday. He graduated in 1962 with a class of 100 students and was voted Best Dressed.
“I grew up in the small towns of Ariton and Ozark…I learned a lot about people”.
Mike headed off to Troy State in Troy, Alabama. There was no family money to help pay for school and although he received financial assistance from the college “it was really tight”. After a year at Troy State, one of the seniors talked to Mike and suggested he join the military. It was 1963 and the Vietnam War wasn’t really on the radar, but there was a draft. The senior pointed out that if Mike fulfilled his military requirement and then completed college, companies would be more likely to hire him and put in the time to train him knowing they didn’t have the worry of Uncle Sam drafting him.
Mike decided this was a good idea and went to see the Army recruiter. Mike took some tests, and he was offered a job in the military as air traffic controller. Mike accepted the offer and now had to tell his mother. “I went home and told my mom what I was going to do. Of course, she was not happy with that, but she accepted it and she took me down to the bus station in Ozark and put me on the bus. I can still very clearly remember her standing there waving as we rode away” to Fort Polk in Louisiana for basic training.
The first stop was the Central Recruiting Office in Montgomery, Alabama. Mike and 13 other guys met each other and sat around “drinking cokes, eating peanuts and jaw jackin’”. They all got along great and were ready for their big adventure. Then the recruits heard a sergeant bark, ‘Adkinson! You’re in charge’! Mike learned that every time they got off the bus, he would have to make sure they got back on the bus. Now that Mike was in charge, the other 13 fellas decided they weren’t happy with his authority and regularly let him know so. “That was my first experience with leadership, a designated leadership, and it wasn’t fun”.
They arrived at Fort Polk and were given uniforms, haircuts, physicals, vaccinations and a bunk. For the next eight weeks of basic training Mike and the other recruits went through all of the physical and mental tests that come with bootcamp including the unrelenting pressure of the drill instructors. The next stop for Mike was Advanced Individual Training (AIT) at Fort Rucker in Alabama where he was trained to be an air traffic controller. After graduating Mike was assigned to Fort Riley in Kansas as an air traffic controller.
After being on the job for a while Mike spotted opportunity. Most of the air traffic controllers were married and didn’t want to work the night shift. Mike knew the night shift had very little activity and was not demanding. He thought if he was the full-time night shift operator, he could also get a job during the day in the local town of Junction City. Mike spoke to Sergeant Graham, pitched his idea and the Sargeant agreed.
Mike soon found a job at Sandy’s, a local hamburger joint. Mike was a hard worker and made himself very valuable. Life was going along nicely until one evening when Mike walked into the Control Tower and he found Captain Ivy sitting at his desk wearing an arm band that said OD, Officer of the Day.
The captain started talking and seemed to know a lot about Mike. Ivy told Mike that he was married, had several kids at home and he wanted to be promoted to Major. To do that he needed a master’s degree. He told Mike it was a two-year process, but he was going to take a correspondence program (precursor to on-line education) and do it in eight months with Mike’s help. He wanted Mike to take half of the classes with him. Mike would read the material and take the tests.
Mike agreed and “I would frankly say I enjoyed it…you can’t complain about learning…and he was such a good guy, and we developed such a good relationship”. The duo knocked out the course requirements in eight months and now Major Ivy, was very grateful. He asked Mike about his future plans and Mike said he would likely end up going back to Ariton when his enlistment ended. Major Ivy firmly told him, ‘No, you’re not. You have an obligation to yourself and everyone else to do more’. He told Mike he saw great leadership qualities in him. He convinced Mike to apply to Officers Candidate School (OCS), handed him an application with his name on it and letters of recommendation from several pilots. They submitted the application and Mike was accepted. “It changed my life”.
Mike left the control tower as a Private First Class for Officers Training School at Fort Benning in Georgia. The school was physically and mentally demanding. The curriculum included learning about chemical warfare, nuclear warfare, learning all of the aircraft in the Air Force and all of the ships in the Navy. Six months later at graduation, Mike had his bars pinned on, walked off the graduation stage and found Major Ivy waiting to congratulate him.
Toward the end of OCS the candidates received presentations on different career options they could choose after OCS. The Rangers made a presentation and told the men Ranger School was extremely difficult with an attrition rate of over 50%. They were promised it was rough, tough, high risk and adventurous. “They were gonna end up with the strongest, meanest, most gutsy guys who could withstand pain”. The Airborne school also made a presentation. Mike applied for both. Much to his surprise he was accepted for both and learned he could go to Ranger School first followed by Airborne School.
“It was nine weeks. Three weeks at Fort Benning, three weeks of mountain training in the mountains of north Georgia for mountain navigation and patrols and three weeks in Santa Rose Sound in Florida for swamp training and beach landing training. It was very, very hard. It’s the first school I’d been to where there was an attrition goal. They were hard and harsh”. The patrols reflected real life conditions. “The swamps in Florida had alligators and (water) moccasins and lots of things that could hurt you real bad”.
In Ranger School every candidate has a Ranger Buddy. No one went anywhere alone. Mike and his Ranger Buddy Mac always volunteered to walk point. This was the most dangerous spot in the patrol, and you were responsible for finding the path forward for the rest of the squad. This often involved maneuvering around the very large, exposed roots of Cyprus Trees. The rainfall that year had been lower than normal which resulted in swamp water with contamination levels higher than normal.
The swamp was often very dark and the water very murky, so it was very easy to unexpectedly bump into the Cyprus Roots which were very unforgiving. Patrols lasted five to 10 days and the squad often moved at night making visibility even tougher. Mike and Mac ended up with numerous cuts on their legs which became infected with Jungle Rot. Their legs swelled and the pain was intense. Their Sargeant lookedat their legs and called in a helicopter to medevac them to a hospital. The good news was both men fully recovered. The bad news was they didn’t complete the course and the rest of the men graduated. The only way Mike and Mac could earn the right to wear the coveted Ranger Tab was to go back and complete Swamp Phase. Both men repeated the phase but this time they taped padding on their legs before they led the patrols.
In the summer of 1965 Mike graduated from Ranger School and went on to Airborne School. During a break from airborne training Mike saw President Lyndon Johnson on national television explaining that he was sending the 2ndInfantry Division from Fort Benning to Vietnam. “I sat my sandwich down, went to the pay phone, put in a coin…and called Military Personnel Assignments”. Mike said he was at Fort Benning and he wanted to be in the unit deploying to Vietnam. He was told that was not possible because he was slated for a priority assignment as a training officer for new recruits at Fort Leonard Wood.
Mike spent the next several months as a training officer and very frustrated he couldn’t get in the fight. He told his boss he wanted to go to Vietnam as part of the newly formed Special Forces. His boss advised him against it, but Mike persisted. His boss gave him the opportunity and Mike took all of the required tests. Within a week and a half he learned he had passed but, he wasn’t going to be infantry. He was going to be a helicopter pilot.
The Army was learning the best way to move soldiers around the battlefield in Vietnam was by helicopter. Parts of Vietnam are mountainous, and other parts are flat plains that flood during monsoon season. Either terrain was not well suited for armored vehicles or trucks to transport soldiers. This created a real demand for helicopter pilots.
Mike was told to report to Fort Wolters, in Mineral Wells, Texas for flight training. “I didn’t give a hoot about being in flight school, but my boss told me, ‘get your attitude changed. You have the ability to do it. You gotta do it’. With that sage advice, Mike adjusted his attitude and reported to Mineral Wells on March 13, 1966. Just like that, Mike’s life changed drastically and put him on a path to accomplish things and have experiences that a kid from a small Alabama town of 600 could never have imagined.
The first day at flight school Mike stood in line in the hot Texas sun waiting for his room and roommate assignment. The Army did things in alphabetical order and the men lined up accordingly. Behind him was a fella by the name of Briganti. “I’d never seen anyone who’s last name ended with an “I”. In uniform, Mike looked like a by-the-book 1stlieutenant. He had a sharp crease in his pants, a high and tight haircut and a professional spit-shine on his boots. Frank was from the motor pool, not an infantryman. Frank looked more like a model for a rummage sale than a by-the-book lieutenant.
They couldn’t have been more different. “He was my first Yankee (friend). He was Italian and had never been out of Connecticut. He didn’t know there were real people in Alabama. He thought it was the place where they took all of the garbage. I was his first rebel and southern friend”. They had a lot of fun making fun of each other and then thought, we may end up as roommates…and they did. The two have gone on to form a lifelong friendship. “We just really stuck with each other”.
Mike and Frank had a great time in flight school and then headed off to Fort Rucker for two more months of flight training. Fort Rucker was only 30 minutes south of Mike’s hometown of Ariton. He felt right at home and was often able to visit his family. “First time I took him (Frank) into the garden and showed him all of the vegetables he said, ‘where’s the mac and cheese’? We got along really good and we were experiencing everything from two different perspective. Me from the southern perspective and him from the northern…New England background”. Their relationship grew stronger as time went on.
The boys knew they were headed to Vietnam but didn’t talk about it much. They both knew the high casualty rate for helicopter pilots in Vietnam. They completed their training in November and Mike was scheduled to deploy in December. Frank suggested Mike come visit him in Connecticut before he shipped out. “I flew up to Hartford, Connecticut and it was colder than I wanted it to be. I met a lot of his friends. His father was a great guy.
During his visit Mike attended a father and son dinner at a local club. “I don’t know what the club was, but it was like a VFW”. The ladies from the kitchen would come in with big bowls of salad and rolls, and then the pasta and sauce and more pasta and more pasta. We had a big Italian dinner that memory stuck with me because that was a very special occasion”.
The time came for Mike to go to Vietnam and Frank drove him to the airport. The ticket agent from American Airlines asked ‘one way or round trip’? Frank said, ‘the Army only reimburses for one way’. Mike said, “I am coming back”. It was a sobering moment.
The boys agreed to keep in touch. Mike boarded his plane to San Francisco where he changed to a military charter. He recalled there were roughly 250 guys dressed in uniform, 10 lieutenants and two captains. “We were all going to Vietnam and that’s what the chatter was all about”. The mood changed over the next 20 hours. “We started off as a congenial, upbeat, positive environment…but the further we got the more serious it got and the quieter it got”.
Mike arrived at Camp Alpha located at the Ton Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon. Camp Alpha was a series of temporary tents that housed soldiers between their arrival and receiving their orders. Mike was ready to get into the action and started quizzing the guys in the personnel tent on where the most active areas were. They didn’t see Mikes bars and didn’t realize he was an officer. They explained there were several types of assignments. There were low risk VIP flight detachments, Medevac flights supporting the wounded and hospitals, cargo flights moving supplies from point to point and three units supporting the infantry in direct contact.
The next morning Mike went back to personnel fully uniformed including his Lieutenant’s bars. He went back to see the same GI he spoke to the night before who was surprised to see he was an officer. He asked Mike if he would like a VIP detachment. Mike asked about the three combat detachments. He was told the conditions in those areas were especially rough, under constant fire and had no sleeping quarters. Mike said, “that’s where I want to go”. Bewildered, the GI stamped Mikes assignment and wished him good luck.
Mike took a helicopter up to a combat base in Bein Hoa. Mike asked about the four companies supporting the infantry and he was told the roughest spot was in a newly established base in Cu Chi. The base had been there only two weeks, and they were taking steady mortar fire. Mike requested an assignment at Cu Chi and an hour later he was on his way. Mike recalled it was so hot it felt like he was three inches from the midday sun.
Mike decided to write to his good friend Frank Briganti. He told him he was based in Cu Chi where it was full of palm trees, and they were a short walk from the beach where there were lots of great bars. Mike didn’t hear from Frank and assumed he checked out where Cu Chi was, learned it wasn’t the resort area that Mike had portrayed and threw the note in the garbage. A month later Mike returned from a mission and he was told, ‘There’s a new pilot here and he’s pissed and he wants to talk to you’. It was Frank and he had requested an assignment at Cu Chi based on Mike’s description. It eventually became a big joke they laugh about to this day. Frank settled into the second platoon, and he flew Lift Ships which were Huey helicopters used to transport troops and cargo.
When Mike first arrived, he was informed that he would be a pilot for a lift platoon that resupplied the troops in combat. Mike was looking for action and requested to be in a Stinger Platoon and pilot a Gunship. Stingers were assault helicopter providing support to troops in contact with the enemy. Pilots needed at least six months of experience flying in-country to qualify as a Stinger pilot. Undeterred, Mike asked who could make an exception and was told Major Patterson. Mike had learned that Major Patteson was also a Ranger.
Just before Mike arrived, two gunships had been shot down and three of the four crewmen were killed including a pilot, Lieutenant White. Mike knew there was an opening and he wanted it. That evening he located Major Patterson sitting in his poorly lit hootch with a cigar in one hand and a pen in the other. He was clearly distressed as he wrote condolence letters to the families of the dead airmen. Mike knocked on the hootch door and Major Patterson said come in.
Mike said he was reporting for duty and he wanted to discuss his assignment. Mike said he was slated for a Lift Platoon and his preference was Gunships. The Major and Mike had a long conversation and Mike eventually said, “Sir, you’re a Ranger. You know the training that I have been through that’s not part of flight school…that’s created a lot of confidence and assurity with me that I can handle tough jobs and tough assignments. The Major listened quietly and said, ‘Mike, I’ll talk to you tomorrow’.
The next morning Mike reported for orientation with the other replacement pilots. Mike was told to get his pilot’s gear. Major Patterson wanted him to take a check ride in lieu of orientation. During a check ride the check pilot tries to unnerve the pilot being tested to assess his or her ability to act calmly and make decisions under pressure. Mike passed the test, and Major Paterson gave him his chance.
Mike reported to his bunk to find that he was bunking next to Lieutenant White’s bunk which still had his mail and personal effects on it. “It took me weeks to be accepted into the unit. I worked really hard and volunteered for every mission that I could get on. I was tested by the conditions of the environment and showed that I was a person that had the stability and the mental capacity not to be upset and to stay calm and collected and that went a long way”. Mike was quickly promoted to Aircraft Commander and then shortly later to Team Leader putting Mike in charge of a two aircraft team. “That’s how gunships operate. The one in charge carries out the mission, flies to the target. The second ship protects the first ship.
Mike felt the need to show his capabilities and that he wanted to learn. “I put my name on the list to go on every mission. I wanted to be real good and the way you learn is to practice. The way you practice is to participate”. “When I became the Platoon Commander, I was in charge of how many ships were going out and who would be on them. I went every day”. Most pilots flew four out of every seven days.
Mike’s crew consisted of George Kathy his door gunner and Teddy Horn his Crew Chief. “We believed in each other, and we had a level of respect and admiration that you just don’t get in other environments... they were totally dependable and taught by their actions”.
“I don’t remember the first one (mission). I was just so proud to be in guns”.
An assault helicopter was heavily armed with a 40mm grenade launcher in the front, rocket launchers on the side with 9 to 24 rockets and machine guns. It required a four-man flight crew. The pilot, the co-pilot, the crew chief and the gunner. The crew chief and the Gunner have different jobs on the ground but the same job in the air – manning the 60mm machine guns on each door. They were always scanning for targets. The gunners were attached to aircraft by straps which prevented them from falling out, especially if they were wounded.
During a battle the helicopter crew has their hands full. There were three radios and an intercom. The air crews and GIs on the ground learned to talk in shorthand to give instructions. Everyone needed to recognize the various voices to keep up with the action.
Mike’s approach to using his gunship was different than most pilots. His infantry training, airborne training and Ranger School training gave him the knowledge and confidence to use his gunship “as a foxhole I could take anywhere”. Mike thought of himself as an infantryman using the helicopter as another tool of the infantry. “Before I got there the tactics of gunships were to operate at 1,000 feet and they wouldn’t come down from 1,000. At 1,000 feet they were out of range to be hit” by enemy fire. “I said…I can’t see it well enough from up there”.
After Mike had proved his mettle as a gunship pilot, he had a discussion with the other pilots and asked them to support him in changing the tactics from operating at 1,000 feet to something much closer. Mike wanted to be closer to the treetops. Initially there was great skepticism, but Mike asked, “ride with me and let’s try it”. They agreed and when they saw Mike’s tactics made it possible to take out the enemy and save the troops on the ground who cheered as they flew off, the other pilots signed on to Mike’s approach. “I wasn’t hitting an area, I was hitting a spot”.
Mike was shot down 11 times. “Let me define that”. Shot down means that the enemy has taken an action that effects the crew or the aircraft that forces the helicopter to land somewhere other than the base. “Of the 11 times I got shot down, I’d say six of those were yawners…no rounds fired. We were just fine”. Of the other five, “I’d say in that we were landing in a place that the VC were still there and shooting at us”.
On one occasion Mike’s aircraft was shot down and two crew members were wounded. A rescue helicopter attempted to pick of the crew, but it too was hit and had to abort. It took close to an hour, but the crew was rescued after more firepower was called in to overpower the enemy.
On August 26, 1967 Mike and his crew were shot down for the 11th time near Horseshoe Bin along the Mekong Delta. On that mission Mike was flying near the treetops looking for any sign of VC activity. Suddenly the aircraft was hit several times. The VC were right under the aircraft, and they continued to take fire. The engine stopped, and Mike had to auto rotate the helicopter in order to land it safely. The crew chief, Johnny Holdman, was shot in the leg, the co-pilot was shaken up and Teddy Horn worked to get the machine guns out of the aircraft to use to hold off the enemy.
Johnny Holdman was bleeding badly from his wounds and Mike tried to apply a torniquet with Johnnys belt while balancing his M16 on his shoulder. Suddenly Johnny pushed Mike to the side, grabbed Mikes rifle and shot two VC standing behind Mike. “We then knew we were in trouble”.
Mike called on the emergency radio for a rescue ship. One gunship heard the distress calls and emptied as much ammo as possible to lighten the aircraft to pick up the four men under siege. “They got 10 to 15 feet of the ground and the VC opened up again”. The pilot George Price took a round to the face. Luckily it went in one side and out the other with minimal damage. The rescue was aborted. The command came through to find a bunker or bomb crater to take cover because the artillery was preparing a barrage. Despite a sustained and lethal artillery barrage the enemy remained active and another attempted by the rescue attempt was aborted.
The order came to “dig deeper” because they were sending A4’s to drop bombs. The bombing “went on for 10 minutes”. Finally, there was silence and another rescue attempt was made. A resilient enemy again thwarted the rescue attempt. It was getting dark “and we were in their house”. A call came over the radio telling Mike, “Right now, we don’t know how we’re gonna get you out, but we’re going to get you out”.
Then a voice came across the radio advising there was an infantry unit in the area, and they could be there to provide support in 30 minutes. As the infantry group drew closer, the North Vietnamese heard them and fled into the darkness without another shot. Many years later Mike learned there was an extensive underground facility 100 to 150 feet underground with living facilities and cooking capability. “For years after, sounds (of that battle) would pop back in my memory…I still have sounds and smells…” that trigger the memory of that long day in the jungle.
In December of ’67 Mike’s tour of duty was coming to an end. One afternoon the call came in from troops in contact in need of air support. Mike and the other helicopter crew in his team flew at tree top level to get to the troops as quickly as possible and radioed for them to pop smoke. Troops pop smoke to indicate their position. “They would always pop two different colors…and I could see where they were”. The different colors marked the edges of their locations. On this day the colors were blending together but the air was still, and Mike was confused by the movement of the smoke. As he passed overhead, he quickly saw the problem.
The U.S. ground troops had split into two units, surrounded the enemy and were now firing on friendly forces. Mike radioed the ground commander to cease fire and advise they were firing on their own soldiers. Mike settled the helicopter above the area where he thought the enemy was and he used the rotor wash to move the jungle canopy so he could get a better view. Mike saw the enemy below was trying to set up a machine gun to fire on his helicopter. In a very unconventional tactic Mike gave the order to empty the box of grenades on board both helicopters into the enemy area. Helicopters do not typically carry grenades, but Mike and his team had been in several situations where they thought they would have come in handy and they started carrying grenades for such a situation. “We dropped the grenades into the holes where they were. They stopped shooting”.
A few days later a Sargeant arrived at the base camp in Cu Chi looking for ‘Stinger 96’, which was Mike’s call sign. The Sargeant told Mike he was from the ground troops in the friendly fire incident Mike helped identify. ‘The boss wanted me to come get you. Our unit is having a pizza and beer party today’ and they wanted to thank Mike for his help. Mike said sure and when he arrived the ground commander introduced him and thanked him for the help he gave the troops. He told the men that Mike was headed back to the real world. What happened next was emotional for Mike to recall. PFC Garcia approached Mike and showed him a picture of his wife and new baby. ‘If you go home, I might never see that baby’.
“That night I couldn’t sleep. I kept seeing Garcia”. The next day Mike told his boss what had happened and he “was gonna do another tour right here”. The boss said, “I’m glad to have you”. Mike knew what it meant to the guys on the ground to hear the sounds of a U.S. helicopter gunship approach when they were pinned down and in real trouble. He had a strong sense of duty and responsibility to keep they boys safe and that was much stronger than his desire to go home.
During his second tour Mike was the Gunship Platoon Commander. On January 29, 1968 Mike went above and beyond to help combat troops in deep trouble. His aggressive tactics resulted in saving the troops and Mike received the Silver Star. The Silver Star Citation read in part:
“As Captain Adkinson marked and supported the insertion of numerous gunships into an extremely hazardous landing zone, the helicopters suddenly came under intense enemy fire. By rotating his gunships, he gave close fire support to the ships and flew numerous low-level orbits which drew the enemy fire away from the landing zone. He then continued to cover medical aircraft and kept a continuous barrage of fire in front of the friendly troops. He spotted a large Viet Cong force moving toward the friendly lines and he took them under rocket fire killing 45 insurgents. Although his ship received numerous hits, he continued to support ground troops and was of immeasurable value to the successful completion of the mission.”
By the end of Mike’s second tour, which lasted six months, he possessed a wealth of knowledge. “I had been there so long and knew the area so well I knew I couldn’t be easily replaced because I had so much institutional knowledge. The boss wanted to promote me to Operations Manager, so I agreed to stay”.
Mike did get some downtime and rest. He spent his first 30 day leave in Australia, although his mother wasn’t happy to hear that. “Most afternoons we would go down to the beach and lay in the sun…taking our towels and ice bucket and cold beer…”. The Americans were very popular. “They identified you as an American and boy, then everybody wanted to talk to you…”.
Mike was the Operations Manager which meant he planned each mission and decide when he would fly. Mike didn’t have to continue to fly missions, but he wanted to help the troops in need of help. Toward the end of the third tour, the Company Commander and the Battalion Commander wouldn’t let Mike stay for another tour. They also had agreed among themselves that if Mike went down one more time, Mike was going home. The last time Mike was rescued he didn’t go back to his base, and his flying days were over.
Mike received another 30 days leave and he came home to Ozark to see his family and friends. The reception here was quite different than in Australia. His family and close friends were very happy to see him. However, there were others who had a negative view of the GI’s influenced by the news media coverage of the war. For example, the television reports that frequently portrayed the troops and the events of the war in a negative manner.
One night Mike and his friends went out for a hamburger. At the restaurant Mike’s friends introduced him to some of their friends as a buddy from school who was home on leave from Vietnam. Although they had never met Mike before, “That was a real negative”. Mike remembers being asked if he liked killing babies. “They didn’t know me from Adam’s house cat” but they decided everyone involved in the war was bad as they had seen on television.
“I’d been there about two and a half weeks, and I was getting sick of it. What the news was reporting was not true. They were misrepresenting what was happening over there and giving a very negative and untruthful view of what was happening. They said we were killing babies and that’s not what was happening. So, after a couple of weeks I said, ‘mom I can’t take it’.” Mike cut his leave short and went back to Vietnam.
When Mike returned to Vietnam his boss asked him if he would like to go to the Philippines to participate in a new school called Survival Evasion Resistance Escape (SERE). A lot of pilots were being shot down over Vietnam and the Air Force wanted to teach them how to evade the enemy until they could be rescued and if they were captured, how to survive. He thought Mike would be the perfect person to test the school curriculum – a pilot who was really a soldier at heart.
Mike went to the school for 10 days and he participated in the exercises simulating a downed pilot. He was able to successfully evade the local Philippinos that had been hired by the Air Force to find the pilots. Mike figured that his best chance of survival was to hide during the day and move at night. It took Mike four or five days to get out of the jungle without getting caught.
He returned to Fort Benning in Georgia in 1969 to command a training company while he waited to start the Army Infantry Career Course. This is a one-year course for Captains to learn more about Army tactics, doctrine, the organization of the Army, war gaming “and a lot of physical training”.
At the end of the class Mike was contacted by the Assignment Officer. He told Mike, although he was doing a great job but there was a problem. To stay in the Army and have a career Mike needed a college degree. The Army offered to send Mike to college, pick up the cost and continue to pay his salary. Mike thought this was a great idea and he applied to Auburn University and was accepted. He was able to complete his four-year degree in less than three years.
Mike’s graduated from Auburn and his next duty assignment was in Hoffenberg, Germany. The Army asked him to transfer into a mechanized infantry unit where he would be the Operations Officer. During this tour he was promoted to Major and selected to attend the Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Missouri.
This was a real honor and acknowledgement by the Army that Mike had a lot of potential for further advancement. Only 30% of all majors get selected. “That’s a yearlong course and it was a good year. Going to school was fun and being around a whole bunch of good guys….who had one or two tours”.
When Mike graduated in 1978, he was assigned to the consulate General’s office in Iran. Mike was hoping for a combat assignment but there wasn’t a war going on. As luck would have it, Mike’s class leader at flight school, Gary Luck, called. Gary had done a tour in Vietnam with the Special Forces and was now commanding the Cavalry Squadron in the 101st Airborne Division. He had been tasked with bringing the entire unit to Germany for training exercises with allied countries and then bringing it all back to the states at the conclusion of the training. He was short one good leader to turn around a problem unit and he was calling Mike to offer him the job. “He was a great man and a really good leader…so that was a real honor for me”.
Over the next year Mike helped to move the Squadron to Germany and back. The mission was successful and at the end Gary told Mike, there was ‘a new brigade commander of the second brigade, he has taken over and he wants a new operations officer’. Mike asked, “What’s his name”? ‘Colin Powell’, was the response. Mike was interviewed and was selected for the position. He was told to meet Colonel Powell at the golf course at 10am Saturday morning. “I got some clubs and golf shoes and spent six or seven hours with the brigade chaplain out on the golf course learning how to putt and tee off”.
Mike recalled Coin Powell as a very caring commander. “He spent a lot of time talking to soldiers, wherever soldiers were”. Colonel Powell would tell his staff what the mission was and then give them the latitude to execute it out.
Mike was part of a mission to test the ability of Army Air Assault units to work in Arctic conditions. To do that they moved a brigade sized task force with all of its equipment to Camp Drum in upstate New York. “January of 1979 turned out to be the coldest winter ever recorded for Camp Drum”.
At the conclusion of that assignment Mike volunteered for a special assignment to learn strategic planning. Up until that time the Army had been spending a significant sum with a consulting firm for their assistance in strategic planning. Congress decided to develop strategic planning capability within the Army. “I got into the program and received a lot of good training” at Columbia University and Pepperdine University. Mike helped write the Strategic Plan for the Army Chief of Staff. “Everybody liked it”. The Harvard Business Review learned what the Army was doing and came to interview the team. This assignment ended in1983 and Mike elected to retire from the Army. Looking back Mike recalled one of the best aspects of the military was the training and the exposure to leadership. He didn’t have the same experience working in the corporate world.
Mike used his strategic planning and leadership skills working for the New York Stock Exchange. For the next six years helped develop the strategic plan. Mike recalled the morass of bureaucracy that made implementing change exceptionally difficult. He left the company in 1989 and went into the publishing business. He published a personal computer magazine and internal communications for RJR Nabisco and the ’96 Olympic Games. He also did some work for Andrew Young when he was mayor of Atlanta. Young wanted to get the word out that Atlanta was a great place for a tech company headquarters. Mike successfully developed magazine and email communications for a wide variety of technology businesses.
“In civilian life I had a lot of good jobs…but I didn’t have the consistency anywhere else in my life that I had”, from those teams in Vietnam. “They never gave negative surprises. They never gave priority to self over others”.
Over his long military career Mike received numerous awards for his heroism. He received a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars with a “V” for Valor, 5 Distinguished Flying Crosses for various acts of heroism or an exceptional achievement, and 73 Combat Air Medals. Pilots receive a Combat Air Medal for every 25 hours of combat flight time. Mike was told that he had accumulated the most combat flight hours of any U.S. aviator as of that time.
Mike survived a lot of close calls with the enemy but couldn’t evade the effects of Agent Orange. “I have a lung disorder (COPD) because of the Agent Orange. The C-130’s would drop it, and we knew they were gonna drop it, but we didn’t know where and when”. Mike recalled times they flew through Agent Orange rain. “It was not like water. It was almost like a light coating of oil. It just covered your windshield. Of course, the windows were open so it’s coming in on you and you’re breathing it”.
Some of the combat he experienced in Vietnam has stayed with Mike through the years. “For a long time…. portions of what happened then, sounds…would pop back up in my memory. It does now, but not often at all, but it does…sounds and smells. Burning food has a similar aroma to powder burning, bombs”.
Like many veterans, the relationships he developed with the men he served with are among his most cherished memories. “The experience of working with people that you knew that you trusted, and you had confidence in, is still to this day one of the most satisfying things (about Vietnam). Was it dangerous? Yeah. Did you think about it? No. You just enjoyed being a team that was getting something done. You took pride in how well you did it”.
Mike, your stories teach us a lot of about gratitude, accountability, putting others before yourself, the strength of real friendships and of course, sacrifice. Many are. Lucky to have known you.
“I’m going to be a helicopter pilot, and I am going to take whatever jobs and get in positions that do the most I can do to help soldiers who are in trouble, help soldiers that are in contact, help soldiers who are being shot at. The ones being hit”.