Company A

227th Assault Helicopter Battalion

1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile)


Home Cooking Cures War Shelling
By John B Lake Jr.

As printed in
Greater Providence - Tuesday, July 30, 1968

NOTE
WO Randy Gee served from 1967-1968 with A/227
This article was provided by his son, Barry Gee

 

When "Randy" Gee was a boy he kept a Guernsey cow as a 4-H project at his father's Arkwright Farm in Fiskeville, and you can bet it was the best-cared for bossy around.

Came his teen years and guests at the Revolutionary War era farm weren't surprised to hear who was piloting the Piper Cub circling overhead and dipping wings. It was then 18-year old student pilot Randy.

So it didn't surprise when Army Warrant Officer Randall S. Gee, now 22, got back safely from a year's Vietnam war duty as an assault helicopter pilot with decorations and commendations.

Friends have come to expect Randy, the son of Richard Gee, superintendent of the state institutional farms, and Mrs. Juanita Gee, a prize-winning raiser of Rhode Island Red Bantams, to do any job conscientiously and painstakingly.

The dedication to duty that won him the Air Medal and has resulted in a recommendation he be awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, higest flying award, obviously took a lot out of him.

It's not just that he lost 20 pounds. It's that he's seen more than his share of war in 1,117 combat flying hours this year. It's plain he can use a good rest before reporting to Hunter Army Air Base, Savannah, GA., to teach helicopter instrument flying, hopefully for the last two years of his hitch. Then his sights are set on college.

Still not too far from mind are the 20 copters, or "hueys," that were shot up by Viet Cong ground fire as he flew them with an assault helicopter battalion of the First Air Cavalry Division.

Or the crewman who were wounded on his ships, shot through the elbow or the foot. Or the wounded crying in pain he evacuated from the jungle under fire, at times chopping up the trees with his ship's two rotor blades to clear an "L.Z.," or landing zone.

It was tough duty from the time he arrived in Vietnam and went to "Charm School," the name the men gave classes in survival techniques, how to look out for booby traps and land mines.

He surprised his sweetheart and about-to-be fiancee, Miss Fay Benjamin of Auburn, when he took here to a movie on a recent hot night. He was cold. She understood when he told here it had been 125 degrees in Vietnam's tropical weather. But there was also rain, once for 42 straight days.

It wasn't the leaky, sand-bagged tents or the lizards that crawled on them at Phan Thiet that bothered so much. It was the "incoming," the mortar and rocket rounds from the Viet Cong guerrillas who could disassemble and move their mortars in minutes.

They usually came at night - for nights without end - and it was risky to try to brave open ground in a run from a sandbagged tent to an underground bunker. When the base moved, which it did plenty, it meant another sandbagging job.

VC suicide squads infiltrated with a mission to put aircraft out of action, not to kill personnel, he said.

Among Warrant Officer Gee's prized commendations is one from Maj. Gen. John J. Tolson, commanding general of the First Air Cavalry Division. That was for skill in making a forced landing when his ship was shot up and the engine failed. With about three feet to spare among jungle trees, he landed without further damage. The copter was recovered and back in action in a day.

With Miss Benjamin (whom he met when they were classmates at Cranston High East, (Class of 1965) to boost his morale, Randy is starting to relax from the year of high tension. His mother also is building him up - her cooking put three pounds on him a week, getting him up to 131.

The two appear to be just the right medicine for a tired airman who was flying 50-60 missions a day not too many days ago.


Last updated March 14, 2015
For more information contact:

Copyright © 2003 - 2015