Putnam, William, Sr., SSG

Best Friends
SFC Dewitt, great guy, greater Plt sgt.

Best Moment
those were the days when the VIP Plt had their equipment in a gp medium tent.

Worst Moment
after being a 67N for almost 10 years, I still did not know how to install a tail rotor on a Huey.

Other Memories
in the winter of 1976, the unit had to go to Yakima for Aeriel gunner for the crew chiefs. so all of the ships lined up to fly over there. White pass was socked in so we had to fly down to Vancouver Washington. I was flying with the Bn Commander, the asst S3, the CSM and the Bn Commander's driver. guess they were going to borrow a vehicle when we got there. well the weather down south wasn't any better. so the commander told operations that he would fly down the Colombia gorge to check things out and the Bn could follow later. we flew west to John Day Oregon, then cut north. we were low level flying. for some reason the commander didnt want to get up to a thousand feet or so. but it was getting dark and neither he or the s3 knew where the power lines that were ahead of us were. they were either on the left or the right. and they didnt want to fly into them. (turned out they were on the left and we would have flown into them). so they put the aircraft on the ground and faced it into the wind (which was blowing at about 35 mph. after the engine stopped, I got to get out and tie the blades down. the temp was about 35 degrees F. we also had a small gas powered air compressor in the air craft which we had to lay out on the dirt.
as I got back into the air craft, we all found out that the only person that had a sleeping bag was me. luck for them I had both sides of a shelter half (had to have my own tent, didn't want to share) and also an army wool blanket. the only food we had with us was a cake that my wife at the time had baked for us and a bottle of home made cherry wine that I had brought. we spent a cold night. before we could take off, we had to have the heater warm up the wind shield, it was covered with ice. After we took off we climbed went up to 10,000 feet. about 30 miles south of Yakima the 20 minute fuel light came on. we ended up landing at Wapato Raceway, in Wapato Washington, the S-3 went to a phone (pre-cell phones) and called the airfield at Yakima and had them send a fuel truck down. turned out they put 210 galleons in a 215 tank.