Funny, Funny Stories From my days at Eden, P.D.
By Michael D. Martin, E.C.P.D. Retired
About the author...Michael Martin (pictured front row, far right in the 1981 photo) is a retired veteran of 25 years on the Eden City Police Department, and has penned a number of anecdotal writings recalling his experiences.
X. Splst. 4 Stephen E. Martin Morehead High, Class of '66
I graduated from Morehead High in 62, Little brother graduated in the class of '66. The United States Government paid for his senior trip and little brother found himself hanging half out of a Huey HU-1A Gunship in southeast asia. Little brother spent the next twenty seven months flying combat missions with Hal-3 (hellicopter-attack-light) out of Det-9 (Detachment-9 Bhien Tuey) and he was a member of the United States Special Warfare Unit ..."the Seawolves"..his job was to man a fifty cal. machinegun in the door (the navy called this "aviation electronics"???) His pilot was a complete madman named Captn. Joe Farr who absolutely did not beleive he could be killed....even when the ship came in with hydrallic fluid spewing and the metalwork shredded and the engine dying and some fellas bleeding. It was a good mission, if Farr was not killed outright, he was ready for the next one. Little brother wrote to mother and told her he had a safe "desk job, out of the action"....Little brother wrote me the truth as he saw it, he was manning a fifty cal. on a Huey and his pilot had to be an escapee from an insane asylum.
They escorted river barges up the Ban Sac and the Mekong to Phnom Penn and when "Charlie" attacked from the banks, the riverine patrol boats went in to battle, when it got to hot for the patrol boats, the "seawolves" went in and saturated the area with fifty cal munitions and rockets...Lil Brother always carried his Yashica .35mm and took photos of the strikes. They inserted special forces and Seals into hot areas and took them out under heavy fire when things went horribly wrong and they flew routine patrol, looking for VC activity and trying to draw fire so they could call in A-12's with napalm. Once little brother told me about working with the CIA where they put radio transmitters in US weapons and let the VC steal them and they flew a triangulation at night and spotted the signals on the Ho-Chi-Minn and called in air strikes from b-29's and A-12's.
The boys at Bhien Tuey called themselves "the brown river navy" Me and little brother water skied a million miles on Philpott lake as we grew up, but I do not remember daddy having to shoot back at folks on the bank. These boys actually got some water skis and water skied behind riverine patrol boats on the Ban Sac...sometimes under fire from VC irregulars...They quit when they skied over some crocodiles or alligators, Nobody worried about being shot, but nobody wanted to be eaten.
Little Bubba's name is on a bronze plaque, on the hangar deck of the United States Capitol Warship "Yorktown" which is at Patriot's Point at Charleston Harbour, South Carolina. These were the heros of the Vietnam war. I was there when my brother, Stephen E. Martin's name was added to the plaque. He was inducted for heroic service with the "seawolves along the Ban Sac river. Another name is Splst. James Arthur Wall of Port Arthur, Texas. Wall was shot thru the breast in earlier action and was saved. he could have gone home, but he refused..he served with the boys at Bhien tuey and became a good drinking buddy of Bubba's...Wall complained of the lack of action at det-9 and transferred to det-6 at Chu-Lai...Wall was killed on his first mission. 58 Seawolves were killed in combat in Vietnam.