A guy asked a couple of years ago about the kind of stuff we carried with us.

Without even getting into what was under the back seats:

Besides the little smelly pine tree (to take care of the geshtunken wafting about from
the smellbad grunts we lugged around) hanging from our Huey's rear view mirror and the
fuzzy dingle-balls across the top of the windshields, we carried only the very barest of
absolutely essential equipment. For instance, all available space on our slick's dashboard
was taken by:

- our new AC's shiny new Hong Kong hand-painted plastic Jesus, self-adhesive. Don't
laugh, we figured if it worked in cars, then it might work in helicopters;

- a Mezuzah that was there before all of us ever were. I didn't know much about it but,
hey, why take a chance? Maybe Father Hurley and Sister Mary Halfnelson were wrong;

- the little brass-plated crucifix with a magnetic base that wouldn't stick to anything in
the ship except the compass, always sliding around, getting in the way, but nobody wanted
to be the one who threw it away;

- one former peter pilot's lucky rabbit's foot (got his cherry busted when they bounced
a round off his chicken plate, just missed with a couple others, and he instantly became a
maintenance officer);

- the Miraculous Medal that the last crew chief stole from a hooker in Kuala Lumpur.
He never thought there was any contradiction there;

- the bronze-colored plastic Buddha we filched from some sap at a supply pad in
Kontum while he was busy double-checking the count on the beer we had loaded. He
missed counting the cases that went straight through the ship, out the other side, and into
the battery compartment. They kept trying to stick us with the rotgut Falstaff, so we kept
stealing their Schlitz;

- our spare lucky rabbit's foot, bought and installed right after the first hydraulic failure
and running landing. Sure didn't want to do that twice;

- my grandmother's Rosary;

- our spare spare super lucky rabbit's foot, bought after the second hydraulic failure and
running landing. Really lucky to have made it through two without burning to death, we
really didn't want to ever have to do that three damn times;

- a four leaf clover pressed in a plastic key ring that someone's mom or sister sent;

- my cousin's St. Christopher medal;

- half of some chaplain's Scapular, with a Snoopy pin stuck through it. Mildly surprised
(as were we) that he had lived through our third running landing, he tumbled out of the
ship when we finally stopped sliding, puked into the foam on the Pleiku runway, sprinkled
everything with holy water, pinned up the Scapular, and without a word went staggering
off across the airfield on an azimuth for the O-Club. I stopped buying so-called lucky
rabbits' feet and began to consider the possibility that we might have a hydraulic problem;

- a twisted up copper wire 'Yard charm a previous gunner left (word was he suddenly
quit flying when they shot one of his toes off with a single AK round straight up thru the
sole of his boot. New Yorker, he figured they'd "prolly" shoot off something more
important next time);

- my cherry gunner's glow-in-the-dark plastic Jesus that drove the firefly pilots freakin' crazy in the dark;

- oh yeah, the...

...better stop there, I'd hate to give you the impression that we might have been
superstitious or something.

Bob K--