** ...I wasen't going to let anyone else kill me ..."

Tom, sometime towards the end of our month+ in the Plei Trap, they brought my ship in for an overnight "oil change." While it was in, to get another ship out, they cannibalized (?) a hydraulic tube out of my ship. Took it out of that panel on the front of the transmission housing. You know the tube. The one that uses two feet of tube to go 4 inches.

I showed up in the early morning, they were just replacing it with a 6-inch tube instead of the one with the proper bends etc. Big hassle followed, the ultimate result was I was ordered to fly the ship. We flew.

It failed 3 or 4 hours later on a pad out in the Plei Trap, BonBon executed a textbook hovering autorotation and we sat there for the rest of the day. Tied up the grunts' only pad, made a great target, and got more and more steamed as the day went on.

They had to fly out tools, fluid, and the correct tube and drop it to me so I could crank the sumbitch back together and we got out of there damned near dark.

When we landed at Holloway way past dark, I was so out of control I was out of the ship with my M-16 and headed for the hangar to kill the dumb bastard TI who screwed me that morning. I forget who intercepted me halfway to the hangar, maybe Shakey or Silk, but thank goodness somebody did. Not a doubt in my mind, if I hadn't been stopped, I'd have killed him, emptied the weapon, no question.

Exactly what you say; the enemy was ANYBODY who was trying to kill us.

Scary stuff, ugly as hell, but facts.

Bob