Jack Heslin said this in his book:

"The helicopter air crews, pilots, crew chiefs and door gunners were an integral team, sharing the same dangers and totally dependent on one another to complete the mission. Not enough credit has gone to those crew chiefs and gunners who worked the long hours to make sure the aircraft were mission ready and who showed incredible courage to go back into the fire to save the pilots.
No one, who hasn't thundered through the skies of Vietnam in a helicopter, can know what that experience was like. Most helicopter crews had more than one tour in Vietnam and had their aircraft hit by enemy fire many times. Most of us had been shot down at least once and we knew that combat flying in Vietnam was living on the edge all the time. Over the battlefields, you could hear the thunder of helicopters that put fear in the hearts of the enemy and brought comfort to our troops on the ground."

And I might add this;
The rest of the Army never quite undertood us.They never understood how officers and EM gould literlly grow so close and come to love each other as brothers during their combat tour. It is because no other branch of the Army had the situation of requireing each member of a crew to perform exactly as required, when on operations, or risk sudden and viloent death. We were completely dependent on each other to stay alive. Those who worked on the aircraft and those who flew in the aircraft had to get it right every time.
Salute
BT