GREGORY GLASHAUSER

If ever there was a loose cannon it was Captain Gregory Glashauser, a recon team leader who, in my opinion, was too crazy to be afraid. Only a few days after taking an AK round in his right side I saw him bandaged and in pain but attending a floor show featuring one of those bizarre bands from the Philippines at the CCC compound in Kontum. When I first met Greg he was going on at length about how he was going to demand from his wife that their first-born son be named Wolfgang. Wolfgang Glashauser sounded like someone straight out of the Sound Of Music. I never saw Greg again after I left CCC, but I would bet that his son received a far more benign and conventional name. I base my guess on the truism that we boys tend to make grand statements to affirm our control in marriage, but that in the end, and as always, the babe wins. I think it has something to do with supply and demand.

Glashauser was manic. He did everything at warp speed. If I didn’t know better I would have suspected Greg of having a never-ending supply of greenies. Shortly after Prince Sihanouk was overthrown and Cambodia became one big free-fire zone I was assigned to fly Greg on a recon of the area into which he and his team were going to be inserted. The mission was scheduled for early morning, which meant another pre-dawn speeding, careening jeep ride past the sniper-haven cemetery and through the town to the airfield where the RF’s were selling our av-gas. So I got to bed early and fell asleep. At about 2am I was awakened by somebody pounding on the wall of our hooch. Greg had gotten into the adjacent room and was beating down the wall with the butt of an AK, a normal weapon on the CCC compound because the SF guys had a menagerie of weapons. And Greg didn’t stop until he had opened up a hole big enough for him to climb through. Fortunately Greg left the AK behind. The next thing I knew my passenger for the morning’s ride was standing over me, naked except for his tidy-olive-drabbies, with an opened box of saltines in his hand. Greg wasn’t a little drunk, he was profoundly drunk. He had crushed the crackers up into crumbs and he then began to sprinkle them all over me. Now it was hot in the Highlands, so it was hot in our room, and it was always humid. The crumbs stuck to my skin like I was a piece of chicken waiting to be fried.

I pushed Greg out the door, got him into the next room and dumped him into a vacant bed, telling him that I’d be back in an hour and a half. I went over to the latrine to shower off my saltine coating but as usual, my steak-buddy Tim Dennis had the water turned off again in the showers, which he did every night after midnight and then again from about mid-morning to mid-afternoon. My flight suit went so long between washings that I usually took it off and stood it in the corner at parade rest until the next day. You know you’re filthy when you can smell yourself. Fortunately one of the sinks had running water so I used a wash cloth to get rid of most of the crumbs.

At 4:30 I dragged Gregory out of bed. Somewhere along the line he had gotten dressed and then fallen asleep again. But it was time to leave the compound and, passed out or not, we were going flying. The jeep ride to the airfield was uneventful, and Greg stayed asleep through engine start, take-off, and the flight over into Cambodia. When we reached the AO I eased the F model into a wide, gentle, descending spiral and started talking to Greg to wake him up. I pointed out the likely LZs for the insertion and extraction as we zipped over the trees at about 200 feet. And while he mumbled responses I knew he wasn’t getting any of this. So I headed east and stayed on the trees until we were a dozen clicks away from the AO. Then I climbed us up to about 9000 feet and crossed back into Vietnam. Greg had dozed off again. I put the airplane into a very shallow dive to build up airspeed, then pulled the nose up and pulled the Bird Dog into a left steep-turn while holding the stick almost full back. When the bottom wing stalled I kicked top rudder and we flipped to the right and started to spin. I let it turn three times and then let go of the stick. The plane stopped spinning and I eased the stick back to recover. Except that I kept the nose up to bleed off airspeed and then kicked us into a split-S. I pulled out of the split-S and put the Bird-Dog into a 360-degree steep turn to the left, rolled out and did one to the right. The only thing that was spoiling my fun was the sound of Greg retching into my helmet bag, my sack full of AR15 clips, and finally, when he managed to get his head out the window, along the right side of the fuselage. He made a very small mess inside of my airplane, the fuselage was gross, and the helmet bag and ammo sack had to be thrown away. Revenge is sweet but smelly. Greg paid Jim Shelly, our crew chief, fifty bucks to wash the mess off the outside and the back seat floor. Then he put his arms around my neck and his head on my shoulder and told me that he loved me. He didn’t kiss me. He would actually do that every once and a while, but this morning his breath was in desperate need of Listerine, and so I was glad that this display of affection and male bonding ended with a hug. I asked him if he remembered covering me with saltine crumbs. Greg laughed and said that he thought the saltine trick was a stroke of genius. And then he headed for the latrine.

I never saw Greg again after he got wounded, but I think that somehow he survived CCC. For all his craziness, he is one of those people who will always retain a place in my memory. When I think of Vietnam I always think of Greg.