Air Cavalry in Vietnam – Jack List

American Warrior Radio

Air Cavalry was a new tactic employed during the Vietnam War. Jack List participated in those early days of air assault, including seeing action in the Ia Drang Valley, made famous in the movie “We Were Soldiers”.

Jack served 30 years, 11 months and 25 days in the Army, retiring at the rank of Command Sergeant Major. Jack was born in Germany and his father served in the German Army during World War II. During his first tour in Vietnam he was notified by his grandmother that he had been drafted into the German Army!

Jack was assigned to the 11^th Air Assault “Test” Division that was evaluating the Air Assault concept. Jack would eventually serve as a Crew Chief with the newly minted 1^st Air Cavalry. He became responsible for a UH-1 “Huey”. Jack flew as a door gunner on missions and then had to patch up the aircraft upon return to base.

The 1^st Air Cavalry was based at Camp Radcliff, An Khe’. At the time it was the largest helicopter base in the world with more than 400 helicopters. On his first mission they launched 110 helicopters to support a Special Forces camp. “The thing that scared me the most was not the enemy shooting at us, it was potential for midair collisions.”

The scenes at LZ X-Ray depicted in “We Were Soldiers” were just a small part of the larger Pleiku campaign. At LZ-Albany, further north in the Ia Drang valley, our troops suffered a 50% casualty rate. Jack described one of his missions where 5 of the 10 persons on board were wounded upon approach to the landing zone. He says he has no idea how he completed two tours without being wounded himself.

His pilot trained other crew members so they would know the basics in case they had to fly the helicopter.

Jack says that Sergeant Major Basil Plumley was an excellent leader and always had his troops well squared away. Col. Hal Moore went back into both LZ X-Ray and LZ Albany to retrieve remains.