Door Gunner
A Tribute to John Thorburn Sgt. USAF Retired
By Michael Domino
Copy write 2007

The year was 1968
And I didn't want to be late.
It was the really big show
And I desperately wanted to go.
The Army is tricky and played a cruel joke
Spiraling my movie dreams of adventure right up into smoke.
Three years I got stationed in West Germany
Not the place I had figured I wanted to be.
For I was a Hell's Kitchen street-fighting villain
And longed to be close to the action and killin.
I served my time in Europe and returned to my Long Island home
Took a job at Grumman and became a factory drone.
While I was working the war over in Vietnam
Continued to rage on, rage on, on and on.
One day I walked up and told my ole boss
See ya later; I just joined the US Air force.
This Time I had made extra damn sure.
That Vietnam would be written right on the door.
I told them to make me a gunner on a Helicopter ship.
Put me into the battle zone and don't give me no lip.
They were more then obliging to teach me to fly
And send me to a place where I was most likely to die.
Finally, I had arrived at the Pacific's combat side
In gun-ship New Yorker I would fight from and ride.
We soared way above the green canopy tops.
The American Air forces deadliest cops.
From far up above in the Southeast Asian sky.
We made our enemy run for cover or get blasted and die.
The bullets and rockets our craft so skillfully fell
Turned skirmish fields of Highlands into tropical Hell.
But at night when the chopper blades stopped rotating and spinning
We would talk about reasons why it seemed we were not winning.
It was impossible to understand how this ever could be
When there were so many bad-asses over here just like me.
So to stop all of this useless and negative thinking
We dulled ours emotions with plenty of drinking.
There was never a shortage of Johnny Walker Black Label or Red
Nor Vietnamese Soldiers and American Dead.
One thing In the Nam we had no trouble to find.
Were sources of substances for numbing our mind.
At the end of the day, it never mattered to me
Booze, women, pot, or a tab of pure L.S.D.
We were psychedelic, gun-toting cowboys and lived by no book.
Killers by day; at night we did whatever it took.
Near the middle of my thirteen months Vietnam tour
The situation was not looking promising; too be sure.
We were never told by superiors on any which days
If we'd be flying secret missions for Special Forces or Green Berets.
From faceless, nameless powers; always came down the order
To fly this day covertly over the treacherous Cambodian border.
In case we got shot down we carried no paper.
Officially, a lost chopper blown up and turned into vapor.
From our clothes we wore you could not tell who was ever in charge.
For Officers captured alive ;punishment would be unimaginably large.
The New Yorker's job was to find the Greenies a soft L-Z
Get those brave men down and give ourselves time undetected to flee.
Most landing missions went smoothly and we took no VC fire.
Other times it got hairy and circumstances turned suddenly dire.
On the worst of all days we set our bird down in the jungles open gap
Never seeing the enemies well planned out but nightmarish trap.
The skids of The New Yorker had barely touched ground.
When all about our cabin echoed the most dreadful of sound.
Bullets tearing through metal and into men's flesh.
Our once gallant chopper being shredded to a mesh.
The Green Berets shot their way into the open to do battle.
If left in the chopper they'd been slaughtered like cattle.
I had broken my bones and a bullet into me had drilled.
For my crew, far worse; they had been shot down and killed.
A second Helo was radioed in to attempt a daring rescue.
To save their fellow countrymen from this wars final curfew.
The Green Berets heroically drove the Viet Cong back to the trees.
While our birds up above circled anxiously like bees.
Brave pilots dared death to take their own beings they did cherish
As they risked their young lives so that comrades would not perish.
The Berets dragged me from the New Yorker as it was burning.
While bullets kept flying and chopper blades kept churning.
Once we were far up above and out of harms way.
The others bee's awesome fire rained down on the fray
The jungle lit up like a thousand dazzling Fourths of July.
My friends in the New Yorker and VC fighters were left there to lie.
From the crash and the battle my body was twisted and bended.
The doctors put me back together; my physical wounds eventually mended.
But never a day passes after of all of these very long years.
When I don’t catch myself thinking and reliving the worst of those fears.
Most days now I'm all right and able to move past that horrific war.
But there are times when I'm along side my buddies back there on that Cambodian floor.