The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking Read Online Free PDF Page B

apartment, expecting to find her waiting for him. Instead, he surprised her in bed with one of his high school classmates, whom he stomped into a pulp. Holder soon learned that Bullock had been sleeping with numerous men, allegedly for pay. Heartbroken by this revelation, he cut short his leave and returned to war, though only after his parents promised to take charge ofraising his daughters. Holder knew his marriage was over, yet he continued to wear his gold wedding band; he didn’t want his Army comrades to have any inkling ofBullock’s betrayal.
    Back in Vietnam, Holder was promoted to the rank of Specialist Fourth Class and allowed to choose his next assignment. He decided to ditch the Blackhorse Regiment in favor of one of the Army’s most glamorous and demanding gigs: flying with the 68th Assault Helicopter Company, stationed at Bien Hoa Air Basejust east of Saigon.
    Nicknamed the Top Tigers, the 68th AHC was charged with airlifting South Vietnamese troops into the war’s hairiest combat zones. The unit’s single-engine Huey helicopters would alight in clearings to disgorge a dozen soldiers each, then dodge Vietcong rockets as they whooshed awaywith guns blazing. In his role as a crew chief, Holder was responsible for maintaining the Hueys in flight as well as firing the mounted M60s that hung from their doors. Unlike his experience in the jungles of Long Khanh, Holder could now see his targets clearly—men who scattered through the elephant grass upon hearingthe hum of the Top Tigers’ blades. Holder dutifully mowed these fleeing figures down, their skulls distorting into scarlet blobs as hisbullets found their marks.
    But the transition from ground to air did not alleviate Holder’s mounting sense of dread, which he tried to suppress with ever-vaster amounts of marijuana. His behavior grew more eccentric, to the puzzlement of his fellow Top Tigers. They thought it odd, for instance, that he liked to address everyone as “nigger,” regardless of their race. And they took note of the fact that he never ventured down to the Paradise Bar to purchase the affections of slinky hostesses and guzzle cans of Carling Black Label. He preferred to spend his off-duty hours at the Bien Hoa barracks, listening to jazz and reading the works of James Baldwin andFrantz Fanon.

    Roger Holder relaxing at Bien Hoa Air Base, 1969.
PRIVATE COLLECTION OF JOY HOLDER
    The Top Tigers tolerated Holder’s peculiarities, however, because he was an excellent crew chief—up at five a.m. each morning to prep the Hueys for battle, then cool underfire in the field. When Holder re-upped for another six-month tour in April 1969, his stellar performance earned him a transfer to the 120th Assault Helicopter Company’s gunship platoon, the so-called Razorbacks. The Razorbacks were responsible for securing Saigon’s forested perimeter; they often operated in the dead of night, ferreting out enemy infiltrators with high-intensity searchlights. Given the high volume of Vietcong fighters that its Hueys dispatched, the unit’s motto was fitting: “Death is our business;business is good.”
    Joining the Razorbacks was an excellent career opportunity forHolder, a chance to prove his mettle with one of the Army’s showpiece units. But as he began his stint with the 120th AHC, the nineteen-year-old was swiftly losing the ability to hold his demons at bay. The fracture of his marriage to Bullock, the separation from his daughters, the memories of his brush with death near Loc Ninh, his feelings of isolation from his comrades—all these hardships combined to chip away at his fragile psyche.
    Holder was also developing an intense dislike for the Army brass. In August 1969 eight Green Berets were arrested for murdering a South Vietnamese intelligence officer whom they suspected ofspying for the North. Holder was incensed that the Army would turn on its most dedicated soldiers; were the generals really so oblivious to the nasty work of war? He likewise