Every day of Kenn Hill’s two tours in Vietnam, he woke up and hoped he would make it alive through the day.
Hill flew combat missions as a helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War.
“People that tell you they weren’t scared aren’t telling you the truth,” the 79-year-old Wichitan said. “You couldn’t help but be scared. The thing was you just relied on your training and did what you’d been trained to do. That’s all you could do.”
The decorated Vietnam veteran will join about 40 other veterans for an honor flight to Washington, D.C., Nov. 1 to Nov. 2 to visit their memorials and reflect on them.
The trip was arranged and paid for by Honor Flight DFW, part of a network of volunteers with a mission to give vets an opportunity to view their memorials. The group’s website is HonorFlightDFW.org.
“I’m very, very honored to go,” Hill said. “Everybody that I’ve talked to says it’s an incredible experience that you won’t ever forget.”
Honor flights struggling
His anticipation is tempered with sadness because honor flights are not as easy to get off the ground as they were.
World War II vets are in their 90s or older, and their participation is dwindling, along with the funding.
“We need to help if we can,” Hill said.
Honor Flight DFW Vice President Kristi Etheredge said it was easier to drum up donations when the trips were made up entirely of World War II vets.
About 250 people are on the nonprofit group’s waiting list for a trip, which costs $1,100 for one veteran, Etheredge said.
In-country
Hill, who is married to Shirley Craft, has roots in Petrolia and attended Midwestern State University and then the University of Texas. He was commissioned as an officer and was a captain when he left the Army. He volunteered to serve.
“My family had a long history of military service, and I felt like it was a good thing for me to do because I wanted to fly,” Hill said.
He was 24 when he went to Vietnam on his first tour in 1964 with the 121st Assault Helicopter Company in Vietnam.
“The world famous Soc Trang Tigers, that’s what it said above our hanger,” Hill said.
In a black-and-white photo from those days, he and his buddies are lounging on the grass around a helicopter, seemingly without a care in the world.
“When you weren’t flying, you enjoyed yourself and tried to make the best of a bad thing,” he said.
When Hill arrived to the 121st, he had to report in to the company commander, whose office was in a sheet metal building.
“There was a fence around the front, and when I got to the fence, I looked over, and there was a tiger on a leash,” he said.
Hill thought, “I’ve got to go in the door, and I don’t know how long that leash is.”
The tiger was named Tuffy. The 121st shipped him back to the United States where he lived out his life in the Toledo Zoo in Ohio, Hill said.
“That was my first encounter with Vietnam after I flew in from Saigon,” Hill said. “I thought, what had I gotten myself into.”
Up in the air
During his first tour, pilots were limited to 100 hours of combat time a month, Hill said.
“That lasted until about six months, and then we were so short of pilots, they raised it to 110, and then it went to 120. Then they took it off,” he said.
The pilot shortage was acute
“We had a high mortality rate,” he said.
They flew combat missions almost daily, Hill said. But he was more afraid at night during the mortaring.
“When I was flying, at least I felt like I had a little bit of control,” he said.
In another photo from his Vietnam days, a young Hill wears a flight helmet and aviator shades, a cigarette hanging out of one side of his mouth. He looks determined and unmistakably cool.
He and three other pilots he trained with in flight school were assigned to the same company in Vietnam, a rare occurrence.
“We flew our first tour together,” Hill said. “You lived with them. You ate with them. You flew with them. You get very close to people in those circumstances.”
While one has passed away, the others are in touch.
“I still pick up the phone,” Hill said. “We call. We talk.”
He said he was one of the lucky ones. He came back without Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or impairments from the war.
“I just had good coping skills and did OK,” Hill said.
In his second tour, he flew for the 13th Combat Aviation Battalion out of Can Tho on the Mekong River, he said. Hill was 28 when he returned to the United States.
Life after war
“When I came home in 1968, I went to work for Ross Perot,” Hill said. “He loved hiring military guys coming back from Vietnam.”
Craft said the late Perot was “an angel” about hiring veterans.
“He gave a lot of guys a place to come home to,” Craft, who also worked for Perot, said.
Perot liked people that came from small towns, Hill said.
“He liked people that had worked while they were in college, and he liked people that had been in the military. He was very smart about that.”
It was a tumultuous time in American history when Vietnam vets might be shunned or even demonized when they came back home.
Hill did not experience that treatment.
“Because I got out and went right to work for Ross, I was never exposed to any negative things about the war,” he said.
Hill has always felt sorry for those who did.
“I don’t know how I would have reacted if I had been exposed to it. I would have punched somebody out,” he said.
Hill has had a prosperous career working for Perot. He is a mentor for information technology solutions startup, GuideIT, a Perot Company. Based in the Dallas area, GuideIT has 45 employees in Wichita Falls.
Hill and Craft have lived all over the United States and moved to Wichita Falls over 20 years ago.
“We chose to live here when I got ready to retire, but then I didn’t retire,” Hill said. “I’m going to work until at least 80, maybe 90.”
(Source: Trish Choate, Wichata Falls Time Record News- 20/10/2019)
