Retired Lt. Col. Don Hull flew Huey helicopters during two tours in Vietnam. He often wonders about the men and women he transported. Photo: Trent Penny/The Anniston Star
Flying injured men to safety in Vietnam, waiting for a war against the Soviets and an invasion of the Dominican Republic are all behind him now.
Memorial Day will pass for him, as it's done for years. He'll still be in Calhoun County, watching for the security of judges, attorneys, suspects, convicts and ordinary visitors at the Calhoun County Courthouse.
He lost the crate that held the memorabilia of a military life years ago, but that's not so important to him, he said. It matters more to his son, Mark Hull, a professor and published historian.
His purpose in the Army was contrary to the goal of war. Instead of killing people, he was saving them.
"I sure would like to know what happened to those guys," he said of the wounded he carried in his helicopter.
He flew tiny dragonfly-like helicopters in Korea, with two injured people on the side. Women gave birth in his helicopter as he flew them to the hospital. And men died in it in Vietnam.
He was there in Germany during the Berlin buildup, when NATO was expecting the Soviet Union to pour across the border in a solid wave of helicopters, jets, tanks and men.
He flew in Korea, supporting South Korean and American troops.
But he says his largest involvement in American history would be in a small, jungle-covered nation, a remnant of European imperialism.
It didn't mean much to Americans in the 1960s. Ask someone to find it on a map, and it wouldn't even trigger.
But it would turn the nation upside down.
Vietnam.
His Huey helicopter bore the red cross of a medical helicopter, and the rear of the aircraft was often red with the blood of wounded men. He was up front, convincing a flying brick to remain in the air and go where he wanted it to.
Vietnam was only one part of his life, and not one of the three things he is most proud of. He's proud of his family: his wife, Jane, and son, Mark. He's proud of his education. And he's proud of his military time.
Mark Hull is a former college professor now, a published author on military history. He spent months in Ireland, writing a book on Irish spies for the Nazis. A copy occupies space on a coffee table in the Hulls' family room.
Don Hull, 75, and his wife both know almost every moment of their son's life, and speak of his work in academia, far removed from the service and work of his father.
Hull, himself, began working in 2000 for the sheriff office as a part-time deputy. Calhoun County Sheriff Larry Amerson said Hull has stopped several attempted escapes from the courthouse and has been a model deputy.
"He's faithful, he gets to work early, he stays late, he cares about what he's doing," Amerson said. "I can't use enough positive terms to speak of him.
"Only time I ever had a complaint on him was (from) one of the guys he tackled and took down."
The memories of his Army service still follow him, held behind his pale blue eyes. He wasn't afraid of the gunfire, he said. It was unexpected things, like landing in the ocean, that scared him. Getting hurt wasn't a problem, either. He had tried to dodge a machine gun nest as he rescued wounded. Apparently not well enough. A round hit something, possibly an oil line, and the engine suddenly quit over the South China Sea.
"It got real quiet all of a sudden," he said.
An airplane will glide if it loses power. A helicopter drops like a rock, with only a spinning rotor to slow its descent. One man jumped and was killed by the rotors.
He brought the aircraft down to meet the ocean.
Hull "landed it like a feather," if a controlled crash with a massive hunk of metal can be called such.
He brought the belly of the helicopter in line with the water. Dragged by the weight of the rotor head, engine and the shattered remains of the rotors, the helicopter flipped over, with Hull still inside. But he made his way out the door and began swimming.
"Where we landed I'd seen monstrous sharks," he said, casually.
Fortunately, none were drawn by the blood in the water from the wounded men.
Most of his patients did not have life vests, so his crew had to make do. He held on to a second lieutenant as they swam a quarter of a mile to an outcropping, where they waited until they were evacuated.
He said he flew more than 2,000 men to safety. Not all of his trips were pulling the gravely injured from a field cut in the jungle coated with fire. Sometimes it was a man with a feces-covered stake through his foot or vomiting from some major intestinal parasite.
His fellow deputy, Fouad Aide, is a two-tour Vietnam veteran. He simply said Hull is a "hero," something the older man tried to wave off.
Hull keeps the memories and attention on the people he helped, both those who made it and those who didn't.
He hasn't seen many of his passengers since then. He rarely saw his patients in the helicopter, although he often wondered what had happened to them. Did they make it?
How injured were they afterward? It would be interesting to know, he said.
A pilot in a Huey helicopter is almost completely disconnected from the back. The pilot gets in through a door in the front, and the only connection is a narrow path between the two pilots' seats.
Time has worn away some of the memories, but many remain.
He still remembers missing his wife and young son. That separation was one the hardest things about the war, he said. If he was single, staying in a foreign nation, an ocean away from America, would have been no problem. It was his duty and what he had been trained for.
There was no e-mail, and it could take two weeks to get a letter. Phone calls were unstable, and "you were never sure if it was going to be two minutes or 15 minutes," Jane Hull said.
Her husband would stand at the station at 2 or 3 in the morning, hoping he could get a call through to home.
"He is one of the kindest, unselfish ... just good, just good inside," she said.
Now he works at the county courthouse, manning the metal detector and watching over courtrooms.
"Don always has friends," Jane said.
She still regards him with the love-entranced eyes of the newly married.
But now he's retired, living in a house in Saks, talking about his son.
The box that held his memorabilia is long gone lost in some move.
ABOUT DON HULL
• Part-time Calhoun County deputy
• Army veteran
• Resident of Ohatchee
FAMILY: Jane (wife), son, Mark
EXPERIENCE: Flew helicopters in Korea, Germany, Vietnam. Joined the Sheriff's Office in 2000.
