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We never dropped the dye markers out of the slick Herks when I flew them, but we did throw one in the fountain a our hotel in Yuma, AZ several years ago. We were out there dropping some of the guys from the HALO school. The Raddisson Inn folks were none too pleased with us.
Now for the Desert Duck story. One of my all time favorites!
Back before political correctness became the order of the day, taking trophies from other squadrons and branches of service was a part of military life. “Souvenir hunting” was a favorite past time and largely accepted. It was always done in good fun and if you took something from another squadron, they usually got it back.
During the summer of 1997, my crew was flying the Might Hercules out of Al Karj Air Base in Saudi Arabia. We were doing our annual ninety day rotation in support of Operation Southern Watch. One afternoon we delivered some cargo to Manama, Bahrain. There is a U.S. Navy helicopter squadron stationed there. I believe they are either HC-6 or HC-8 but I don’t remember for sure. Anyhow, they are called the “Desert Ducks”.
My flight engineer came walking out of the Navy hanger and told me that he had found me the perfect souvenir, but he didn’t think I was brave enough to go take it. I followed him to the hanger where he showed me a zinc chromate green, two foot tall statue of a duck, made out of concrete, sitting on top of a desk. I went back to the Herk and got my backpack, then walked back over to the duck. With my engineer playing lookout, I quickly raked the duck off into my backpack. This is when I found out that the duck weighed about 75 or 80 pounds. The backpack hit the ground with a loud noise, but nobody seemed to notice. I hoisted it over my shoulder and headed back out to the plane. Some of the concrete on one of his legs had broken away when I dropped him in the hanger and the rebar was showing but otherwise he was ok. When we got back to Al Karj, I put the duck in our tent, under my bunk.
Now, tent life is pretty boring and people have a tendency to do all sorts of weird stuff to occupy their time. One of the more popular things to do is tie a person to their bunk with parachute cord while they are sleeping and carry them outside for everybody to laugh at. I awoke one morning just as my bunk was being picked up, held by my easily entertained tent mates. As they headed outside, with me strapped down to the bunk, one of the guys tripped over the concrete duck that had been under my bunk. He broke most of his toes and I was dumped off in the sand, still tied up.
For the next couple of months, we carried the duck every time we flew a mission. Just before we rotated back to the states, we flew one last mission into Manama, Bahrain. While I was loading the plane, a Navy Captain walked up the cargo ramp. He asked if I had flown this plane to this airfield on a certain date. I looked at my logbook and told him that we had. He then asked if I knew anything about a duck. I told him that I knew they waddled when they walked and said quack but that was about the extent of my knowledge. He didn’t think that was nearly as funny as I did and told me that their mascot was a green concrete duck and it had been stolen. I made a few comments about that being a stupid mascot and he told me that somebody had stolen it on the date in question and that since my crew had been at the airfield that day we were suspects. I assured him that we hadn’t stolen his stupid duck and then he asked if I had any idea who took it. There was a RAF Herk parked a couple of spots over from us. I told the Captain that it was probably the Brits that took his precious duck, because they had also been on his base that day and they were basically vagrants that would steal the coins from a dead man’s eyes. He thought that suggestion had merit and he walked down the ramp to go visit with the Brits. Had he walked through the crew entrance door at either point, he would have seen his big green duck tied to the emergency escape step on the flight deck.
Over the next year or so, somebody from the squadron carried that dang duck all over the world. Everywhere we went, we took a picture of him in front of a prominent land mark or something more interesting. He has been on six continents, carried to the top of the Eiffel tower, sat in front of the statue of liberty, flown in “Red Flag” in Las Vegas, surrounded by strippers in Florida, tied to a surf board in Hawaii, sat in bed with prostitutes in the former Soviet Union, on safari in Africa, laid out on the ground beside unconscious heroin addicts in Amsterdam and sat on the bar at just about every drinking establishment we entered, all over the world. Every time we took the duck somewhere, we took a picture of it. These pictures were sent ,from time to time, to the U.S. Navy helicopter squadron in Manama, Bahrain; usually with a letter from the duck telling of his travels.
Eventually, the duck got too heavy to carry around and was getting to beat up from being dropped and bumped into things. He sat in our squadron for another year or so before “somebody I know” carried him to his parent’s house in Texas. When they sold the place and moved to Oklahoma a few years ago, they carried the duck with them. He is now being used as a door stop.
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Brad
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