Happy Veterans Day from ‘Buttercup’

If you look closely you can see the word “BUTTERCUP” on the copilot’s window next to me. In January of 2001, I departed Coast Guard Air Station San Francisco as a newly qualified First Pilot on my second counter-narcotics deployment to the Eastern Pacific aboard USCGC MORGENTHAU with my Aircraft Commander, LT Kevin Quilliam, and our crew, AVT2 Rich Allen, AMT2 Scott Bigelow, and AMT2 Duane Houdyshell.

I’d dressed up as the Powerpuff Girl Buttercup for the Air Station Halloween morale costume competition the previous fall. Since we don’t really do callsigns in the Coast Guard like the other services, the crew decided to give us callsigns for this deployment. Kevin was ‘Knightrider’ and I was ‘Buttercup’.

This was very confusing to the ship’s captain who thought it meant Buttercup from The Princess Bride. He kept saying, “As you wish,” to me, which I didn’t mind at all coming from an O6 ;-). 

Eight days into this 40-day deployment I flew my first ever ‘solo’ flight (single-pilot, with a flight mechanic in back) in the H65, 1.9 hours, mostly alone and definitely afraid, off the deck of a cutter.

The mechs rigged the audio system so we could plug in Kevin’s Walkman, or whatever it was at the time, and we listened to Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory while we cloud surfed—I mean patrolled—looking for bad guys.

We chased one boat that had jettisoned its illicit cargo, and, since we didn’t have any guns, dropped message blocks telling them ‘Follow me’ in Spanish. They actually stopped twice and read the messages before giving us the finger, continuing on their course beyond our fuel capacity, and disappearing over the horizon. Partying in Acapulco was a bonus. Loved this deployment and crew. 

Happy Veterans Day to all who served.