Great article Mike! One thing that stuck out to me was when the author said that he told the Army that he would fly anything except the Chinook. Well, yeah...he was young. Too young to know that you don't tell the military what you DON'T want to do...because that's what you'll definitely be doing. I had some experience with that.
Great article! I was honored to have been able to pin my Son's wings on at Ft. Rucker. He was 3rd in his class and got his pick of birds and went with the Apache. He did 6 deployments 3 on the ground in infantry and 3 flying in Afghanistan. He also was picked for a TDY to HI, where they were trying to test feasibility of flying Apache's off of ships.
I never flew helicopters. I rode in them, they dropped us off and quickly departed. The best part was seeing them come back to pick you up and bring you back! After 3 years I transferred to a gentler branch of the military--the Air Force.