Not 40 feet away was the UH-1 Iroquois “Huey” helicopter he had flown on hundreds of combat missions during the Vietnam War. The very ship that had once been so full of wounded Marines that their blood had run under his seat, into the cockpit and coagulated in a rust-colored smear beneath his feet.

The same magnificent machine that had behaved so admirably while being torn and slammed by shockwave concussions from mortar rounds exploding just yards away. The exact chopper he had affectionately called the “Bell Hotel,” in reference to the company that manufactured it.

Ford would later say seeing his old ship after 40 years was, “Just like seeing home.” But in the first radiant flush of reunion the man from Okeene, Okla., expressed the inexpressible with a singular, “I’ll be doggone.”

On a recent Friday morning, in the silence of a Greene County warehouse, a helicopter pilot who became a miller, and a flying machine that became much more than the sum of its parts, reunited.

“It’s not even a machine,” Ford said as he stood back to admire it. “It was really something you strapped onto your body.

“Every part of that machine was as close to you as anything you’ve ever been around in your life. I can still remember the smell of the fuel when you hit those igniters.

“That machine was so wonderful to me, it really was. I loved everything about it. I loved the sound of the turbine when we’d start it. Everything about that aircraft just encompassed my whole being.”

“This one was on the way to the boneyard when Craig found it. To be able to pull it out, and then find the actual pilot who flew it.”

Craig LaMountain saved the Huey in 1996 from the jaws of a junkyard crusher. The government gave it to him with the understanding that he would use it as a historical teaching aid.

The Huey is now the centerpiece of a museum exhibit that LaMountain has created on his property to honor Vietnam veterans. School children and veterans alike have seen the displays of artifacts and machines from the Vietnam War, but Ford’s recent visit was unprecedented.

“Just to see Bob’s reactions when he walked in and saw the helicopter,” said LaMountain who also served in Vietnam with the Army. “He saved lives with this ship. He was one of the cowboys of Vietnam.

“His daughter said all he talked about this last week was about coming here and being reunited with his ship.”

The Huey had been an all-purpose workhorse. It attacked enemy positions, evacuated wounded from battlefields, ferried troops into combat and delivered supplies.

As Ford approached No. 754 for the first time in decades, he was drawn to two framed photographs in its cargo area. The 64-year-old former aircraft commander picked up the one that showed him standing at the front of the helicopter in 1968.

“That’s me,” Ford said quietly as he looked at the younger version of himself staring back at him. “Can you believe it?

“We had flown several missions that day, and we had just come back from a really tough one. After I got out I walked to the front and said, ‘You big son of a bitch, you got me back again.’

“My copilot said, ‘Hey boss, let me take your picture.’ I’m wearing the same uniform today as I was wearing then.”

Ford picked up the other photograph showing a gathering of eight young men, himself included. Inked across the front of their flight suits and T-shirts were their names and fate — five of the eight were either wounded or killed in action.

“A radio kid had come in with a Polaroid camera and took a few pictures,” Ford recalled. “I asked him if I could have this one, because I realized I might never be able to get all the guys together like that again.

“This guy here, Jerry McKinsey, was a great guy. During the siege of Khe Sanh he was trying to get some guys out when he was shot down and killed. His dad was the chief of police of Modesto, Calif.”

Ford had sent the photographs to LaMountain after reading a story about the helicopter that appeared in The Daily Progress in January. He felt they should be with the ship.

Toine Wyckoff, a Charlottesville resident, read the story first and sent it to her daughter-in-law, Amy Ford Bradley, who lives in Alexandria. When Ford’s daughter saw the photograph of the helicopter and the numbers 282 on its side she knew it was from her father’s unit.

“It’s that connection to my dad. We went to see the Huey at the Smithsonian and that was a real moment. But I had never seen him in the cockpit of one before.

“So to see him in the helicopter he flew in Vietnam is hard to put into words. It really is. The thing that resonates with me is that he never questioned serving in that war. It’s something I don’t want my kids to ever forget. I’m so proud of him. ”

Without straining a button on his vintage uniform, Ford climbed into the left seat where the commander sits. He reached under it, pulled a lever and slid the seat all the way forward.

“People asked me why I’d always have my seat so far forward and down,” Ford said as a smile spread across his face. “I’d tell them I made a smaller target that way.”

Ford started through the start-up sequence, explaining what he was doing as his daughter looked on from the copilot’s right seat. When he did something that made the main rotor blades waggle for the first time in how long, they beamed at each other.

“The first thing I would do after getting in a helicopter was pull this circuit breaker right here to make sure nobody accidentally turned on the windshield wipers,” Ford said. “If you wanted to make a crew chief mad, turn your windshield wipers on and scratch the Plexiglas.

“When the sun is out you can’t see through it when it’s scratched. But if bullets hit it, it wouldn’t shatter. The bullets would just make clean holes.”

Thompson smiled as he watched and listened to Ford talk to his daughter about what it was like to fly Hueys in war. He later reflected on it.

“I loved watching Bob go through the start-up sequence,” said Thompson who retired from the Army as a lieutenant colonel. “It’s good for his family, too.

“You don’t understand what people have gone through unless you hear someone talking about it. Then seeing him in the actual aircraft he flew, that really makes a big difference.

“That’s why I brought my grandkids here. They’re too young to know anything, but just to have them sit in the seat of a Huey and see the flight helmet I donated here with my name on the back of it. They’ll remember a little of it.”

As Ford looked through the scratch-free windshield of No. 754, his memory served up one of the most vivid images he came away from that war with. It occurred while he was picking up a small Army Special Forces reconnaissance team off a mountainside in Laos.

“We had two Cobra gunships supporting us,” Ford said. “The team was completely surrounded, and the incoming gunfire was just God awful.

“The last two guys got on and I lifted off, putting all the power to her. I was just starting to get some altitude when all of a sudden right in front of us a Cobra went diving straight down just shooting the sh— out of everything.

“Honest to God he was so close I winced in my seat, because I though his blades were going to hit us. He couldn’t have missed us by more than a few feet. It was absolutely unbelievable.”

The Huey was remarkably resilient and capable of enduring tremendous punishment. At different times Ford had limped them back to friendly territory with holes through the main rotor blades, through the rear rotor blade, in the fuel tank and throughout the fuselage.

“Unless you got hit in a real vital place, that thing would keep on flying,” Ford said. “One critical place I got shot was right through the 42-degree gear box.

“I was at about 500 feet, and the second I got hit the ship started shuddering and I lost about 300 feet almost instantly. It shook so violently I couldn’t read the instruments.

“I thought, ‘This is it.’ But then it smoothed out and we went on to complete the mission.”

Just a bump in the road for a Huey helicopter pilot in Vietnam. They, along with their crew chiefs and door gunners, were revered by the combat ground troops they supported. Untold numbers of Vietnam veterans are alive today because of their heroics.

Courage doesn’t mean not being scared. Ford’s year-long tour of duty was from July 1967 to July 1968. Some of his most dangerous missions were conducted during the Tet Offensive in support of Marines engaged in fierce fighting for the city of Hue.

“During the Tet Offensive I would have to go back into Hue time and again,” Ford said. “I had made it through a dozen or so missions without a break, and I was sitting on my bunk when this private comes in.

“He said, ‘Lt. Ford, you have to go back, you’re the only one who can do this mission.’ I remember getting so scared that I could hardly walk to the aircraft.

“Honest to God, I thought I was either going to pass out, cry or throw up. The only way I got over it was I diverted from the aircraft and walked over to the platoon hooch.

“I walked in and those guys looked at me like death had arrived. I said I wanted another aircraft commander to go with me on the mission. Are there any volunteers? Colburn? I liked Bart Colburn.

“He said, ‘I’ll go with you boss.’ We did the mission, and when we got back I thanked him for going. He said, ‘You did all the flying.’ I said, ‘I know, but I couldn’t have done it without you.’ ”

Joe Sumner was Ford’s crew chief on many missions flown in No. 754. The pilots flew the Hueys, but they belonged to the crew chiefs.

“Many times after a day of flight operations we’d have to work into the night to get the ship ready for the next day,” said Sumner, who lives in Georgia and works for Delta Airlines as a technical manager on the 737 aircraft. “We got real skinny over there.

“Bob Ford was a very good pilot, and he took care of the guys who worked for him. He couldn’t have been better. And that helicopter means a lot to me, too.

“I spent a year taking care of that thing, and it took care of me. We picked up a lot of wounded soldiers in it and carried them to the hospital in Da Nang or out to the hospital ships in the gulf. It saved the lives of a lot of people.”

Sumner plans to reunite with his old helicopter as well. He still has the bullet that nearly took them both out during a mission 10 miles south of Da Nang.

“We started taking fire from some sampans on a river, and I could see the green tracers coming up at us,” Sumner said. “One went right by the left side of my head.

“I heard a big bang and felt something hot on my neck. I looked to my left and there was a big hole in the side wall where the bullet went through. After we got back to Da Nang I found the bullet up by the engine.”

Ford never bothered to count the day and night missions he flew in Vietnam, but said it was no less than 1,200. He didn’t bother about medals either, and the Air Medal for valor he was awarded came as something of a fluke.

“The only reason I got the medal was because a major wanted to fly on a mission into Hue, and he wrote me up,” Ford said. “He actually went a little crazy on me.

“I had to turn his radio off, because he kept screaming, ‘We’re getting hit, we’re getting hit.’ It was a terrible situation, but it was only about a fifth as tough as most of the missions were.”

After serving three years in the Army, Ford left with the rank of captain. Within five days of being discharged he went to work for the flour milling business his grandfather, J. Lloyd Ford, started in 1906.

The former helicopter pilot was as successful in civilian life as he was in the military. He and his older brother, Bill, continue to run the family business that grinds about 20,000 bushels of wheat a day.

And like their grandfather before them, the brothers continue the family legacy of giving back to the community whenever they can. As much good as Ford has done as a civilian, he said he has never stood as proud or accomplished as much as when he was serving his country in Vietnam.

After spending a couple hours with his old warhorse, Ford said goodbye again. Outside in the sunlight he tried to sum up what he had just experienced.

“I didn’t think I would ever sit in a Huey ever, ever again,” said the executive vice president of the Shawnee Milling Company. “I never even thought about it until I read the newspaper article.

“Then it just consumed me to get back here, and look at this aircraft that meant so much to me. It represents a part of my life that was by far the most profound, and by far the most rewarding.

“Being part of a team, a crew, that flew these day in and day out for more than a thousand combat missions. It means everything. It really does.”