IN CONVENTIONAL WARFARE an infantry division is deployed with two others in a Corps. Their combat elements, infantry, artillery, and armor, are deployed in a line of battle, and their support elements, logistics and administration, are arrayed behind in an area known as the rear echelons. Their combined front line usually faces an enemy similarly deployed and the two opposing forces maneuver and engage each other seeking victory. We didn't fight the war in Vietnam conventionally. We had neither front lines or rear echelons. We were all scattered about the countryside attempting to hold out against the enemy like a man trying to hold down scattered papers in a windstorm. 

We lived and operated out of base camps. Our division headquarters together with the headquarters for several of our support battalions were based at Camp Bearcat. We had three brigades, the 39th, the 47th, and the 60th Infantries, each with its own base camp. Each brigade had multiple battalions with multiple companies, all, with few exceptions, having their own base camps. Platoons and artillery batteries frequently operated from separate fire bases.

You have to see this picture clearly in your minds to understand all that follows. Unlike World War II, we couldn't have convoys of trucks rushing supplies from ports to the front lines. In most cases, supplies had to be airlifted over enemy strongholds to scattered units. Communications had to be relayed between microwave antenna towers located at each base camp or by wireless radio. Landlines were vulnerable to any man with a pair of wire cutters.

Those of us who served in Vietnam often reflected that life inside the base camps, surrounded by earthen berms and barbed wire, was like living in a prison camp. The enemy were our prison guards. They shot anyone who ventured outside. Given the opportunity, they also shot those who remained in their cells.

In the coming days I will explain how we not only coped, but also waged war effectively against an enemy that lurked in the midst of the civilian population we were attempting to protect. Mine is neither the majority nor the popular view. However, you may find it amusing.

Every war is steeped in politics, even the popular ones. Take World War II as an example. Almost no one regrets our involvement and yet, the vast majority of Americans were opposed to becoming involved in it. Franklin Roosevelt was elected President on his sworn opposition to our country becoming involved in another “foreign war.” Of course, immediately after making that promise he turned to his advisers and asked, “It's not a foreign war if we're attacked, is it?” Just how prescient was that?

Every war is fought with words as well as guns and bullets. Take for example, the War on Terror. I hope that President Obama will forgive me for writing that. He has forbidden the use of that phrase in his Administration. Yet, here we are fighting a war with terrorists regardless of what we call it. Regardless, the most important battles are being fought in the court of public opinion.  

The same was true in Vietnam. There we fought an invasion, but were never allowed to name it as such. We called it a “counterinsurgency” as though we were trying to protect an established government from discontented rebels. In truth, we were fighting a communist invasion sponsored by the Soviet Union abetted by Communist China. Unfortunately, we had no will to fight that war. We preferred to let it remain “cold.”

How do I know this? It's a long story. It will take several weeks and months to tell, one posting at a time. Feel free to disagree. Most people do. However, the truth is in the history, not in the news media, not in our schools, and definitely not in our political posturings.

Ultimately, you may ask the same question I have come to ask: Should we have fought the war in Vietnam more conventionally? I hear some of you saying, "Isn't the more important question whether or not we should have fought it at all?" Hopefully, when we're done, you'll learn that the answer to that question was answered long ago, and the answer might not be what you expect or agree with.

MY FIRST ENCOUNTER with a latrine was during my first trip to Boy Scout camp when I was about eleven years old. One look, one smell was all it took. I held it in all week. Seriously, all week. My father had to exercise the plumber's helper vigorously after my first visit to the bathroom when I got home. Fortunately, I outgrew my aversion to primitive privies by the time I got to Vietnam. There's no way I could have abstained for thirteen months.

Oh, come on now. Get over it. I had to broach this subject sooner or later. I know you wanted to know. How did we attend to the routine functions that are common to all of us, regardless of race, religion, or rank? Yes, even generals do it. In fact that reminds me of one of the more interesting stories that circulated around Vietnam during the war.

A sergeant was seated upon a throne at USARV Headquarters (United States Army, Vietnam) in Saigon when someone entered the stall next to him. After a few minutes the sergeant began fanning the air with his newspaper. A few moments later he began commenting aloud, “Damn, what the hell did you eat!”

He continued commenting on the smell rising from the stall next to him using more colorful language until his neighbor made ready to leave. He was startled when the door to his stall was yanked open and he was face-to-face with an angry gentleman wearing two stars on his collar. “Well, you don't smell like no bed of roses yourself, sergeant,” the general exclaimed and left.

At least the sergeant and the general had the benefit of modern conveniences in Saigon. I doubt if they would have noticed each other had they been in a base camp where we all used latrines.

We had urinals scattered around the camp. They were simply barrels sunk into the ground and filled with stones. A three-sided shed with a galvanized tin roof provided some degree of modesty from observation by helicopters passing overhead and anyone else except those directly behind you. Fortunately, there were few women. There were a few and I remember feeling some discomfort whenever one walked past as I was relieving myself.

Generally speaking, you are no more vulnerable than when you are using such a facility. It is difficult to react, to run, or to defend yourself when you're relieving yourself. One of my clerk-typists learned this lesson when the casing from a poorly aimed illumination round dropped inside our base camp. It fell beside him while he was in mid-stream. He began to run without pausing to stem the flow or secure his equipment. Even worse, he ran in the wrong direction – into the urinal.

Our thrones sat atop sawed-off barrels that were accessed from a hatch at the back of the latrines. The “shit” detail made the rounds regularly, exchanging empty ones for full ones. The full ones were taken outside downwind of the base camp. The soldiers added fuel oil and ignited them. Truthfully, those latrines weren't as bad as the ones at Boy Scout camp. Indeed, they were better maintained than most port-o-potties that I've seen.

Which all brings me to the story of Shit-for-Brains. Sorry, that was the name we used for it. It was a monkey, the pet of a major who shared our hooch. I'm pretty sure he called it something else. We didn't care.

I don't know where the major got it, but the animal was getting on in years, and monkeys tend to get surly with age. We complained about the damage he caused but his “master” was the senior officer in the hooch. However, even he “lost it” one day when we returned to find everything turned over or spilled out, and our mattresses torn apart. At first, the major defended it while we complained. The major refused to get rid of it until the monkey defecated on his shoulder. I don't know which made him more angry: The monkey's feces on his back or us laughing at him.

Before you accuse me of being insensitive to cruelty, please remember the degree to which we were provoked. We laughed as he grabbed the varmint and knocked it senseless with his fist. He shouted a few obscenities and carried the limp primate to the latrine and tossed it into one of the barrels. We sensed that something remarkable was about to happen, so we grabbed chairs and arranged them to be prepared for the next act.

A chief warrant officer (who shall remain unnamed for decency's sake) made his way unsteadily from the officer's club where he had been drinking, to the stage. Newspaper in hand, he entered. He must have been too focused on his mission to notice us.

The door closed.

All was quiet.

Then came the shout.

Next came the warrant officer bursting from the door. His pants were around his ankles. The monkey was hanging onto the only handle he could find in the dark.

I didn't know a man could run that fast bow-legged while straddling a snarling ape.

Men in the field had to squat wherever they could, whenever they were reasonably secure from attack. Interestingly, it was never a good idea to relieve oneself near a defensive position or when they were waiting for the enemy in ambush. Because of our radically different diets, the waste of Americans and Vietnamese have different odors, making it easy to smell your enemy at great distances. For the same reason, we also had to use soaps, shampoos, shaving creams, and deodorants without perfumes of any kind.

Although I didn't spend much time in the field, I was happy to pick up a can of G.I. Talcum powder. I didn't care that it was odorless. I only cared that it kept me dry at night. I spread a liberal amount between my mattress and my sheet when I made my bed with fresh bed linens each week. Then, just before I climbed in, I would pluck the sheet and a cloud of talc would filter through the sheet and keep me cool and dry all night.

I'm sure that after reading this, some grunt is going to hate us REMFs even more.

GI'S IN VIETNAM referred to shelters as hooches – a spelling variation of hotch, meaning booze or alcoholic beverages – but having no apparent connection to the hotchy-kootchy, a sensual form of a belly dance. During my tour of duty, I spent some nights in bunkers or sleeping in a ditch. Unlike the front line grunts, I spent most in a somewhat comfortable shelter. None of thehooches we occupied were in any way sensualbut most were supplied with hotch. 

After checking in with the Adjutant General, the AG Sergeant Major escorted me to the 9th Admin Company orderly room where I received a flak vest, steel helmet, and an M16 rifle. I was also fitted for jungle fatigues and boots.

I was then shown to the mess hall and officers club. The last stop was my first billet.

My first shelters in Vietnam, both at the reception center in Long Binh and the 9th Admin Company Transient Officer's Quarters at Camp Bearcat, headquarters for the 9th Infantry Division, were wood frame buildings built on concrete slabs. The walls were simple frames covered in screen and overlaid with widely spaced slats that provided some semblance of privacy without blocking the breeze. The roofs were corrugated, galvanized steel.

On my first night at Camp Bearcat, I unpacked my bags and used a horizontal member of the building's frame as a shelf. Shortly after taps, a nearby 8” howitzer battery went to work. I dove from my cot to catch a falling bottle of after shave lotion – yes, I took after shave to Vietnam – and succeeded despite being wrapped in mosquito netting that I dragged with me. 

The building seemed to breath – its walls expanding and contracting – with each salvo.

The sound of rain on a galvanized roof can be very loud, especially during a monsoon. It was like living inside a metal drum. I remember shouting bids to my partner while playing bridge during a storm. Even the howitzers firing nearby could not compete with the noise of rain drumming on the roof.

I moved from there to a wabtok that I shared with five other officers. A wabtok is an interesting structure having a wooden floor elevated atop metal shipping cases for large caliber artillery shells, resembling sections of sewer pipes. A flimsy wood frame covered in screening to keep out insects forms the walls, and a tent – GP (General Purpose) Medium – serves as the roof. The walls of the tent are stretched out on all four sides to serve as awnings. 

The Division Adjutant Generals offices were also housed in wabtoks. They were arranged in pairs, end-to-end, along a road near the division headquarters building, close to the wabtok that housed the office of the division G1, the division's chief administrative officer. Unfortunately, the canvas tents rotted quickly in the tropical climate and were threadbare by the time the monsoon rains began. They sagged with puddles and I sent an enlisted man with a broom to empty them before the tent collapsed. Unfortunately, he used the stick end of the broom to try and push the tent up where it was sagging. The broom handle burst the puddle like a balloon and the poor lad was drenched. I couldn't stop laughing long enough to be angry.

The division had arrived in country en masse about four months ahead of me and construction of more permanent facilities was well underway. The division's Finance Offices were already completed – a row of the single story buildings similar to the transient officers quarters. It was a clear indicator of who was considered more important.

However, when the engineers finally got around to building our permanent quarters – about six months after my arrival – we were treated to two-story versions of the type of building that the Finance Corps worked in. We felt truly honored until we saw how quickly the termites could gnaw their way through a 2x4 – about a boardfoot per day. Also, it was unsettling when we realized that our new offices extended well above the base camp's protective berm and we were sitting targets for snipers. At night, we exited using the door away from the base camp perimeter even though that forced us to retrace our steps on the ground to reach the urinals (fodder for a later posting).

When the two-story company grade officers quarters were constructed, each of us was provided an 8' x 10' room with a screen door exit. However, each room shared an open doorway with the one it backed up to so that we would all have at least two exits – in case of fire or attack. CW2 (Chief Warrant Officer) Ray Cimbalnik and I had adjoining rooms and decided to share one as a bedroom and the other as a living room. We requisitioned four risers and stacked our cots as bunk beds. I slept on the upper one and only regretted the choice on one occasion when 144 mm rockets slammed into our base camp. It was about three months following the Tet Offensive of 1968 and hadn't heard a shot fired in anger until North Vietnamese Army (NVA) units reached the Delta and were able to resume the war that the Viet Cong had failed to survive. Ray and I both awoke sitting on the edges of our beds. The first rocket had awakened us. We didn't realize why until we heard the second explosion. Ray began to rise from his bed and my knees became hook over his shoulders and he dragged me with him This wouldn't have been a problem except that my mattress had slipped below the edge of the metal frame of the cot and my family jewels were hooked. I grabbed Ray by the ears and dragged him back. He didn't have enough hair to serve as a handle.

Our living room contained four chairs, a card table covered with a woolen Army blanket, and a counter containing a small refrigerator, a hot plate, and a small TV. We covered the end walls with pin ups extracted from Playboy magazines. A 3” x 5” ad hidden among the photos asked, “Had any lately?” We could always tell when someone examining the photos found that sign.

Most Vietnamese hooches in the countryside were walled with wood or wattle and had thatched roofs. The floors were packed dirt and mama-sans swept them daily with palm fronds. They separated the fibers of the leaves so that they were finer than any straw or plastic broom. Many had walls clad with flattened beer and soda cans. It was amazing to see what they could fabricate from the trash heaps that we accumulated at our base camps – including weapons.

City homes were mostly built of clay bricks or cinder blocks. Most used bamboo for structural support in the same way that we use steel. It didn't rust and was impervious to termites. Although the Vietnamese could not build higher than a couple of stories using bamboo in place of steel girders, their buildings were amazingly strong and long lasting.

One of the most common phrases heard came from new arrivals when seeing a Vietnamese hooch for the first time. “I wish my mom/sister/wife/girlfriend could see this.” Yes, we all came back appreciating the homes we had in America, no matter how poor.

ALL REPLACEMENT OFFICERS were welcomed to the 9th Infantry Division by Colonel Bell, the division's G-1 – the division commanding general's staff officer in charge of personnel, discipline, and administrative matters. His NCOIC (Non-Commissioned Officer In Charge) laid my 201 (Personnel) file on the desk in front of him as I saluted and reported for duty. He opened the file and looked at the top sheet attached to the left inside cover to find my MOS (Military Occupational Specialty). It was the only thing that interested him. He found just what he was looking for, 1542 – Infantry Platoon Leader. Platoon leaders were in short supply and many platoons were led by junior grade NCOs (Non-commissioned Officers).

As soon as I saw his smile I knew the mistake he had made. “Sorry, sir,” I corrected him and pointed out the entry on the next line. 2210 – Personnel Officer. I have beaten myself up for more than forty years for opening my mouth. Had I remained silent, I might have been sent to one of the combat battalions and, by the time anyone and figured it out, I would have been dead, wounded, or cured of the survivor's guilt I have carried all these years. Then again, as my wife is quick to remind me, I might have also missed the joys of marriage to her, our children, and our grandchildren. Of course, she's right.

Colonel Bell's smile faded and he replied politely, “Of course, the Adjutant General has been expecting you.”

With that he had his NCOIC escort me to the 9th Infantry Division's Office of the Adjutant General and my fate was sealed. A short walk took me from the G-1's wabtok to a row of similar structures housing the offices of the Adjutant General.

A wabtok is a tent stretched atop a wooden floor set a couple of feet above the ground. A simple frame covered in screen provides a barrier to insects without impeding the flow of air. A screen door front and rear provide the only means of access, however, it wouldn't take much to burst through the screen in case of an emergency. Standard issue gun-metal grey desks lined both sides of a clear aisle through the center. Other wabtoks, separate ones, served as housing for enlisted men and officers. They served their purpose until the monsoon season began and we discovered that the canvas tents had rotted away in the heat and humidity.

I was introduced in quick succession to the Adjutant General, Lieutenant Colonel Traylor, his deputy, Major Reed, and the Chief Administrative Officer, Major Rome Smyth. Next stop was my first desk: Chief of the Casualty Reporting Branch. With an NCO and six clerks, I was responsible for the administrative processing of battle casualties for the division: Notification of the next of kin and initiating requests for replacements. We also had to prepare letters of condolence that would be sent to the next of kin on behalf of the division commanding general, Major General Julian J. Ewell at that time, the division chaplain, and the casualty's unit commander. Every letter had to be perfect. No erasures were permitted.

My office was next to the Adjutant General's, in the same wabtok. I guess that he liked to keep a close watch on new second lieutenants, especially those who had been trained as infantry officers inasmuch as he had problems with my predecessor.

I spent my first few hours there getting to know my men and their responsibilities and watching the workflow as the first casualty report was telephoned in from the field. It seemed surreal sitting at a desk, just like the one I had left at Social Security, surrounded by clerks, again like Social Security, in the middle of a war zone. I felt completely out of place. The survivor's guilt hadn't set in yet. It was lurking in the future. 

I DIDN'T SEE another officer at the Long Binh Reception Center until my second morning there. A captain was sitting at the breakfast table in the officer's mess when I walked in. I joined him. I glanced at his branch insignia as I sat down and saw that he was a doctor. That helped explained the fact that he was muttering to himself in self-diagnosis as he took his own pulse. A glimmer of awareness grew in his eyes and he picked up the salt shaker. After removing the top, he poured a healthy dollop on the side of his hand and ate it – the salt, not the hand. He smiled and offered some to me. “It's for the heat,” he explained. “We're dehydrating.”

Speak for yourself, I thought to myself. I was already acclimatizing. Indeed, I became so acclimatized to the heat after thirteen months in Vietnam, I nearly froze when I was reassigned to Hawaii.

The truth is that I was becoming concerned about my status. The sergeant in the office hadn't heard anything about me other than the message he delivered when I arrived that I wasn't going to the 185th Military Intelligence Company as stipulated in my orders. Furthermore, I hadn't seen another officer since I left Oakland two or three days previously. It was hard to account for the time. We had been in the air almost a full day and we had crossed the International Date Line. Whatever day it was, I knew that there was a plane arriving every 20 minutes after ours. Twenty-four hours. Three planes an hour. Maybe 300 troops in each plane. Where were the officers?

By the time the doctor arrived, I had been anxiously scanning the area for officers. As ridiculous as it sounds, it was beginning to look like they had sent me to Vietnam to command American forces. Yes, it not only sounds ridiculous, but also is ridiculous. Of course, I didn't expect to command the Army in Vietnam. It was just nice to find another officer even if he was only a doctor. It was nice to have someone else to talk to.

Unfortunately, we didn't even have a chance to finish breakfast together. The orderly came and told me that the sergeant had my orders.

I later learned that a lieutenant serving in the Adjutant General's office at the 9th Infantry Division had sufficiently annoyed the AG until they had him reassigned. He was sent to fill my post at the 185th and I was sent to replace him at the 9th Infantry Division. As it turns out, I too annoyed the old man for what turned out to be approximately the same reasons. We were both trained infantry officers who had little respect for “serving in the rear with the gear.”

Generally, platoon leaders who survived six months in combat were reassigned to staff and support duty in the rear if they could be spared and a replacement was available. They rarely were. It seemed that most had “burned out” in that time. Sure, enlisted personnel could expect to serve their full twelve months in a combat role, however, they didn't carry the same responsibilities as platoon leaders. It's one thing to face death. It's quite another to face death and be responsible for sending others in harm's way.

Interestingly, there was a safety valve for enlisted men, too. Those twice-wounded would be reassigned to staff and support positions in the rear again with the same qualifiers – if they could be spared and replacements were available. Once the Army in Vietnam built up to about a half-million men, the flow of replacements could be diverted to this purpose more often.

But, I digress... (I always want to write that). The sergeant handed me new orders and asked me to hop on a truck full of replacements headed for the 9th Infantry Division Headquarters Base Camp. It was waiting outside and the orderly already had my duffle bag loaded on board. As the only officer, I was invited to sit up front with the driver.

The first thing that I noticed was that everybody in Vietnam wore flak vests and steel helmets all the time. They carried weapons wherever they went. The replacements on the truck, including me, still wore our khaki uniforms with the starch already leached from them by the heat, humidity, and our own sweat. I don't know about the rest of them, but I felt my lack of armor and armament as soon as we passed out through the gates of the Long Binh perimeter.

The 9th Infantry Division Headquarters was located at Camp Bearcat, about twelve miles east of Long Binh.  Most of the road was packed clay.  Some of it was paved with asphalt that had worn away at the sides leaving a track too narrow for vehicles traveling in opposite directions to pass without grinding along the rubble-strewn shoulders. This was especially true for military vehicles. Civilian traffic seemed to be comprised mostly of bicycles and three-wheeled motor scooters carrying families and cargo. An occasional French-built Citreon DS-19 whizzed past giving me a new respect for these durable vehicles.

Most of the countryside was filled with rice paddies in those first miles after leaving the Army base camp and the town of Long Binh behind. However, as we drew nearer to Bearcat, we were flanked by rubber plantations on both sides of the road. What little comfort I had been able to achieve during the ride evaporated when I realized that the foliage could easily conceal an ambush in waiting for us.

Rubber trees are planted in long rows to facilitate their maintenance and harvesting the sap from pots at the base of each tree. I discovered that my neck was beginning to spasm because I was attempting to look down each row for hidden enemies as we passed at about thirty miles per hour. I flushed with embarrassment as I glanced to my left and spotted the driver smirking. There was no way he wasn't enjoying himself at the lieutenant's discomfort.

THE BUSES THAT picked us up from the charter jet at the airstrip near Bien Hoa transported us to the U.S. Army Reception Center at Long Binh. Like Bien Hoa, the base at Long Binh was a work in progress. In time it would grow to house the U.S. Army Headquarters in Vietnam (USARV). 

My first impressions were pretty sparse. We arrived in the middle of the night. We passed between two bunkers with M-60 machine guns on top manned by Military Policemen (MPs). Inside the base was dimly lit by well scattered lights mounted high on poles.

We stopped in front of a flimsy structure with a corrugated metal roof and the sergeant who had been acting as our “tour guide” called me to the front. “This is where you get off, sir.” The bus drove away leaving me standing on a packed clay surface, facing an enlisted man who smiled and invited me to follow him inside where another sergeant waited at a wooden counter with a copy of my orders sitting in front of him.

He gave me a flicker of a welcoming smile and told me that my orders had been changed. I wasn't going to the 185th Military Intelligence Company in Saigon. “Where am I going?” I asked.

The sergeant shrugged. “Maybe we'll know more in the morning.”

He didn't wait for me to conjure up any more questions. “Specialist Jones will take you to your quarters,” he said nodding towards the enlisted man who had led me in from the bus.

“My dufflebag?” I asked.

“Already on your bunk, sir,” the enlisted man responded. “Just follow me.”

Specialist Jones led me to the transient officers quarters about a hundred yards from the office. True to his word, Jones already had my dufflebag waiting for me. I cannot imagine how it beat me there considering the speed with which we deplaned and were whisked to the Reception Center. That was on impressive system they had working there.

Jones took me to the front door and pointed to another building next to the office. “That's the officer's mess, sir,” he informed me. “The PX is over there,” he said pointing to another, larger building about three hundred yards away.

With that, Jones departed and I found my self alone. I know that some officers have difficulty keeping apart from the enlisted men. Our Executive Officer in Basic Combat Training used to wander among us seemingly attempting to make some kind of a connection but not really sure just how “friendly” he should be with the troops. I never had that problem. I was significantly older than most of them and was naturally separated from the younger men. Thus, it's not surprising that I hadn't even thought to look around me on the airplane for someone to socialize with. There's also the fact that I was focused on my pain from all the injections I had received just before we departed. I wasn't good company for anyone.

Morning was approaching as I settled in and I didn't feel like sleeping. I got plenty of that on the plane. So, I looked around. The building that served as the Transient Officer's Quarters was a simple frame structure covered in screening and widely spaced clapboards that let the air circulate freely. It had a corrugated metal roof and screen doors. Double-decked pipe frame bunks lined both sides. All were empty.

Stepping outside, the sky to the east was just beginning to brighten a little. The sun wasn't yet visible, yet I could feel the heat and humidity beginning to build. I knew I was in trouble. I decided to escape to the mess hall and see if it was air conditioned. It was.

I discovered that the mess hall was open 24/7, with coffee and pastries always on hand. The mess sergeant told me to help myself and informed me that breakfast would be served in about an hour, beginning at 06:00. I wasn't in a hurry to eat, but the coffee was appreciated.

Army coffee is akin to “cowboy” coffee – thick enough to float a horseshoe. It serves as food as well as a beverage. I really didn't start drinking coffee until I entered the Army. I take mine with cream and sugar. A friend of mine in later years, who had served in Korea as an enlisted man, told me that all officers took their coffee with cream and sugar. Enlisted personnel drank theirs black because the officers had used all the cream and sugar before it got to them.

I hid out in the mess hall as long as I could. I darted to the office every hour to check on my new orders but the sergeant dismissed me with a wave after the third time. He was getting bored with me.

Each time I went outside, I felt the heat weighing down on me as though it had substance. I began hanging around under the eave of the mess hall roof. I knew I had to stay outside and begin acclimatizing myself, or I'd never be able to function in Vietnam. After a few minutes of that, I abandoned the shade and attempted a run to the Post Exchange (PX). I only made it about half of the three hundred yards there before I was forced to sit on a stump and catch my breath. I looked back to the mess hall and then again to the PX trying to decide which was closer. Inasmuch as I didn't know if the PX had air conditioning and I knew that the mess hall did, my choice was simple.

WE DESCENDED INTO Vietnam in the middle of the night. It was disconcerting to look out the window when the pilot pulled back on the throttles and see nothing below. Anyone who has traveled by airplane has seen civilization below, even from cruising altitude, marked with clusters of lights connected to each other by strings of lights. I assumed that a cloud layer might have been masking the view below, but dismissed that idea when I began to see the ocean shimmering with a ghostly glow.

Soon we passed over a coastline and even that evidence was stolen from my view. I must have popped my ears two or three times before we heard and felt the landing gear deploy. Our angle of approach was much steeper than anything I had experienced before on any other flight. I didn't know until later that it was called a tactical approach dropping steeply rather than gliding gently to the landing. The idea was to avoid presenting an easy target to enemy gunners hiding in the countryside around the airstrip.

I didn't see any lights until the wheels were skimming the surface of the runway and the edge lights began flashing by. Necks craned all around me as we taxied off the runway. We were all looking for the terminal. There wasn't any.

The doors opened as soon as the plane stopped, even before the engines were shut down and ground personnel rushed on board and began directing us to move quickly. There was no milling around in the aisle as you see on most planes when they stop at a terminal. We were instructed to remain in our seats until directed to stand, grab our carryons, and move quickly off the plane. Every door had been opened and stairways had been pushed up to each one.

I couldn't help pausing in the doorway when it was my turn to exit. It was disorienting. I couldn't see anything other than the steps in front of me, dimly illuminated by small lamps on each side. All of the runway and taxiway lights had been extinguished before the airplane even came to a stop.

A sergeant standing to one side urged me to keep moving. Rank meant nothing. The only thing that mattered was to empty the airplane as quickly as possible. I don't think we could have done it any faster had they deployed the inflatable emergency evacuation ramps.

Another sergeant at the bottom of the stairway hurried us on our way towards a line of parked buses visible only by the dim light of their interior dome lights shining through their windows. A quick glance back at the plane showed me that every cargo hatch was open and teams of men had almost emptied it of everything already.

I trotted towards the buses following the line of men ahead of me. Behind me, I could hear the planes engines restarting and it began to taxi back onto the runway when the last men had descended the stairways and they had been pulled just a few feet away from the fuselage. The men pushing the stairways from the front doors of the aircraft had to rush to keep from having them toppled over by the passing wings. It was roaring down the runway and lifting off before we were all on board the buses which departed just as quickly as each was loaded.

They knew we had questions. A sergeant stood at the front of our bus explaining. The airfield we had just landed at was near the town of Bien Hoa. It was little more than an airstrip and a few shacks. The enemy would begin dropping mortar rounds on the airplanes if they remained on the ground long enough for them to set their sights. The planes were flying on to Thailand where their crews would rest before making the return flight with a stop at Ton Sun Hhut Air Force Base in Saigon to pick up passengers returning to the United States.

I looked out the window at the night shrouded countryside when the sergeant paused in his explanation. The windows were covered in heavy wire mesh (to prevent anyone from tossing a grenade inside). The air blowing through the bus from its open windows was warm and heavy with the smell of humidity and rotting vegetation.

Welcome to Vietnam. Welcome to the war. 

I REMEMBER ONE of the young candidates in Infantry Officer Candidate School who thought that Vietnam was somewhere in Europe. I wish it were. It would have been a helluva lot shorter flight.

World Airways was one of several airlines that was chartering jets to the U.S. Air Force to transport the troops to Vietnam during the buildup in 1967. The photo above is one I snapped at Travis Air Force Base just before I boarded. 

It was packed inside. There were no "cabins." It was just one long metal tube with seats crammed into every available space, and everyone of them filled. Luckily, as an officer, I was able to board first and get a window seat on the left side of the plane. That put my left arm, still smarting from from seventeen shots that I received minutes before we boarded, in the space next to the window where it wouldn't bump against anything.

There was no functioning entertainment system. No music and definitely no movies. A young soldier sitting near me asked a stewardess. She replied that she was the "entertainment." She wasn't much good at it.

Travis was built with extra long and wide runways to accommodate B-52 bombers. We needed them. As our plane began to roll we looked at each other. It didn't take an experienced flyer to realize that we were carrying the maximum load. The plane floated on its suspension. Every seam in the taxiway caused the planed to dip and float slowly back.  The cargo compartments must have been even fuller than the passenger compartment. 

When we turned onto the runway, the pilot took us to the very end and made a u-turn so that we could take advantage of every inch of pavement to accelerate and get airborne. He set the brakes and revved up the engines until they were screaming with white hot fury. The plane rolled from side-to-side and we expected to take off as though launched from an aircraft carrier catapult. Instead, when the pilot released the brakes, we surged ahead like a giant glob of honey pouring from a jar.

We were worried. Well, I was. I had flown enough to know that we needed speed to lift off. However, I swear that birds were passing us on the runway. And they were walking. 

Towards the end of the runway there were signs warning that we were approaching the end. (I'm not saying the end of what.) 5 - 4 - 3... I don't know how far apart they were, but the plane still hadn't rotated - the nose wheel was still on the ground - when we passed "2." 

I don't think it ever rotated. I believe that the pilot simply raised the landing gear like a woman might raise her skirts to cross a puddle, and we cleared the chainlink fence at the end of the runway.

We circled until we gained enough altitude to clear the mountains circling Travis before heading northwest to Alaska. The planes headed for Vietnam alternated routes with the first stop being either Alaska or Hawaii. My plane went from Alaska to Japan to Guam to Wake Island to Bien Hoa, Vietnam.

We were allowed to deplane and stretch our legs at each stop. I was comatose most of the time - almost 24 hours total - sleeping off a hangover and recovering some feeling in my arm.

I ARRIVED IN Oakland, California, on the date specified in my orders and reported to the Army Terminal for transportation to Vietnam. The sergeant at the reception desk scanned my orders, handed them back, and told me to return the following morning.

What was I supposed to do? He gave me a tired look and explained that he didn't have a seat for me that day. He might have one the next. I guess he had repeated that explanation countless times every day and didn't have the patience to recite it for another idiot lieutenant.

I knew a girl who had moved to San Francisco about the time I joined the Army and I decided to look her up. She grabbed her boyfriend and a friend to be my "date," and we went out on the town. They had me return my rental car and threw my dufflebag in the trunk of their car. The party lasted until they delivered me back to Oakland the next morning.

They waited while I checked in and learned that they still didn't have a seat on a flight for me. I was again instructed to come back the next day.

It was April, 1967, and a chartered flight was taking off every twenty minutes, 24/7, and I still couldn't get a seat. It was the height of the Vietnam "buildup."

The party continued another 24 hours and I was begging for a seat the next morning. I didn't think I could survive another day. If I was going to die, please let it be in Vietnam where I could at least be decorated with a Purple Heart.

The last thing I remember was a kindly policeman coaxing me to return the stone cupid I was carrying out of some park, somewhere. The sergeant at the Oakland Army Terminal took pity and I joined a queue headed towards a bus.

Unfortunately, I was yanked out of line at the last minute. A corpsman asked if I had my vaccination record. No. Well, it wasn't in my medical records either and I had to be re-inoculated before I could get on the plane. The bus was loading as the corpsman pumped me with seventeen different injections, all in the left arm. I decided that I needed at least one good arm.

It was not a comfortable ride from there to Travis Air Force Base where our plane waited. 

IN THE BEGINNING, we believed President Johnson when he said that there was an important mission for us in South Vietnam. President Eisenhower had warned us that all the nations in Southeast Asia would fall like dominoes if Vietnam fell to the Communists. President Kennedy sent advisers there to train the South Vietnamese to fight for themselves, but they were outgunned, out-maneuvered, and out-smarted by the Soviet-backed North Vietnamese. So, when President Johnson said it was time to go, we went. Only later did some begin to question his judgment.

If you've been following this blog, you already know that I spent a year getting ready to go as an infantry officer, but was commissioned into the Adjutant General's Corps at the last minute. Along with my commission, I was handed orders to report to the 185th Military Intelligence Company in Saigon after a brief - six week - stint at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana to learn how to be an administrative officer.

During a week layover at home, I reconnected with my girlfriend - the one who had sent me a "Dear John" while in Officer Candidate School - and we "reconnected." Yes, I was really that dumb. (That last statement shouldn't require any explanation if you think about it or if you have been following my blog for any time.)

When I arrived at Ben Harrison, I was told that there was only one room left at the Bachelor Officer's Quarters on post. I slipped away and didn't return until after another lieutenant had taken it. That way I was able to collect a substantial amount of TDY (Temporary Duty) money for living off post, and was able to replenish my savings that were sorely depleted after I had to buy new uniforms as an officer.

I met up with three other lieutenants who had graduated from Officer Candidate School with me and we found a two-bedroom apartment to rent by the week. It was located in a building filled with a surprising number of young women. Only one of the other lieutenants was married and we became popular additions to the community. 

The girls took pity on us and we were treated to many "home cooked" meals. Unfortunately, most were pretty bad and the guys insisted that I do the cooking. (I had been cooking since I was eleven years old.)

A trio of young women lived across the hall and I became friends with one of them. Unfortunately, I maintained a hands off policy in deference to the girl back home (yeah, the one who had sent me the "Dear John" and who would repeat the performance while I was in Vietnam. Now you must understand the part about me being really dumb.)

After learning the intricacies of Army paperwork and the Functional Filing System (aren't you just dying to know the intimate details - the filing system, not the blonde), I went back home to dump my excess gear and have another week with my girl friend.