It was January 22, 1966, at 0400 (4 AM for civilians, for you marines that is when Mickey's big hand is on the twelve and his little hand is on the four). I had arrived in-country on Christmas Day 1965 and pulled guard duty that night (the new arrivals were the only ones sober enough to do it...subject for another article sometime). I spent New Years at the 69th Signal compound on Tan san Nhut AFB...in a fox hole because the Air Force guys fired their pistols in the air to celebrate the arrival of 1966 and the Army guys thought they were being attacked. I arrived at my permanent station, an old villa in the town of Gia Dinh the first week of January and began to settle into my daily routine.
Things were very peaceful, and the best thing was that I got to drive a jeep all over town all day. I was a motor messenger for the Saigon-Cholon telephone company...the 593rd Signal Company. I got up at 0345 ( that is 3:45 AM...oh never mind) got to take a shower downstairs pre tripped my jeep, drove to Tan San Nhut to 69 Sig to pick up my first packet...and the rest of the day was spent moving papers from one switchboard to another...or to units served by us or message centers in the area. Considering other jobs that were available in Vietnam, I felt pretty lucky.
We didn't have a mess hall so we were payed to eat elsewhere and being on the road all day, I was able to get a lot of variety in my diet. Some mornings some of the other guys in the headquarters platoon would ride with me on my first route so they could eat at one of the hotel messes in the city. I was 18...in-country...had a beaut of a job...and no one was shooting at me. I really thought that this was a pretty good way to spend a war.
On the 22nd of January I woke up lazy. At 0345 I talked myself into skipping the shower rationalizing that most GIs in-country didn't get to take a shower every day...or week...or month...so I could reset the alarm and catch another 15 minutes sleep. Since I spent the day virtually alone...no one would notice or care.
At about 0350 a small man leaned his bicycle up against the outside wall of the building I was sleeping in...in which I was asleep. The bicycle was stuffed with about 25lbs of plastic explosive. The little man ran away and at 0400 sort of...the bike exploded. The explosion blew a hole in the wall about 5 ft by 3 ft. under the stairs. The stairway redirected the blast so that it cleaned out the whole downstairs. The stairs were concrete and they were blown away from the wall...the shower stall was in the next room adjacent the stairs...it was pretty well trashed with pieces of brick blasted all through it and the pipes all twisted up and broken. There was a staff sergeant sleeping against the wall under the stairs where the hole was.
Upstairs when the blast went off I felt the floor heave and the walls shake then immediately there was powdered concrete and smoke in the air. Eight of us shared what was once a standard sized bedroom. The sanest and most mature of us began to call out each of our names...at first it was kind of hard to hear...but we quickly determined that all of us on the second floor were alive and uninjured. The mature guy grabbed me and said we had to go downstairs and check on the others.
The stairs were wobbly, not what you expect from a concrete staircase, and disorienting. The smoke and dust were much worse downstairs. We had to feel around to find anything. I told my buddy that the sergeant wasn't in his bed...and neither was his bed. He was silent for a moment then told me he had found him...on the far side of the building. Another sergeant was supposed to be there but rarely was...we couldn't find him but really didn't expect to.
Well, the rest of the world began to show up shortly after we found the sergeant. Flashlights didn't help much, they just made cones of lighter colored dust. I became aware that the whole rest of the compound was running around with rifles and shouting and generally sounding pretty intense. I didn't feel intense...I don't remember how I felt. At first it didn't occur to me to check on my buddies in the room with me...I was hearing a couple of women from outside the compound screaming and crying and thinking that it was pretty heartless to hurt their own people to get at us. As soon as bosses started showing up I was assigned to guard the entrance to the building and keep out unauthorized personnel. I didn't know who was or wasn't authorized so I kept everyone out and that seemed to work ok until the commander showed up. He assured me that he was authorized.
The rest of the morning was kind of a haze. I helped with the clean up for a while until the First Sergeant found me and told me I had to get started on my message routes. He also told me to clean up first. I got my shaving kit and went into the bathroom to clean up and saw what had happened there for the first time. I looked at the mess the shower stall was in and realized that if I hadn't chosen to be lazy...well...there wasn't much room in that stall for all that damage and a skinny 18 year old, too. I found a piece of mirror large enough to shave in and caught a glimpse of a gray haired, gray skinned, skinny old man with flecks of flesh and blood on his face. It was me. I cleaned him up and made him look more like I was used to and sent him off to do his job.
Every thing changed that morning. I had been foolish to think that I had a quiet little corner of the war where it was peaceful and safe. What I had was a lull. There would be several more along the way. There would also be several more learning experiences...as the man said...days of boredom punctuated by minutes of sheer terror. I came face to face with my own mortality. I received the first of many lessons about fear...I would never have gone down those stairs without my buddy calling me out to help him...about leadership...I would never have gone down those stairs without my buddy calling me out to help him...about managing fear...you can be scared spitless and still do what has to be done...and doing scary things...it is scary.
This small little piece of the war was my initiation into the real deal. I know the exact date because the staff sergeant is on the Wall and besides...two days later I turned 19. There were camera crews there from one of the networks...there were print stories about it...but funny thing is...as I contemplated whether to write this particular story or not...I tried to research the event...and couldn't find it anywhere...how 'bout that.