Because my travel agent was the Department of Defense and the plane I was assigned to had some serious issues with prolonged flight, I arrived in Vietnam, Republic of, in the morning of the 25th of December, 1965...about three days late. Yep, Christmas Day. Everyone who had anything to do with receiving the hundred or so soldiers who gratefully stepped off the rear ramp (doesn't that just say a whole lot about how we felt about our aircraft? That we were grateful to be on the ground, not in it, even if that ground was RVN?) of that errant C-141 was drunk on their butts. The very first thing they did was to put us into a formation and start counting off from my left. They stopped about three guys from me and took that bunch off to load onto helicopters...they were going to An Khe, the home of the 1st Cav...no matter where they thought they were going, they were used as emergency replacements for the 7th Cav. The month before the 7th had been involved in the first "stand and fight" battle with the NVA (watch "We Were Soldiers" to get part of the story...or read "We Were Soldiers Once...And Young" for the whole story) and they needed to fill the depleted ranks. But I wander...

I got some of the best advice ever from a drunk buck sergeant that afternoon, just before he put me on guard duty. He said in effect, "Don't worry about the bullet that has your name on it...that one will find you no matter where you hide or what you do; your name's on it, you're gonna get it. Over here what you have to watch out for are all the bullets flying around marked "To Whom It May Concern." I took that wisdom to heart and tried hard to avoid being exposed any more than was absolutely necessary.

When I got to my "gaining unit", the 593rd Signal Company, I thought avoidance would be easy in a signal unit. Then I got word on what my job would be. I was going to be the new motor messenger for the 593rd. In a lot of signal units that wouldn't be so bad but the 593rd was the Saigon/Cholon/Bien Hoa/Long Binh telephone company. We had switchboards all over the area and tons of paper passed between them: reports, work orders, rosters, work schedules, all manner of paper. It was before all the electronic wizardry we have today...everything was on paper, most of it was classified, and all of it had to be hand-carried. I was the telephone company's mailman, so to speak. Which required me to start early every morning, driving from switchboard to switchboard, message center to message center, and any other unscheduled stops that were added to my route. So much for avoiding exposure. Every day I was O D (Out Dere) amongst the hundreds of thousands of denizens of the greater Saigon area, north as far as Bien Hoa, south as far as the Rice Mill ( a switchboard south of Cholon), and any other area I would be sent to. Some I visited every day, some only once a week, some only when service was requested, but every day in every different route I went, I spent a lot of time in Injun country.

That is how I spent my year...I didn't walk the bush, didn't go looking for "Charlie", didn't do much to further the war effort that way. But every day I drove out of the compound and into harm's way...or potentially, anyway. So when I got down to my last month my First Sergeant pulled me off the road and told me to work in the mail room...a reward of sorts: less exposure, easy job. It was an ideal arrangement for me; I was glad to be "safe" in the compound every day, and my hours were drastically reduced. So naturally, I screwed it up.

I have always had a bit of a twisted sense of humor. I guess not everyone gets it when I poke fun at them. Sometimes it has resulted in bruises and such...sometimes them, sometimes me. It was always easy to pick on the new guys; they were so green and gullible. One of the new guys got a package from home...well...what he got by the time it got to us was a smashed and leaking cardboard box wrapped in shreds of brown paper and tied with mailing cord (back in the day, that's the way things were done). The only trace of anything that had once been in the box were some cookie crumbs and a few crumpled photos. The address label was still intact and readable, though. So when the guy came to pick up his mail, I handed him the remains of the box and told him to thank his mom; the cookies were great! He stood there without a word for a second looking like I had killed his puppy, then he welled up and turned away. I giggled and thought that was that. It wasn't. the next day I was summoned before the commander. I had to answer for tampering with the US Mail. I explained the whole thing, trying hard not to giggle as I did it. While the chain of command didn't find anything they could charge me with, the did fail to see the humor in the same vein as I did. So I was booted out of the mail room.

That is how I came to spend my last month in-country on the permanent guard force, twelve-on-twelve-off, sitting in a makeshift guard tower all night long under a huge spot light that screamed to any one who cared, "RIGHT HERE!!! HERE IS YOUR AIMING POINT...RIGHT HERE!!!"