On the Way

California, Here We Come

Our airplanes had to be flown to the Army Depot in Stockton, California, where they would be prepared for loading on a cargo ship for a month long sea voyage. Each airplane would have the wings removed and then the wings stacked next to the fuselage would be sealed in a plastic cocoon to prevent sea air and water from corroding the metal skin and structure.

Twenty-four Bird Dogs took off from Ft. Sill’s Post Army Airfield just after daylight one Monday in August 1967. We flew in a very loose group southwest out of Oklahoma into Texas and made our first refueling stop in Hobbs, New Mexico. Then it was on to El Paso, Texas where we would RON (remain overnight). On the way I diverted slightly to overfly Carlsbad, New Mexico and the mines to the east where I worked on an underground surveying crew in the summer following my third (and last) year at Colorado School of Mines. Vertical shafts at the mines were developed to a depth of 900 feet below the surface where potash (potassium chloride) was extracted, hauled up to the plant at the surface and processed into fertilizer. The vast deposit under western Texas and southern New Mexico was once the bottom of an ancient extension of what is now the Gulf of Mexico.

After flying over the mountains of southern New Mexico and west Texas, I dropped down to about fifty feet  above the ground and flew the last hundred miles or so to El Paso chasing coyotes and jack rabbits across the flat, arid plains. El Paso, on the US side of the border, is opposite Juarez, Mexico and of course we had to visit the other country.

The next day we flew on to Palm Springs, California after a refueling stop in Tucson, Arizona. We stayed at a motel in that oasis in the desert and the next day we all split up, with orders to get the aircraft the next day to Stockton, California. I flew into San Jose, California and spent the night with an Army buddy and his wife. The next day I dropped off the airplane at the Stockton Army Depot then joined up with the other guys to fly commercially back to Ft. Sill.

Bird Dogs on the refueling ramp at Tucson International Airport

Once all the airplanes were gone, all we had to do was help the enlisted men pack up the rest of the company equipment and supplies into large, steel CONEX containers that would accompany us on the troop ship that would get us to Vietnam. After that was done and the CONEXes were loaded on trucks enroute to Stockton, all company personnel were allowed to take leave before we shipped out. I took Linda on a trip through the West in our Mustang, visiting (in Colorado) the Royal Gorge, Pikes Peak, and the Coors Brewery and School of Mines in Golden . We then drove south through the beautiful mountains to Durango where we rode the Durango-Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad through the Animas River Canyon over the route that gold and silver ore was brought from the mines in Silverton to the smelters in Durango in the late 19^th century.

We then went to the Four Corners and the Painted Desert on the way to a two-day stay at the Grand Canyon. The final stage of the two-week vacation was down to the Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, then back to Ft. Sill. Linda and I really enjoyed the time we spent with each other, with the unknown future not far from our minds.

The day finally came when we soldiers had to leave the ones we loved for the war. My mom and dad drove up from their home in Irving, Texas (having escaped New Jersey in 1961) and Linda’s mom and dad drove out from Columbia, South Carolina. After a few days of both families enjoying being together, tearful goodbyes were said, not knowing if or when we would be together again. Then back to Texas for my mom and dad and Linda to Columbia with her mom and dad and her third year at Columbia College.

Getting There

On the trip to Vietnam we used every mode of transportation available:  bus to Oklahoma City, train to Stockton, ship to Cam Ranh Bay (Vietnam), Air Force airplane to Qui Nhon, and truck, jeep and finally foot to our airfield at Phu Hiep on the South China Sea.

Our ship, the “General William Wiegle”, was a Liberty ship built in World War II to carry cargo, and recently reconfigured to carry troops as well as cargo. There were about 1500 troops on board, most of which were two airborne battalions, one from the 82^nd and one from the 101^st Airborne divisions. The ship left the pier at Stockton  and passed under the Golden Gate Bridge on October 3, 1967. Three weeks later it docked at Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam.

Another troop ship passing us in the middle of the Pacific

During the voyage the ship put in for a 24-hour maintenance stop at Subic Bay Naval Base in the Philippines. About six or eight airborne troops felt that their chances of surviving the shark-infested  waters of Subic Bay were better than surviving a year in Vietnam, so they jumped overboard and started to swim away, The Navy picked them up and threw them in jail, only to be returned to their units later in Vietnam.

It so happened that the night we got into Subic was nickel beer night at the Navy Officers Club. While the details of the incident are fuzzy in my mind, I was told that I played a mean set of drums and that one of my friends was dancing with an Admiral’s wife when we were not so politely asked to leave.

One of our sergeants had acquired a Doberman Pinscher in Oklahoma and brought him along with us. We called him “Sarge” and he wore a coat on which was stitched our unit patch, his name, and his “rank” of sergeant. He lived in a doghouse on the upper deck and enlisted men were detailed to walk and feed him daily. Sarge was used to us and liked us but he didn’t care for the airborne guys. When one came along and tried to pet him, Sarge bit him. The next day we held a ceremony and promoted him to Sergeant Major, the highest enlisted rank in the Army.

On board ship we were indoctrinated into what would be the ritual everyone would follow in Vietnam  - malaria pills on every Wednesday. The large, brown pills were to be taken weekly, and to some that was the way to keep track of what day it was.

The policy of the Army was that each man was sent to Vietnam for 12 months, and the tour of duty started the day one physically departed the United States, whether by airplane or ship.  Everyone had a DEROS date, the “day of expected return from overseas”, and everyone counted down to that day. Those of us on the ship had been on “duty” for three weeks when we first reached Vietnam. Therefore, everyone who went over with a unit had the same DEROS, so they all would leave on the same day 12 months later (if they survived, of course). This caused a policy of “infusion”, which meant that individuals were assigned to other units so there would be men with different DEROS dates and everyone did not leave the unit at once. This is how, after about a week at Phu Hiep, I came to be reassigned to the 219^th Aviation Company, the Headhunters, based at Camp Holloway Army Airfield near Pleiku in the Central Highlands.

Home for the next 11 months - Holloway Army Airfield

During a large going away party for me and others at the Phu Hiep Officers Club, Viet Cong sappers sneaked onto the airfield and blew up a helicopter. The explosion caused the entire base to go on alert for a possible attack. I ran back to my hooch, grabbed my steel helmet and M-16, loaded the one cartridge I could find, and crawled between the sandbags and wall of the building. I was prepared to defend myself with one round. Welcome to the war!