My Vietnam
January 24-December 11, 1970
Note the location of Cam Ranh Bay peninsula where I was stationed.
A typical late 1960’s scene (1967)of US Army barracks on Cam Ranh Bay just before I arrived in early 1970.
Excuse us for living, but not all of us who were drafted and sent to the Vietnam War were in the “boonies,” the jungle, fighting as combat soldiers. - -“South Vietnam” and the “Vietnam Conflict,” to be precise. For every combat soldier, there were 11 of us serving as support troops. At the height of our troop strength, there were 550,000 of us. You can do the math as to the numbers involved in actual combat. “Occupying” territory turned out to be our main mission and biggest contribution. To make the point, upon our exit in 1973, the government and country of South Vietnam fell to Communist North Vietnam by 1975 with the fall of Saigon.
This photo captures the core of my daily existence in Vietnam, an air conditioned desk job as a Military Policeman, US Army. That’s me on the left at my desk. Don’t recall the name of that familiar faced visitor sitting desk right. Tebout! That’s it! You can almost read his name on his right pocket! Can’t make out his rank in the photo.
I was part of those support troops assigned to Battalion Headquarters Company of the 97th MP Battalion, Cam Ranh Bay, South Vietnam. We were under the command of the 18th Military Police Brigade. I was head clerk in the S-4 Section. We were in charge of &/or accountable for equipment for the supply rooms, motor pools, arms rooms, communications shacks, and the mess halls for our Headquarters Company and the four MP companies under our charge. I arrived at a rank of PFC and left a Specialist Fourth Class. (I passed up the chance to be promoted to Sergeant but that’s a story in itself.) In between I became a “one man show” compiling reports on the number and status of all Battalion radios, vehicles, weapons, and ammunition, among other responsibilities. In the S-4 Office there was a Captain in charge, a Staff Sergeant, a typist clerk, and “Fontana.” The typist clerk saved me, for I had lied my way into the job saying, “Yes, I DID type my college term papers.” No one asked how proficient nor tested my skills! But the best way to convey my status around the S-4 Office would be to quote the Group command office, between our office & Brigade Headquarters, when they called to ask a question. It was one of those rare occasions when I was off duty. The Officer shouted over the telephone, “Doesn’t anyone there know anything except Fontana?” I did OK, I guess, receiving a Bronze Star for “meritorious service.”
Cam Ranh is a peninsula across the Bay from the mainland, characterized by low lying sand hills & sand galore as far as the eye can see, with sparse vegetation/plant life and trees. This is THE MAIN INTERSECTION of all Cam Ranh, aptly named “Times Square” with street sign to prove it & two traffic signals! One quarter mile up the hill to the right was the 97th MP Battalion.
Cam Ranh Bay was our duty station, a supply depot for the most part. I called it America’s “Fifty-First State”! The US Army occupied most of Cam Ranh Bay. Both the US Navy and the US Air Force had their respective isolated installations on opposite ends of the peninsula. Cam Ranh is 17 miles long and 2 miles wide, connected to the mainland by a bridge. It had the feel of an island. I never did find that land bridge making it a peninsula!
This was our Battalion Headquarters. I marked the photo with the designated names of buildings. Thus, with this photo in their hands, I could refer to places in letters to the folks back home. (In one letter I included a small handful of sand for authenticity!….not appreciated I suspected!)
Place this photo to the left of the photo above & it completes the picture. You can see the “repeated buildings” photo center right. This was the “studio lot” for my Vietnam escapades & anecdotes that were more like a “M*A*S*H TV series experience for me!
When I arrived in late January 1970, we worked 7 days a week at our office jobs, 7:00 AM to 5:00 PM. After 6 months, we were given 1 day off every 2 weeks! The one exception was time off to attend religious services on weekends! This gave new meaning to the phrase, “He got religion!” But the idea was that if you were working, there was less time to get in trouble. We cannot compare our modest contributions to those of the 58,300 troops who gave their lives and the 153,303 maimed and injured fighting in the jungles of Vietnam. We had it relatively good and we knew it! - -Set office hours, evenings off, a different outdoor movie every night, a TV and reading room, and an “Enlisted Men’s Club” or bar with live bands in the Headquarters area.
There was the occasional BBQ with steaks & beer in the Headquarters area or on the beach at the South China Sea. Pictured here with raised beer in hand is the always warm & friendly Staff Sergeant Harrison West of Indiana & to his left, back the equally congenial Specialist Fourth Class Edward Parlier of California. They were assigned to get the steaks going on the grills at a celebration at the South China Sea. We had just passed with commendations a big “Inspection” of the entire Battalion operation by a real General & his staff.
There was even a freshwater lake for time-off with sailboats, catamarans, canoes, rowboats, & even a motor boat for water skiing! Yep, that’s me at “Tiger Lake,” where I learned to sail! (We were always leery that a Viet Cong sniper might be lurking in the treed hillside & take a pot-shot at us. It never happened.)
That’s me, second from the left. - -Can’t recall the others by name. On at least 5 or 6 missions, we were called upon to pull regular MP duty away from our Battalion Headquarters desks. Packing .45 calibre pistols, we pulled duty in Cam Ranh, on the mainland, & helicoptered to remote MP Company locations.
To get a more balanced picture of my Vietnam service, it wasn’t all peaches and cream. We had Viet Cong “sappers” or guerrilla fighters or snipers who, in dark of night, swam or crawled across the waters from the mainland to Cam Ranh and blew up a docked ammo ship and a giant oil tank and the ammo depot. And then there were the occasional rocket attacks. You would hear a blast, near or far, and off went the sirens. - -Maybe 6 or 7 rocket attacks over my 12 months there.
Be it guerrilla attacks or rocket attacks, we followed the usual SOP, Standard Operating Procedure, putting on steel helmet, flak jacket (bullet proof vest), reporting to the arms room to be issued an M-16 rifle and ammo. You then either reported to your duty station or to a bunker according to your preordained orders. This was considered a “Red Alert” and would last for a few hours to as long as through the night toward dawn until the “all clear” siren. Surprisingly, we felt relatively safe from day to day around these attacks which usually occurred in the evening. In fact, we Enlisted Men saw great humor in our Officers’ barracks being hit by a rocket one night, since no one was in the building at the time. The worst thought, probably unjustified, was lying on your bunk at night imagining a Viet Cong guerrilla fighter crawling on the floor into our barracks. - “Never happen!” We were on the second floor of the barracks! Ha!
And so, this sets the scene for my Vietnam experience which more closely resembled an episode from “M*A*S*H” and the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, the 1970 movie & the TV series from 1972 to 1983! Take another look above at the two accompanying photos of the 97th MP Battalion Headquarters area. That’s where many a laugh and high jinx took place. It is not the popular thing to admit with the great loss of life there, but this too was a part of the Vietnam story in Cam Ranh and, I am certain, elsewhere. This was my Vietnam, 1970.
“Excuse Us For Living” will from time to time tell you about “More Vietnam” and just maybe you will laugh along with me.
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