I was at Phu Bai. Got there not long after it was built, as an 05H20.
I arrived there March 196. Flew in on a TWA flight to Vietnam. The rest of
my class arrived two hours prior to me on a Pan Am jet. I got bumped off
the Pan Am by a sixty day wonder who was in a hurry to make a name for
himself. Their plane got hit on approach by 50 cal. rounds and lost
a wing on the runway.
When we got to Phu Bai on a C121, everyone got to line up for his
GG shot in the ass except for five of us, we went straight to operations
to start work, and left our bags laying. I worked for the next 137 days,
12 hours a day before I got a R&R. By the way, I got my shot right out of
the icebox, GOOD and THICK, several days later.
I lived in "C" row, brand new, just set up and ALL the air conditioners worked. Kept my room about 65 or it felt like it when you went in, of course, you about passed out when you left.We had the ARVNs there to patrol the outside till about June when the USMC came to take over. They were really some nice guys but we felt like they hated our guts. They did the fighting and we stayed inside what we called "Gods half acre".
We had a fantastic general watching over us, Gen. Westmoreland.
He came to see us one time because one of our guys sent hem a message
about a new major who thought we should work 12 hours in operations
then pull 4 hour details on sand bags every day. He got that straightened
out real fast.
In the year 1965 when I arrived, there were not to many of us there.
The ARVN's would pass by on foot patrol every afternoon, going down
Hwy 1. We would sit on the star bunkers and yell "Bomdeball" (spelling
wayoff), their name for their rice beer, holding up our beer bottles and
they would fire their gun in the air. Our 1st Sargent found one of
their men laying naked in our barbwire one morning, still alive. When he
called the ARVN's to get him out, they drug him out and shot him in the
head. He had been caught the night before trying to go AWOL, they threw
him in there to let the others see what would happen.
As I said before, the marines came to our aid about three months later. The ARVN's were still around and not much help to the Marines. One day, the Marines were just off Hwy 1 between Phu Bai and Hue building a sandbag bunker when an ARVN started firing on them with a machine gun. This was in the middle of the day, none of the Marines got shot but after they called the ARVN camp, a jeep pulled up to the ARVN bunker, a ARVN officer got out, went inside, shot the other ARVN and drove off.
We slept every night to the song of the 105"s and 155"s going off across the road. Every once in a while, a short load would wipe out the observation post on top of the hill looking over the trail below. They would go up the hill and rebuild the post the next day.
We had a price on our heads there, 10,000 American dollars for one of
us alive. When we went to Hue for our needs, the Marines stood guard
while we took care of business. We had to get our name on the list to
go and it was not often. Of course, when the Marines got there, the
price went double from what it was.
We were completely wiped out twice while I was there, that is per the N. Vietnam radio. It is really a funny feeling to hear on your headset that Phu Bai has just been wiped out, every last man was killed. We would over and over tell our troops to not go into a certain place or they would find resistance in a certain area and they would not listen. After we lost a lot of men, they started asking us were the Cong were.
In or about Feb. 1966, a very large force was coming at us. The unit
was my assignment and the operator I was copying got frustrated
with control and switched from coded to plain text. Our translator was
standing behind me and as I typed Phu Bai on the paper, I got the word.
There were three Battlions of Vietcong coming at us. We called in the
Navy battle ship but they could not get in range, water too shallow.
The Marines went out in the choppers and drew fire to locate the enemy
and DaNang sent fighters to take care of the situation. We lost one plane
and pilot in the battle. It was a strange sight to see our marine choppers
leading a squad of fighters to the location. They let me go outside
to watch the fight.
I am happy to say in all that mess, I did pick up a mayday from one of our pilots going down in N. Vietnam. I was the only one to get him and we got a fix before he stopped his transmission. He was picked up, safe and thankful to someone he didnt know.. since we did not exist.
I got extended one month, waiting for some of the FNG's to relieve us.
I left in April 1966, went to Germany to finish my 4 years. Went to Bad
Abling, lasted there for about six month (great place), got drawn out of
a hat and set to Herzo Base (bad place) to finish. I left May 1968,
ETS'ed back to North Carolina.
There were a lot of good times there, more bad times than I want to
remember. To this day, I have not gone to the Vietnam wall. I can not
bring myself to go see all these names of young men and women that gave
their lives for such a poor reason. I love my country and I always
hoped everyone else did also. I have been around the world and there is
no better place than home.
Hope I hear for some of the others and some of my old friends. I am glad someone is trying to tell the story. If the "know it all's" in Washington had stayed out of the mess, we could of all come back with some honor and a whole lot less dead men. When I left for Vietnam, it was being protested by the fantastic President we have now.How did we get into a situation were Americans are so weak and forgetful?
-Jim Lairson email:jlairson@worldnet.att.net