Letter from Sgt. Earl Shollenberger (USASA ret.)

To the veterans of the 335th RRC:

I was in Tay ninh/Cu Chi with the 25th Div. when the 9th came in country. Got in a run-in with a Lt. (which wasn't tooo healthy for a career guy with a family) so volunteered for the 335th to replace SFC Stirling who was killed in a mortar attack at Dong Tam. Capt. Givler sent me down there so I became the acting Plt Ldr. Had a GREAT bunch of kids, and I showed them how to "play the Army game" and before long we were the "shining star" detachment. (Very simple tactic: Support your troops, respect your troops, give them the credit and let them do their thing) We tried everything and most of it worked. Fantastic SecCom analyst, Spec. Baker and our "tracking" ditty bopper (Sp5 Wacey or Wiley ???) and a helluva maintenance man (McGregor???) We got so good, Lt Zachar at Tan An, came downto observe our procedures, - quite simple - (worked our asses off from dawn to dusk and then got a new palette of beer). GREAT, GREAT kids!!

I say that because I was a 43 year old SFC at the time. Now 72, and was a Merchant Marine in WW2. (In an Antwerp dry-dock with our ass end being repaired from a mine during the Battle of the Bulge), Fought the "War of Occupation" in Germany from "52-56", after opening Bad Aibling (328th Comm Recon), then the 332nd at Heilbronn, Bamberg, and Hof, but I had good duty with roving Strategic DF sites at Roetz and Straubing, then Vint Hill, Clark AFB (Philippines), NSA School, Harrogate, England, (Then, with 6 years of weekly rotating shifts and 100-man platoons, "frozen MOS" SGT (E-6), unsuccessful Warrant application) I said to the (now) "Ex", We're gonna live like civilians as Field Rep in Philly for three years". So I became one of those "silver-tongued", (but stupid) "recruiters" (560 guys a gawdam battalion of naive, virile American boys). Then "Nam", and then direct inter-theater transfer to Bad Aibling as MSG Opns Sgt for more than three years until I retired in 1971. ( I opened Bad Aibling in August, 1952, as a PFC and nearly closed it (advanced team for Augsburg was on post before I retired as Opns NCOIC.
I was in Germany when the three Dong Tam Detachment members were ambushed near Tan An. Sfc Taylor, my replacement was one of them.

Memories (so MANY): Lt Zachar became Capt Zachar, my Bad Aibling Opn Officer, and later the youngest post-Vietnam bird Colonel. Sfc Franklin, who I knew in England and met in Vietnam when he gave me a tour of his "caribou" as head of his airborne team. Ernie Jones (cook at Bad Aibling and the 372nd at Cu Chi) who burned to death in his mobile home in Alexandria, VA - my visit to Germany in 1994 to retrace my many memories during the Occupation and post-Vietnam - and the painful grief of seeing all the once-proud posts of 45 years ago . . . dark, deserted, desolate. Even proud Bad Tolz, home of Hitler's Waffen SS, and our own Special Forces and the German Army Mountain troops, dead, dead. The grandeur and vitality of Garmisch, Berchtesgaden, Chiemsee rest facilities during the Occupation reduced to shabby, drab, listless places with minimum wage staffs. I DID go native during both my German tours, and revisited German friends (some after 45 years) and they like me now in their 70's.

The Army has been everything a former high-schooldrop-out, deck-hand, coal-miner, steel mill "looper" and general laborer could have dreamed of.

I was drafted at 25 years of age - traveled, used college courses in Philippines and England, visited castles, museums, monuments, authors, (saw Hanna Reisch live and breathing), visited Haworth and Stratford on Avon,Stonehenge etc. etc. etc. . . . and even as I grew ever older, I enjoyed 20 years with a cross-cut of the finest young men any man could have work for him. Today I am a 'ham-radio" operator (call: N3FDX) and a better CW person than I was in the Army (couldn't type).

Sure wish I had contact with the guys in my Dong Tam detachment (my MOST rewarding assignment in 20 years Don't know God, but if I did, I'd ask HIM to bless you all!
ASA all the way!!
Earl Shollenberger
email: magoo@epix.net
Address: RD5, Box 379, Pine Grove, Pa 17963