Saigon

Four weeks in Saigon, living in the middle of the Viet Nam war was not that strange a deal for young guy of twenty. Grew up with the war on television, never knew what war was other than television shows, movies, and the evening news in the 1960s.

There was so much time devoted to the war on television many of us became immune to the sights of war or so it seemed.

One day I was working at the Waco Police department as a police cadet in the basement of the old city hall and the next was in the U.S. Army sitting in a two story barracks at an Army post called MACV near the civilian military airport in Saigon!

Arrived in Saigon in time for thanksgiving, learned the war up close was not the same as the war on television but the war was not like anything expected.

Spent the time at Saigon in the barracks, walking the compound, ventured out a few times into the areas around MACV. Was not impressed with all the squalor caused by centuries of neglect of the folks who lived in Viet Nam by the powers-that-be. The war as horrible as it was brought hope to the folks who lived there and gave them away to make money and thrive. My comments or those of a twenty something soldier who had never been outside of Texas till the Army.

While in Saigon we had Armed Forces Television to remind us of home and keep us distracted, just shows with no commercials. No physical training or anything like I was use to in Basic and Advanced Army training, was beginning to thing the war on television was nothing like the war for real.

Do not get me wrong, there was a war going on just not where I was at that moment. There were soldiers, guns, uniforms, and Army every where but we were not shooting or being shot at.

As the third week rolled around the war came to visit as several of us were getting out combat issue in a facility twenty minutes to the outskirts of Saigon. One minute all was fine, we were loading into the truck with our gear and the next the buildings and vehicles around us were exploding, pieces of metal, dirt and people were all over us, it was not fun, the war was real and was now aware the-powers-that-be had not lied to me.

My group of military police from the 509th R&R scrambled to the security trenches along side the road for safety from the attack and set up to repel any ground troops. The entire attack lasted no longer than ten minutes but it seemed like ten hours at the time.

When the attack was over, most of the area we got our equipment from was destroyed along with several vehicles adjacent to that equipment issue site. Our vehicle was not damaged, once the all clear was given, we loaded back into the truck and headed back to Saigon as if nothing had happened.

As my last week in Saigon came to an end, loaded my gear up and was taken by jeep from MACV compound to a large aircraft at the airport and left on a wild ride to my new assignment as a combat military policeman with the 144th Aviation Company providing security for aircraft, convoys, and the post.

While leaving Saigon the airfield was under attack, felt weird, spent four weeks in Saigon and only had one war incident and here I was flying out and the war returned! The C130 aircraft took several hits but not enough to keep us from flying so we flew till we reached Nha Trang.

On arrival at Nha Trang it was obvious the airfield was under attack but our aircraft landed or kind of landed anyway. The rear of the plane opened as the plane touched down, we ran out the back of the plane and the plane took off without ever stopping. It was a wild run from the run way to the airport terminal area, not anything like we trained for, loud noise, explosions, bullets, smoke, all right out of a war movie.

Nha Trang is another story and will drop more memories of it later.