I made it through my first combat tour physically unscathed. I completed my tour and received orders to Fort Monroe, Virginia. I elected, instead, to extend my Vietnam tour. The combat and overseas pay were major motivators. I would have more money to send home. Mom and my kid brother and sister were struggling back on the family farm, and I felt an overwhelming obligation to share my money with them. Besides, the extra money I was making from selling cigarettes and liquor on the black market helped meet my own needs. Because I had already received orders for Fort Monroe, Virginia, an exception to policy was required before I could extend my tour. The captain I worked for was a lawyer in real life and had been working for a prestigious law firm in Delaware when he was recalled back to active duty and dispatched to our Signal Section in Vietnam. We did not get along. He was a pompous and unpleasant captain who had no friends and seemed to begrudge the fact that he was back in the Army and now in Vietnam.
With the trace of a smirk, he informed me that he had to disapprove my DA Form 1049 request for tour extension. “You are just too late in asking for an extension, Ojeda,” he said. “You should not have waited this long. Besides, your replacement is already slotted. There are no more vacancies for your job specialty here now.”
That gave me another hurdle to overcome. I filled out another DA Form 1049 requesting my six-month tour extension with the provision that I be assigned to the Military Assistance Command. I really had no idea the Military Assistance Command consisted of Advisory Teams assigned to the Vietnamese Army’s major infantry units, but that was to be the only way my request stood a chance of approval. When Brigadier General Terry finished his morning staff meeting, I knocked on his door and asked for a favor.
“General Terry,” I began. “I am trying to extend my tour for another six months, and I have not been able to get any support. Would you support my tour extension and approve my DA 1049?”
General Terry stated, “I see no problem with you extending, but have you talked to the admin officer about this?”
“Yes, Sir. The admin officer tells me I am too late in requesting my extension, and he cannot support it.”
“Get me the admin officer,” General Terry ordered.
Once I informed the admin officer that General Terry needed to talk to him, he jumped out of his chair, grabbed a writing pad and briskly walked into the General’s office. I waited by the admin officer’s desk. He returned in a matter of minutes with a flushed look on his face. He handed me my DA Form 1049 which General Terry had signed and coldly told me “General Terry wants you to go see the Personnel Officer right away. He will cancel your orders to Virginia and reassign you within the Military Assistance Command.”
When I got to the Personnel Section, a Sp5 personnel clerk had already been briefed. I was to get my choice of assignments. Every time I picked an area on a map of Vietnam taped to the wall, there were no administrative vacancies. The only area outside of Saigon with an authorized administrative vacancy was Advisory Team 99 at Duc Hoa. That was to become my home for the next six months.
My extension authorized me a thirty-day free leave with paid round-trip transportation to anywhere in the free world I wanted to go. I chose to vacation in my hometown in Texas. My thirty-day leave in Texas was a blur, and I recall little of what transpired during my time back home, but I recall getting more and more depressed the closer I got to my return trip back to Vietnam. I also recall my Grandma taking me to San Juan Cathedral near home to keep a promise she had made if I returned back home safely from Vietnam. In Spanish I asked Grandma, “Ma Bence, why did you have to go and make that promise to God?”
“Hijito, it was God’s will that kept you safe and brought you back home safely,” said Grandma. “But, Ma Bence, you didn’t have to go make that promise. I was gonna come back anyway,” I said. Ma Bence’s rebuke was short and swift. “Hijito, no dijas eso. Iremos a la casa de Dios!”1
I have never completely understood why, but I was not at all thrilled to be entering God’s house at San Juan Cathedral. I was twenty-one, invincible, hard-headed and felt there was nothing, no way, no how that anything was going to happen to me in Vietnam. I was going to return home intact. At that point in my life, I was that certain of myself. And if I were to not return back home, it was not a problem that I would have to deal with. It was not worth wasting time thinking about it. It would have been a futile effort to explain this to Ma Bence, so I talked my kid brother, Raul, into joining us. I drove us to San Juan Cathedral to keep Grandma's promise to God. Ma Bence knew her God and knelt and prayed for several minutes. Raul and I followed her lead. When Ma Bence finished praying, she walked up to the candle worship rack. She dropped some money into the donation box and took a candle. Grandma prayed as she tipped her candle on its side to light it from a lit candle on the rack. She placed her lit candle on an empty spot on the candle rack. A few more minutes of prayer and worship and Ma Bence was done keeping her promise to God for bringing me back home safely. Grandma Bence knew her God and the prayer ritual. On the drive back home I asked Ma Bence not to make any more promises to God on my behalf. I was going back to Vietnam soon after, but I had every intention of making it back home safely.
Back home I faced another situation. My sister had gotten a horse from a friend at work who no longer had the means to care for him. It was an older horse with many, many miles on him and a prominent slope on his back. We did not have a fenced-in area to keep him, so my sister would tie him up to a tree in the back yard. It was a well-behaved but sometimes flighty horse who seemed to enjoy the freedom of not being tied down. While home and on the eve of my return back to Vietnam, the horse found an opportunity to escape and quickly took it. My sister was in a panic. The horse had gone into our cornfield and was having a grand ol’ time tremendously enjoying himself feasting on the corn and corn stalks. I decided to help her and ventured out into the cornfield in bare feet chasing after the horse. At one point, I got within a foot of the hanging rope harnessed around his neck while he was busily chomping down on yet another ear of corn. I grabbed the rope as he startled and moved towards me sideways then started galloping away from me. I chased after him in my bare feet and mowed down a couple or three corn stalks with my bare right foot breaking toes in the process.
The horse got away from me and started running away as I struggled back to the house pained and suffering. The same Grandma who had prayed for my safe return home was telling my sister to soak my foot in hot water and massage my toes. Sis poured boiling water into a pan and forced me to stick my whole foot into the steaming water. The pain from the steaming hot water was brutal and inhumane. When the water had sufficiently cooled for her to put her hands in, she started massaging my toes while I writhed hopelessly in pain. My toes were now blue, black and swollen.
I was getting dressed that next morning for my return back to Vietnam by way of Oakland Army Base, California. Mom was sufficiently concerned about my toes to suggest that maybe I should stay a couple of more days and see a local doctor. I concealed my pain as best I could telling Mom that though my toes were swollen there was very little pain.
I struggled to walk and even more so to put my right shoe on, but I hid my pain from Mom. Somehow, I made it to the airport and to Oakland Army Base. I went on sick call that next morning. X-rays showed I had broken toes on my right foot. The doctor assured me everything would be fine and apologized that there was nothing he could do for my toes other than to wrap them together with tape and prescribe aspirin. My regard for military medicine took a sharp dive that day.
Before I left Oakland Army Base for Saigon, I sent Mom a postcard telling her just one toe was broken and it didn’t hurt much. In reality, two toes were fractured and the hurt was something awful, but I was trying to lessen Mom’s worry. I also exaggerated about the meals being exceptionally grand when in reality army meals have never been anything to write home about.
I struggled all the way to Vietnam until I contacted my old friend Papasan Bich who felt sorry enough for me to share his personal stash. While pot does not cure anything, pain seems to just evaporate as it dulls the senses. But it takes a lot of pot for broken bones. I checked into a local hotel and extended my stay in Saigon for some three or four days until my pain sufficiently subsided before I began my journey to my new home, Advisory Team 51, 21st Vietnamese Infantry Division at Bac Lieu.
Postcard to Mom on way to Saigon
1 "Son, don't say that. We are going to God's house."
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