It was perhaps a thirty- minute flight from Tan Son Nhut to Duc Hoa, my new home with Advisory Team 99. It took me some twenty- two hours to get there. I had caught a Huey leaving Tan Son Nhut for Long Bien hoping to catch a flight from there to Duc Hoa. Getting to Long Bien, I learned there were no flights to Duc Hoa that day. An Army sergeant at the airfield offered to have his driver take me to an Advisory Team nearby. With no other formidable plan available, I accepted. I was taken to an Advisory Team that seemed pretty much deserted. The team was occupying a military camp abandoned by the French after their downfall at Dien Bien Phu. The old dilapidated buildings were stucco glossed over with fading tan colored paint. I walked around lugging my duffle bag and M-2 carbine and found a large warehouse type building with open French doors. I approached the chest- high plywood counter which ran nearly the width of the building.
To enhance the appearance of plywood when paint was not available, it was Army practice in those days to slightly burn the surface of plywood with a hand butane torch to highlight the veins in the plywood and give character to the otherwise dull and boring plywood. The burning process for this plywood seemed to have been heavily overdone perhaps by some new private not familiar with the burning process. It was heavily and deeply burned in spots making the whole surface appear dreadful. Several barrels overflowing with waste and debris lined the far wall. This was not the typical Army supply operation whose areas are typically neat, clean and orderly.
Some six soldiers were sitting behind the counter telling stories. A couple of these folks casually glanced at me but made no effort to greet me or find out what I wanted. I addressed a specialist four (the only one with a shirt) nearest to me and asked where I could find the first sergeant. He yelled out to the group, “Hey, anybody know where the first sergeant is?” They all started laughing. Then he told me there was no first sergeant on the team, “But that would be his office over there if you wanna wait for him.” Ignoring the flippant remark, I asked where I could find the sergeant major. Once more he turned and yelled out to the group, “Hey, anybody know where the sergeant major is?”
I was pissed! I yelled out at the group wearing no shirts, “Who’s in charge here?” Again they started laughing. I picked out the one who seemed the oldest in the group and shouted at him, “Are you in charge?”
“Yeah, what can I do for you?” he drawled. I told him how I was assigned to Team 99 but could not find a flight to Duc Hoa. I again asked where I could find the sergeant major. “Well, that’s his office over there, but you won’t find him at his office,” he said adding, “The best place to find him is at the NCO club.”
He told me where the NCO club was, so I shouldered my M-2 Carbine and lugged my duffle bag to the NCO club. I threw my duffle bag in a corner by the front door and waited a few moments for my vision to focus. It was mid-afternoon. Except for the side windows where the sun was shining through, the club was dark and dreary with the presence of a heavy musty odor. I spotted the sergeant major. His spit-shined boots glistened in the sun shining through the oversize windows smeared with the caked dirt of many months. He was in starched fatigues sitting at the bar casually eating popcorn and sipping on a beer while being entertained by a tall, wiry and underdeveloped Vietnamese waitress wearing thin short shorts and a skimpy top exposing her entire midriff. She looked hideous wearing the sergeant major’s hat tilted down and nearly sideways. Walking up to the sergeant major, I introduced myself and told him I was assigned to Team 99 but was unable to get a flight to Duc Hoa. I needed a place for the night. He seemed to be the smallest sergeant major I had ever seen. Casually, he removed his hat from his waitress and with exaggerated care positioned it on the counter. Without even looking towards me and still positioning his hat on the counter, he weakly informed me there were no more flights to Duc Hoa that day. “Go find you a bunk for the night and I’ll get you there on the first flight in the morning,” he said almost apologetically pointing towards the team’s hooches.
I threw my duffle bag on the first available bunk and just could not get the smell of popcorn out of my mind. I grabbed my M-2 carbine, walked back to the NCO club, sat down at a table. There were probably no more than three or four customers. I waited for service. The only available waitress was still entertaining the sergeant major. I waved at her a couple of times and she purposely ignored me or was half blind. Finally, I yelled out “Hey, waitress!” She moseyed on over to my table with a frothy look loudly asking “What you want?” I replied “Get me some popcorn and an American beer.”
“What kind beer you want? We 'haf' too many kinds,” she mumbled sarcastically.
“Okay, get me a PBR.” I said.
Thrusting her hip outward with one hand on her skinny hip and looking quite annoyed perhaps because I interrupted her session with the sergeant major, she informed me quite adamantly that she did not know what PBR was. “You tell me what kind beer you want! I ‘haf’ to know!” she again mumbled sarcastically.
“Just get me a damn Pabst.” I muttered. “And get me some popcorn, too!” She walked away mumbling “You get for you. Over there!” pointing to a theater style popcorn machine. I checked it out, and it was self- service. I must have had some three bags of popcorn that night with enough beer to put me to sleep.
I had just sat down to eat my breakfast in the team’s mess hall that next morning when the sergeant major in his starched fatigues and spit-shined boots walked up to me saying “Go get your shit and make it to the airfield as soon as you can. There’s a mail chopper leaving for Duc Hoa in about fifteen minutes. You don’t wanna miss it.” I was tired of being in transit and badly needed a permanent home. Leaving my breakfast untouched, I walked back to my bunk, grabbed my duffle bag, shouldered my carbine and half-ran to the helicopter pad.
I was the only passenger on the mail flight and sat right by the open door and buckled up. We had just lifted off when my hat blew off from the blade turbulence and swirled in a downward spiral as it neatly made its way all the way to the ground. The doorgunner closest to me just looked at me and shrugged his shoulders as if to say “Well, we sure ain’t going back just for that.”
We circled the team compound before landing at Duc Hoa, and I recall thinking just how small and vulnerable the compound was. It was situated out in the middle of nowhere so distant from any American military units, and I was truly alarmed at the predicament I had just gotten myself into.
I was now with Advisory Team 99, 25th Vietnamese Infantry Division, and there were no hats available on the team. It was awkward being the only man on the team wearing a steel pot. Several Advisors would ask me during the course of my first day there “Where’s your hat?” or “What’s with the steel pot?” It was some five days before I was able to walk down to the village and buy a Vietnamese military cap. This worked until I was able to catch a convoy to Saigon and buy a real one a couple of weeks later.
Upon my arrival at Duc Hoa, I did not sleep much the first two or more weeks. There was a Vietnamese artillery battery right behind our team compound. As soon as dark approached, the battery started firing Harassment and Interdiction (H&I) rounds randomly around our perimeter about every thirty minutes. This continued until daybreak. The artillery 105- millimeter rounds whistled over our hooch way out into the distance landing with a still deafening boom. I would just be dozing off when another one would whistle over our hooch once more over and over and over again all through the night. While it took some two weeks before I could sleep peacefully, some good came out of this. I learned to sleep soundly through anything – loud noises, thunderstorms, traffic noise, irate exes.
©Copyright texan@atudemi.com - January 2022