Advisors lived a much different life than regular Army personnel. We were far removed from the regular U.S. military units. Our advisory teams numbered between five to some sixty personnel and lived side-by-side with our Vietnamese Army counterparts experiencing the same incoming rocket, mortar and ground attacks. A large number of advisors I worked with suffered health issues and I know of only a handful of advisors who completed their tour without a major health issue. There was a period when some eight or ten of us caught hepatitis C, so our whole team would line up for gamma globulin injections once every three or four weeks for a period of some months. Because the injection was thick and kept in cold storage, the syringes would be given to the advisor when he would be three men from the medic with instructions to roll it between your hands or place it in your underarm to warm up the gama globulin. "It will hurt less if you warm it up," the medic warned. Once we got to the medic, we would hand the syringe to him and drop our pants to expose the buttocks. I could never sufficiently warm up the injection, so it hurt considerably.
The mess facility in our Advisory Team 99 compound was very much in stark contrast to the perilous nature of our mission and the vulnerability of our compound. Our compound was situated in an area called Parrot's Peak now known to have been riddled with underground tunnels which the enemy used to hide and transport men, weapons and ammunition to the battle. Walking into our team's mess facility generated a sense of safety and well-being, a safe haven from the rigors of being in a combat zone. Each table had a white thermo-pitcher of hot coffee that was kept full for breakfast. Milk was real and not the reconstituted milk we had the year I spent in Saigon with the regular Army. I learned that it was shipped frozen then thawed in refrigerated storage for a week before being served. Our team had Vietnamese waitresses in white uniforms who came by our tables for breakfast asking what number breakfast we wanted. They were not well-versed in English and were totally dependent on the numbers. There were some ten numbered breakfast choices, and it took me a few breakfasts to learn my preferred number. Lunch and dinner had similarly numbered choices. We had actual plates and a good selection of desserts including a dessert bar with pie, cake and ice cream. The meals themselves were not the best I'd had, but the ambiance was splendidly comforting. It was daunting to me how this dining facility environment was in such contrast to the hellish life we lived while with the team. It had to be some higher-up bestowing on us this blessing as if to make up for the grueling and horrific life we lived with the mortar and rocket attacks every three or four days in addition to the occasional ground attacks. "God, please keep our mess facility safe from these damn rockets and mortars," I once found myself praying. My God was good.
The mess facility at Advisory Team 51 was less favorable, but the mortar and ground attacks were not as frequent. We did not have uniformed waitresses or numbered breakfasts. We ate what was available. We were so far down the Mekong Delta that our resupply lines were often cut off during the rainy season. Our dirt airstrip where resupply planes would normally land was closed after a monsoon rain, and it stay closed until it sufficiently dried up to receive aircraft traffic. During these times, we would receive smaller shipments of food and other supplies by helicopter. There were a lot of pineapples, mangos and other fruits grown in the Mekong Delta, so we ate a lot of these fruits during periods when we were short of supplies and had an abundant supply of C-rations as emergency rations. Notwithstanding contamination by the 35,795 gallons of Agent Orange1 sprayed around our Advisory Team 51, the local fruits and veggies were first-rate and plentiful. This amount of Agent Orange, however, is only a fraction of the 973,031 gallons of Agent Orange to which I was exposed during my four combat tours between Vietnam and Laos.
The mess facility at our Military Assistance Command headquarters in Tan Son Nhut rivaled some of today's Golden Corral or Luby's. This was where all grades from privates to generals ate steak, pork and fabulous side dishes and desserts along with a selection of juice, white or chocolate milk, fountain sodas and ice tea. At least once or twice a month I would find reason to go to Saigon then take a taxi to our Military Assistance Command's mess hall. This also provided me the opportunity to spend a day or a weekend at the Victoria hotel in Cholon drinking and smoking to calm the rattled nerves.
My biggest surprise for the appreciation of Advisors came when I left Vietnam for the last time with the Advisor group. Upon arriving at Saigon, I and a few other fellow advisors were gathered in a large room. A colonel walked in. We started to stand at attention, and he quickly dismissed this with a wave of his hand. The colonel spent some twenty minutes praising us for our service with the various advisory teams telling us how difficult it had been for us advisors and paying tribute to those advisor casualties who could not be there with us that day.
It was a speech I am certain he had given dozens of times, and it appeared this was the colonel's first Vietnam tour and had probably never spent a day in combat since he was not wearing a right shoulder combat patch; however, it felt good that someone recognized the efforts of us advisors.
Our group of about fifteen men was put in an air-conditioned bus to Long Binh that next morning for our trip back to the world. An armed MP jeep equipped with an M-60 machine gun drove ahead of us and escorted us the thirty some miles to Long Bien. Once we deboarded the bus at the out-processing station, our advisor group just seemed to lose its identity as we blended in with a couple of hundred regular Army men. We went through several briefings, had all our bags inspected for contraband then just sat and waited, the Army's traditional "Hurry up and wait" concept.
I was carrying a well-worn bamboo smoking pipe which I had found while sweeping through a village near Ca Mau with Advisory Team 51. It was fresh bamboo at the time I picked it up with little evidence of use, so I used it for the remainder of my tour with Advisory Team 51. While at Long Binh outprocessing center, I stashed my bamboo pipe inside my belt to keep it from being confiscated then wrapped it with some clothes which I dropped off for shipment back home. I never got to use it back home. Mom may have found it and disposed of it. I never asked her about it, but I suppose it was a good thing that I never got to use it back home.
After one or more hours sitting on our duffle bags in the miserably hot sun, some sergeant wearing our MACV Advisor patch got up on a platform and yelled out “I want all you MACV advisors to board that green bus. Only Advisors.” We did as told and one by one our advisor group reformed onboard the bus. It, too, was air-conditioned unlike the regular Army buses. The sergeant from the stand jumped onboard and started checking all our unit patches to insure everyone on the bus was an advisor. The rest of the two hundred or more regular Army men were herded onto buses without air-condition. I kept thinking what a hell of a contrast it was to our living and transport accommodations back in my advisory teams.
The sergeant rode with us to an air-conditioned barracks where we spent the night. The next morning our sergeant herded us back onto the air-conditioned bus that delivered us to a mess hall for breakfast. Once all advisors had reboarded the bus, the kind sergeant bid us good luck and left us. We left for the airfield where we quickly boarded our return flight back home while the rest of the regular Army men were still sitting in their buses waiting for further instructions.
Some six years later I was assigned to the JFK Center, US Army Institute for Military Assistance, at Fort Bragg, NC. The colonel in charge of our directorate required all NCO's 2 to meet with him upon assignment to his Special Forces Schools directorate. He was in a hurry during my incoming briefing and cut the briefing short due to some other commitment; however, I recognized him immediately after shaking his hand. He was the colonel who praised us MACV advisors upon leaving Vietnam back in 1968. He was still a colonel.
During my two-year stint with JFK Center, I participated in two conferences with him in attendance. During one of the scheduled breaks, I walked up to him and mentioned our earlier meeting back in Vietnam. I did not expect him to remember me, and he did not. When he learned I was leaving Ft Bragg for an assignment with NATO Land Southeast3 forces in Izmir, Turkey, he sent me an unsolicited letter of recommendation for appointment to Warrant Officer. The letter was a major factor in securing my direct appointment to Army Warrant Officer some months later. Such was the regard the colonel had for our advisory service during the Vietnam era.
1 - http://cybersarges.tripod.com/aosprayeda.html
2 - Non-Commissioned Officers
3 - North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Turkey is a signatory to NATO and Land Southeast protects the Southeastern border of NATO.
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