By the time I was ready to leave the 101st Airborne, I had pretty much weaned myself off pot and almost completely off beer. I had someone drive me in convoy to our 8th Radio Research Field Station in Phu Bai where I spent the night prior to leaving for our 509th Radio Research Group headquarters in Saigon. Time was not of the essence, so if I missed my morning flight, no one would care. I decided to have one more fling at the local NCO club.
Two TV’s blaring out the military’s version of “news of the world” were at opposite ends of the club – blaring over cheap speakers which sounded more like a monotonous high pitched wail than spoken English. I was drinking alone mentally planning my departure and my next duty assignment with the 303rd Army Security Agency at Fort Hood, Texas. I was thanking my God for having made it safely through 13 months with the 101st Airborne when two locals noticed my 101st Airborne patch and sat down with me asking me about Firebase Ripcord.(Read article below)
Ripcord had been widely reported to have been overrun by and lost to the enemy when we actually evacuated the firebase just before it was taken over by the enemy. Even Paul Harvey, a national news reporter who had a thirty-minute show on Armed Forces Network, mistakenly reported that the 101st Airborne’s Firebase Ripcord had been overrun and lost to the enemy sustaining heavy casualties. I assured them I knew no more than they did. The more they pressed, the less I shared with them. I changed the subject and asked them what type of work they did.
One of my two new friends was a traffic analyst1 whom I knew just had to be extensively and intimately knowledgeable about Firebase Ripcord, so it puzzled me why he was asking. The other was an administrative clerk who bragged that he had only four weeks to complete his tour and go on to his next assignment at Fort Hood. I shared with him that I was leaving that next morning also headed for the 303rd Army Security Agency at Fort Hood, the same unit to which he was being reassigned. We kept drinking, became better friends, took our beers to the snack bar next door then returned to the club for more drinking. At one point I asked admin clerk, “Look, you’ve got only four weeks left. Why don’t you just leave tomorrow with me? I’m very well familiar with Saigon, and I know people there.”
“Naw, I can’t do that. I don’t have my orders yet,” he said.
Traffic analyst offered, “Look, you dumbass. You’re the orders clerk. Just cut the goddamn orders, pack up your shit, and you can still make the afternoon flight.”
Admin clerk left us at that point saying something like, “Fucking ‘A’ right! What are they going to do if I get caught? Send me to Vietnam? I’m going to cut my orders and pack my bags.” Pointing his finger at me, he said, “I’ll see you at the airstrip”.
As he left, traffic analyst started laughing and banging his head on the table saying, “I can’t believe that dumbass is really going to do that.”
We kept drinking till the club closed. I then went back to my room and crashed. Come morning I was at the mess hall when admin clerk approached me waving a copy of his orders. “I did it! I cut the orders last night and put them in the captain’s box along with a whole bunch of other paperwork. He didn’t even fucking notice they were my reassignment orders. He signed them this morning. Damn, he is gonna be pissed when he realizes I left four weeks early. But there’s not a damn thing he can do cause he signed them.”
Admin clerk and I left Phu Bai that afternoon, reported to our 509th Radio Research Group at Saigon then left for downtown. I educated him on what a month’s worth of cigarettes and liquor could buy him. Papasan Bich was nowhere to be found, but I knew other locals who bought black market goods. We bought enough weed to last a couple of days and converted the black market proceeds to spendable MPC2.
After being at Fort Hood, Texas, for only two months, I was granted approval for reassignment anywhere in the world I wished to go. I picked Washington, D.C. area and was subsequently reassigned to Fort Belvoir, Virginia. I last saw admin clerk as I was processing out of Fort Hood on my way to my Fort Belvoir duty assignment. I was passing by his desk and recognized him. I shook hands with him and asked if he remembered me.
“Damn straight I do!” he said. “Can’t get away here with the shit we pulled back in Nam.”
It was an awkward couple of minutes of conversation. Friendships made in Vietnam never seemed to carry over to stateside. We were now different people with different characters and values than we practiced in Vietnam. We wished each other well. I left for my new duty station at Fort Belvoir.
1 Traffic analysts would translate and decode enemy messages.
2 Military payment certificate was the only negotiable money used in Vietnam.
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