The Story
On Vietnam . . .
The Monsoon seasons were unforgivable. While near Hue with the 101st Airborne Division in the northern part of Vietnam, it once rained straight for some thirty-plus days and nights. There was already talk (and bets) of surpassing the Genesis rain event of forty days and forty nights. Cursing and disappointment quickly followed the end of rain.
Fanatical and over-zealous Viet Cong (some of whom were embedded into our Advisory Teams) and North Vietnamese regulars across the country took every opportunity to sabotage and destroy our mission and operations. Their primary goal of taking territory while trying in earnest to kill or maim every American in uniform never wavered. The fear of a mortal wound was overpowering in that first month of the initial and each subsequent Vietnam tour thereafter. Gradually, the fear factor scaled down until it became little more than just another irrefutable human sense buried deeply in a remote region of my inner self.
On the Kingdom of Laos . . .
Fear of a mortal wound was just as powerful when I initially began field operations in the Kingdom of Laos. Another element of fear was instilled in me during my incoming briefing when I was cautioned not to ever carry any documents, weapons or identification that would associate me with being military. Officially, we were US Embassy employees with civilian credentials and diplomatic status. If captured with any trace of being military, we would be tried as spies by the Pathet Lao1 and be held as prisoners-of-war subject to particularly harsh treatment by them .
Duty in Laos was at times a contradiction in terms. I could be on a mission in the midst of an enemy-dominated site in the daytime then catch a flight back to Vientiane with just enough time to clean up and drive to the safety of a social event where attendance was expected.
D i r e c t o r y
Chapter 1 - In the Beginning - 1965 to 1966
With Vietnam looming and local draft boards eager to feed the Vietnam war machine, graduating in the early to late 60's just had to be one of the most unfortunate times to graduate. I graduated high school in 1965 with limited academic skills, unable to qualify for college both academically and financially, and I just could not get a decent job. Employers would not hire applicants with a draft classification of 1-A (Available for military service) for fear of losing their newly-trained employee to the draft AND having to hold that position available for the draftee once his two-year service obligation was completed. My long history of menial jobs included pumping gas, dishwasher, busboy, operating a cotton gin bale press and farm laborer. Being naive and not fully understanding army enlistment choices and with my options closing in on me, I enlisted for an "unspecified" career field leaving it up to the army to place me in a career field best suited for me.
Johnny Horizon's Draft Avoidance
Chapter 2 - Training - 1965 to 1966
Seven weeks of basic training at Fort Polk, Louisiana, went by in a blur, but it was intense, strenuous and brutal. I was then transferred to North Fort Polk where I underwent six weeks of administrative school before going for twenty-four weeks of Stenography school at Fort Ben Harrison, Indiana - then a quick trip to Vietnam.
Basic Training - Fort Polk, Louisiana
Chapter 3 - US Army Vietnam Signal Directorate - 1966 to 1967
Assigned as classified records custodian managing a classified documents facility of Confidential to Top Secret documents. Experienced my first exposure to combat environment and defending our sector of our perimeter without a flak vest, without a gas mask and with not a single bullet for my M-14 rifle while enemy conducted an unrelenting attack on a neighboring sector of our perimeter at Tan Son Nhut Airbase.
A Promise Kept and Broken Toes
Chapter 4 - Advisory Team 99, Duc Hoa, Vietnam - 1967 to 1968
Picked Advisory Team 99 because they had the only administrative slot. That was to be a bad choice. Got rockets or mortars almost weekly and had several advisors killed. Crash-landed in helicopter en route to Duc Hoa. Flew on psychological operation Birddog flights dropping surrender leaflets over enemy territory. When things got too tough, I traded two cases of beer for reassignment out of Advisory Team 99.
Arriving at Advisory Team 99, Duc Hoa
Chapter 5 - Advisory Team 51, Bac Lieu, Vietnam - 1968
Arrived Advisory Team 51 assigned as a sergeant of the guard. Shortly after arriving I replaced a radioman in field. Upon return from field location, I got reassigned as Air Traffic Controller but was fired for an air traffic incident then assigned to manage PX store and PX warehouse. This was to be the most challenging yet rewarding job I ever had in that first enlistment.
Chapter 6 - 101st Airborne Division, Camp Eagle, Vietnam - 1970 to 1971
Recruited by the Army Security Agency2 and retrained into communications-electronics then assigned to provide radio communications support to 101st Airborne Division traffic analysts, linguists, interpreters, and Morse-code interceptors capturing over-the-air radio traffic which the 101st Airborne used for tactical and strategic purposes in Vietnam. Initiated program where I would take captured communist Chinese radios then repair and convert them to our military batteries for intercept operators to capture enemy data. My Chinese radio conversion project3 is documented in "The Sentinel and the Shooter".4
You're in the 101st Airborne Now
Hot Dogs and Carling Black Label Beer
Students for Democratic Society (SDS)
Chapter 7 - Project 404, Vientiane, Laos - 1972 to 1973
Assigned covertly in civilian status and provided with US Embassy credentials in Laos without military uniforms and without weapons. Provided radio and teletype communications capability in support of US operational missions. Flew throughout the Kingdom of Laos on Air America and Continental Air Services flights to friendly and enemy-dominated areas to install, maintain and recover communications capability. I tread lightly in relaying Project 404 stories only because some information is still shrouded in layers of classification from Confidential to Top Secret and beyond even after all these years.
Emmet Kay - Continental Air Services Pilot
The Ambassador's Christmas Tree
Father Lucien Bouchard, O.M.I.
Chapter 8 - Life After Vietnam
"Life after Vietnam, you ask ? Well, it's been a bitch, but the only other option would certainly be worse." 5 Once experiencing the fears and tragedies of combat service, a veteran's psyche6 undergoes a transformation that worsens with time. Left untreated, PTSD sets in, and the longer it goes without treatment, the more difficult it is to overcome. I always denied the possibility of having PTSD largely because I believed back then that PTSD was for weak-minded, dim-witted veterans. It was an old country doctor at the Cedar Park Veterans clinic who first raised the PTSD issue with me. He subsequently referred me to a psychologist at the Austin, Texas, VA clinic. That's where I got started on a string of drugs to address my PTSD issue. Some years later I finally resigned from psychologist care and began living life without PTSD treatment. While it's been tough living life with PTSD, life has become manageable despite facing situations that could easily become opportunities for a PTSD event.
P-38 Opener, Can, Hand, Folding, Type I
Chapter 9 - The Final Chapter
The Final Chapter explores memories, horrors and fears experienced or observed. The Vietnam/Laos involvement resulted in 58,220 American casualties in the ten-year period of conflict. That is a rate of some 485 casualties a month and 112 casualties weekly. The cost of American casualties is enormous, especially when compared with the number of casualties of the Afghanistan/Iraq war which cost approximately 7,014 total casualties between 2001 and 2018. That is a casualty rate of approximately 34 casualties monthly and 8 casualties weekly. While these numbers are significant, they are minor compared to US casualties of World War II when 291,557 American military were killed.
1 - The Pathet Lao was a communist nationalist group in Laos that was founded in 1950 and took control of the country in 1975. They were closely associated with North Vietnam's Vietnam People's Army, South Vietnam's Viet Minh, later the Viet Cong, and Cambodia's Khmer Rouge.
2 - The Army Security Agency (ASA) was a separate activity within the Army, existing as a self-contained entity. ASA's purpose was to produce intelligence for the U.S. Army. Such intelligence was obtained by capturing (listening in on) the enemy's communications. Two years after leaving the Agency it was disbanded and reformed into what is now the United States Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM).
3 - Doug Bonnot donated one of the Communist Chinese radios I repaired to the 101st Airborne Division museum at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
4 - The Sentinel and the Shooter by Douglas Bonnot is a fascinating book about the exploits of the Army Security Agency and the 265th Radio Research Company (Airborne) and the deeds of the dedicated men who made a significant difference in the Vietnam war.
5 - A fellow Vietnam veteran in my PTSD group therapy session just before another Vietnam veteran pulled out a gun and killed himself in the Austin, Texas, VA clinic waiting room on April 9, 2019.
6 - The mind, soul, or spirit, as opposed to the body physical. In psychology, the psyche is the center of thought, feeling, and motivation, consciously and unconsciously directing the body's reactions to its social and physical environment.
. . . On Writing Your Story
"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you." - Maya Angelou, American poet
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