Comprising a Life

After getting wounded while out in the bush and then going to an "in-country" R&R (Rest and Recouperation) center I was attached temperarily to a Rangers company who put me and some other wounded guys guarding  helicopters while I continued to heal from my wound.

After leaving the guard company I became the head draftsman for the 268th Combat Aviation Battalion at Tuy Hou on the coast of the South China Sea. There I took the position of head Battalion draftsman and was promoted to Sargent (for real this time).

This base was quite a departure from what I had been used to. They had flush toilets, a gymnasium, a several-ward hospital, a television broadcasting station and paved sidewalks. There were sand filled revetments around the barracks but they were not really needed, so secure was the base.

So after having been a "Grunt" for all that time in the bush, I then had to settle into becoming a REMF which stood for rear echelon mother f - - - - r.

The village chieftain had declared the town of Tuy Hou off-limits to GIs, remembering how the French servicemen had inflated the towns economy during that war. So although the base had a lot of stuff in it, it was basically a pretty boring place. And my having been used to seeing the country at least to some degree by going on missions, I figured I had to find a way to occasionally get off the base to explore.

I did this by two means.  First I got permission to take my Captains Jeep into town to volunteer at the Tuy Hou Orphanage. Second I told my captain and Col. that I needed to visit the offices of other draftsman in the country to get supplies that I couldn't procure for my office where I was stationed. In this way I obtained travel orders to go all over the country. And being now in a combat aviation battalion made this easier too. All  I had to do then was to walk out of battalion headquarters, go down to the flightline and grab a chopper going in my direction, get off where it landed and hitchhike to the nearest base that had a draftsman. Getting on the base I wanted to go to without travel orders proved to be a bit tricky though sometimes.

On one such occasion I found myself afoot trying to get on a certain base where I was friendly with the draftsman (I always had to come back with something for my drafting office to prove to my captain my mission had been entirely necessary).

Fortunately a jeep stopped with an army chaplain in it and he asked me if I needed a ride. I explained my predicament to him and he got me through the gates without my having to show any travel orders.

Of course the really tricky part was always getting back out through the front gates again still having no travel orders. But on this lucky occasion there happened to be a chopper pad very close to where the draftsmen's office was. So I gathered up my new supplies while my draftsman friend hustled me up a chopper and pilot and I flew off the base with no one officially knowing I had even been there.

I discovered a good thing about being assigned to an Army aviation battalion was that it provided a great way to become friends with chopper pilots. I became friends with one pilot who let me take the controls of a helicopter smaller than a Huey for a short period of time and when I say short I mean as in a few seconds, because no sooner had I put all of my hands and feet on the controls than the chopper started to dance all over the place.  I handed back the controls to my pilot friend quickly.  I did finally get the hang of it a bit but I found out how difficult it was to have all of ones limbs occupied on different tasks all at the same time.

Since my office at battalion headquarters was right down from the Colonel's and the Colonel had his own special helicopter and  crew, I became friends with his crewchief which meant I would occasionally be able to fill in as door gunner when the Colonel wanted to go somewhere. 

Another diversion that kept me from being bored on that base, was photography.  Since there was not much else to spend  one's money on,  men on the base would either order stereo equipment or camera equipment from the Pacific Mail-Order Catalog.  My preferance was camera equipment.  I soon got into close-up photography and purchased macro lenses and other types of lenses to do that.

Sadly enough the rear was where the greatest drug abuse problems occurred in Vietnam.  Men stationed in the rear as I had now become, weren't as easily able to find diversions as I had been.  Heroine was everywhere and on my base one could kick up little empty vials in the sand as easily as cigarette butts. I could talk hours about that situation but it sickened me too much to dwell on the subject.  I must confess that I did smoke marijuana when I was in the rear but that was a social thing not a diversion from reality.

Having been in the bush and having seen so much of what seemed unreal I was happy to glimps a little reality.

By this time the "drops" (shottened service time) had come down, and if you decided to, you could extend your time in Vietnam by about a month or two as trade for not having to serve your last months of your two year obligation to your country at "state side" (in the United States).  So when you checked out of Vietnam you basically would check out of the army although you still had to go to a stateside base to do it.