This is a short story about my illness in 1969 that I brought home from Vietnam. I don't have a clue why I am writing about it other than I have a little time and feel the need to write about something. Here goes.
In the Central Highlands of Vietnam, there are a lot of different kinds of places to be. There are plains a lot like the foothills near Denver and mountains like you would see in Central America. The biggest difference is the heat and the humidity. I am not sure of the big reason for it, but the place stinks in ways that are hard to imagine. Just when you think you have smelled the worse out nearer to the rice paddies, you pass a market place where the combined smell of smoke and dried fish almost would gag a maggot. I spent a lot of time out in the hinterlands and not too many days near cities. By the time I had been there a couple of months, I became nose blind to the smells of dirty GI's. When you know you stink, the body odor of everyone else just doesn't stand out.
OK, lets talk about my circumstances. I was a young 2nd Lieutenant when I arrived in Vietnam. After a horrible first month, I was transferred to the 1st Bn, 92nd Field Artillery who's headquarters was just north of Pleiku. The Artillery Group I was newly assigned to provided fire support to units in the area north of Pleiku and some to units of the 4th Infantry Division. Most of the firing batteries were spread out in a 100 kilometer arc north and west of Pleiku. In other blogs, you can read about the job I had as the Battalion Ammo Officer/AO but this story really starts in late summer and early fall of 1968.
Just before I was assigned to C Battery, I went to the field as a Forward Observer with small units that needed a fill in while their FO went on leave or R&R. Most of the time We were out with just what we could carry. For me, I carried a ground cloth, a poncho and an air mattress. Throw in C rations, ammo and water it was a load to carry in 100 degree weather. I always try to carry a battery for the portable radio, PRC 77 I think.
Most every unit had a medic assigned and he was responsible for looking after our health. Any kind of a wound, blister or rash would soon turn infected if the medic didn't help put whatever miracle medicine he had. He also dispensed the pills that were designed to be a prophylaxis for malaria. In the Central Highlands that consisted of a daily little white pill and on Monday a bit orange one. I could never tell if the little white pill had any effect on me but come Tuesday, our unit always traveled slower because a lot of us would get a touch of the runs after the big orange pill. When I came home to the States, I was assigned to Fort Carson, Colorado.
The Army gave me a 30 day supply of the little white pills and while I was assigned at Fort Carson, I took one a day and began to have what felt like the flue until I came home to Kansas in July. I'll bet I took the maximum amount of aspirin each day to help kill the headaches. My supply of the big Orange pills lasted until the first Monday in July.
When I got home, went back to working construction until school started in September. I was able to work for a couple of weeks before I really started to get sick. It started as a fever and really a feeling or weakness like I had a super strain of the flu. The off thing was that it was every other day for a week or so. My Doctor put me in the Hospital for a couple of days and they found nothing. I didn't run a high fever there either.
As soon as I got back home, I started to run a fever and threw up breakfast. I remember getting blankets to help me stop from feeling cold. My wife went to work and when she came home about 3 in the afternoon the trailer we lived in was about 100 degrees. She called my parents house and everyone loaded up to go to the VA.
Upon arrival at the VA, one of the Emergency Room people said that I clearly had Malaria. They admitted me to the hospital and a Doctor visited me to see if I would like to join a trial they were starting to treat Malaria. It seems that Lieutenant came home from Vietnam with Malaria and Leukemia. As soon as they started the chemo for Leukemia, his Malaria went into remission and by the time then ended the treatments, it was gone. For the next three weeks or so, they would give me a big green pill and by 9 AM, I could not get out of bed. I could smell the chemicals coming out of my pores and I COULD NOT HOLD DOWN LUNCH. That evening, I would start to feel better, get up, take a shower, put on new pj's and sleep like a baby. One evening. my wife came to visit and we snuck out of the hospital to get a chocolate milk shake at the fast food restaurant across the street. I had to surreptitiously slip back into the hospital through the emergency room. I'm pretty sure that I was not the only patient that did that.
Like I said, for three weeks or so I was one pretty sick guy. Then one day, it all changed. The pills stopped and I was given a few duties around the hospital to help the nurses. The only salvation was that I needed to go to Wichita State to enroll for fall classes. Once free of the hospital, I didn't go back. I felt about 75% better and started classes that fall. I got a letter in the mail that gave me a 10% disability for a year. As I remember, it was just enough to buy a case of beer or two but I took it. With the wife working as she also went to school, the GI bill and a few odd jobs, things went well for the next two years.
MUD (ret)
9/06/2017
Vietnam
As I travel out and about, I see a lot of old guys wearing those Vietnam Veteran hats. I always go up to them and say, "When I went to Vietnam we were a bunch of young guns and now all I see are old guys wearing those Vietnam hats." How do you explain Vietnam to kids today that didn't go there.
In real estate they say it is Location, Location, Location. In Vietnam that was one driving force but it was also Branch, location, branch. If you saw the Movie, "Good Morning Vietnam." you saw only the war from the eyes of one of those Rear Echelon (Words deleted) guys. I don't know the ratio of warriors to support but at 500,000 troops in 1968 it seemed that the guys in the field were far outnumbered.
I went to Vietnam with an Artillery Battalion that go mortared their first night in the field. I think the final count was 13 dead and about 27 wounded. I never saw the recovery of that unit as I got transferred to another 155 unit within a week of that horrible night. The bright side of it all was I went from one of the worst units in Vietnam to one of the best. My new unit, the 1st Bn, 92nd Field Artillery had been in Vietnam a couple of years and was full of really well trained and motivated men.
We were in the Central Highlands near Pleiku. It was located on the plains kind of like Denver with the mountains nearby. Our job was to go to a lot of different places and provide backup Artillery fires for units located there. For the most part, it was units of the 4th Division with a lot of Special Forces thrown in for special operations. I spent time in locations on or near a major base and on mountain top firebases. It didn't mater where we were, we fired a lot of fires in support of units out on the ground and then at night we fired Harassment and Interdiction fires on points out on the ground that the Intelligence guys said were likely locations for the enemy. Those would be random shots from one or two guns that went on from the hours of darkness until the wee hours.
I went to Vietnam as a Forward Observer that was to be assigned out with an infantry unit. That first night in the field, all of the battery officers but me were wounded. I spent the next week in charge of the unit until my transfer. In my new unit, I was assigned as the battalion ammo officer and we had the duty of rebuilding up the ammo in the ammunition supply point (ASP) in Dak to. It had been blown up and most of what wasn't blown up was shot at the enemy during TET earlier that year. For a couple of months straight, we took all the available five ton trucks and convoyed from Pleiku to Dak to. We would spend the nights at the Pleiku ASP and the days in a convoy. It was generally a turn around for us as we went to and from each day. If I wasn't in the convoy in my jeep., I would be in a bird dog providing air cover for the convoy.
The guys thought it was better when I was in the convoy as for some reason we never got hit with an ambush in our part of the convoy. If we were in the back, the ambush would hit the front. If we were in the front, they would ambush the middle of the back. On one occasion, a pretty god sized element probably a Company of at least 100 ambushed the convoy and I was in the air. The good news was there was a battery of 155's in Kontum just up the road. I almost immediately got them set up firing on the ambush site and then chased them into the jungle. On the top of one of the overlooking mountains, I saw what looked like a radio relay point for the enemy and blew it away. I set up a line of artillery fire behind the enemy's withdrawal and the helicopter gunships and the A1E Sky Raiders (Fixed wings) really worked them over. I never did hear a total body count but I imagine most of the enemy were killed. I think my battery had one driver wounded when a bullet went through the door of his truck and a few of the fragments hit his leg.
For most of the next 4 months, My job was to provide bullets to our units and an occasional trip to the field with some outfit that needed temporary help. Lets see, I was the forward observer with a basic training company, with a Montagnard unit with South Vietnamese advisors and finally the 3rd bat, 503rd Abn (173rd guys). The last unit was supposed to be a very short stint while their FO went home as his father had a Heart Attack. While home, he had an attack of Malaria and it was 6 weeks getting away from that unit. All in all, I have been shot at, rocketed, mortared and either bored or scared half out of my wits.
One of the luxuries of being me in Vietnam was the times I got to fly in one of the bird dogs of the Head Hunters. Most of the time we would go out and fire one of the firing batteries at some bend in the river as an adjustment. That was to help tie the unit's map location to an actual location. This greatly increased the accuracy of the unit and was a lot of fun. At the end of the adjustment period, a lot of times the Bird Dog pilot would fire one of his rockets under his wing to help make his accuracy improve. His grease pencil mark on the windscreen was his aiming point.
It was always pretty neat to see how accurate the Maps were and how the actual bends in the rivers would match the maps. The only problem with the maps was north of Pleiku where the maps converged and the grid squares on our firing charts didn't match exactly. No matter how hard we tried to cut the firing charts down to match, there were always a few errors that changed the accuracy.
On one of these flying missions, the pilot decided to see what was just over the next hill. By my map, it was the border and along it ran a stretch of the Ho Chi Minn trail. As we calmly flew without a care in the world, that next hill was blocking our view of a convoy. Just as we cleared that hill, the pilot said don't do anything, hang on and we'll report it when we get in a safe place. The truck convoy had a ZSU-4 at both the front and back of the convoy. They had stopped and most of the drivers and crew members were walking around and taking a break. I saw one of the ZSU-4's start to swing his quad guns at us just as we slipped back over the hill. In another minute we would probably would have been shot down and all of this blog would have not been. I immediately got on my radio and relayed the location of the convoy. The Pilot did the same on his channel and all hell broke loose for the next hour or so. The Field Artillery units were not supposed to shoot into Laos or Cambodia but the 175mm units had a lot of pin holes in their charts over there.
When we got back to Pleiku, we were sent to the operations room of the unit and attended a briefing on the results of that mission. It seemed that the convoy had a lot explosives in the trucks and there were secondary explosions as that ammo blew up as the trucks burned. The Air Force got into the play and I'm sure that there was another stretch of the trail that was cleared of trees for a mile or two. That was the odd thing to me, the trail was not on a map but you could follow it for miles and clearly see where the B-52's blew the hell out of it. There was a path of dirt probably 1/2 mile wide devoid of trees.
Oh well, better get on with my day.
MUD
In real estate they say it is Location, Location, Location. In Vietnam that was one driving force but it was also Branch, location, branch. If you saw the Movie, "Good Morning Vietnam." you saw only the war from the eyes of one of those Rear Echelon (Words deleted) guys. I don't know the ratio of warriors to support but at 500,000 troops in 1968 it seemed that the guys in the field were far outnumbered.
I went to Vietnam with an Artillery Battalion that go mortared their first night in the field. I think the final count was 13 dead and about 27 wounded. I never saw the recovery of that unit as I got transferred to another 155 unit within a week of that horrible night. The bright side of it all was I went from one of the worst units in Vietnam to one of the best. My new unit, the 1st Bn, 92nd Field Artillery had been in Vietnam a couple of years and was full of really well trained and motivated men.
We were in the Central Highlands near Pleiku. It was located on the plains kind of like Denver with the mountains nearby. Our job was to go to a lot of different places and provide backup Artillery fires for units located there. For the most part, it was units of the 4th Division with a lot of Special Forces thrown in for special operations. I spent time in locations on or near a major base and on mountain top firebases. It didn't mater where we were, we fired a lot of fires in support of units out on the ground and then at night we fired Harassment and Interdiction fires on points out on the ground that the Intelligence guys said were likely locations for the enemy. Those would be random shots from one or two guns that went on from the hours of darkness until the wee hours.
I went to Vietnam as a Forward Observer that was to be assigned out with an infantry unit. That first night in the field, all of the battery officers but me were wounded. I spent the next week in charge of the unit until my transfer. In my new unit, I was assigned as the battalion ammo officer and we had the duty of rebuilding up the ammo in the ammunition supply point (ASP) in Dak to. It had been blown up and most of what wasn't blown up was shot at the enemy during TET earlier that year. For a couple of months straight, we took all the available five ton trucks and convoyed from Pleiku to Dak to. We would spend the nights at the Pleiku ASP and the days in a convoy. It was generally a turn around for us as we went to and from each day. If I wasn't in the convoy in my jeep., I would be in a bird dog providing air cover for the convoy.
The guys thought it was better when I was in the convoy as for some reason we never got hit with an ambush in our part of the convoy. If we were in the back, the ambush would hit the front. If we were in the front, they would ambush the middle of the back. On one occasion, a pretty god sized element probably a Company of at least 100 ambushed the convoy and I was in the air. The good news was there was a battery of 155's in Kontum just up the road. I almost immediately got them set up firing on the ambush site and then chased them into the jungle. On the top of one of the overlooking mountains, I saw what looked like a radio relay point for the enemy and blew it away. I set up a line of artillery fire behind the enemy's withdrawal and the helicopter gunships and the A1E Sky Raiders (Fixed wings) really worked them over. I never did hear a total body count but I imagine most of the enemy were killed. I think my battery had one driver wounded when a bullet went through the door of his truck and a few of the fragments hit his leg.
For most of the next 4 months, My job was to provide bullets to our units and an occasional trip to the field with some outfit that needed temporary help. Lets see, I was the forward observer with a basic training company, with a Montagnard unit with South Vietnamese advisors and finally the 3rd bat, 503rd Abn (173rd guys). The last unit was supposed to be a very short stint while their FO went home as his father had a Heart Attack. While home, he had an attack of Malaria and it was 6 weeks getting away from that unit. All in all, I have been shot at, rocketed, mortared and either bored or scared half out of my wits.
One of the luxuries of being me in Vietnam was the times I got to fly in one of the bird dogs of the Head Hunters. Most of the time we would go out and fire one of the firing batteries at some bend in the river as an adjustment. That was to help tie the unit's map location to an actual location. This greatly increased the accuracy of the unit and was a lot of fun. At the end of the adjustment period, a lot of times the Bird Dog pilot would fire one of his rockets under his wing to help make his accuracy improve. His grease pencil mark on the windscreen was his aiming point.
It was always pretty neat to see how accurate the Maps were and how the actual bends in the rivers would match the maps. The only problem with the maps was north of Pleiku where the maps converged and the grid squares on our firing charts didn't match exactly. No matter how hard we tried to cut the firing charts down to match, there were always a few errors that changed the accuracy.
On one of these flying missions, the pilot decided to see what was just over the next hill. By my map, it was the border and along it ran a stretch of the Ho Chi Minn trail. As we calmly flew without a care in the world, that next hill was blocking our view of a convoy. Just as we cleared that hill, the pilot said don't do anything, hang on and we'll report it when we get in a safe place. The truck convoy had a ZSU-4 at both the front and back of the convoy. They had stopped and most of the drivers and crew members were walking around and taking a break. I saw one of the ZSU-4's start to swing his quad guns at us just as we slipped back over the hill. In another minute we would probably would have been shot down and all of this blog would have not been. I immediately got on my radio and relayed the location of the convoy. The Pilot did the same on his channel and all hell broke loose for the next hour or so. The Field Artillery units were not supposed to shoot into Laos or Cambodia but the 175mm units had a lot of pin holes in their charts over there.
When we got back to Pleiku, we were sent to the operations room of the unit and attended a briefing on the results of that mission. It seemed that the convoy had a lot explosives in the trucks and there were secondary explosions as that ammo blew up as the trucks burned. The Air Force got into the play and I'm sure that there was another stretch of the trail that was cleared of trees for a mile or two. That was the odd thing to me, the trail was not on a map but you could follow it for miles and clearly see where the B-52's blew the hell out of it. There was a path of dirt probably 1/2 mile wide devoid of trees.
Oh well, better get on with my day.
MUD
9/03/2017
Suprise, Here is a new one
I am currently reading a book about the attack on Hue City in Vietnam during Tet of 1968. It reminds me that even though I spent a year there in 1968, I knew damned little about the entire war. For many reasons, the people in power in the 50's thought it was a good thing to take one country and make two out of them. Vietnam, Korea and Pakistan/India come to mind. Had the powers to be really done it right, the promised elections would have solved the Vietnam question but they didn't enforce the rule and the North had to make a war to settle the question. The unfortunate part was that a lot of young Americans (50,000) got killed in a war that should have not been.
I am not the brightest mind in the basket, but with age I am becoming more aware that a lot of the things I thought were correct are/were just not so. The sad part is that I see our country devolving into a divided country over things that just aren't as important as some people think. I hate that a lot of Southern Texas had to get battered by the Hurricane but I can see that a lot of people are becoming more aware that working together might be a really good thing and a lot of the protests were not nearly as important as fixing what is broke right now.
Not long back, I wondered when I would be allowed to start spending some of the money we saved for a rainy day. Well, it seems that the day has arrived and if we are lucky, we will make some of the money back in the long run. You have heard that you should buy the worst house in the best neighborhood? Well, I think we did and now it it can not become a money pit in the long run it may turn out for the best. Even if it doesn't make us a lot of money, hopefully it will lead to the upgrade of Dave's house to a nicer neighborhood. More to come on that.
Well, better run and get some things done here at the homestead. Lots to do.
MUD
I am not the brightest mind in the basket, but with age I am becoming more aware that a lot of the things I thought were correct are/were just not so. The sad part is that I see our country devolving into a divided country over things that just aren't as important as some people think. I hate that a lot of Southern Texas had to get battered by the Hurricane but I can see that a lot of people are becoming more aware that working together might be a really good thing and a lot of the protests were not nearly as important as fixing what is broke right now.
Not long back, I wondered when I would be allowed to start spending some of the money we saved for a rainy day. Well, it seems that the day has arrived and if we are lucky, we will make some of the money back in the long run. You have heard that you should buy the worst house in the best neighborhood? Well, I think we did and now it it can not become a money pit in the long run it may turn out for the best. Even if it doesn't make us a lot of money, hopefully it will lead to the upgrade of Dave's house to a nicer neighborhood. More to come on that.
Well, better run and get some things done here at the homestead. Lots to do.
MUD
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)