I’ve always wanted to chronicle my thoughts on my experiences in Vietnam and this rainy Spring in Kupreanof gives me the chance. I will divide my narrative into three parts: 1.) Chu Lai (1965), 2.) Danang (1966) and 3. a Retrospective with my meetings with Nixon/Ehrlichman and later a return trip to Hanoi. (These will be updated periodically)
CHU LAI
The featured image above was taken of me at Chu Lai sometime in the summer of 1965–almost 60 years ago. I was 18 then and had to get my dad’s permission to join the Navy. The other day, I visited the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson Arizona with 6 other classmates from Dental School (University of Washington Class of ’79) and saw this A-4 which brought back memories. The one above was sapped by Viet Cong one night–perhaps 1/4 mile from my tent. A few days later, I was summoned to visit MAG 12 and a marine gave me direct orders to haul a crated box away–so I followed orders and hauled away the ejection component of this gutted A-4. Get the full story and more below.
I joined a peacetime Navy in 1963 as a 17 year old–needing my dad’s permission. He was a Lieutenant in WWII in the Soloman Islands as a Navigator on the USS Escambia. He expected each of his three sons to serve in the military and after high school, I was penniless, aimless and anxious to see the world. Joining the peacetime Navy sounded like a good idea. While still in high school, I signed papers on October 14th, 1963 and two weeks later, Ngo Dinh Diem, President of South Vietnam (and his brother Nhu) was assassinated. Following this by only 20 days, U. S. President John F. Kennedy was also assassinated. It went south from there (no pun intended) with the Gulf of Tonkin incident the following August and by January 1965 (after a short freeze on deployments), I was assigned to four months Navscon (Naval Schools Construction) to be trained as an electrician.
Here I am learning how not to fall off a telephone pole–I was so skinny, my safety belt hardly held me in. I was the only one in my class of 23 to not “burn” a pole. We learned to climb with gaffs then and the poles were either 26′ or 42′ tall after implantation. One day the entire class, finding me up on top, all took their pike-poles and began swaying the pole back and forth trying to dislodge me. I was still on my gaffs and belt (not on the cross) but hung on for dear life. I never slipped. To burn a pole is something you’ll never forget. Those that did usually ended up in the sick-bay getting lots of slivers removed. Looking down those poles resembled a bottle brush with all the slivers.
I shipped out to Okinawa flying in a MATS C-141 Starlifter*–a new jet in the fleet at the time–in May of 1965–or at least that was what my orders said. After arriving in Okinawa I was was given immediate orders to go and “jump on that ship over there.” I must have been the last one to board as we shoved off to parts unknown within the hour. Our destination was top secret–but we all knew we were going to Vietnam. I finally found a bunk–the bottom one about 6″ off the deck and when I lifted it up to see if there was any storage space, the floor moved around like liquid oil. It wasn’t oil, but cockroaches–thousands of them.
*In October 2004, the Last C-141 flight occurred from Christchurch to McMurdo (Pegasus Field) base in Antarctica–Martina was aboard that flight.
At night the seas fluoresced and during the day, I saw my first flying fish. The USS Washburn was an old WWII stink-bucket. We sailed about 7 days south through the South China Sea; with me sleeping uneasily a few inches from a sea of cockroaches. Every night I stood a four hour watch in the minus-4 hold guarding…..trucks. these were 6 X 6’s with canvas covers. Curiosity finally getting the best of me; I peered under the canvas one night and what did I see? Budweiser–lots of it. Now, what was the Navy going to do with all this beer–perhaps they wouldn’t miss a few? Each night I filched a couple of cans and upon arriving in Vietnam, had nearly a full case or more which I squirreled on shore for barter. I could hardly drag my seabag up the sandy beach. But the future looked brighter now.
This was my first perspective of Vietnam, however, from about 3 miles offshore where I spent a week driving a forklift on an LST offloading landing matting. I had never driven a forklift, but figured out it was time to learn and I couldn’t wait to get off the Washburn. This photo above is the causeway built by Amphibious Construction Battalion One or “Aceybone.” Our battalion was to the right over the first berm of sand in the pine trees. Iguana lizards were up to 5′ and there were cobras too. After getting released from forklift duty, I hauled a 55 gallon oil drum up the beach. Next to me a fellow Seabee flipped a barrel end over end up the sand–setting the invention of the wheel back 6 thousand years. Harbinger of things to come. Below is a diorama in the Seabee Museum in Port Hueneme, California, with me rolling that barrel off the LST–Aceybonbe’s causeway in the distance….. From the movie South Pacific: “We got sunlight on the sand, we got moonlight on the sea, we got mangos and bananas you can pick right off a tree…..”
When I got the 55 gallon up the beach, I checked in and quickly proved to the Yeoman on duty–2nd Class Petty Officer Seymour Simon Sperber III, that I could type faster than he could and soon found myself a good job iunder the shade of a tent, complete with ice cooler and fan! But first, everyone had to put in 6 weeks of sandbagging–this was not fun…..and the Navy promised me “fun.” “Skip” and I became good friends and would cross paths 50 years later in quite a remarkable coincidence (described at the end of this post).
Camp Bannister was first named after our CO or Commanding Officer John M. Bannister. “First In” ran the banner on this entrance sign. Our beach landing was the largest since Incheon Korea 15 years earlier. Standing beside the sign here is Seymour Simon Sperber III–“The Threat of Chu Lai” we called him. Skip was definitely NYC entertainment material, and if I didn’t know better, would place him as the fifth Marx Brother–he was an absolute character. Once in a bar in Yokohama, he jumped on stage grabbed the mic from a performer and start singing (I was there). He could do the “hambone” faster than his hero, George Jessel, and would demonstrate at the drop of a hat.
Speaking of whom……George Jessel once visited our battalion–so did Bob Hope and Roy Rogers (to follow). The skipper asked me to deliver a message to him–at some sort of Officer’s Club reception. Normally an enlisted man couldn’t access these “sacred” places. Sperber was all beside himself not being allowed to take on this task–pestering me when I returned for a full report of his “hero.” “Did you see George Jessel?” he repeating over and over. Well, I responded, there were lots of folks there and I described them all in great detail. Then I added–“oh, yeah, there was this old guy standing over in the corner–probably the janitor–dressed in khaki’s and described George to a”T.” “That’s him! Sperber screeched. “He’s not a janitor…he’s not a janitor…..” he yelled over and over. Sperber never forgave me for this prank. Another time, the skipper pulled a surprise inspection in the admin sleeping quarters. Sperber had spent the night on watch so was the only one sleeping in the tent. As the skipper and I approached the tent, we suspected something horribly wrong by growling sounds from within and approached with caution. It turned out to be snoring. Add to this farce–in spite of the 100F degree heat–Sperber was in an army down sleeping bag! The bag was drawn tight–the only thing poking out was Sperber’s ……hrrrrmph……well…….ample nose–which I might add was unmistakeable. The skipper stopped, glanced at the snoring nose, looked back at me and we both nodded in agreement–Sperber.
A color Polaroid. I had no camera for the first deployment, borrowing one from time to time. My iconic “Sad Sack” genuine Seabee hat is lying flat like a chef’s hat. I would be known for this hat.
Camp entrance and the beginning of the MSR–Main Supply Route. The airstrip lay just beyond the MSR.
As mentioned above, our camp was initially called Camp Bannister after our Commanding Officer…..but not for long. We received reports that a VC Battalion was going to overrun our base and the skipper called for his gun. While cleaning it, he shot himself in the foot and had to be evacuated. From that point on, we were named Camp Shields after Marvin G. Shields, the first Medal of Honor recipient in the Navy in the Vietnam conflict and the first Seabee ever. He was one of two Seabees killed at Dong Xoai June 9th. Since MCB 10 was the first battalion in Vietnam, he was attached to us, but was deployed from MCB 11 (Seabee Technical Assistance Team or STAT Team 1104). I never met him but there is a VFW hall named after him in Port Townsend WA, his hometown. This was a sober beginning for an 18 year old. Captain Bannister had never fired a gun in his life, methinks. When he blew off this round, besides a loud wail, the entire camp went on full alert and we soon got a new skipper….. Here is a summary of the role of the Seabees in Vietnam.
Before I was assigned to my administrative duties, I was the sand-bagging duty–outside each tent we had a trench fortified with bags in case we were overrun–called Mortar Pits. Fortunately, we never used them. Everyone got 6 weeks of sandbagging. At the end of this stint, I thought we’d run out of sand.
More sandbagging here…..
….and here. I actually worked on this one. We used heavy equipment to dig a hole and then bagged all the walls adding a center support of stacked oil drums. Landing matting sufficed roofing which was paved with……more sand bags. This Seabee was hit in the head with a magnesium flare during a skirmish one night and was shipped out–I don’t know if he lived, but I remember typing up the report. He was not wearing a combat helmet.
We took no direct casualties from combat–after-all we were Seabees (look up John Wayne and the fighting Seabees). However we had an occasional incoming round–probably discharged like Bannister’s pistol by adjacent marine camps. We had just four casualties that year, two of our men died of disease–one an Admin fellow, Joe Butler who contracted meningitis. He was well liked. One day an F-104 flew directly over our tents by 100′ and crashed just beyond our camp killing the pilot.
Our camp was right on the beach. This photo was taken after we hard-sided our tents–a real improvement with mosquito netting and the like. Acebone’s causeway is in the distance. Before hard-siding our tents and when everything was open, iguanas would slither under our bunks at night looking for morsels. Also the crabs. You could hear the crab legs clicking as they walked sideways. But in the morning the sand was clean and nice and level–as if it was raked. Before the lights-out (10pm), millions of bugs would line the tent ceiling and after the lights went off, they would drop one-by-one onto our sleeping nets. I recall huge praying mantis’s and the biggest beetles ever–a veritable entomological jungle. Every now and then, one would get inside your mosquito netting and all hell would break loose. Glamping at it’s finest.
The Admin crew: Behind: Raymond B. Orca, Seymour “Skip” Sperber, Robert Kircher, Lower: William Knight and your’s truly. Orca was from Watsonville CA and would often get detained by the Marines as he looked like a Viet Cong. We all ribbed him about it. Kircher was from Marin County CA and told me all about the turtle races at Zacs. Bill Knight was from Midland Texas. All great guys.
This my “office after hard-siding and moving off the PSP. Note the mountain pics on the walls–I had longed to climb Mt. McKinley and had applied just before I left. Also note my boots–somehow these got wet in the monsoons and the toes curled up dramatically. Now, this was not an issue except…… when they pulled a surprise inspection. I might also add here facts about my hat…… We were issued the Seabee hat–which was this big baggy like contraption. Everyone tossed these away and got issued the Marine Corps field hat–which was sporty with pointy corners (I’m wearing that version here). However, when called for inspections, I switched to the Seabee version–all starched up as tall as I could get it to stand. It looked irksome. I lined up with the other men and the skipper looked down the row for the lone Seabee who stood out, his eyes usually stopped with me. I was a fan of the Sunday cartoon “Sad Sack” which you youngsters may not remember–he was in inspiration to me–a goof-off in the military–years before Catch-22 was written. Sad Sack wasn’t exactly reenlistment material and neither was I. Besides the boots looking out of alignment, I wore my stovepipe Seabee hat. All my compatriots wore the Marine hat to blend in. Needless to say, I stuck out like a sore thumb–sultan boots with curved toes and this “Abe Lincoln” starched hat towering above all the others. I was proud of my Seabee hat and the uniform regs couldn’t prevent me from wearing it. When the skipper walked down the ranks, he always stopped with me, turned to face me, slowly shook his head and walked on. I couldn’t wait to get out and the skipper had similar feelings.
Today, you’d pay big bucks for “glamping” in such a place. We had fresh crab, and when available, steak….but it was sometimes a paradise….sometimes. In spite of the diorama above, we didn’t “pick mangoes right off the tree…..” We began with C-Rations–12 to a case with A,B,C and 1-4 labels. A-2 was my favorite with fruit cocktail for desert. It came with powdered coffee, a heat-tab which was poisonous and two cigarettes, I recall. Read on….
This was Steak Sunday…..without any Bordeaux. We did get two cans of beer issued each day but only because our water was so bad. Recall that I stood watch on the Washburn in the minus 4 hold guarding a “sea of trucks” Green tarped 6 X 6’s full of …… Budweiser beer which helped. Not being an idiot, somewhat of an opportunist, and definitely an entrepreneur, I squirreled away a can or two each night of watch, into my seabag and buried my treasure in the vast sands of Chu Lai in a secret place. This became my “baksheesh” or trade material later. The Chinese have a term “cumshaw” which means the same. Time Magazine ran an article on one of our Chief Petty Officers by the name of Fedderson. He left with a pile of empty pallets and came back from Saigon with all sorts of goodies–ice cream machines, a theater, and more–here is that article. Each Sunday, the marines would look over our fence and ogle at our opulence….and my goofy baggy hat. (I’m standing on PSP or Perforated Steel Plate.)
Of course, we had to wash our own dishes–and there were no automatic dish-washers* but only garbage cans with submersible heaters turning our sink into a caldron–a toilet bowl brush hangs ready to combat bad food…..(and there was plenty of it). One night I snuck out and fished a case of C-rats out from under the mess tent and set up a proper feast for myself and a few select buddies.
*But we had car-washes. A roadside sign literally translated from Vietnamese. A Shakespeare in our midst!
One my jobs was to gather “Sit-Reps” or Situation Reports–twice a day. They were classified documents and gave us the intelligence of where the enemy was, casualty rates, etc. I always wondered why they put numbers on NVA and VC killed and wounded (KIA, MIA) but never on our own troops. They should know. By my recollection, for every US Marine killed,10 were wounded and for every wounded US Marine, there were 10 NVA/VC killed and for every enemy killed, there were 10 wounded–all powers of 10. In both the French War and the American War (as the Vietnamese called them), we collectively killed about 4,000,000 Vietnamese. This ranks up near the holocaust–and something you won’t read in our history books. Using Napalm and Agent Orange even–can you imagine the outrage today if Russia or Israel used Napalm? See my third post on this subject–coming soon. We Seabees were attached to the Fourth Marines (Danang housed the Third Marines) which occupied the three northernmost provinces–Quang Tri, Quang Nam and Quang Ngai. There are now five provinces here. The population of Vietnam was 14M in the North and 16M in the South then. Today it approaches 100M with the average age about 17–so there is no memory of the war. The US Army was responsible for the southern 2/3rds of the country including the Central Highlands. But I digress…..
To fetch these “Sit-Reps,” I’d drive up the MSR–Main Supply Route–a laterite packed road along the beach. We’d always drive in pairs and always carry our M-14s. I could field strip this behind my back in 30 seconds. My jeep was an M-38 and I’ve always wanted to buy one when I returned. Besides the VC, sand was our enemy in summer (dry and gritty) and laterite our enemy during the monsoon season–like soup. We split the difference traveling sand in the monsoons and laterite in the summer. I had my own jeep…..remember that Budweiser? Well, I traded a case of beer to some marine for my own jeep and nearly got court-martialed when the skipper found out about it. I would usually borrow the skippers jeep to get these Sit-Reps. One day after a 2-star Admiral had visited, they left the ‘two stars’ in the license holder in the front (each jeep had high rank displayed on the front–where you’d expect to see a license plate). Well, not realizing this was still in place, everywhere I drove, marines snapped to attention and gave me a smart salute wherever I went. Maybe I should reenlist……
This is the main supply route or MSR from the north end of our beach–looking south. Just to confuse us Seabees, we had MRS’s that graded the MSR. MRS was “Mississippi River Scraper–two are shown here. I wasn’t confused. Our Camp Shields would be behind the two palms far left. Here is another photo taken by the US Navy:
This is the MSR looking south from the point–you can see the sand road (left) and the laterite (right). During the monsoons, I once saw a jeep in front of me–actually a “Mighty-Mite” completely disappear in a “pothole.” The two occupants swam over to me and I helped them out. The beach was wonderful feature after a hot day’s work. We worked 6 days a week, sometimes 7 (see my rebellion in the sequel post). On our single day off, we would take our air mattresses out into the surf and have a blast. The crabs would bite our toes though. But then, we would harvest them and eat them for dinner–a rare treat.
The monsoons arrived in late summer–sometime our tents would take flight. Same place on a sunny day. I had never seen rain like this.
Hercules C-130s were our lifeline for supplies–the ships left after the strip opened–it was ultimately 8000′ and only a temporary strip. RMK was building a mondo one up against the mountains. Here is an aerial of the one we built:
Camp Shields is at the far left–all organized rows of tents. The revetment where the jets would back up to and let loose is directly across from our camp entrance. It certainly didn’t make for a peaceful night’s sleep. My complaints went nowhere. Also causing disturbance was the 105 Howitzers which lit off all the time. They were thunderous. Stacks of brass casings would be everywhere. One day I grabbed one, took it to the machine shop, and made a nice ashtray out of it. I don’t smoke but still have it. Here is a Google Earth view of the same area dated 1985–RMK’s strip is upper left–now a military base:
The airstrip we built is just off the beach–two parallel lines just showing about 1000′ of what’s left. A road now runs along the beach through what was once our camp.
Airstrip construction: survey, level, basement laterite, PSP (perforated steel plate–actually this is a more modern version without the perforations). I did not directly participate in this work, however, I did dispose of a huge truckload of matting and it slid over and nearly took off my hand. I ended up in sick-bay but lived to tell the story.
And the A-4s were at this time the offense–here parked on the taxiway. Note the barrel divisions preventing a sapper from taking out more than one plane at a time–a later addition. We built a revetment for “launching” these jets. It was essentially a “backstop” and was just beyond Camp Shields boundary and every night they would roar off into the monsoon rains. Our strip was functional for C-130s and -123s at 4000′ but was eventually built out at 8000′. A-4’s could land and take-off with JATO (Jet Assisted Take Off) bottles on a 2000′ strip. Our battalion dentist was from Seattle and we became good friends. He was also the battalion photographer–some of these photos are his. Here is a video he made of our operation.
This may be one of the first jets to land and take-off–JATO assisted. No taxiway and very little support buildings. June or July 1965? We were exposed here on the beach. Each night we’d stand duty out in foxholes–my turn came up about every fourth night. We’d get dropped off half mile to the left and spool out a wire to attach our sound powered phones. Every fourth or fifth station had a foxhole and the rest of us would pair up and sleep right on the sand–staring at the stars. One would stand watch–returning a queue “whistle” every 15 minutes, and one would sleep–2 hour shifts. When the monsoons hit, it was miserable and we were confined to foxholes which sometimes filled up with rain. We’d make coffee from our C-rats using the heat-tabs; the acrid smoke of which nearly poisoned us. One trick we used to stay awake was to see how far we could reach with our sound powered phones. Our call-sign was Shavetail and the Marines next door were Blood Alley. There was also Afterglow and many more–we learned this sequence of camp call-signs and would whistle into these phones (they had no ringers) alerting the switchboard operator to answer–“connect me to Afterglow,” we’d holler. Then Afterglow would hook us up to Blood Alley and so forth–all a series of plugged-in circuits. After reaching the Chu Lai command post, we’d ask for Danang, then Saigon, Philippines, eventually Hawaii. From Philippines, it was a land-line and we’d try to convince the telephone operators to put the calls through to home. Few of these operators believed they were talking to some soldier in a foxhole in Vietnam and few calls got through. But it passed the time.
2000# bombs.
More 2000# bombs
and more bombs.
105mm Howitzer casings–stacked like cord-wood. A fortune in scrap brass. The sound of these being fired was deafening. They would sometimes sound off all night. In some areas, the Vietnamese have begun mining these warheads–particularly around bridges–targets of the 2000#ers. Also the casings for metal. See the Danang entry (next post).
These are the tanks that would fire these 105’s. One day Sperber and I were driving out to Route 1 for some sight-seeing (a rare and probably forbidden activity) and passed right under the muzzle of this when it fired. Skip nearly drove off the road.
Civic Action. In spite of all our bombing and destruction of this land and people, one of the positive sides of the Seabees was civic action. Kind of like today in Gaza–we bomb the eastern side and supply the western side–totally crazy. I would volunteer to accompany these teams–usually medical ones to get off the base and see what Vietnam was really about. This is a fishing village north around the point.
Here a little girl baby-sits her younger sister who rides on her hip; she couldn’t be older than 6 and her sister 2. She looks away from me as I take her photograph. The red lawn chair behind her was a typical sight there–we’d buy them and sit in them in our “Sand-O-Rama” theater on movie nights. Chief Fedderson kept us with a good library of movies. One of the warehouses I peered into here was also full of Budweiser–and this was just weeks after we landed. I thought this was top secret–Keynesian economics at its finest.
I recall this was our battalion MD names Starr? I kept close to him as I didn’t carry a weapon.
R&R: I was one of the last to land at Chu Lai so got last straw for R&R (Rest and Relaxation visits). They first offered me Okinawa where I had sailed from. Now, little that I knew of Okinawa, I knew I didn’t want to fly back and spend a week there among the military bases and their surrounding “facilities.” I turned it down–which was unheard of. The skipper sent me over to the Chaplain to get “interviewed” to make sure I was “OK.” I simply explained that I had no interest in Okinawa but would like to visit Bangkok and see some other country and I got it. Here I traverse the Chao Phraya River. The tallest building was 7 stories in 1965–the Diamond Hotel in the center of town. I stayed in the 6th floor:
Here I take a photograph showing the Bangkok skyline of 1965. It was a beautiful city and Americans were treated royally. For example, a woman in the hotel lobby who sold silk ties offered to have her 13 year old daughter take me around town and show me the sights. Trust still followed Americans abroad then–at least in Bangkok. I remember having birds nest soup. I bought a silk tie–with simply no use for it as a thank you. I also bought a blue star sapphire stone for $50. It was later stolen out of my first house in West Seattle by Omer Brown–whom I caught by marking $50 one dollar bills and buying it back from the “fence.” I still have it. And Omar is still in jail, I’m told.
The Bangkok floating markets were a must-see. In the mid ’60’s, they were lovely. I joined up with a marine I met at the hotel and we rented a boat for a day. My week went too fast. On the way over, our C-130 stalled an engine so we got side-lined in Danang for three days. I traveled with another Seabee (we were on the buddy system in Danang) who was a bit shady (he later was sentenced to life for murder). He insisted in visiting the red-light district in Danang so I was obliged to accompanied him–we traveled in rickshaws. When we turned the corner into this “district” every girl looked out an upper window and waived a skimpy article of clothing. I was frankly quite shocked. Just shocked, I say. It was a sad sight–what our European cultures also brought to these Asian cities. And besides, it was pouring rain and I had to wait out in the rain.
That evening after this excursion into this Dickensian theater, we had to fend for ourselves to find a place to sleep. There were no barracks available as so many marines were being shuffled about. We found a tent out in a flooded rice paddy. No problem, we found a warehouse full of mattresses and began to ferry these huge cumbersome items–balanced on our heads–across narrow boardwalks between paddy berms finally plopping them down into the water–gradually building up a dry bed–like a coral reef. For three days we lived like this–which was enough–until our engine was repaired. That put is three days late for a total of 10 day gone–we had no control over this but were temporarily “put on report” for returning late. What a week it was.
One poignant memory of this R&R trip was landing in Danang after the short trip up from Chu Lai (when the one engine shut down). We disembarked the plane on one side of the airstrip and our departure terminal was exactly opposite–about 2 miles of walking in pouring rain and muddy laterite. Danang airstrip was then touted as the busiest airport in the world–with one airplane debarking or landing every 45 seconds! Most of these were F-4 Phantom jets. Now if you’ve ever been up close to one of these when they take off, it’s impressive. Like a double barrel shotgun continuously going off. They were horizontal rockets until they got above ground effect, then pointed nearly straight up and were gone in seconds. Thunderous. So–here we were on the wrong side of a 10,000′ airstrip in monsoon rains. Our terminal was tantalizingly close–just 100 yards distant. The alternative was a two mile trudge in laterite mud around the strip. Well, we Seabees are a “Can Do” bunch so I came up with probably the dumbest idea of my life…..that we (there were three of us, no less) could simply jump the barb-wire fence, run across the center of the strip between flights and we’d be in the terminal in less than 2 minutes–seabags and all. Well……., it worked perfectly and why we were not shot on sight, is still a miracle to me today–some 60 years later.
Shortly after returning from R&R, we mounted out to return to Port Hueneme CA. There were 9 flights scheduled to lift out our battalion, and I was assigned to the last. These C-130s flew until engines shut down–note my trip to Bangkok above where we had two shut-down events. The C-130 that flew in to pick us up, crashed and killed the crew when it landed at Chu Lai. Reassuring. So, they sent in this plane. We had 81 people on board I recall and several of these 6X6 trucks in the plane’s center. We all slept on hammocks on the bulkheads for this 70+ hour series of flights. I slept in the lower net on the red line. A red line is marked on all military planes to show the propeller strike zone–but I wasn’t aware of this. The plane was so heavy, we had four JATO assist bottles on each side–we were half-rocket when we took off. Our route went from Chu Lai to the Philippines, to Wake Island and on to San Francisco, refueling at each stop. Twenty minutes past the “point-of-no-return” between Wake and San Francisco, our port inboard engine blew apart and caught fire with part of the compressor ring blowing in all directions putting a dent in the fuel pod and taking out the port-light about 3′ feet above my head. Sleeping above me was Robert L. Jones who lost his leg in this incident. He was blown out of the net and fell on me and then to the floor. I tried to rise up but the floor was oily–or so I though as I slipped in my boots–it was blood. Emergency lights went on and everyone was looking around in silence. The air quickly turned to icy crystals–almost like snow–which were then quickly sucked out this hole. Quickly realizing the issue, I put a tourniquet on Jones, called for Chief DaHarsh who was a medic on board and ran up into the cockpit to inform the crew (I was closest to the cockpit). We were flying at 26,000′ at the time and dove within a few minutes to 12,000. The fire was extinguished during this dive. I haven’t flown sober since.
After landing, we look at the damage. It took the military 4 months to issue me a “hero letter” which I post here. This letter actually served me well throughout life–I submitted it the admissions department at the UW School of Dentistry and they thought I was perhaps a good risk (I was). Four others were injured by this shrapnel–I was unscathed. These are some of my memories of my first year in Vietnam. Next will be Danang (1966).
Oh, I forgot to mention how I ran into Sperber 50 years later. As I mentioned earlier, I have never flown sober since this flight on the C-130 (although I did fly again on these beasts–into the South Pole–and they are a marvelous aircraft). About 6-7 years ago I was flying on a commercial flight from Seattle to Atlanta. My seat-mate was a Boeing flight engineer and touted the safety features of the plane we were flying on. I naturally to related him my story of the return from Vietnam with all the gory details–as I guzzled another drink. He scoffed at any danger that I was in….. We landed in Atlanta and everyone got up and checked the overhead bins. Directly in front of me a fellow turned around–it was Sperber. And here he had been on that same flight about 50 years earlier. He was flying down from Anchorage–he lived right up the street from me. We had a good chat as we walked off the plane.
Here is the letter:
