"We Gotta Get Out Of This Place"

Every two to three months, Army brass sent us from the jungle to the VIP Center in Bien Hoa for three days.  They called it an R&R, a place where combat soldiers go to rest & recuperate from fighting the war.  

Evenings were spent at the club drinking beer and watching Vietnamese rock-and-roll bands.  None of them played very well so to add some interest, they had go-go dancers.  I don't think any of the band members could speak English very well.  That didn't stop them however from mimicking the latest British and American rock-and-roll tunes. 

It was weird watching them play something like "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" by Iron Butterfly.  But it was all we had.   There was one song they did however, that never seemed weird.  We requested that song every night.  The song was, "We Gotta Get Out of this Place" by the Animals.  We all loved hearing it because the lyrics related to our time in Vietnam.

If you don’t know the song, you need to listen to it on You Tube.  It builds in intensity,

beginning with a base guitar lick that grabs you right from the start.  The lyrics, "In this dirty old part of the city, where the sun refuse to shine" are delivered slow, low and easy.  It starts to crank as drums then lead guitar and finally organ are added.  The lyrics move with the music describing a story of pain and despair.  We are all feeling it, mesmerized by it, because the story relates to the pain of where we are.  Finally the refrain hits and every guy in that club, filled with emotion, join with the band and belt out, "We gotta get out of the place.., If it's the last thing we ever do.., We gotta get out of the place.., Cause girl, there's a better life, For me and you."       

It was absolutely draining singing that song but at the same time, it felt so dam good.  

The Army Mule

I cannot think of anything really that was more fun in Vietnam than running around in an Army M-274 truck.  They were affectionately known as a mule.

I read somewhere that the mule was introduced to the Army in 1956.  Four different manufacturers built 11,240 of them.  Production stopped in 1970, the year I was in Vietnam.  The Army used them for various tasks.  They were even used as a weapons platform for the 106 mm recoil-less rifle and the 50-caliber machine gun.  I only saw them used for carrying supplies.  

They were about ten feet long, four feet wide, four feet high and weighed about 900 pounds.  The seat was so far forward, your legs had to be supported out in front of the thing on a metal frame where the brake, clutch and gas pedal were.  They had a neat little air-cooled, four-cylinder engine, two-wheel and four-wheel drive and a manual three-speed transmission.  There was no suspension in them at all other than those large, rubber tires.  Flat out, they would do about 15 mph, which was fast enough because you bounced around a lot on the dirt roads we ran them on.

When we pulled guard on Firebase Buttons, there were always day jobs to be done other than pulling guard.  A day job may include guarding a dump run, burning shit or moving supplies between the supply tent and the airstrip.  Buttons was large enough, where it needed its own airstrip for landing Air Force planes and large helicopters.

Running supplies back and forth on a mule was pure joy.  You felt like a race-car driver out there shifting up through the gears, racing along, down shifting, then hitting the brakes to a skid stop.  It was enough to make you forget you were in Vietnam, at least for a while.  They were so narrow, we were lucky they didn't tip over on turns.

Back home, three-wheelers made by Honda and other companies starting to appear in the early seventies.  Four-wheelers replaced the three-wheelers around 1985 due to safety issues.  My son-in-law has two four-wheelers.  When I look at those vehicles of his, it reminds me of a time back in 1970 on the other side of the world when I raced around on the granddaddy of them all, the Army mule.            




  

F'in New Guy

If you look closely, you will notice that my helmet cover is new, my uniform is new, jungle boots are new, my pack is empty and I don't have a mustache.  I was an "F'in New Guy" (FNG), just starting out in Vietnam.  It was February 1970 and I had been in country for a little over a month.

Three weeks before, I had been assigned to the First Cavalry Division, home of the "sky-troopers".  They gave us that funny nickname because we traveled everywhere in helicopters.  Even when we went into combat, we traveled by helicopter to get there.  Headquarters had assigned me to Ace High (A-Company), 2nd-12th Battalion.

It could not have worked out any better.  Ace High was pulling guard on Firebase Buttons in Song Be when I joined them.  So I didn't have to jump on a helicopter and meet up with them in the jungle.  Being dumped in the jungle right from the start was bad news for an FNG.  There was just too much to learn and a hell of a dangerous place to be while you were learning.  Even better, I had been with Ace High for four days, when we learned that instead of heading back to the jungle, we would be going on R&R to Bien Hoa for three days.  Everything was playing out for me like a gift.  

Funny, I had just left Bien Hoa.  Before being assigned to the 1st Cav, I pulled guard in Bien Hoa for two weeks.  Now I was heading back and feeling guilty about it.  I felt I didn't deserve it but they told me to go anyway.  So I spent three days there relaxing during the day and drinking beer while watching Vietnamese rock bands at night.

On the day this picture was taken, we were back in Bien Hoa Air Force Base waiting to catch a C-123 to Song Be.  Close by was that "freedom bird", the Overseas National jet in the background behind me.  Freedom birds held a very special place in my heart.  I would have loved to slip on board that freedom bird.  They were the airplanes that brought you to Vietnam from the United States and returned you back again a year later.  For me, it seemed like it would be forever before I would be heading back.  So I wasn't a happy camper posing in front of that plane.  Three weeks before, I may have deserted if by some miracle I had been given the chance to jump on a freedom bird.  But not now.  I was part of a team of guys that already were beginning to feel like family.  I would go back to the United States at a drop-of-a-hat, but I was no longer willing to be a deserter as a way to pull it off.  

  If you look closely at my face, you can see the innocence in it.  I wasn't scared but I was uneasy about the unknown out there in front of me.  I even look a little defiant.  Thank god, I had no idea what was coming.  Thank god, none of us know what is coming.
      

The "Going Home" Sign

I arrived at Bien Hoa Air Force Base in Vietnam in mid January 1970.  I was dog-tired.  I had been flying in a packed airplane for the last twenty hours.  I was feeling uneasy about Vietnam and the mess I thought I was in.  

Outside the terminal, they packed us in buses and drove us over to a place called the 90th Replacement Battalion.  The 90th Replacement Battalion was where military personnel were processed-in as well as processed-out of Vietnam.  As I stepped down from the bus, someone pointed me in the direction of the administration building.  There, for the first time I saw the sign, GOING HOME?, REPORT HERE, USA BOUND.

The sign overwhelmed me with a mix of fear and homesickness.  I realized then that I was staring at a full year of Vietnam in front of me.  I would not be seeing family and friends for a year.  And there was a chance I would never see them again.  For other soldiers however, who were processing-out, they must have stared at that same sign and just knew there time was up.  They were heading home and I was not.  I envied them.  It was painful looking at that sign.

Well I made it out of the 90th Replacement Battalion in three days.  Then I spent a week in a training area with the 1st Cavalry Division.  They worked us in the hot sun so we would not collapse from the heat when we were transferred to our unit.  From there I pulled guard for a few weeks at the Air Force Base.  Finally, they shipped me to my unit where I began work as an infantry soldier.  With over four weeks under my belt, the thought of that sign was fading.  There was just too many other things to think about.

The year passed slowly in some ways and quickly in others.  The pain of the day-to-day slog of an infantry soldier made time drag.  Yet somehow, the year ticked away day by day, week by week and month by month.  That last month just crawled almost to a stop.  Then I was on a plane heading back to Bein Hoa Air Force Base for the last time.  From there I caught a bus over to the 90th Replacement Battalion.  This time I was processing out of Vietnam.  As I got off the bus, that same sign I had seen almost a  year before, hit me with a rush of warmth and happiness when I read again, GOING HOME?, REPORT HERE, USA BOUND.  How could one sign have such opposite emotions linked to it!

In 1975, the war ended and I'm sure that sign was torn down and burned by the communist North Vietnamese Army.  It's too bad.  I have been looking for a good reason to go back to Vietnam and I can't seem to come up with one.  Maybe if that sign still existed, I would go back to Vietnam just to see it again.