Catholic Church

Early in my tour, I was assigned to pull guard at night for a few weeks  at Bien Hoa Air Base .  During the day, I'd sleep in the morning and wander around the village of Bien Hoa in the afternoon.  On one of those days, I ran across a small Catholic Church.

I assumed it was Catholic because it had a statue of Mary on the property.  I wasn't sure though because the church had colored banners draped across the steeple and around the property.  I could not figure out what the banners signified.  I'd never seen banners like that on any catholic church at home.  The door to the church was locked and there was no one there to question.  What I can say for sure is the church was the first place in Vietnam where I felt a sense of peace.

Vietnam had me feeling uneasy so far.  I hadn't been there long enough to experience combat.  But I knew it was coming.  Fear of the unknown left a lump in my stomach that would not easily go away.  But standing in the presence of that little church calmed me.  It took my mind off things.  It didn't have that sense of awe that you feel when you are standing inside of a large cathedral.  But it was enough.

I wonder now who the church had served back then.  Was it the French?  Old french homes were in the area.  You can see one behind the church and another in the background behind the statue of Mary.  Or did the church serve the Vietnamese people?  I tried to find the church on the internet recently to see if it still existed.  No luck.    

Former French Homes

In the early 1900's when I suspect these French homes were built, the French colonial government was in full swing.  French high society lived in these homes.  They were either linked to the government or they owned a rubber plantations or maybe they owned paddy fields for growing rice.  World War II was the beginning of the end for them when the Japanese threw the French out of Vietnam during the war.  By 1970, when I arrived, the French were long gone.

You can see that the fences hadn't had paint in a long time.  That bird house in the snapshot below must have cost a fortune to build in its time.  It was wasting away.  I noticed that windows were open in a few places.  I believe that caretakers were living in the homes.

I checked on the internet and could not find any indication that these houses still exist.  It wouldn't surprise me if they were torn down by the communists from North Vietnam when they took over the South in 1975.  They wouldn't have liked them because they represented a former colonial power who in their mind lived high while the population suffered.  Besides, who could have afforded to fix them up and live in them again.

It amazes me how quickly a country can change as conquerors come and go.  What did this location look like before the French and what must it look like now.  Maybe some day I will get over there and see for myself.    

First Team Academy

The First Team Academy is where the First Cavalry Division sent recruits who had just arrived from the United States.  A busload of us  spent a week there training in the hot sun as a way to get used to the climate.

I like it there for a lot of reasons.  I felt like I was finally moving forward rather than hanging around waiting to be assigned to a unit.  The conditions were better.  We received three good meals a day and slept on a bed that felt reasonably clean.  We learned a lot more about how to fight in the villages and jungles of Vietnam.  The highlight of the place however, was the repelling tower that you can see in the snapshot below.

Repelling was the art of leaping from a hovering helicopter to the ground below by sliding down a rope using a D-Ring as a brake.  Instructors told us that we may have to repel from a helicopter if the pilot could not set down on the jungle floor for some reason.

To practice, they had us repel from the platform you can see at the top, down forty feet to the ground below.  We first learned how to belt ourselves into a body harness then connect a rope to the harness with a D-Ring.  To ensure that the training would be a hair-raising experience, instructors forced us to jump of the end of the platform with enough slack in the rope to free-fall about ten feet before being jerked to a stop.  Then we lowered ourselves to the ground using the D-Ring.

Throwing yourself of the platform rather than crawling over the edge was meant to be part confidence building, part sadistic.  The fear I felt before the leap quickly changed to a feeling of pride as I lowered myself to the ground.

Time went by quickly at First Team Academy because they kept us busy.  Much too soon, we received our orders for the next leg of our tour of Vietnam.  

Bien Hoa Air Base

The French built Bien Hoa Air Base in 1955 for the First Indonesian War.  The United States shared the Air Base with the South Vietnamese during the Vietnam War that followed.  So when I landed in a Freedom Bird at Bien Hoa Air Base in January 1970, the base had been in existence for fifteen years and it showed. (Freedom Bird was the name given to the commercial jets that carried American soldiers to Vietnam from the United States.)

I was shocked how large the base was and how ordinary it felt.  It could have been any other Air Base in the United States.  Stepping off the plane in Vietnam for the first time and then seeing that sign, left me feeling that maybe Vietnam was not going to be so bad after all.

During my tour in Vietnam, I returned to Bien Hoa Air Base many times.  Every few months we flew to Bien Hoa when traveling to in-country R&R (Rest & Recuperation) sites for a three-day break from the action.  When I went on a one-week R&R to Japan and then months later to Australia, I flew into Bien Hoa.  I took combat leadership training in the Bien Hoa area.  Bien Hoa was a destination for me that always meant that I would be out of the fighting for awhile.

That blurry snapshot to the right is Bien Hoa Air Base taken from the air.  I took the picture at the end of my tour.  I had been released from the First Cavalry Division and had my orders to return to the United States.  I waited three agonizing days to get a seat on a Freedom Bird.  They bused me and a plane-load of others to a set of stairs at Bien Hoa Air Base that lead up to the open door of the airplane.  I was lucky enough to to get a window seat.  We taxied to the runway, took off, and then banked right.  As we turned, I could see Bien Hoa Air Base below.  Leaning toward the window and looking down thorough my Instamatic Camera view finder, I snapped my last picture of Vietnam.  It felt like I had just closed a door.  I knew I would never have to come back again.  It felt so good to take that picture.