Almost Never told Vietnam story

In 1967 I had signed up for an extra year beyond my Army 2 year draft notice time in an attempt to stay out of the infantry. Against the backdrop of my high school friend Gary Scott being killed as an infantry officer timed with my going in, I nixed my OCS path that would have made me his replacement, most likely, and got into supply instead. I should have joined the band, but I didn't think of it. This actually turned out to be a good move, since even though I was in Vietnam by January of '68, "Tet", I ended up in "Automated Supply", a computer services operation in a relatively safe area in Vietnam, if there was such a thing. We tracked, stocked and ordered replacement parts for all of the helicopters in the country. Some of the operation was classified secret, and everything was top priority. Several times had to urgently have a special delivery of a needed tail rotor or something from St.Louis with nothing else on the flight but that one part! Our Army suply unit was in a compound called "Tent City B" just outside the Ton-Sun-Nhut Air Force base, the busiest airport in the world at the time, and we were not too far from the place that Westmoreland stayed. Due to the IBM 360-40 mainframe computer in the building (today's desktop computers are more powerful), we enjoyed air conditioning and secretaries and fairly lax controls, by army standards at the time. After our day "at the office" we walked or jeeped a half mile to the barracks, where we had bunks and lockers and mama-sans to shine boots, wash and iron , clean up during the day. We were in a relatively safe area. There were the occasional snipings on the edge of the base, grenades being found with pulled pins in the back of trucks passing through crowds outside of town, mortar rounds hitting in our near area, the closest to me was when one VC 120mm mortar fried a helicopter not 100 yards from where I slept, and other hazards of living in the midst of a war zone, but by and large we were relatively safe. I mean especially compared to the vast majority of army people who were scattered out in remote places of the country, and carried guns and were more exposed to danger all the time. I can tell stories of notable other exceptions, but we were even relatively safe when we pulled rotating guard duty all night long every few weeks. This guard duty is my story for today.

Tent City B, with its chain link and barbed wire exterior would have nestled right up into a residential suburban saigon area except for a buffer zone of about 100 yards or more that was sort of rolling grassy area like the edge of a golf course or something. These residential areas beyond the fence had low shacky houses with adobe looking walls, wooden boxy houses with long sloping roofs, multi family it looked like, or at least many people disappeared into the houses . During the day you could see people scurrying around, men in their dull clothing and women in those silky pajama-like things and the conical architypical hats, and the sad eyed kids by the scores. These residential areas near cities were supposedly friendly south vietnamese population, but there was no way to know if they were infiltrated with VC or sympathisers as well. As I learned about half way into my stint there, the south vietnamese that we were there fighting for weren't uniformly happy about us either. A light bulb went off for me when a local girl who keypunched for us told me that she couldn't even ever tell her neighbors that she worked for the Americans on the base, so she told them she worked for the South Vietnamese officials. If they knew, she would be scorned.

Anyway, we clerks and computer nerds and others in our operation had to pull armed guard duty in this buffer zone every night just to keep an eye out and be there I guess in case we were needed. The way the rotation worked, I think I had to do this every three weeks, but I can't recall. Did I mention we were not seasoned soldiers? Sgt Bilko would have recognized us. We were issued grenade launchers, flares, rifles, live ammo, and those big machine guns on tripods for the end bunkers, but we had had minimal training on any of these things. I had an M16 the first night I was out there. We would form up and string out along a line next to the base perimiter out on the grass, and in bunkers and foxholes that were already there. You went out there about dark, and stayed awake until morning. Nobody really told you what you were supposed to do, or under what conditions you would use the guns or whatever. It was a really strange setup. I'm sure there was a chain of command to higher authority if something really started happening, but we felt like we were on our own. I was one of the higher ranking, since I had made seargant by being able to read 80x80 computer cards efficiently.

Well this one night I had opted for a flare instead of a rifle, and secretly had decided I was going to shoot it off, if I could figure out how it worked. I noticed that they didn't account for these very precicely like the guns and ammo, and they were expendable. I figured If somebody asked, I would say we heard something out there and wanted to light it up to see what it was.

It was in a canister tube thing about two feet long and 3 inches in diameter. The way it worked is that you took a cap off of one end and put it on the other end. That cap had a firing pin in it, and striking it would fire a flare out of the tube. I had seen these flares used at a distance, and they were really bright. A phosphorous ball or something shot out and up and spread light like an umbrella over a big area. This would be good to light up a target for helicopter fire, or investigate movements, or whatever. I was nervous for a couple of hours thinking about trying one out. Here's a sketch of how the cap fit on the other end and was rapped to shoot off the flare. Also, I wan't sure how to aim it. Since I was sitting down, I figured a safe way to do it was to pound it on the ground in front of me, to have control of it as it shot upward, like this:
___.___________

Well, that's not the way it happened! As I struck the ground in front of me, I couldn't keep the the bottom from sliding towards me, and the business end of the flare aimed straight out like a howitzer!
______

The phosphorous ball, instead of shooting aloft, streaked forward about 1 foot off the ground, whoooosshshshsh and struck like a fireball right through the wires and slam into the wall of some poor local person's house about a football field away from us! All heck broke loose.
Men and women came out with blankets and buckets and put it out with much hubbub. Luckily nobody was hurt as far as we could tell, bravely cowering in the bottom of the foxholes hoping that they wouldn't shoot back.

My version of the High Point story

When I was in first grade, (1951?) Dad moved the family from Eggertsville (Buffalo NY) to North Carolina. He had been personnel manager hiring people for a new Sylvania plant there, and apparently when the hiring was done, we moved back up north to LeRoy NY, and he similarly opened the Sylvania plant in Batavia. Here is a googleshot of our house we lived in then, 708 Montilieu Ave. High Point NC: The view is looking south. I am a little confused about which house is which, but I'll figure it out. Below is sort of a brain dump of my memories from that short time being a young tarheel.



Upper left is the woods I started on fire playing with matches. The Ray Street School, which Merry and I went to was torn down years ago, but was about a mile to the right here. I found the vacant lot for that school when Martha and I went back there. I also found Armstrong Park, where I remember catching crawfish and learning to make boondoggle lanyards in the summer at sort of a day camp.

I think I remember sitting in the living room watching TV with ads for Lucks Pinto Beans and Orville the Orkin Man, and probably the Howdy Doody show.
I remember the "Why you shouldn't drink water" animated lamp stashed in the upstairs closet.
I remember there was a Mulberry tree right beside the garage that we climbed to get on the roof.
I remember setting rat traps in the back yard and prying the rats out. Is that possible? I was in first grade.
I remember in school the teacher made some kind of jelly trays as some part of preparing masters for the mimeograph machine. It seems like I can smell it now.
I remember going out from the classroom to take the chalk whitened erasers from the big black blackboards that lined the room and pound them on the grate that covered the window wells beside the playground. I think it was a reward, not a duty to do this.
I remember a little one-roomed red school house in the back of the school, which had been the previous school, and it was still used for something.
I remember being teased by two kids at school for chewing on my pencil, and got a bucky beaver nickname.
I remember the plastic tokens they used for lunches in the cafeteria smelled like throw up to me. (or was that later?)
I remember that we knew of a family that lived nearby that the kids supposedly ate soap sometimes.
I remember that we had a black cat named Yose-mite who we left behind by mistake at a fair far away and she found her way home by herself.
I remember a few times Dad drove us out in the country to a fish fry restaurant and we had hush puppies.
I remember Dad bringing a movie projector and screen home from work and us sitting in the dark living room watching a travelogue type movie about a car trip through the south, including the blue ridge mountains.
I remember I was allowed to go by myself by bus downtown to the YMCA for some sort of swimming or sport of some kind. Is this possible?
I remember too well being bit on the lips by the neighbor Mrs. Johnson's collie. I had tried to chase it down with a rope, and it got me in the struggle. I remember crying and thrashing as the doctor and my parents tried to make me lie still for them to sew my lip. I felt guilty years later about that, because from time to time I felt self conscious about that scar, and realized I had probably made it worse by resisting.
I remember Dad and Mom hired a Mayflower Moving Van to move us to our next home on Summit St. in LeRoy, and the driver was Mr. Sullivan, who according to legend was very good to us. Some things were packed in cardboard barrels that had metal clamped hoops holding the tops on.
I remember these things, but what did I have for lunch yesterday? Not a clue.