MY+YEAR+IN+MIBARS

HHC and 45th MID, 11/67 – 11/68 LTC Bob Freeman, USA (Ret.)**
 * MY YEAR IN MIBARS: RANDOM RECOLLECTIONS


 * MIBARS Memories**. My year in the the 1st Military Intelligence Bn (Air Reconnaissance Support), NOV ’67-NOV ’68, was my first Army assignment after training. It was the beginning of a 27 ½ -year MI career, so it naturally holds a special place in my memories. The following MIBARS recollections are probably pretty distorted, at least partly due to the passage of four decades. I apologize for any serious violence to the truth, and I’d appreciate readers letting me know the real details of events, big or small. I sure had fun thinking back, though.


 * GETTING THERE IS HALF THE FUN!** My 30-hour flight to the RVN cured me of any desire to be in the "jet set." Remember back when smoking was permitted on board? Armrests with ashtrays? EVERYONE smelled like an ashtray by the end of this flight. Landing at night at Bien Hoa Airbase, I saw that my world was divided into troops DEROS-ing, who had a definite attitude, and new meat—me and the rest of my planeload. I’d gotten a hint of this at Oakland Army Terminal and Travis AFB, where I’d observed returning troops minimally following orders—they probably were just one or two more orders away from open mutiny! In a year, the jungle boot would be on the other foot, so to speak. The bus to Long Binh and the 90th Replacement Battalion had wire mesh on the window openings, to keep grenades out, and there was a little incoming nearby that night, but not enough to seriously affect my sleep, although I was a little uneasy being unarmed the first couple of days in a war zone. Later in my tour, I’d learn to sleep soundly at every opportunity—in airplanes, on cargo pallets (the rocking action put me out instantly), and in duce-and-a-halfs. I once nearly slept through a mortar attack. But I’m getting ahead of myself.


 * SETTLING IN.** My first room in the Good Guy Villa had a refrigerator. Good for keeping a couple cans of beer cold, but now and then a gecko would crawl into it and die of exposure—discouraged me from hoarding food. I learned to keep my gear clean and check it frequently after I left a pair of shoes under my bed for a few days, and they filled with a greenish-gray mold. One of my predecessors had left me a flight helmet, and a Life Support tech at the 460th Recon Wing fixed me up with internal pads to fit my head, so I was set for a year in the MIBARS. I also started to collect a small arsenal to supplement my M-14, and even came up with an elderly Winchester trench gun and a few rounds of 12 gauge ammunition. My .38, .45, M-16, and M-79 Grenade Launcher would come later.

Following approval of a reconnaissance request by the MACV J-2 Tactical Air Support Element (TASE) and the 7th AF Tactical Air Control Center (TACC), a frag (fragmentary) order would assign the targets to the 460th Tactical Reconnaissance Wing (TRW) at Tan Son Nhut AB (or the 1st Marine Air Wing, DaNang). The 460th would assign the mission to one of its reconnaissance squadrons and MIBARS ARLOs working in a small building co-located with the 460th HQ would be notified of the request. ARLOs worked 24/7 in two 12-hour shifts, to match the Wing’s day/night reconnaissance capability. Before the target was flown, an ARLO and an Air Intelligence Officer briefed the aircrew. The ARLO, trained in reconnaissance, surveillance, and imagery interpretation, specifically focused on all available information that would assist the aircrew in successfully completing the mission and insured that the aircrew understood the results desired by the requestor. (When I arrived, ARLOs briefed from half-page, locally produced target sheets filled out with stubby pencils. These sheets were reused over and over and barely legible due to erasures.) The aircrew would then complete their flight plan and compute times over targets (TOTs). The ARLO relayed this information to the relevant Direct Air Support Center (DASC) for artillery coordination (sometimes aircrews would coordinate artillery suppression with the ARLOs by phone patch while airborne, in the event they noted friendly artillery firing in the vicinity of a target—the maximum ordinate of artillery is several miles and posed a fratricide hazard to U.S. aircraft. I used to love to talk directly with the pilots, ‘cause I could use really cool radio terminology, like, "Go with your message," instead of just, "Over."). Postflight, while the sensor take was being processed, the ARLO and Air Intelligence Officer debriefed the aircrew on its mission, covering subjects such as visual sightings, enemy action, and any problems encountered with communications, artillery coordination, sensor performance or unexpected cloud cover, as examples. (As part of its postflight duties, to assist in sensor readout the crew would draw a //pilot’s trace// on a flimsy to show the route flown over the target, including IP and departure coordinates. However, one RF-101 pilot, Major Bond of the 45th TRS/Polkadots would draw his trace while airborne returning to base, to provide to the ARLO. He carried a CONFIDENTIAL stamp and inkpad in the cockpit and marked the trace top and bottom before landing.) The ARLO could send urgent information developed during crew debriefings and/or rapid sensor readout directly to the field. (When I was assigned as an ARLO in November 1967, I recall MAJ Cal Korf and CPT Spencer Kowamoto were senior ARLOs.
 * ARLO.** My first MIBARS assignment was as an Air Reconnaissance Liaison Officer at Tan Son Nhut Airbase. ARLOs were a key link between U.S. field commanders in RVN and reconnaissance elements that supported them. I really enjoyed my ARLO duties, my MIBARS colleagues, and the Air Force recce pilots. (More than a dozen years later, one of those pilots was my classmate at Air Command and Staff College.) I also REALLY got into the idea of midnight mess on the flightline, a great USAF tradition.


 * BREAKFAST of CHAMPS.** Every so often, like when I was Duty Officer, I slept in the Bn HQ instead of the Good Guy Villa. My alarm clock at the HQ was the rooster next door. Breakfast for me in the mess usually was cold cereal and milk. One morning, a guy sat down next to me and I started telling him that Kelloggs should have a new advertising campaign based on the slogan, "Rangers eat worms!" The ad should say, "Rangers eat Froot-Loops!" I thought this was hilarious, until he pointed to the Ranger tab on his sleeve. The guy turned out to be the Delivery Platoon leader, MAJ Boyle. He lived near my home in NY and I took him up on his kind offer to stop in on my folks when he rotated. I didn’t warn them he was coming, and he had to explain to my shocked parents that he wasn’t a casualty assistance officer when he showed up unannounced on their stoop one evening, in uniform.


 * PAY THE TROOPS.** Fairly early on in my assignment, I got orders to be the battalion paymaster. I got to fly around to all the dets in a U-6 Beaver with a briefcase full of MPCs, lay my .45 down on a table in front of me and pay the troops. I had a blast, but I also learned not to joke with a soldier about his pay—it’s serious business. Back in Saigon, my tally left me with an extra dollar, and I had one helluva time turning that one lousy buck back.

Before heading to Can Tho, I had expressed an interest in going out on a riverine patrol in the Mecong Delta. MAJ Walker, the Bn XO, God rest his soul, got wind of this and STRONGLY cautioned me against it. He probably saved my life. So, instead, I went out on a recon over the Song Ham Luong (a river with lots of VC activity) with one CPT Spain in his O-1 Bird Dog. CPT Spain sure loved to fly and fight. Actual quote (gleefully): "Bob, you hear that? They’re SHOOTING at us!" Then he dove his Bird Dog at 170 mph, fired his 2.75-inch marking rockets with the overhead ARMING switches (his joystick trigger had shorted out) at the VC anti-aircraft gunners, and pulled up so fast I thought for sure the wings would come off! I missed seeing the WP explode ‘cause the Gs folded me in half in the back seat. But CPT Spain sure was happy about the results. I was just happy to be alive. That night, there was a big VC attack in town, which didn’t wake me up, but the OV-1 Mohawk that flew over dropping flash carts for night photography sure did!
 * CAN THO**. Also as part of my orientation as a green LT, I visited other dets as time permitted. The DET C MIBARS guys in the Delta were first rate, but the "firstist" had to be MAJ Fadlo Massabni. A great guy who later served in the ACSI’s Special Security Group (SSG), as did several other MIBARS guys (Rusty Troth and me, among them).

All of a sudden, a vertical spray of tracers no more than 20 meters to my front split the darkness, and I tromped on the brakes. In my headlights, a 101st Airborne trooper stood in the road firing his M-60 machine gun in the air, then he pointed it straight at me. He shouted, "Who the fuck are you?! What the fuck are you doing here?!" I raised my hands, got out of the Jeep, told him who I was, and he lowered his muzzle. Still agitated and waving his gun, he shouted, "The VC are attacking!" I didn’t need to be told twice when he screamed, "Get the fuck outta here!" When I got to the flight line, it was obvious that everyone was on alert and/or hunkered down. I found a few MIBARS personnel in the trailers on the tarmac that served as an imagery interpretation shop, redistributed the few available M-14s and magazines among them, and attempted to organize a defense. Glad of my Infantry training, I shuddered as I briefly pondered the wisdom of putting guns in the hands of photointerpreters and looked out at the perimeter wire where the fougasse mines were exploding. I also thought, "Hey, what I learned for sure at the Infantry School is I didn’t want to be in the Infantry, but HERE I AM!" I didn’t have long to think. Almost immediately, someone ran toward my position, waving his arms and calling out, "They’re comin’ across the runways!" I shouted for my guys to withdraw to the 460th HQ building, ran back there myself, flattened down behind a footing, drew my revolver, and prepared to die. Of course, I didn’t. But I sure expected to. After a while, we realized that though the VC had penetrated the airbase, they’d mostly been "headed off at the pass," and we gathered in the ARLO shop to await the dawn. At the beginning of morning twilight, I climbed an observation tower on the roof of the HQ to watch distant—and not-so-distant— airstrikes, firefights, and Puff/Spooky/Spectre flights. Some fighting had occurred on Tan Son Nhut in the Air America compound, awfully close to the 460th HQ. And we learned later that a USAF major from the 460th had been killed while watching the action from the roof of a villa, when he was struck in the chest by a VC mortar round that failed to detonate. I recall that there were some MIBARS guys who got to pop a few caps at the enemy, one young guy in Can Tho Leroy Johnson KIA and some who were wounded.
 * TET.** I found myself in the middle of the Tet Offensive of 1968 like I had just dropped in from the moon. Chalk it up to me being just another clueless LT. Around the same hour that the NVA/VC Tet Offensive began, I woke up in the Good Guy Villa for my midnight shift as an Air Reconnaissance Liaison Officer to the 460th Tac Recon Wing at Tan Son Nhut. I thought I heard a lot of fireworks in the city, but nothing much more registered. AFVN sounded normal, too. I showered and dressed, and set off in a section Jeep for work. I don’t think I had my M-14. Not that I was unarmed. I had "liberated" a .38 caliber S&W revolver from the USAF, along with five rounds of ammunition. Little did I suspect that I might have to hold off the Asian hordes with only a handgun. I became a bit concerned and pushed harder on the accelerator when someone popped a round off at me about half-way there, but I remained resolutely clueless about what I was getting into as I turned onto the road I knew as the "back way" into the base.


 * KATYUSHAS**. The VC now and then would lob a few Soviet 122mm rockets at Tan Son Nhut (and, I guess, 107mm on occasion). These unguided, ballistic rockets have large warheads and quite a bit of HE, but the VC’s improvised launchers were only able to send them in the general direction of the airbase—it just SEEMED like the ARLO shop was their primary target. When they hit anything, I think it was in the vicinity of the Graves Registration "reefers" out on the tarmac, so while the shrapnel caused some property damage, live human casualties were limited. But boy, what a lot of noise and concussion! Kaboom! I’ll never forget being under 122mm rocket attack one night, crouched in the kneewell of a steel desk, listening to Donovan singing "Mellow Yellow" over AFVN! Scrounging around after one of these attacks, I found a pretty-much intact aluminum tail fin assembly complete with Russian markings ID-ing it as part of a 122mm rocket. I carried it around for months afterward like a talisman.


 * PROMOTION PARTY.** LTC Jerry Wetherill, who had visited my II classroom at Ft. Holabird, back in late summer/early fall, was a class act. He pissed off a some of the troops in the battalion (like me) with his edict forbidding the private purchase of Honda 50cc bikes, but he probably saved a lot of young lives, too. He promoted me to 1LT in Mid-March ’68, in a brief, nice ceremony in the HQ. I thought that was all there was gonna be. But that night, no sooner had I bought myself a beer in the Good Guy Villa bar, than just about the entire HQ contingent poured through the door. A surprise party! The big surprise is that I survived. Somehow I got involved in a drinking game with a visiting Australian warrant officer. Big mistake. I recall that under the "rules," I had to consume a drink he suggested, a large cocktail of vodka and brandy! I tossed it back and almost immediately sneezed the vile combination out of my nose. Quickly covering the sneeze with my palm drove the corrosive mix upward behind my glasses into my eyes. Arrgh! I was blinded! Groping around in extreme pain, I was so pathetic that LTC Wetherill rendered first aid!

Likewise, getting USAF assets to airlift the detachment to Phu Bai was getting bogged-down in bureaucracy. But I hung out with some of the aircrews who had flown in from Clark Airbase in the Philippines, and they volunteered to transport our M-292 expansible vans and other vehicles aboard their C-124 "Shaky Jake" aircraft, with minimum red tape. I felt a little bad about telling one pilot that our Tactical Imagery Interpretation Facility (TIFF) was "just like" an M-292. If he had known the TIFF was bigger and heavier than the M-292, I don’t think he would have hauled it to Phu Bai. As it was, its larger external dimensions caused some damage to his cargo bay when we backed it in, but it must not have skewed the aircraft’s weight and balance too badly, because it got off the runway ok. I may have been a little too enthusiastic in my quest to move the 45th north, because I really pissed off a transportation major at Qui Nhon. I learned later that he had sent a letter complaining about me to CPT Troth, but Top, SFC Frank Carrington, intercepted and shitcanned it.(Lots of the calls I made arranging for transport were routed through the Lightning Tactical Operations Center (TOC) at Bien Hoa. On my second ‘Nam tour in ‘72, I happened to be in Bien Hoa, looking out over a vast wasteland of rubble that formerly was part of the American base. I reached down into the debris and picked up a sign that said, "Lightning TOC.") One day while packing up our outfit at Phu Cat, the supply sergeant told me he’d be off the base that evening on business, and gently turned down my offer to accompany him. Next morning, it was evident that he and some 45th MID colleagues had been on a "midnight requisition" to obtain a couple of prefabricated buildings. (Incredibly, a few years later, exchanging war stories with a stranger on the barstool next to me at the Bolling AFB officers club, he seemed to know details of this incident and claimed the materiel had been removed from his warehouse in Quinh Nhon! "Sharing" equipment wasn’t unusual. Our supply sergeant who had obtained the prefabs once spotted a generator which had been "borrowed" from the 45th MID being towed by another unit’s truck. He followed it into their compound, and "borrowed" it back.) The prefab buildings and other gear were stowed in a trailer too big and heavy to airlift, so the trailer was loaded aboard the MSTS ship Fentress for the trip from Quinh Nhon to Da Nang. The voyage took so long, that veterans of setting up the 45th MID in Phu Bai will recall asking among themselves, "Whatever happened to the Fentress?" I sure remember. One night, I was summoned to the phone during a musical show at the 8th Radio Research Field Station across Route 1 from the 45th MID. Rusty Troth, away from Phu Bai, somehow had tracked me down to tell me he’d learned the Fentress had unloaded in Da Nang harbor. My mission was to lead a team to Da Nang to pick up the trailer. We’d then be part of a convoy headed back up Route 1 north to Camp Hochmuth. Fortunately, Marines were going to provide security, including air cover, along the way. In Da Nang, while my guys went to get the trailer, I attended the convoy briefing, presented by a USMC first lieutenant, who was also the convoy commander. Although he asserted that the main threat to our convoy would be from a VC "snapper battalion," (combat engineers are "sappers," not "snappers") operating along Route 1, he otherwise gave out a lot of good information, and I was able to introduce myself and speak with him and the other players on whom we’d be relying for security and emergency breakdown repairs. Next day in the assembly area, with the tractor-trailer hooked up, and the convoy forming on the road, we found that the trailer’s crank-down jacklegs that support it when detached from its tractor had been damaged in transit and wouldn’t retract. With the jacklegs locked in their extended position, no way could we traverse any but the flattest parts of the notoriously uneven, potholed, and steep Route 1 north through the Hai Van Pass to Phu Bai. But, honest, what happened next was like it had been scripted for one of those leadership training flicks they showed in the darkened "Master Bedroom" at Ft. Benning. Each of these ended with the sergeant turning to the camera lens and asking the audience, "Whaddawedonowlootenant?!" Then the lights come up and 200 lieutenants are supposed to come up with the school solution. When my men asked me, "Whaddawedonowlootenant?!," I heard myself reply, "We’re gonna remove the jacklegs and join the convoy." Problem was, we had zero tools for the job. Maybe take the bolts off with our teeth? My Swiss Army knife? Just then, I spotted my new friend, the Marine first lieutenant rolling by in his Jeep, flagged him to the side of the road, explained our problem, and asked to borrow his mechanics for a few minutes. Thanks to the Marines, in no time flat we unbolted the damaged jacklegs, stowed them, and took our place in the convoy. Semper Fi! Even the VC "snappers" knew better than to mess with us, and we made it to Phu Bai ok.
 * 45th MID.** When Rusty Troth selected me to be his XO for the Phu Bai detachment, I was in 7th heaven. I was getting away from the flagpole AND I could trade my M-14 for an M-16! He sent me on ahead to Phu Cat Airbase to help move the detachment. My big thrill there was being able to drive around the base in a Jeep with the windshield down. When my supply sergeant asked me for a loan, I found that the men hadn’t been paid in a while. With a phonecall, I got "Class A" orders from CW2 Diaz, but the pay section at Quinh Nhon wouldn’t honor them, because they weren’t "special" orders. But, Ft. Benning had taught me I could overcome any obstacle—so I went around the problem. I left the paymaster and dropped into the 1st Logistics Command admin shop and explained my predicament to a sympathetic warrant officer, who ginned-up a set of one-off "orders" that passed muster and got supplementary pay for the 45th MID.

A couple of Bird Dog pilots nicknamed me the "Green Baron." I got sick often enough in the back seats of O-1s that I took to carrying a barf bag, which I would chuck behind the aircraft revetment on return. Most recce flights were largely uneventful. On one occasion, however, the oil pressure gauge registered zero for a LONG time, but the engine held out long enough to get us back to Phu Bai. Some of our guys joined the 45th from Det B in Da Nang, and had smuggled north the detachment’s mascot, "Shithead," their loyal mongrel dog. When the Da Nang det commander called me about returning "his" mascot, I couldn’t let my guys down, so I "denied any knowledge" of its existence. I lied so convincingly, that I knew I was cut out for a career in MI. During my early days in Phu Bai, MAJ Walker got ahold of CPT Troth with a special mission for me—to investigate a missing 35mm camera for a report of survey. The camera was receipted to a unit of the Americal Division at Landing Zone (LZ) Baldy, but on the MIBARS property books. I puzzled over CPT Troth’s statement to me as I departed, "Bob, MAJ Walker told me, ‘This is one investigation Bob could do sitting at his desk.’" When I got to LZ Baldy (reknown largely for the fact that there was an actual Red Cross "Donut Dolly" in residence), it became clearer that the camera may have been given away as a bribe to help cover up the loss of a considerable amount of other equipment, and that’s what I remember reporting up the MIBARS chain. Maybe MAJ Walker had experienced this before, so the conclusion I’d reach was obvious to him, prompting his remark. What wasn’t obvious to me, however, was why I was stonewalled by every senior Americal officer I interviewed. Their level of evasiveness was hardly what I had expected in an investigation over a camera that went for around a hundred bucks in the PX. Even the suspected major materiel losses might not be such a big deal (for example, the combat loss of a ¾-ton truck offered the opportunity to write off tons of equipment ostensibly blown up in the truckbed, but otherwise gone missing—or to the black market). Decades later, it occurred to me what was really going on. I had dropped in on LZ Baldy and the Americal at a very bad time—shortly after the infamous My Lai incident, of which I knew nothing. But the officers I interviewed almost certainly had been internally briefed or at a minimum had heard latrine rumors of suspected war crimes, and probably seriously doubted that I was nosing around the division just to find out what happened to a missing camera! A minor sidelight to my excellent Americal adventure, was that returning to Phu Bai, on the leg from Cu Chi to Da Nang, I was a passenger in a USMC C-117 (looks a lot like a C-47). When we landed, a Marine E-8 stepped out of the cockpit—one of the last of the storied USMC enlisted aviators. Even then, both the aircraft and the pilot were among the last of their kind. In my year in MIBARS, I hitched lots of rides in lots of aircraft, including a few Air America C-46s. They would go from point A to point B, but usually airdropping a hold full of cargo along the way. On one occasion, I was aboard a C-46 that was diverted to help rescue an Air America pilot who had made a forced landing on a beach, flipping his single-engine, high-wing plane upside-down. Another time, I was aboard a C-46, whose "kicker" accidentally followed his cargo down!
 * PHU BAI is ALL RIGHT!** As II Section Leader and handheld photographer in Phu Bai, I had lots more excellent adventures. Like the time I almost slept through a mortar attack and I ended up last guy in the bunker with my M-16, helmet liner and one boot. Fortunately, the enemy mortar section had been poorly trained and only about one-third of well over 100 rounds detonated. Unfortunately, several 45th MID personnel suffered shrapnel wounds, although only one was serious enough to warrant overnight hospitalization. In a MASH bed next to our MIBARS guy, I met one of my Infantry Officer Basic Course classmates—a 101st Airborne LT who was recovering ok after being shot in the chest in the Ashau Valley. (I had merely flown over the Ashau, scene of some God-awful fighting.)


 * COMMAND PERFORMANCE.** LTC Wetherill visited the 45th early on in our Phu Bai encampment, and asked to tour the Hue Citadel, which had taken such a beating during Tet. CPT Troth and I obliged. Rusty drove, and I was the official photographer, with a trusty Pentax and ONE roll of Tri-X. You guessed it. When we finally escorted the commander to a virtually intact shrine in the Citadel’s inner-most sanctum, and LTC Wetherill had smilingly posed for the camera to capture this once-in-a-lifetime moment, I was outta film!

I turned down the unofficial R&R, because it conflicted with a party at the 45th MID that I was determined to attend, and flew directly from Tan Son Nhut to Phu Bai as the only passenger on a 6250th T-39 Rockwell jet courier! I’m sure I’m the only Army guy EVER to forego the fleshpots of some Asian capital for an all-expenses-paid visit to Camp Hochmuth! It was a great party. I got to see my old colleagues, and they gave me a plaque with scrollwork at the top proclaiming, "Phu Bai is All Right." It hangs on my wall today. On my return trip from Phu Bai, I had one more excellent adventure. To catch the jet courier, this time I had to fly in the Delivery Platoon’s Beaver via the northern route to Da Nang. CPT Steve Burke, who for one reason or another didn’t like me much, had to drop off "dupe pos" film and reports elsewhere in the Provisional Corps first, so I went along for the ride. First stop, we landed on the short strip in the Hue Citadel—which was even shorter than usual due to resurfacing work on the far end. As we touched down and rolled out short of all the trucks and laborers on the runway, Steve said, "I don’t think we can get out of here!" I didn’t like the sound of that, as I was much too "short" for problems of any sort. I climbed out of the copilot’s seat and delivered a couple of fat envelopes to the locals, climbed back into the aircraft and fumbled with my seatbelt, shoulder harness, and flight helmet, while Steve taxied back to the unobstructed end of the strip. While running through the takeoff checklist, he turned the ship into the wind, cranked down a few degrees of flap, and pointed at my loose chinstrap. "Tighten it up," he said, "We might crash." I tightened it. He aimed for the dump trucks and workers, who didn’t seem all that far away, and pushed the throttle to the firewall. So, here we were, hurtling down a pockmarked runway at absolute full bore, with the tail stuck high in the air to reduce the angle of attack for maximum speed. I could clearly see disbelief and even terror on the faces of the Vietnamese workmen, looking like I felt, as we closed with them—then they dropped their shovels, rakes and hoes and ran! I resisted the urge to yank the control yoke back, while Steve clenched his teeth just like Snoopy, and pushed the yoke further forward to bring the tail up still more. We were no more than a handful of yards from the trucks blocking the strip, when Steve heaved back on the control yoke, yanking the ship from the ground. We’d needed almost every foot of available runway, but we were airborne! We flew to Camp Evans, where the 1st Air Cav was located, then on to Dong Ha, base for the 3rd Marine Division, just six miles from the DMZ. I had my final hazy glimpse of North Vietnam just before we landed. We gave a lift to a couple of Marines, and set course south for Da Nang. Since we’d come so far north, we took a brief detour over the South China Sea, looking for the Battleship New Jersey. We never spotted it, but did see a USN cruiser before turning back to the coast. En route, Steve explained that he had partied hard most of the night before with a couple of naval officers, and was nursing a horrendous hangover on four hours sleep. "Wanna take it?," he asked me. Now, in the couple weeks leave I had between the II course at Ft. Holabird and shipping out to Vietnam, I had learned to fly. Sort of. I had 12 hours in a J-3 Piper Cub that was one year older than I was, and I had soloed in it. So I could deal with an aircraft that had a 65-horsepower engine and a fixed-pitch prop. That nowhere near prepared me to fly a Beaver, with its several hundred horsepower Pratt & Whitney radial engine and variable-pitch prop. In my 11 months in ‘Nam, I had gotten a little "stick time" with sympathetic pilots, but my rank amateur status was still intact. So I replied, "That’s ok. Thanks anyway." Steve wasn’t receptive. "Take it!," he ordered. I grasped the wheel, then Steve leaned his head against the bulkhead and fell instantly asleep. I was at the controls, whether I wanted it or not. It’s really easy to fly a Beaver straight-and-level, but it’s no Piper Cub. I was maxed-out with basic navigation, and minor course, throttle and trim adjustments. I just followed the coast and kept an eye out for other aircraft through the haze. When we approached Da Nang, I picked up Route 1, and was going to follow it through the Hai Van Pass. We were at about 3,000 feet MSL. But I couldn’t remember how high the mountains were, and I wasn’t about to avert my eyes or fumble with a chart to check, so I steered around the coastal mountains, and out above the shore. All of a sudden, we were over Da Nang Harbor, and the airbase was directly ahead. I realized that I had blundered into the traffic pattern when I saw jets above us, and cargo aircraft and choppers below. I was time to wake Steve up, so I put the ship in a shallow left-hand turn and punched him on the leg—twice. "ZZZZZZZZZZZZ," was his only reaction. I figured he was faking to make me sweat, so I grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him hard. It wasn’t an act. He woke up with a snort, looked out the window, scanned the instrument panel, grabbed the wheel, and entered the pattern—all the while furiously twisting knobs on the radio to raise the Da Nang tower, and landed smoothly. Once safely on the ground and parked, he signed off on my non-crewmember flight time in the logbook. I think I earned it.
 * FEARLESS AVIATOR.** Sometime around the beginning of October 1968, I had a month left on my MIBARS tour. By this time, I had been reassigned from Phu Bai back to the ARLO shop at Tan Son Nhut. I was scheduled for R&R in Australia soon before my early November DEROS. My boss, CPT Pete O’Neal, offered me the chance to take an additional, "informal" R&R, somewhere out of the country (I forget where). We were able to arrange this sort of short break, due to our close association with the 6250th Support Squadron and other USAF outfits, and I had briefly gone to Thailand and the Philippines earlier in my tour (these trips, I recall, were on C-54s that leaked a lot of engine oil, but made it safely there and back). Rusty Troth was with me on one of those trips, and Darryl Neidlinger, Delivery Platoon Leader on another.


 * SENDOFF.** My DEROS finally rolled around in November ’68, and I turned in my TA-50 gear (except for my Mask, Protective, Field, M-17—I figured I’d need it in DC) and got all the signatures I needed. Several of the NCOs I had served with in Phu Bai "just happened to be" in the HQ, and invited me to the bar for a drink. "Just one," I’m sure I said, "I gotta get to Long Binh to catch a flight tomorrow morning." The result was predictable. When I finally got to the 90th Replacement, driven by my former colleagues, I fell out of the vehicle and sprawled in the dust something like Lee Marvin fell off the stagecoach in "Paint Your Wagon." I thought it was pretty funny, but I’ll bet all the pimps sitting around in their long, shiny black Citroen "pimpmobiles" outside the 90th’s gates thought, "There goes another potential customer back to the world" if they even noticed. With some assistance, I made my flight, and went on to my next assignment at the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Special Activities Division, DIA-XX4.


 * US ARMY ELEMENT DIA.** The admin office for the US Army Element DIA, was in the basement of the Pentagon, way back then. When I reported for my assignment to DIA-XX4 around Thanksgiving, an LTC in the Army office heard me say I had been in Phu Bai, and asked me how long the runway was. He needed the information to determine what kind of aircraft could operate from the strip. Well, just a few weeks earlier, I had been in the Phu Bai airfield base ops building, and had closely studied the airport diagram on the wall, showing the runway and the new overruns at either end. I knew EXACTLY TO THE FOOT how long the runway was at Phu Bai! But I was afraid that if I told this LTC that I knew the exact length, he’d just think I was just another smartass LT. So I said (and I’m making this length up, because I’ve since forgotten the number I knew well, back in the day), "The main runway is APPROXIMATELY four-thousand five-hundred and ninety-seven feet long," before realizing I’d given him the exact length. The LTC just looked at me. "Approximately?," he asked, "Yes, approximately," I lamely replied. I’m sure he thought I was just another smartass LT.

Return to 1st MIBARS HHC Members Pages