Vietnam and Desert Storm pics and stories

[NAM VET]

since there seems to be some interest in my pictures and stories of my two wars, with the moderator's permission I will begin to put them in this sub-forum. I graduated from Nebraska in '65 as a 2nd Lt via ROTC, with a commission in the regular army, infantry. Two days later, I reported into Ft. Benning to begin infantry officer basic, followed by airborne and then ranger school, graduating from these, and was posted to Schweinfurt, Germany in late Dec, '69. By early '71, I was headed to Vietnam via Benning and the advisor/Vietnamese language course, to IV Corps, which was the Mekong Delta. After in processing in Saigon, hopped a ride via C7A Caribou to my first six months in Kien Phong Province, in the middle of the Delta, which was part of the Plain of Reeds, which extended into Cambodia. I was a MAT (Mobil Advisory Team) chief, which meant I and one SGT would chopper out to some Vietnamese outpost where we would try to teach mostly how to call in air support. We were out usually a week at a time, then back to our Province HQ, which had about 40 US troops. After six months of this, the usual thing, by then a CPT, was for field officers to come into some HQ and be a Staff Weenie, with an air conditioned billet, and office hours. But I was beginning to think about a post army career, and decided I could save a lot of money by staying out in the field, so was then sent way south, to be a District Senior Advisor, normally a Major's post. This was to south of Camau, along side the U Minh forest, a bad place. I spent the next six months there with one and some times two SGT's. I would go out with the Vietnamese, and stay in radio contact with my home for whatever help I might need. After that six months, I returned stateside back to Bragg, where I took over a 14 man Special Forces A Team, and had that duty with further worldwide adventures until early '73, when i left active duty, using my GI bill to ultimately become a pediatrician, and eventually a flight surgeon, and was Chief of Staff of the busiest field hospital in the Desert Storm war.

So, this is what it was like....

Visiting the guys at Kien Van, another District Team. The three US there lived in the hut in the back of the picture, and a local troop is netting small fish to dry, in the incredibly polluted pond, note the pig sty and the latrine dumping right into the pond. Us US guys never ate that sort of thing. This compound had a bamboo viper living in the vine covered latrine attached to the US home. Had to keep a close eye out for moving vines when using the one-hole there. Later this compound was over-run by VC, and the several US there only lived because they retreated to their inner concrete bunker, and just held the trigger down on their M60 and ran a 4000 round belt thru in one long burst. It only lasted a few minutes, and the US were pretty much deaf thereafter.
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Here is the inside of Kien Van, with two friends cleaning their weapons, note the later lifesaving M60. Soon after this picture, the CPT was sent out on a river patrol and was ambushed with friendly KIA, and he came storming back to the hut to find the Major in an intimate position with the hootch-maid. The CPT was only kept from killing the US Major by Toyota (the US SGT, who was Mexican-American, but called Toyota, go figure). The Major was immediately sent back to the states.
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[NAM VET]

Here is a typical three-sided Vietnamese compound way out towards Cambodia, reachable by Chopper or if one was brave, by dugout. The Vietnamese usually lived at these miserable compounds with their wives and children. They also became very lazy and drank rice wine a lot, and did not take good care of their defensive positions. They generally were pretty disinterested in what skills I was trying to teach them. Since the VC were always listening to our radio conversations, I couldn't teach them to call in air support by saying "I have yellow smoke out", or "I have purple smoke to mark my position", but instead to use slang like "I love banana", or "I like grapes a lot." Mostly the local troops gambled and drank. Eventually, my Vietnamese got to be pretty good, and in fact, I still can make some conversation with my Vietnamese patients.
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Would live for a week at a time in hovels like this. Lots of rats.
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[NAM VET]

In one of the small hamlets that the Vietnamese set up way out in the Plain of Reeds, this one hootch kept this snake to keep the rats at bay. Soon after I got to this location, one evening I was taken to see a small girl who had been shot in the chest. I told the locals her only chance was to get her to a US hospital, but the local's refused as it was too dangerous to travel on the waterways after dark. I wrapped her in my poncho liner, so she at least died with some warmth. When this event was over, I had to sit down and think over how I was going to handle the awful things that happen to non-combatents in a war zone. I came to a realization that has helped me so many times as a physician in the decades hence. That I had not caused their problem, but they had bad luck, or bad Karma, or just believed in the wrong god. But it wasn't my fault, and I would do what I could, and the rest was out of my hands. I never did get another poncho liner, and learned to just sleep in the cold.
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About to have lunch in one of the floating restaurants. The cooks would dip some river water up, full of debris, and boil it, and crunch in ramen noodles, add some fly-specked pork and hot peppers, and serve it up piping hot. I never once got sick in my 366 days in-country. Soy sauce was about a nickel a quart, out of a rusty 55 gallon drum. In this hamlet there was an elderly Jesuit priest with a bad leg. When I asked him how he was going to defend himself when the VC came to kill him, he showed me his pistol. I told him that would never do, and gave him one of my Sub Machine guns, an M3 "grease gun" in .45, with some mags. I suspect he was one of the few Jesuit priests armed with a full auto SMG. Years later I read about him, he survived, and continued to the end of his life in service to God and humanity. God bless him.
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[isaac_alaska]

love reading these stories, and seeing the photos. not often you get to read a first hand account with photos like this!

[T. Highway]

Hal,

Great pictures and stories. That is quite the antenna array in the Kien Van hut picture.

Bert

[Elwood]

Thank you for posting these photos and stories.

[NAM VET]

Kien Phong, my first Province, was fairly pacified, at least during daylight hours. The VC, which by my time there were pretty much dead from the '68 TET attacks, and had been replaced by seasoned Main Force troops, tended to leave the local troops alone, which made for lazy, careless defenders. Mostly they just slept and drank and W.... around with the local girls. Then, when the enemy reconnaissance suggested a local compound was careless, they would swoop in and take it in a few minutes, and then be gone. Here is me with a group of local defenders, who are drunk. Sometimes a Vietnamese trooper would just stand in a stupor and keep saluting me. Now, later I will post accounts and pictures of superb, aggressive, brave Vietnamese troops I worked with in my second six months down south of Camau.
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Here is a Vietnamese 105 at Kien Van, shooting our ammo just for something to do. I think these guys were killed when the compound was later over-run.


Every couple of months I would hitch-hike a ride on some chopper up to finance in Saigon, as my pay was always fouled up. Basically, the army paid me double every month, so I would write a check back to the US government. Drop by the big US PX, and pick up some supplies, and a few cases of Tab, the original diet drink, for 2 cents a case. I bought my Pentax via the PACEX catalogue, and shot Kodachrome, taking my camera with me in a waterproof bag every time I went anywhere. Not long ago, I had some of them professionally digitally scanned, so that is what i am posting here. I have always liked military aircraft, my dad being a Naval Aviator since the late '30's, (the Japanese sank his carrier). So for those of you who also like military aircraft, here is a teaser. A Douglas AD Skyraider, referred to as Sandy, used for covering our Jolly Green Giant CH 54's when they would seek our downed aviators. My dad liked to fly them. Could carry more than their own wt in ordnance. We had to buy them back from the French to use in Vietnam. Enjoy....
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[j mccormick]

Thanks for posting these pictures and comments, really interesting! Keep them coming.

Joe

[NAM VET]

War is a truly unique human experience. And so awful for so many people, including those who wage it. When I would go up to Saigon, I would hop a ride with whatever chopper or fixed wing was going my way, and I would get home the same way. To get back, I would go over to Tan San Nhut airbase, and inquire if any aircraft were going south. Sometimes the aircrews would say "sure, but first we have to sling load some ammo out to the Cambodian border", or "sure, but we are going out to sling load back a downed chopper, maybe you can give us a hand." It was so nonchalant, just like getting a ride to one's favorite bar. But I got to see lots of other compounds and places, like Rach Gia, the dustiest place I had seen, at least until I went out into the Saudi Arabian desert. Sometimes would have to lay over at one or another compound, and just chow with whomever was there. I think when one was an advisor, no one really knew or cared where or what we did. I could have snuck off to Hawaii or Bangkok and come back months later and no one would have suspected a thing. In war zones, it takes a while before one takes on the attitude and appearance of someone who has been there for awhile. Faded and worn jungle fatigues, tan, attitude a bit surly. Not much of a smile. In my pictures, my jungle fatigues slowly become more and more ragged. Once, was up to Saigon, eating one after another BLT in the officer's mess. I ate Vietnamese food, and the BLT's were heavenly. At the next table were about five Loach pilots, all talking loud and being boisterous. I told one LT to pipe down several times. Finally I just got pissed off, and pulled out my Buck folding hunter and walked over behind him and laid my blade against his neck and told him one last time to let me eat in peace. Now, I just can't imagine doing such a thing. But war's change people.

Up in Saigon, I would check into the Ramada hotel, not relation to the US chain. About four stories, open top with bar and girls with numbers pinned on them. It was just surreal, standing up there in the evening, Beer 33 in my hand, looking out in the distance, beyond the city, and seeing 122 rockets coming into the city, and distant firefights, artillery impacts, and here and there Spooky sending streams of tracer lights down onto some poor soldier in the mud. They are dying, I am having a cold beer. Here is one version of Spooky, a C119, aka Fly Boxcar, the same plane I first jumped out of in parachute school at Benning. There were other versions, C47's, and C123's too. One, met up with am American girl who worked at the Embassy, she invited me to her apt in Saigon for a dinner, and while we were there she got word that her boyfriend, a Spooky pilot was overdue. Years later, I read how he and his crew were finally brought home.
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[Cal_Gary]

Your insights and pictures are just amazing! We remain a free nation thanks to you and your brothers and sisters who served. Thank you!
Gary

[T. Highway]

Hal,

That is one strange looking bird. What is in the rear firing station? Electric Gatling gun or a recoilless cannon?

Bert

[NAM VET]

T, while some of the AC aircraft had 105 howitzers along with their mini-guns, I think this one is some sort of spotlight.

In the province I was in the first six months, half of the province had roads, the western half was just reeds, often with water 6-10 feet deep. Just to illustrate how "loosey-goosey" being an advisor was, soon after I got there, was over in the TOC (Tactical Operations Center) and some Loach pilots walked in, these were the pilots of the small observation choppers, usually Hughes OH6, the small egg-shaped ones, with a 600 hp motor. Pilots liked them, were more survivable than the just coming in OH 58's, because the OH6, when it crashed, tended to break off the tail, and roll around, like a sturdy egg. Anyway, one of the pilots asked if I wanted to go out in his OH6 that night to drop grenades into bunkers out in the Plain of Reeds. So he picked me up after dark, and we flew out a few feet above the water submerged reeds, looking for tiny built up mud bunkers, and he would turn on his searchlight, and I would lean out and try to drop a grenade down into the entrance hole. Not easy to do. We did find two men way out in their dugout. He asked me if I thought we should gun them, and I said no, that likely they were just fishermen way out where they should not be. No way to know for sure. When we returned later, I told my self that doing things like I had just done was about the stupidest thing I could do. No more of that nonsense. And sure enough, the next night one of the Loaches went into the water way out there.

About the same time, wandering around in the US TOC, when we heard distant gunfire and explosions, coming from the far side of Cau Lanh, where we were located, the "capital" of the province. By the way, just before that, our little town was mentioned in Playboy by the pin-up, who mentioned when she had flown into visit the US at our compound, her chopper had taken fire. Anyway, it quickly became apparent when the visiting ARVN unit requested airstrikes on our local Vietnamese defense troops, that the whole mess happened because one of the ARVN moving thru the area had jumped one of the local troop's girl friend, which quickly became a friendly firefight, with dead and wounded on both sides. Of course, we US declined to put airstrikes on our own local troops. The ARVN moved on and I went out to survey the damage, and perhaps I can find pictures of the shot up jeeps and such to post. Such is war.

Here is an OH6 Loach. Note the minigun, with a steel can over the muzzle. All it takes to fire it was electrical power to spin the barrel. So I was told when one of our choppers was downed, it was imperative to quickly retrieve or destroy the downed chopper, because all the VC or Main Force had to do was to hook the gun up to some batteries and it would cause havoc on our other aircraft.
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Still very early in my tour in RVN, I was beginning to think about some day returning to school to be a dentist, but having a four year active duty obligation to complete first (I eventually used my GI bill to become a physician). But first, having been an English major at Nebraska, and having had a lot of difficulty with chemistry and physics, I had to prove to myself that I could indeed learn those academic disciplines. It just so happened that the Army had arranged a free correspondence program with none other my own Nebraska. So I enrolled and started to carry a chemistry book in a plastic bag on my operations, and would sit and do problems when I could. Here is me with my small slide rule. The local troops were fascinated by the slide rule, and would ask me what it was. I would tell them it told the future. They would ask "how many sons will I have" and the like. When they would always conclude by asking "how long will I live" I would manipulate my slide rule and always reply "not much longer."
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[Hal O'Peridol]

Great stuff, keep it coming. Both of my Drill Sergeants in Basic back in 1980 were Vietnam vets. SSgts Zander and Brumfield.

Would it be OK if I added some of my Desert Storm pics to this thread, or should I start another?

[NAM VET]

from one Hal to another, of course, please add whatever pics you have. Here is one of my DS pictures.

410 EVAC, way out in the SA desert. Wet and muddy.
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then came the heat of summer, our chopper pad, before we oiled it down.
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[NAM VET]

again, way out in the Plain of Reeds, visiting a run-down, decrepit compound. When I would inspect their weapons and mortars, they would be all rusty and non-functional. Their wire would be all in a shambles, not intact at all. The troops somnolent, intoxicated. The would never be out on any patrol, so Chuck would just ignore them, and go on about their business.
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and another, although this compound is much further south, during my second six months, south of Camau. Same hopeless defensive compound.
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But it wasn't all out in the bush. Here is a picture of me with other troops in some cafe, up in the Province capital.