Vietnam
Q: So let’s transition to your first days in service after you have finished your diving school, and everything like that. Did you end up in England, like they told you you would?
No
Q: What happened?
The Navy had other ideas. Before I graduated from dive school, within a few weeks, I got a phone call from what they call your detailer, who was an officer in the Pentagon who assigns your specialty. And my specialty was going to be deep sea diving. And he said, “Well, I have bad news. The Brunswick is late in construction, and therefore it is not going to be ready for pre-commissioning crew when you graduate in two weeks. So, your orders are canceled. All I got is Harbor Clearance Unit 1, Da Nang, Republic of Vietnam. So on New Year’s Day, in a blinding snow storm, I went to the airport at National Airport in Washington DC, for a flight to San Francisco, on my way to Vietnam.
Q: And what was your job when you got there?
Harbor Clearance Unit had a barge. We would go up the rivers and salvage PBR’s and gunboats and stuff that would be sunk. And we’d go up and salvage them, bring them back to Da Nang, and they’d repair them and put them back into service.
Q: Did you move around from that specific barge?
If we had job, we’d go up the rivers. Vietnam was divided into military regions, and they were Roman Numerals from the demilitarized zone, which was the border with North Vietnam. The first region south of that was Roman numeral number one, which became known as “I core”. And then there was two core, three core, four core as you move south of the country. And I never left I core, I was always at the northernmost part of South Vietnam. Never really went other place, other than between Da Nang and the provincial capital of Hue. And so we went up to Hue during the Tet Offensive of 1972. Because a landing craft with tanks had run aground, and we were going up to pull her off. And when we were going up the river, we were taking small arm and some heavy arm fire from the bank.
Q: And did you stay on the same barge the entire time you were stationed in Vietnam?
No, because then, when that tour was up, I liked Vietnam. I felt like it was the only real job I’d ever had. You know, I’d worked at a factory one summer, I’d been a lifeguard for six summers while I was in high school and college. It was the first real job I’d ever had. I mean it was some pretty heavy stuff for a twenty-two year-old kid, you know. I was in charge, you know the war was going on all around us. And it was exciting. So I asked, I looked to stay, and pretty much all the Americans were getting out, there were only very few units left. But SEAL team had a billet for a diving officer, but I wasn’t SEAL trained. I was already diving trained and demolition trained, but I had no land warfare qualifications, other than 50 caliber, 20 mm, 40 mm, 5 inch gun. I was a pistol marksman, but I had had no other small arms training. And so, I had to go back to Subic, in the Philippines, to Underwater Demolition Team 12 to get land-warfare qualified and come back. And the reason they wanted a diving officer is because SEAL team was doing insertions into North Vietnam, from underwater from the USS Grayback, a diesel submarine. And so they needed experienced diving officers. So I asked them if I could do that, and they said yes and moved me over to SEAL Team in Da Nang and the only insertions we ever did was from the Grayback. And we went up to the Tonkin Gulf to sweep mines, because they needed divers to demolish mines, because that was part of the Paris Peace Accords, that we would clear all the mines that we’d put in the Haiphong Harbor. And so, a big task force of about fifty ships went up to the Tonkin Gulf to clear mines and when that project was finished, the Grass went back to Guam, which was its homeport, and I went with it.
Q: And that was the end?
That was the end of Vietnam for me.