The First Experience In the Vietnam War
Michael: Well. I got out of high school in June of 1966, I kind of goofed off during the summer, but I knew the way things were going in Vietnam, it was starting to escalate or everything, 65, 66 or everything, and I figured it if I didn’t enlist in the service, I would end up being drafted.
There wasn’t any real objection. There was the concern because of what was going on, as I mentioned, Vietnam starting to escalate. But, we kind of thought, well, you know, at least I am enlisting, hopefully getting a choice, having more options than just ending up going to the army or marine corps, and pretty much knowing being a ground soldier, that was where I would end up.
I was at band wire base. The first post that I stood the year before I got there was the focal point of a major attack on the base, and there were two security policemen that were killed there. I didn’t know them, because I wasn’t there yet, but I knew before going to Vietnam, I knew the stories about that, that attack during the Tet Offensive and everything.
When you get right down to it, the individual soldier that in the field was fighting for his or her life, some of the rules, they wanted to follow them, but you know, you tried to stay alive, so you did what you got to do. I was lucky in the sense that I wasn’t out in the jungles, the rice paddies, or whatever, trying to fight enemy soldiers or anything. In some respect, even though it was terrible for the guys going out to the field, and chasing after the enemy or something…not terrifying, but it was not an easy feeling of sitting there where we were , because we just had to sit there and wait for something happen. You don’t know when it’s going to happen, but you know something is going to happen sometime, so the sense is always in the back of your mind. Are they are going to shoot rockets tonight, or they are trying to penetrate the parameter or something. There was a stress level that was always there. If it would be a rocket attack on the base or something , as it is going on, or immediately after, everybody’s joking, ok, well, they didn’t get me this time, you know, whatever the comments would be or something. And then there was just a way of trying to deal with the stress of, you know, I got lucky it didn’t hit me this time.
And then you will see things that will occur near you, particularly like that in the air base when there was a rocket attack or something, and that is you see something that would get blown up or something and that was fairly close to you, this just missed me. There are a couple of cases I can recall. I was working one bunker and one night, it was probably 100 yards or 150 yards or something away from me, there was a fuel truck that had been parked on the ramp behind where the bunker was at, and the fuel truck was hit by one of the rockets and blew up. As soon as we could, everybody kind of, let’s go and do what we need to do, these people will take care of this guy, we need to get back to our job, get back to our post and so on. And obviously I don’t want to make the light of the fact of someone losing their life or anything. But you know everybody probably, I can’t remember specific about that particular incident. But everybody was probably trying to come up with something that they could do to kind of joke about the way the night had gone or something, and to deal with the stress.