Vietnam memories: The story: part 8

8

Van Kiep, Baria, Phuoc Thuy Province

Van Kiep was home to Master station. It was principally an ARVN camp for advanced infantry training and usually housed a few such battalions. These had their advisers who used the US mess but slept with their men. The US had a small team to run their compound including such things as a small detachment of marines as artillery observers. They always had a certain air of being apart. There was also the team of advisers to the provincial headquarters at nearby Baria. The base had two colonels.

Decca had its own compound but messed with the US. The compound had been rather shot up in a mortar attack and our portacamp buildings were riddled with rather impressive holes shortly before I arrived and Decca had decided to house its off duty personnel in Vungtau. We worked a 24 hour shift and had 48 hours off.

Things were fairly quiet when I arrived. If we count two ARVN machine gunners from different battalions in their watchtowers settling their differences over our heads as a friendly fire incident. One night I nearly decapitated myself on some wire whilst running for a bunker during my first alarm.

We had a problem with our station commander who thought he had to command us. My experience had been one was always politely asked to do something. One then always did it. In the Bahamas with three men living on tiny islands (cays) for months at a time one had to always stay calm. We put a stop to that by telling him some equipment was urgently needed in Saigon and gave him a heavy sealed container. He rushed off to the office at Tan Son Nhut with it but when he opened it in the presence of the area manager it was found to contain only a bag of sand.

We got on pretty well with the Americans. It was always useful to drink with the sergeants who seemed to run their army, perhaps all armies. They could supply us with tins of frozen oysters, beef stakes or boxes of ammunition. There was a film most evenings and we barbecued T-stakes on Sundays. I well remember a sergeant M who ran the MP section. The only time I've really liked a military policeman in my life. There was a former South African who was responsible for

armaments. There was one hell raiser who invited me to go parachuting with his men the following morning. I don't think I could have been very sober to have agreed, but I reported to the jump field in the cold light of dawn rather like some poor fellow who got challenged to a dual the night before. His captain happened by and put a stop to it; I am not sure if I was relieved or not.

There were two rather beautiful young Vietnamese translators at the camp. Both tall, one was very pale and sad as though she had some enormous tragedy in her life, which she probably did. The other was pretty and happy. Perhaps my emotions were too occupied elsewhere at that time. Or perhaps after forty years one can look back and regret the girls one didn't really get to know. That must be better than regretting having known the women one did get involved with.

Memories of Vietnam 1965 1975 part 7

7

Air travel in South Vietnam in 1965

I was posted to Master Station at Van Kiep. One always travelled by air. I was to travel by road a lot later. Things were very simple. One just went out onto the airfield and went around trying to find a pilot heading in the same direction. Sometimes it was a fixed wing aircraft or often a chopper. The fixed wings were mostly C130 Hercules or C123 Providers. I always felt safe in the Hercules but utterly loathed the Providers which were twin engine but with twin jet boosters to help them take off. I always felt they had a hard time getting up in the air. Crowded in with material, soldiers, guard dogs and whatever one imagined the mess if they did not make it. There was a delightful Canadian aircraft, I believe it was the Caribou (thank you John for your email reminder of the name); it was twin engine with a high tail. It seemed to fly with the grace of a swan.

When I was in a press agency one day I saw a photo of one cut in two in the air by friendly artillery. I believe the photographer was a Japanese. He trod on a mine a few weeks later. Such are the fortunes of war. There were usually no seats. Straps on the floor to stop one falling about and the rear cargo door open. Australian pilots often flew at tree top height. The choppers often didn't have any doors either and flying at tree top height in them was an experience.

Our own major had a round come up through the floor and between his skull and helmet. Knocked unconscious, the co-pilot, our Decca manager took over. The major survived. We lost one of our Decca flight instructors, Jerry Degnan, in a chopper when it was shot down. The mystery of his disappearance was not cleared up until after the war due to a mix up in bodies. I knew another one from the Bahamas. He had spent time in the Isle of Pines prison in Cuba for gun running to counter- revolutionaries. He was going to be shot but was released at the time of the tractor deal with the United States. These instructors were a breed apart.

I had learnt to fly in the Bahamas. We did a lot of flying to the out islands and I didn't like the idea of sitting next to a pilot who conked out on me, and I thought one at least needed to know how to land the thing. I never took a license though.

I am not by nature a man who prays often but I did an awful lot of praying during the many hours of flying I did there. I believe the United States lost something like 10,000 aircraft of all types and through all causes during the war. Most of the chopper pilots were young; I think about 19 years old.

Memories of Vietnam: part 6

6

Decca Navigator Systems,Vietnam

It is not my purpose to go into a highly technical explanation of the operations of Decca in Vietnam.
For a very good web site on this subject and Decca in general you should go to the site of Jerry Proc:http://www.jproc.ca/hyperbolic/decca . Let us just say here that it was a hyperbolic navigational system first used in the Normandy landings. It was originally installed in Vietnam in the early sixties for the US Air Force. Then it was switched to helicopters which were army. For some reason our mail still came through the 7th US Air Force.

It consisted of one chain in 1965, the old Mk5. A chain has a Master station (at Van Kiep, a small Vietnamese army camp in Phuc Thuy province). Three slave stations; Green (Phan Thiet, an airstrip outside the town with a base of the 101st Airborne division when I was there); Red slave station (Tay Ninh, in an old French fort, which had a platoon of 106mm Recoilless rifles, when I was there. Tay Ninh was also home to the Cao Dai sect which during the French war had its own private army. It also featured in Graham Greene's The Quiet American.); Purple slave station (On Con Son, the former French penal colony of Poulo Condore. Still reputed for its tiger cages during the current conflict). The base was at Tan Son Nhut airport.

At that time we operated with four men per station. Three technicians and a diesel mechanic.
The office had a manager, a number two who ran the stations and a local secretary who ran the office and a local employee to take care of the accounts. There were also various odd bods who seemed to live in the office without any visible function. We had a few instructors who flew in the helicopters and various cartographers stationed around the country who worked on the charts.
We had one liason officer, a major. He had his sergeant. They had a helicopter and a jeep. We possesed a minibus and driver.

Being in that somewhat grey area between civilians and the military we had grades of GS 12 for station personnel and GS13 for station commanders. A GS12 is the same level as a major and a GS13 that of a colonel. We so outranked the military that it was to cause some friction later.
Although 1965 saw the build-up of US forces it had not yet filtered down to affect our daily life.
Everything was very low key. It was what I would call a much laid back war. When one arrived at the military air base one did not have to show any papers. Nobody was in a hurry. Except for the Vietnamese who had adopted the French passion for bureaucracy we virtually ignored all regimentation.

We were all ex service personnel; who wasn't in those days of the draft and National Service. It was a job ill fitted though to men who had not known the rigours of military life. I believe we were all bachelors. The company did not like sending married men overseas. We were mostly British or American with the odd Australian etc.

All this was to sadly change. Big does not make better and the American belief that one should use a sledgehammer to swat a fly, and not to be responsible for the accompanying collateral damage was to rather poison the atmosphere later. I loathe that word "collateral". I don't think it was used then. Battles killed people. That was generally accepted. But it was the more the better that irritated me.

Memories of Vietnam: part 5

5

Getting organised in Saigon: July August 1965

I spent the next few weeks getting organised.

The U.S. dollar was still being used alongside the Vietnamese piastre. Funny, there used to be piastres in Cyprus when I was there in the army at the time of the E.O.K.A. business.

One was introduced to the helpful services of the Indian money changers. They were also in the "rag trade». One visited the PX that haven (or was it heaven) of capitalism. One noted the black market in Le Loi street full of goods stolen from the PX.

Hotel accommodation was a problem. I was lodged in a place of very dubious reputation although the top floor bar with its ‘bar girls’ was a most novel experience. Later I would stay in the Hôtel Majestique which became my favourite. Ghastly food but such refined service and "please, no girls in the bedrooms". I would discover the Hôtel Continental and its terrace (more on that later).
I did night shift on the monitoring service in our H.Q. at TSN during this time to leave the days free to do the mountains of paperwork necessary to function.

When going to Tan Son Nhut one asked for the"Porte militaire", paid 20 piastres for a 17 piastre journey and said keep the change. A few years later it cost over 300 piastres and one haggled fiercely.

The first night I got lost on the unlit airfield and found myself in a very black Vietnamese helicopter park. Each "chopper" was guarded by a doberman or alsatian. I bumped into two US Airforce officers with drawn pistols, equally lost, and decided I needed one too.

Memories of Vietnam: part 4

4

Saigon, arrival

July 1965

I was not met when I descended from the aircraft. Perhaps it was my appearance, suit and tie, trilby (I've still got it) brief-case and furled umbrella.

I commandeered two U.S. military policemen and their jeep and we spent an hour driving around Tan Son Nhut airport looking for a building with a special twin aerial, unique to Decca, denoting the main office. They did not quite know what to make of me; perhaps my umbrella etc. helped my use of authority. We were successful.

I learnt later one fellow in similar circumstances spent two weeks in the Caravel Hotel before he found the office. There were however many distractions between the two. One chap didn't even get off the aircraft and flew straight on to wherever. Perhaps cold feet at the last moment!

Certain arrivals have left lasting impressions on me. Berlin in 1957 after crossing East Germany by darkened troop train at night. Havana just after Castro had taken over (I then couldn't get out). Hong Kong during the Cultural Revolution. Saigon was another. It is a feeling related to war, communist menace or adventure. It beats tourism every time.

Memories of Vietnam: parts 1,2,3

1

The beginning. Memories of Vietnam

My oldest memory of Vietnam was when I was still at school in England. It was called Indochina in those days. I can remember my history teacher bursting into a maths class, portable radio in his hand, crying out "Dien Bien Phu has fallen, Dien Bien Phu has fallen". This was of course in 1954.
I was 15 years old. It was the first event that pointed my way to Vietnam as the United States then became involved.

2

More beginnings

Another element in my progress to Vietnam was to find myself working in the Bahamas in 1965.
I was stationed in the Exhumas working for the U.S. office of Decca Navigator on the AUTEC Project. It was an idyllic life. How I had come to be there was a long story. Why is someone in a certain place at a certain time to meet an event that changes the course of one's life?

3

Goodbyes

In June 1965 we were informed the contract had been taken over by the London office and there would be a 50% cut in personnel and for those under the U.S. office a 50% cut in salary.
I asked if there was anything else going and was told the Americans were looking for people to go to Vietnam. I said I would think about it.
Not to appear too hasty I waited five minutes and called back on the radio to say that I would volunteer.
After an absolute storm with my family who were opposed, a month in New York with my girlfriend (Where are you Laura? You were abandoned also), where every day was my last whilst waiting for a flight, I eventually arrived in Saigon at the end of July 1965.

Vietnam photos: 1965-1975: And the guns fell silent

The morning after a night in Phan Thiet, 1968

Vietnam photos: 1965-1975

A school girl on a bridge. Saigon, circa 1972

Vietnam photos: 1965-1975

ARVN soldiers in cholon, 1968

Vietnam photos: 1965-1975

NTPB somewhere near Long Hai about 1967