TRUE STORIES FROM DAYS IN THE NAM
PO Box 944 Buena Vista, VA. 24416 USA
517-745-8872
THE WRITTEN WORD
I BUILT A FEW BUNKERS DURING MY TIME IN THE NAM
Sgt. Zoomie On Bunker Building
EVERY TIME I GOT A NEW COLONEL HE PUT me IN CHARGE OF RE-BUILDING
THE AIR FORCE BUNKERS, on the interior not the perimeter mind you, after he had gone
thru his first MORTAR ATTACK......it was like a Pavlovian Response.....
I had only been in Xuan Loc for about three weeks when The Asshole Colonel rotated and
MASON replaced him. After a year of MASON then I got Colonel ETHRIDGE who was a
good guy too. Mason was twice my size t I got the job done but Etheridge was even smaller
and shorter than me. My third colonel was named Jackson and a real prissy son of a bitch, do
it by the book asshole. If I flew in those last months it was NOT with him.
AT ANY RATE, the same thing happened every time these colonels had to spend their first
night in one of the Air Farce bunkers, is that the next morning I would get to have a one on
one with the man and be told I was now in charge of re-building our two bunkers. Thank you
fucking very much SIR, but I got the job done with a minimum of screaming and shouting
from the other troops of Kenny Control.
When I got to Xuan Loc the MACV compound just had wire around it, nor berm whatsoever,
that happend after tet 1968, we were open and naked but some sort of deal had been cut with
the VC that the MACV compound would never get hit. At the time I was there the
compound was maybe 250 yards square at best and while there was no berm around it, just
some piss ant wire, there were bunkers around the perimeter for the Army pukes, just in case.
The Air Farce bunkers were NOT on the perimeter, I guess they did not trust us. Had we
been over run we would be the last men standing, or shitting our pants.
SO AT ANY RATE, Mason had been there maybe ten days or so before Xuan Loc got hit
again and this was of course his first time. A few rockets landed 300 yards away on the
airfield and the 35th ARTY was getting hammered with mortars as was DIV HQ but they were
a klick away so no sweat GI. So like I said, the next morning I got called by my colonel and
given the assignment to “re-build that damn bunker.....” What that meant was that between
1400 and 1700 hours EVERY FUCKING DAY until the job was done I was in charge of
every winging dick from E-4s to O-4s of Kenny Control [oh did the officers and senior
NCOs bitch at first but my colonel set them straight as to what exactly needed to be done and
WHO WAS IN CHARGE, Airman Dieckman.....I HAD THE POWER......Milo Minderbinder
reincarnate....]
So we were good as gold until Colonel Etheridge came in fall 1968 and showed up in with
his M-16 in his undershorts for his first night in the bunker. Needless to say the next
morning I got called in and given my orders: “....those fucking bunkers of ours have got to be
re-built....” “Aye, aye, sir” and I got on the job and once again was able to assert my
authority over every fucking body on the team, EVERY BODY WHO WAS NOT FLYING
OR RUNNING THE RADIOS would be filling sand bags under my control and if you had a
bitch talk to my colonel and get set straight.
Colonel Etheridge even came out and helped fill sand bags to encourage the others. Also he
had delusions of grandeur and thought he was an architect. To make these bunkers perfect
we needed not just a dirt floor and sand bags but plywood and he knew how to get some. Of
course I was assigned the mission of getting this plywood.
It seems Colonel Ethridge knew an Air Farce supply sergeant in Saigon who wanted a couple
of
Chicom SKS rifles to take back to the states to prove he was in the war and if he got these
pieces would be willing to part with 50 sheets of 3/4" plywood, 4' x 8' for each piece. They
just had a big fire at a warehouse on Tan Son Nhut and if you are in the supply chain big fires
can sometimes be a good thing. So I got put on this job. Getting the SKSs was easy, they
were even still wrapped up gunky with comsmoline, never been fired. Two of them cost me
a case of Martell cognac to a Vietnamese Dai-Uy [Captain] that I did business with in their
G-2 shop [cost = $2.20 @ fifth at local PX—hey at the MACV compound we even had flush
toilets, we were state department not army, even though we dressed like them, so we did not
have to burn our shit like the real Army did]. Once I had the SKSs in place then all I needed
was a deuce and a half ton truck and a driver and that was too easy, as they say in the land of
OZ.
The truck and driver, a senior ARVN sergeant [Trung Sau] only cost me 6 fifths of Martell
given as a gift the the Trung-Uy [1st LT] in charge of the 18th ARVN motor pool and I was
ready to rock-n-roll. Because the plywood was to improve our two bunkers every body had
to give a little cheese for the booze with my colonel pitching in a Jackson so it was no great a
burden on the other troops. As I recall there was even a fifth that slipped thru the cracks and
ended up in my possession.
NOW I HAVE TO DIGRESS and explain to you how things really worked. If you look at
my military records they will tell you I was present and fit for duty with a thing called 19th
TASS [Tactical Air Support Squadron] stationed at Bien Hoa AFB. I reality my unit of
assignment was Intelligence, 7th AF HQ Saigon reporting to a Major Jones. One of my jobs
was to spy on my FAC team and report in every month to Major Jones as to the team’s
moral, cohesion, effectiveness, drunkenness etc etc....in other words I was a rat fink.
Technically my 33 months in Xuan Loc I was on a TDY assignment [Temporary Duty] and
as such I was issued travel orders that allowed myye to fly on any military transport plane to
anyplace in SEA with a priority of AAAAA, which meant if there was only one seat left I got
it even if the other guy was an officer but he was only AAAA. With the permission of my
colonels I every once in a while got a few days off and using these blanket travel orders was
able to visit Da Lat, Cam Ran Bay, Pleiku, Ban Me Thout, Vung Tau, Da Nang. The perks of
being a spook.
AT ANY RATE I forgot to carry these travel orders on me when I rode into Saigon with my
gook driver in the deuce and a half, wearing my 18th ARVN NCO beret [I still have it], Colt
.45 in a shoulder holster, jungle fatigues, two SSKs and four joints. At the front gate of Tan
Son Nhut we had to pass by both a Vietnames and American Air Police checkpoint. My
driver had all the paper work but alas, alack in no time at all I was forced to “ASSUME THE
POSITION....” And before long I was in the brig. The joints were in my left breast pocket of
my jungle fatigues where there were little things that were supposed to be for holding pens
and pencils but where you could store for jays. I also carried a small note book in that pocket
so when I got patted down at the front gate of TSN the idiot found that, examined it, gave it
back to me so he never found the jays, thank god. And then I got taken to the brig where a
very unpleasant Air Police Captain interviewed me. I told him my story and he got on the
phone to try to reach my colonel in Xuan Loc to verify my story. That took a long time.
What he had to do was crank the crank phone and get Saigon Operator and ask to be patched
through to Xuan Loc Operator which meant he had to go thru Bien Hoa Operator first and
after 20 minutes or so was finally told that my colonel was not answering his phone, that he
was flying. So I was stuck. I have to say the Air Cop sorta believed my story, he even called
the supply sergeant with the plywood who sorta confirmed my story but they still kept me
until Etheridge finally got on the line and asserted his authority and I was set free. I was dusk
when me and my driver and 100 sheets of plywood finally got back to Xuan Loc. One of the
reasons I know I am one lucky mother fucker.