A Look Back, Part III

     From Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon, as well as during travel to air bases throughout Vietnam and Thailand (where we couldn't acknowledge we had troops), Charley supplied parts for the Sikorsky "Jolly Green Giant" search and rescue helicopters, which were picking up pilots who had been shot down during '66 and '67. Caught in a firefight in the highlands of Pleiku, he was grateful for a bunker overnight.

     In Saigon he lived off-base with four other officers. Each kept a gun under his pillow at night, despite barbed wire fencing and triple locks.  One night a rat as big as a cat ran across Charley's chest. However, there were no cats to feed on the vermin, since the population considered cats a delicacy.  Rats were rampant.

     A local Vietnamese mamasan cleaned their villa and cooked for them.  Another did their laundry. When the men discovered their beers were disappearing from the refrigerator, one of them appeared unexpectedly during the day to expose the black market convenience store mamasan #1 was running out of their refrigerator.

     Following a squelched raid by the Viet Cong from both inside and outside the base one night, Charley viewed enemy bodies lined up on the way to work the next morning.  He recognized them as the barbers who'd cut his hair in the barbershop on base.

     His villa was across the street from a school.  Four months after Charley rotated home, U.S. forces obliterated the school during the Tet Offensive.  The Viet Cong had been hiding there at night to direct attacks at the air base.

     After we met in Honolulu in the spring of '67, we were anxious to receive Charley's stateside assignment for September.  "Since you're among the first troops to be engaged here, you'll have your choice of bases when you go home," Charley heard from the personnel officer.  "Fill out this form for your first, second, and third choice of bases."

     Charley and I had decided that since we had no kids, we'd like to see the west coast of this country.  We'd selected two bases in California, and one in Washington state as our top choices.

     "Do you really want to go to those, Lieutenant?" asked the sergeant filling out his form next to Charley.

     "Absolutely."

     "Then you have to play their game.  Don't list those, because you'll get stationed as far away as possible.  Look at my form.  I want to go to Europe. I put down Thule Air Base, Greenland."

     "How can you be sure you'll get Europe instead of Greenland?" Charley said.

     "Trust me, Lieutenant.  I've been around for seven assignments and that's how it works."

In my Vietnamese silk Ao Dai

Saigon, '66-67

     Charley didn't have the guts to put down a base in Greenland, or anything but the west coast. When he received his orders, they were for Warner Robins, Georgia, about as far from the west coast as possible! He would be the liaison officer attached to the same search and rescue unit he'd left in Vietnam, sending parts daily from the Georgia warehouses to the helicopters. The sergeant had been right on!  The year in Georgia would be our last in the military.

TO BE CONTINUED...

           

A Look Back Part II

   

     We took Charley to JFK Airport in New York to see him off to Saigon in August, '66.  The "we" included my parents, his parents, his aunt and uncle, and me. He would stop in San Francisco before landing at Tan Son Nhut Air Base, where he'd be attached to the Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Wing.

     There were no smiles at the airport.  In fact, there were few words.  Everyone was too depressed.  My parents had ordered trays of cold cuts and salads for a lunch buffet at their house in Connecticut for all of us after Charley left. It never happened.

     Charley said he hardly moved from his seat for six hours to the west coast.  He couldn't focus to read. During the second leg of the trip to Vietnam, meals arrived every four hours.  Noticing that Charley was refusing all his meals, the master sergeant next to him asked, "Your first tour over there, Lieutenant?"

     "Yeah," Charley said.

     "This is my second."  The stripes up and down his sleeve and colorful bars on his chest confirmed he'd seen combat. "You going to eat your meal?"

     "Probably not, Sergeant."

     "Mind if I have it?"

     Thereafter, every meal Charley passed up the sergeant gobbled down.

     We communicated by writing letters every day, which were sent without postage to an APO number overseas.  In addition, we recorded cassette tapes, since we each had a recorder.  I sent my tapes to our pilot friends, who carried them on their planes, along with care packages, to Tan Son Nhut Air Base.

     A third method of communication was by satellite phone.  We'd designate a date and time for the phone call, allowing for the fact Charley was eleven hours ahead of East Coast Daylight Saving time.  It was usually around midnight for me when the call came through.  He would stand in line at the USO for the phone, since there was no method to communicate like Skype (no personal computers) or cell phones.  When the call went through, the conversation was bounced off satellites by ham operators. It went something like this:
   
     "Hi, honey, how are you?  Over."

     "I'm great and it's wonderful to hear your voice!  How are you?  Over."

     "I'm OK.  It's the end of rainy season here, so the monsoons are less frequent.  Still 100 degrees, though. Over."

     "We've got a chill in the air and the leaves are starting to turn.  Grad school is keeping me busy. Over."

     It was real personal!???!  If the conversation went beyond five minutes, those waiting behind Charley would get all over him.  "Enough, Lieutenant!  How 'bout us?"  A bouncer actually monitored the length of the calls. Eventually we gave up on them altogether.

     Aside from a serviceman's date of return, the most anticipated day of the year was when a week's R&R (rest and recuperation) began outside Vietnam.  Six months into his tour, I met Charley in Oahu, Hawaii.

     I made my plane reservations and booked a room at the Ilikai Hotel (famous from  the opening shots of "Hawaii Five-0").  Charley's plane was supposed to arrive in the morning, so I arrived the evening before.  I put my hair in curlers and smeared a mud mask over my face so it would be clean and smooth the next morning. Then I went to bed.

     Around 4:00 a.m., there was a knock on the door.  "Who is it?" I said.

     "It's me, honey!  Open up!"

     I pulled a few curlers from my head but the mud mask remained, cracking during the kissing.  So much for beauty treatments!  While I washed my face, Charley told me, "I saw the sunrise twice - once in Saigon and once over the Pacific.  I actually got here in negative hours by crossing the international date line.

Honolulu, April '67

     "It took forever to get debriefed, then I got a taxi here.  When I gave your name to the desk clerk, he had no record of you!  I didn't know what to do, it was 3:30 a.m., but I was sure this is the hotel you told me.  So I asked him to check under my name.  Nothing!  Then I asked him to check again for your name. Finally he found you, under 'Paula Carry!'"

 
 The rest of the week was pure heaven.