The trip from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to Dak Pek, Viet Nam, took a couple of weeks. A neighbor worked for a rental car company, and told me they had a rental Chevrolet that had been stolen in Oregon and recovered in Fayetteville. The company wanted the car moved to the west coast, and I had to get to Travis Air Force Base, California, to catch my flight to Nam, so we struck a deal. The company would pay auto expenses if I would deliver the car to the Oakland, California, office. Driving instead of flying would give me an opportunity to visit family in a couple of places en route to California. A friend and SFOC classmate was booked on the same flight to Nam as I was, so he decided to meet me in Las Vegas, from whence we would travel to Travis AFB together.
I left Fayetteville several days before Thanksgiving, 1965, and drove to West Tennessee, where I visited my brothers and sisters. The car had been acting up a bit, and I took it to a dealer in my home town to have the trouble diagnosed and fixed. They replaced the fuel pump, but I found later that that was not the problem.
After a few days, I left for Scottsdale, Arizona, where my wife’s brother lived. A couple more times enroute I had to stop to have the car checked. At each stop I had to pay for what turned out to be no help at all. Finally, at a one-bay service station somewhere in New Mexico, a grizzled mechanic found that a clogged fuel filter was the culprit.
Joyce’s brother owned an advertising agency in Phoenix. One of the perks was that he would do advertising work for hotels and casinos in Las Vegas in return for free rooms and food. He graciously arranged for me to stay at a great place in Las Vegas that I otherwise could never have afforded.
My friend met me in Vegas, and we shared the driving to Oakland, arriving on Thanksgiving day. We found the car agency and I presented the bills for auto expenses, expecting the agent to reimburse me. He said he would have to contact the agency owner in Oregon, so Hank and I went to a local restaurant for our Thanksgiving dinner. When we returned, the agent informed me that the Oregon office questioned the amount of my expenses, and would forward me a check when he received the car. The amount of money involved was about $150, and that represented a large part of a month’s pay to me. I knew that if I walked out the door without the cash I’d never see it.
I asked the agent to get the Oregon representative on the phone for me. When I spoke to him, he repeated his objection to the amount of my expenses. I gave him a choice: authorize immediate payment or I would put the car in a commercial garage and we could settle up in a year after I got back from Viet Nam. It took but a few seconds for him to authorize payment.
The flight from Travis AFB to Saigon took about 24 hours. We traveled in short sleeved summer khaki uniforms, so the stop in Anchorage, Alaska was a bit uncomfortable, but at least we could get off the airplane. Not so in Tokyo, where we spent a couple hours aboard while the plane was serviced. Likewise in Clark AFB in the Philippines, but instead of freezing there, we sweltered. I believe that I would have gotten off that plane even if we had landed in Hanoi instead of Saigon.
After a day in the replacement depot at Saigon, it was a short hop 5th SF Group headquarters in Da Nang by C130. A couple of days of processing was followed by a C123 flight to the C team headquarters at Pleiku. From there, it was a short hop by Huey to the B team in Kontum. Another day or so of processing and briefings preceded a final hop by Huey to Dak Pek.
The Huey flights I experienced in Nam were white knuckle rides. The usual trip was at tree top level where the hundred knots or so of airspeed were quite apparent and exposed the helicopter to ground for the shortest possible period. Choppers frequently came in with leaves and small branches hanging from their skids. The natural reaction, at least for me, was to grasp with all my strength some part of the chopper in anticipation of the imminent crash. We always traveled with the cargo doors open. Not only could we take advantage of the cool breeze, but if we did crash we’d have a way to get out. To guard against falling out the open door, we strapped a nylon safety belt around our waist and attached the safety line to a tie down point in the floor of the chopper.
After more than a week of travel from Travis AFB, living out of an duffel bag, I was looking forward to getting settled in my Dak Pek home for the next several months. I was enjoying the magnificent scenery and the cool mountain air as Dak Pek came into sight. I asked the Huey pilot to circle the camp a time or two so I could get the lay of the land. We landed on the pad, and I saw the whole team assembled to greet me. As the pilot started his shut down, I jumped out and hurried to meet Lt. Richard Gladfelter who was hurrying forward to meet his new CO. Before we could shake hands, I received a rude jolt. Having forgotten to detach the safety line from the chopper, I was snatched to an abrupt halt in mid-stride. My first thought was that I hoped that the team didn’t think I was as dumb as I looked and felt.
Copyright 1999
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