U.S. ARMY QUICK SUMMARY, 1965–1970

August 5, 1965. Fort Dix, New Jersey. The Army swallowed me whole.

Nine weeks of basic training. I breezed through it. But I was a draftee, and draftees don’t get to plan their own future. During the last week, they gathered the whole company and gave us the news: every one of us was headed to Advanced Infantry Training. Then Vietnam.

Four of us got pulled out of formation. A deal was on the table. Skip Vietnam. Get schooling in whatever we had an aptitude for. Pick our own base. All we had to do was go Regular Army for four years.

I took the bait — Avionics School, Fort Gordon, Georgia, then Germany. The Army wasn’t bluffing. My whole basic training class shipped out to Infantry AIT anyway.

Six months at Fort Gordon, tearing apart radio schematics until I could see the circuits in my sleep. Highest level of aircraft electronics training the Army offered. The dropout rate matched it.

Then eighteen months with the 3rd Infantry Division in Germany, running a fourth-echelon repair shop. We fixed what other shops couldn’t. If a radio beat us, it went back to the factory. That almost never happened. Our technicians didn’t accept failure — not as a rule, as a mindset.

I made E-5 in Germany.

I liked the work. I liked the mission. But I wanted more. I put in for Airborne or Ranger training. No slots in my battalion. Worse — my MOS was too critical. Combat arms wasn’t an option for a man the Army needed fixing radios.

There was one door left: Officer Candidate School. And OCS meant Vietnam wasn’t a possibility. It was a promise.

I sat with that for three months before I signed the paperwork. Tests. Two officer review boards. Accepted. Then my electronics training caught up with me again — the board took one look at my file and locked me into Signal OCS. No Airborne. No Ranger. Just Signal.

I could have stayed safely in Germany, with little chance of promotion. Instead, I chose Vietnam.

One month of leave. Then Fort Gordon again — six months of OCS. Commissioned a second lieutenant. Fort Sill, Oklahoma, for three more months of officer training. Last stop before Vietnam: platoon leader, 2nd Armor Division, Fort Hood, Texas.

The flight out left from Oakland. Hawaii. Wake Island. Okinawa. I landed at Tan Son Nhat Airport on January 5, 1969.

My first three months in-country, I lived behind a cyclone fence inside an old French fort in Tay Ninh East — red brick walls two feet thick, built during the First Indochina War. Three hundred to five hundred Vietnamese Special Forces, Popular Forces, and CIDG troops called it home. My own team ran five to ten men, depending on the mission.

I didn’t know our real purpose there. On paper, we were a small detachment off the 25th Infantry Division, gathering intelligence. Looking back, I believe we were part of the Phoenix Program — a CIA operation running out of Tay Ninh East.

Three months in that fort. Then the Viet Cong blew the ammo dump and took the compound with it.

What came next was the assignment of a lifetime: Nui Ba Den. Signal Officer was my title. Executive Officer of the Nui Ba Den Provisional Company was my real job — and it came with a free hand on any project I judged necessary to keep that mountain secure.

Major Campbell, the commanding officer, trusted me completely. Whatever I proposed for security, he approved. Fifteen different Army units answered to that mountaintop with me — A-324, 5th Special Forces, U.S. Air Force, two Vietnamese relay teams.

Then the Sappers came.

That night is the measure I hold myself to. Combat tests everything you believe about your own nerve, and that night I found out what mine was worth. I lost four good men. But the Viet Cong did not take our signal complex. Not one Army signal unit went dark.

Six months on Nui Ba Den. Three months before that in Tay Ninh East. Brigade decided I’d had enough time in the field and pulled me back to Tay Ninh Base Camp as Assistant First Brigade Signal Officer.

Low stress. No real challenge. Just a staff job — though I still sat in on the daily combat briefings for my sector of Vietnam. The only real danger was dodging the daily mortar and rocket fire, and the Viet Cong were never in a hurry — one or two rounds a day, usually.

The last three months went fast. Then I was on the freedom bird home.