Here's a look at the DMZ. The
ARVN 1st Division has responsibility for the DMZ and the area just south of it. I don't thlnk they are a good match for the NLF tanks and mechanized units so I'm going to delegate the Marines for responsibility for the DMZ and use the 1st ARVN division as backup. I may need to call in the
5th Mechanized Division to handle the NLF tanks depending on how bad it gets in future turns. And it can get fairly bad.
We were losing a platoon of Marines per week in 1968 when I graduated high school. I got one deferment from the draft because I was a college student but I was afraid that my draft number was going to come up next so I joined the Air Force on 04Nov68 and started active duty. I was in the Air Force for five years 10 months and 10 days. I got an early out as the war was winding down in August of 1974.
Basic Training was a breeze. Some recruit fell dead after getting a flu shot and running the obstacle course so the higher ups decreed that there should be no running on the base for any reason. So basic training was as easy as high school. Six weeks of training how to salute and march and how to wear the uniform and that's about it.
The technical school they sent me to was Lowry AFB, Colorado, where for 14 weeks they taught me how to load bombs and bullets and missiles and napalm and rockets, and mines, and some special equipment that probably shouldn't be mentioned. Fuel-air bombs that can devestate any standing structures like small villages. Instant landing zone...that sort of thing. And some equipment to rescue shot-down pilots like powders and gasses that put you to sleep etc. So they could gas the bad guys, wait for them to collapse and walk in and get the pilot out. There was some kind of blow up about it being against the Geneva convention to use gasses or powders so they decided to make it non-lethal to skirt the regulations about the Geneva convention. Chemical and biological weapons were sensitive subjects back then. Maybe it still is, I donno.
After the specialized training I was sent to Luke AFB, near Phoenix, Arizona where I was assigned to load the training F-100's with these little red 25-pound bombs that had a shotgun shell in them to mark where they hit the ground on the gunnery range. They were training the pilots in close support and they were training me to load planes. It was a win-win. I got tired of that after a while so I volunteered to take part of the Air Force acceptance of the
A-7D from the Navy. This was way before the A-10 and the air force needed a ground support aircraft designed specifically for ground support and the navy had some A-7D's that they weren't using for anything so they gave them to the air force and we used a lot of them in Vietnam. After about a year of that and several promotions I volunteered to go to Vietnam and got my orders to go very soon after that. I ended up at Bien Hoa, RVN. This is the first time I went over there. I worked as a weapons mechanic loading F-100's and A-37's and OV-10's and A-1E/H's and then I heard they were needing volunteers to fly as gunners on the
AC-130E/H's and I volunteered. They sent me to Hurlburt Field Florida to learn how to be an aerial gunner, how to load and unload the gun, fix it in the dark using a small mouth-held flashlight and aircrew training which involved water survival, jungle survival, escape and evading, use of the pistols they gave us and so on. I found myself going back to SouthEast Asia again in
August of 1972 as an aerial gunner.
When I first arrived at
Ubon, Thailand it was in the monsoon season and we would take off in the rain and follow the Mekong river over to Pakse, Laos and then follow the river all the way though Cambodia to Saigon where we would orbit for several hours on CAP. Then about 03:00 we'd land at Tan Son Nhut, there in Saigon, deplane to go to the chow hall for breakfast while they serviced the plane, refueled it, etc. and then we'd take off again about 04:30 and orbit until the sun started to come up and then fly back to Ubon. It was called the Tan Son Nhut turnaround. I did that for several months and then after I got some experience they started sending me on missions to
northern Laos and deep in
Cambodia and some places
just south of China which they wouldn't tell us what that was all about. And we'd get shot at every night. Mostly near misses, never closer than about 50 yards away from the plane but still it was exciting. The rules of engagement were that anything that moved after dark was considered enemy. We once found a boat moving down the river and sank it. It was still burning when we returned to base several hours later. It was in the schedule for a crew to
fly every other night so you could recuperate from having just spent close to 5 hours in the air getting shot at. But we enlisted men found ways to get intoxicated and have some light fun. But I ramble.
His is going to be the most world-wide anticipated obituary in the history of the world, that I will tell you. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
