I was in Vietnam from June 1970 to May 1971. I got there by trying to avoid getting drafted and sent to fight in combat as an enlisted man. My dad had been shot up pretty badly at Anzio in WWII by a German machine gun and he always advised to go into war as a “behind the lines” officer. I took his advice.
In 1967 I signed up for Dartmouth’s 2 year ROTC program. It was the easiest way to get an officer commission and only required an easy course in military science that I could take pass–fail. I missed most of the drills and as many meetings as I could, without getting booted out. We had an old army sergeant that was the brains of the program and he told me that what really mattered in how the army assigned new officers was your performance in the two 6 week summer camps.
The first summer camp was at Ft. Benning Georgia. A red clay hell hole with humidity high enough to drink and heat hot enough to boil the beverage. The Infantry Basic Training Course was a simple brain washing program. They broke the trainees down with lack of sleep, sparse food, incredibly difficult physical training and verbal humiliation. For me it was a piece of cake. In those days I could run or march forever and the obstacles courses were meant for an agile scrawny guy like me. I kept my mouth shut and paid attention to the harassing drill sergeants who were always looking for the dumb asses to mess up. While we were at Ft. Benning the West Point classes were rotating through the same training venues. They passed us each morning going out to the ranges in their air conditioned buses as we trudged through the red dust. At the end of the summer camp they gave us an aptitude class. I must have done pretty well since the Dartmouth ROTC instructors starting pushing me to go RA. (Regular Army) for a career.
The second summer camp was at IndianTown Gap Military Reservation close to Hersey, Pennsylvania. The routine was similar to Benning, but emphasized Advanced Infantry Training with platoon and company strategies. Again I kept a low profile and excelled in the runs and obstacle courses. They also did a lot more aptitude testing. Close to the end of the camp they selected the top trainees to lead a company sized group in a war game maneuver. I was selected to mount a defense and counter attack using National Guard “flying banana” helicopters. The choppers were worn out surplus and the pilots had minimal training. In retrospect it was my closest brush with real danger in the Army.
The class of 1969 graduated Dartmouth on 14 June 1969. I was commissioned on the same day By virtue of my summer camp performances I got my first choice of Army branch and reported to Ft. Ben Harrison, Indianapolis, Indiana on 2 July 1969 as a 2nd Lieutenant Finance officer. There we were given the basics in Finance, prisoner of war, and chemical warfare survival training. We also had to buy or rent a set of dress blues to attend the General’s reception at the officers club. Toward the end of our classes, we were offered a chance to go next to Europe or somewhere in the US .and avoid Vietnam if we would sign up for an addition year over our two year military commitment. Most of the married guys and guys with serious girlfriends signed up. I figured it was a trap and did not.
After Ft. Harrison I was assigned to Ft Knox, Kentucky to run the pay station at the Armor School. It was a cushy job. I had a huge vault with about $8 million in cash and my enlisted tellers, who were either CPAs or MBAs, put together the cash payrolls for about half the base. Each day I opened the vault and they paid on vouchers at teller windows. There was a base library annex next door and I read 60 books sitting inside the vault out of sight.
After a year, my orders came down to go to Vietnam. I reported to Oakland Army Base in California for tropical vaccinations and combat fatigues. Before flying out I managed to visit with Jim Ross, “Rossman”, my Dartmouth roommate, who was getting his masters in geology at Stanford. He lived in a coed dorm with coed showers. At that point we both realized Stanford would have been a sweet place for college.
All three of my college roommates would later go to Vietnam. Rossman was a tech sergeant running an asphalt paving platoon, after the army he was a prospecting geologist and traveled the world Looking for gold. Jack Bauer was a lieutenant. in the medical service and later became a dentist and rancher/farmer. Jon Hanshus was lieutenant with a infantry battalion fighting in the jungle and later became head of international HR for Polaroid Corp. We try to have a reunion every couple of years. )
After a nice weekend with Rossman, I flew out of Oakland and landed in Japan to refuel where I bought a small pair of Nikon binoculars. This would be my first purchase of quality Japanese goods. Arriving in Vietnam at Bien Hoa airbase I was sent to Saigon to run a pay station on Ton Son Nhut airbase that housed MACV headquarters, the general headquarters of the US war effort in Vietnam. I think we had about 50 enlisted men and about 100 Vietnamese nationals working for us. On the introduction to the Vietnamese workers, the spokesman greeted me with “Oh Wootennant Grandy,, you number 1, you one of us,. You Hawaayan “. I was off to a good start.
I was replacing a RA captain and one of the duties was to be the property book officer for the organization. We had several offices out in the sticks and before I signed for the property I wanted a physical inspection and count. Much to the chagrin of the departing captain we were missing all sorts of equipment that had been traded on the black market, stolen, damaged or lost. I only signed for what I found. I was never sure what happened to the delayed departing captain ,but told my property sergeant to make sure we keep track of our stuff and to trade for what we needed to be able to leave Vietnam on time when our tours were up. At the end when we were short some typewriters and lockers he just chopped up a few and presented them as multiple items damaged by incoming mortar fire.
The routine in Saigon was essentially working 12 hour days 7 days a week. My tellers converted all incoming US dollars to either US military payment certificates (MPC) or Vietnamese currency . They also paid incoming and departing troops and put together cash payrolls for the troops assigned to MAVC headquarters. After working in the office we would catch a ride to our “hotel” which was outside the perimeter of the airbase and about a mile into the city. The hotel was a concrete structure with protective wire around it and Vietnamese guards manning the entrances. Housed with me were other logistical types, including a detachment of Grave Registration National Guardsmen from Georgia and Alabama. In civilian life they were mostly undertakers and had that dry sardonic sense of humor only folks who deal with the dead on a familiar basis have. They were fun to be around, drank like fish and had wild stories of their grim work. I had one roommate at the Hotel but only saw him every 2 months when he came in from his LRRP patrols. I was never sure where he had been but think he was into Laos and Cambodia on long range recon work.
Our office also paid certain “off the books“ workers of Air American and Alaskan Barge and Transit. These were CIA fronts or contractors. Besides running the pay station we were tasked with furnishing guards for the night defense of the airbase and for manning a quick reaction force to defend the USAID and AFVN (radio / television) compounds downtown, (AFVN was the location that was portrayed in the movie Good Morning Vietnam, with Robin Williams as DJ Cronauer.) We had some open bed trucks to jump into and roar downtown with our M60 machine guns, grenade launchers and M16s at the ready. We were dead meat if the Viet Cong really wanted us. Since the army only paid once a month, the troops were always broke my mid-month. Finance officers had the authority to give partial pays in advance and this ability provided our finance group with a good source of “trading material”. We usually had plenty of beer and steaks for our monthly BBQ s and the Military Police in charge of our quick reaction drills tipped us off as to the timing. When the call came to scramble we were sitting on the trucks and ready to roll.
After 8 months in Saigon I was sent to Vung Tao, a coastal resort town, and Headquarters of the Australian army in Vietnam. My job there was to set up a temporary pay station. In retrospect I think the Army was anticipating using Vung Tao as the last step on the way out of the country. When Saigon fell in April 1975 many Vietnamese escaped on boats from Vung Tao. The city was an idyllic spot with a long sandy beach like South Padre Island, Texas; a rugged rock headland like the cove in La Jolla, California and a moon shaped bay much like Acapulco, Mexico. The bay side restaurants in town had ample supplies of Lobster and cold Australian beer.
After getting my tellers set up each morning I walked across the airbase to a helicopter repair battalion and hoped on “test” flights. The flights were really beer and “supply” runs around the country. With the doors wide open and a helmet ear piece linked into the pilot’s radio I could hear all the military traffic around us and could often see combat engagements in the distance. Like most of my Vietnam experience, I was high above any real danger.
Finally the Army in its attempt to drawn down forces in Vietnam more quickly, sent me home early and separated the Army from Oakland Army base on 25 May 1971. I later learned that most of the Finance officers in Vietnam had been replaced by my classmates at Ft. Harrison that spent a year in Europe. On the flight from San Francisco back to New York for my sister’s graduation from Skidmore, I was still in my tropical fatigues and freezing on the plane but fell asleep exhausted, when I woke up on landing at La Guardia the elderly lady next to me had covered me up with her fur coat. Welcome home soldier.