Rioting & Vietnam

C H A P T E R V
(1969-1970)

Paul Haight was a big fellow, standing six-foot, three inches. He was a slow walking, slow talking kind of man, but those who knew him, didn't mistake the slowness for being dumb; he wasn't that! Not many people gave him any trouble. His size alone was enough to enforce any order he gave. Paul was easy going, had a good sense of humor, and had many friends on the compound and in the Montaignyard community. I worked with him for the first three months I was at Kontum, doing the housekeeping details on the compound.

We would drive out to the Montaignyard village in a 2 1/2 Ton truck in the morning, and pick-up the men and women who would be going to work on the compound that day. Paul usually brought along a pocket full of candy to distribute to the kids, who would cluster around the truck in anticipation, as soon as we arrived. While we waited for the adults to climb aboard the truck, Paul was busy giving out candy to the kids.

The village was surrounded by a dry moat that had punji sticks hidden all through it. Punji sticks are sharpened sticks of bamboo that are embedded in the ground with the points up. The tip is commonly coated with poison or dipped in excrement to cause infection if it breaks the skin. On the other side of that was a wall of sharpened stakes about eight feet high and circling the village. The huts (for that's what they were) were all built on stilts and were about six to ten feet off the ground. To enter the hut, it was necessary to climb a notched log that was leaning against the veranda of the hut.

The villagers had a mixture of some old rifles of various makes and calibers, and crossbows and arrows, and machetes to defend themselves. They had a local militia who formed a loose-knit guard in the area.

We usually parked near the front entrance to the village while waiting for the workers to assemble. The village chief decided who would work for that day. Normally, it was the same people every day. When everyone was aboard, we would drive back to the compound.

Paul had selected who was to work on the latrine waste, the housegirls were assigned to work for each barracks and for a certain number of GI's. Some men and women worked in the mess hall, and the remainder of the men worked at various task around the compound such as filling sandbags and bunkering. Once everyone had been dispatched to their duties or shown what to do, if we had time to relax a little bit, we would get a cup of coffee from the mess hall.
At ten o'clock, we'd gather up the housegirls again in the deuce-and-a-half, with their loads of dirty fatigues, underwear and socks, and drive them out to a river about two miles from the compound. There, they would wash the clothes, while we waited for them to finish. We supplied the soap and they supplied the muscle. The clothes were washed by hand, beating them with a stick against a stone, or scrubbing the dirt out by rubbing the material against itself while working up a lather. After rinsing and wringing out as much water as possible, the wet clothes were brought back to the compound and hung to dry inside the barracks building. That didn't take long in hot Vietnam.

It was fun to listen to the women talk and laugh while working. There was one time that was quite different though. For a reason that I cannot now remember, we had gone to a new spot on the river to do the washing. Shortly after we got there, two Vietnamese men showed up and started asking the women and us some questions. They didn't speak much pigeon English and we couldn't understand Vietnamese, so we never did find out what they wanted. The women were very nervous and did not talk while the men were around. Paul and I kept our rifles very handy and a sharp eye on what the men were doing. I was happy to leave that place when we finished. The women didn't tell us what the men wanted, but we didn't go back to that place again!

Another time, while the women were busy, I decided to cool off in the river. Since I had no swimming trunks and there were already a few men and boys swimming nearby, I took off my clothes and joined them. The water did cool me off, but it was the first time I had ever been naked in front of women, so I was a little embarrassed. They didn't think anything of it though, so I became less inhibited after that.

Just past our compound at Kontum, and to the right of us about a mile and a quarter, was an M-155 howitzer battery. We could just make them out from the northern perimeter of our compound. This outfit frequently came under mortar and rocket attack. One night, the guards at one of our bunkers could see the flash of the mortar tube that was shelling this compound. He reported it to the mortar team on the B-team compound behind us, but could not get permission to fire on the VC doing the shelling. I never could understand that reasoning! Luckily, nobody was hurt during that attack.

Whenever that compound or ours came under attack, we and the B-team compound went on alert also. That is to say, steel pot (helmet), flak vest, ammo, and rifle were grabbed, and you headed for a pre-determined bunker. My bunker was the AN/GRC-26D, and to get into it, I had to reach through the barbed wire gate, unlock the lock and chain, close and lock it again and then go into the bunker. I had to be ready to destroy the crypto gear, should the need arise. Incendiary grenades were inside for that purpose. My bunker was linked to the command bunker by landline telephone (a field phone that has a physical or wire connection). When the alert was over, the word was passed over this landline.

One night, about six of us were in our little club behind the orderly room (it had a small bar, two bar stools, and one table with four chairs), when an explosion went off about twenty feet from the door. We knew it was incoming because there is a distinct difference between that and an outgoing round. We automatically headed for our weapons and then the bunkers. About a half hour later, the all clear was sounded. Come to find out, one of the cooks was disgruntled and had thrown a hand grenade at the club, knowing that there were NCO's in there. Paul caught a small piece of shrapnel in the neck (not enough to be hospitalized), but that was the only injury. We had a bad scare though, and that was the only incident of "fragging" that I know of first hand. The soldier responsible was sent back under guard for courts martial to Pleku. I never heard anything else about his case.

About this time, there was a need to transport a private back to his former outfit at Phu Bai so that he could get some of his stuff he had left behind when he came to us. He had been a discipline problem for his unit so they had unloaded him on us. He got into trouble in our company also, and the CO wanted him to collect his old gear from Phu Bai and then be transported back to Pleku for courts martial. He had to have a military escort on this trip, so guess who was elected? You got that right, me! I was given a loaded .45 caliber pistol to guard him with, in addition to my own rifle.

We flew Air America out of a private airfield in Kontum. That airline was reputed to be connected with the CIA in some way or other, but you couldn't tell it on the flight we took up north. It was a fixed wing, two engine prop plane that carried about thirty-five passengers normally. The seats had been removed from the aisles and there were only webbed seats along the fuselage. Most of the passengers that day were Vietnamese or Montaignyard, with some being military. The majority appeared to be civilians traveling with goods for trading; there were even live pigs, goats, and chickens being transported.

In those days, a U.S. military man could travel just about anywhere on his ID card alone (on my second tour, he had to have orders). All he had to do was to show up at an airport with that and see someone in flight operations. If he bought your story of your need for travel to a certain destination, he'd book you on a flight going that way. Of course, you had to be satisfied with whatever was flying out. Sometimes it was a Chinook, or a huey, or a C-131; you took what you could get. In my case, the CO had given me written authority to transport the prisoner (for that's what he was) back to Phu Bai.

Phu Bai is up just beyond Hue, and the closest point I'd ever been to the DMZ separating North and South Vietnam. It was the monsoon season and the ground was just a quagmire of mud when we got to the man's former compound. I reported to the first
sergeant and informed him of my mission. You could see that he wasn't too happy at seeing the young man I'd brought. Since there was nowhere for the prisoner to escape, and since we wouldn't be leaving until the next day, the first sergeant gave us the run of the compound, but admonished the prisoner to gather his things and be ready to "get the hell out" the next day.

I found a place to stow my gear and located the local watering hole (any place that had beer for sale). After having a few beers and talking to the troops, they assured me that the best place to go for a good time (that spelled "women") was the massage parlour just near the entrance to the compound. I went there, and for a modest sum of money, found out what they had to offer. The women weren't beautiful, but after being without them for a length of time, they could be tempting. I was afraid I’d catch VD, so I opted for some oral sex. It wasn't what I had expected, but did unwind me a little.

The next day, having secured his gear and said good bye to his friends, the prisoner and I headed for Pleku. The flight back was on helicopters, nothing as exotic as Air America was going our way. We had to fly to Qui Nhon first. There, we waited about three hours, before we caught a Huey going to Pleku. Later, I caught a convoy back to Kontum.

At about this time, I finally took over the duties of the RATT rig. Paul was going on R & R to places around the world.
He'd been saving his money for just such a trip. When he came back, he was scheduled to be reassigned to another outfit within Vietnam; he had extended his tour, but on proviso that he be reassigned out of Charlie Company, 43rd Signal. That left me as the senior Radio Teletype Operator, with two specialist fours working for me.

The first thing I noted when I took over was that
Bartholomew and Smith (these were my junior operators) could not touch type. I taped over the keyboard on the teletype machines, made a chart of the keyboard to post on the wall above their positions, and drilled them daily on typing. I would stand behind them calling out letters while watching them type. They could only look at the chart (looking at the keyboard wouldn't help them because they couldn't read the keys), and had to use the correct finger to type the letters. Whenever they made a mistake, I would correct them. In addition to these typing classes, I also gave them classes on the procedure to follow in handling messages and the sixteen line message format.

One day, we were sitting outside the rig, but inside the barb wire. I was giving Bart and Smitty a class on priority of message handling when we heard a loud cracking sound. We looked up at the tower, for that's where the sound came from, and saw it starting to fall. Someone in a truck had accidentally hit one of the guy wires and toppled the tower. It was falling toward us, but missed the bunker by about thirty feet. Only about half of the tower came down, but it did foul up communications with Pleku for about a week.

We'd not been handling much message traffic up to now, but I had plans to change that and I wanted my operators ready. What I did, was to contact someone from the 525th Military Intelligence unit that operated out of an outpost near Kontum. They usually sent a physical dispatch rider with messages to Pleku, their headquarters. I convinced them that their messages could be sent by secure means over radio teletype and they would get there much faster. I had to have the CO's permission to do this, but after explaining that my men needed to keep in practice with their MOS, and since he was not using them, I wanted to be of use to the MI guys. He okayed it, so we started sending the MI traffic on a daily basis.

There was usually about two or three messages of three to five pages in length. In addition to standing my own shift at the teletype rig, I would also monitor my operators' shifts too, to make sure that they were sending the traffic correctly. I had them type up the message on tape and when they sent it out, they'd make a page copy. I always checked that against the original to make sure it was correct.

It was a genuine pleasure to have real traffic to pass over the radio instead of making hourly radio checks. The guys began to really enjoy it also. We got a lot of the news that was happening around the country. Most of it was the kind you never hear about. All that traffic was clandestine, dealing with operatives working among the VC, sightings of military activity, caches of weapons and ammunition, etc. It was hot stuff and we finally felt that we were being useful over there.

Smith, or Smitty, as we called him, was quite a stand-up
trooper when he was sober. He worked hard and looked sharp most of the time. Occasionally, though, he would go on a drunken spree that lasted about three days. He was worthless when he did this. I'd cautioned him several times about his drinking habits and what it was doing to him. He said he understood, and that he wouldn't do it again. But the day came when it happened once too often. I wrote him up for article 15 action, thinking that this might wake him up and he would straighten out. Unfortunately, the man got belligerent with me; he threatened me with bodily harm time and time again. The man was a black belt holder in karate and practiced every day. One day, he almost dragged me off of a deuce-and-a-half. When he did that, I went to the CO and told him that I feared for my safety and the man had to be transferred out or I had to go. Smitty was transferred!

We had a KWM-2 shortwave radio-transceiver in our bunker that operated on crystals. There was a whole bag of crystals, oh, about sixty of them, each in individual pockets in a plastic fold-out bag. Nobody could give an accurate account of where the set came from and it wasn't on anyone's property books. It was in fine working order, but wasn't used by anyone that I know of. It was just there!

The pump in our well had gone bad and we had to resort to hauling our water from a water purification point on a nearby river. We did this for about two weeks. The company commander was getting desperate so, one day he swapped the KWM-2 and the whole bag of crystals for a new pump. Barter was a fairly effective way of getting something accomplished, that's probably how the KWM-2 came to be in our possession in the first place. The only thing is, our CO got the raw end of the stick. The radio set and its crystals probably cost over three thousand dollars, whereas the pump could be had for under two hundred dollars. We had water, but what a price we paid!

At about this time I noticed a female cat hanging around our bunker. She was pregnant and about to have a litter. From time to time, I brought back scraps from the mess hall to feed her, but she was finding most of her own food in the bunkers on the compound. They had a habit of becoming home to the rodents in the area.

She had her litter underneath the AN/GRC-26D. We could hear them mewing occasionally. Shortly after their birth, the mother cat disappeared. We could tell she was gone, because the kittens began to cry for long periods of time; they were hungry. I tried for several days to coax the kittens out by calling to them and trying to reassure them. Finally, two of them managed to crawl towards my voice and to a point where I could reach them. They had just opened their eyes, so couldn't have been more than three weeks old. If there were others back under there, they must have died, because no more emerged, and I heard nothing else to indicate there were more of them. I learned later that the mother cat had been thrown down the well and died.

I kept those kittens and raised them on milk from the mess hall and more solid foods when I felt they were able to digest it. At about four months, however, they began having convulsions. This was probably a result of them not getting the proper nutrition from their mother when they were first born. Rather than see them suffer, I had a soldier destroy them out of my sight. I couldn't do that myself, but knew this soldier was capable of doing it, because it was rumored that he was the one who had killed the mother cat.

A new radio teletype set arrived to replace the AN/GRC-26D, it was the AN/GRC-46. I wasn't familiar with its operation, but needn't have worried about it. The CO didn't even want to uncrate it. It had to be inventoried though, so he had me do that, but he never authorized setting it up for operation. It was still there when I left shortly after that.