I did two years in Vietnam so I could get the hell out of the Army as quickly as I could! The Army spent a good amount of time lying to me, and working very hard to get me into Vietnam and the war. Arriving at Basic Training 23 October 1968 and arrived in Vietnam 19 April 1969 on my 19th birthday. After initial arrival in the Americal Division I arrived as a "trained" Turbine Engine Mechanic, a critical specialty . Getting to my company the First Sgt.asked my MOS (Military Operational Specialty) he responded, Engine man, well we got enough of those, you are now a Hydraulic Specialist. So much for the training, which was worse than poor and obviously way to short. I never had so much as touched a working engine and hadn't even seen a helicopter during training. With that said, flight controls were none of my training which was largely my job for a year, When I discovered I could not get promoted working outside my specialty and legally they couldn't leave me in that position. I eventually made my promotion board and was awarded E-5 in my specialty. I went home after 13 months for my first extention leave, and while at home I bought up all the 12 point qurter inch box end wrenches I could find at Sears with my own money. I took them back to Vietnam with me and passed them out, Our tool boxes were not equipted with these wrenches and the hot end section of a turbine engine is held on with 72, 1/4 inch, 12 point nuts. Tool boxes that held tools that were chromium plated, were cheap, and the plating that could peel off these wrenches, would destroy and engine if the plating would get sucked into the compressor section of the engine. Effectively cheap tools that didn't work for what we needed and often didn't even fit the bolts we had to remove! A great example of providing us with what we didn't need! As my example shows, we covered our own needs the same way I bought wrenches for the crew., and we made things happen inspite of the Army. We supported the helicopter companies we worked for including the medivacs, aircraft that were grounded for repairs were not available to supply the infantry, give air cover for operations, insert people, and get the wounded the hell out of harms way, sowe worked especially hard to move aircraft out of our hangar and back into service. We did things we weren't supposed to do, we ordered parts we weren't allowed to order untilthey sent the parts and we did things we weren't allowed to repair, then callDepot for an inspection on what we did! Once inspected and it passed, we were authorized to do the work and order the parts! Otherwise, we maintained an ilegal numberof parts to turn out ships faster and replaced our inventory with the parts we turned in. Our original parts came out of crashed ships that we destroyed in place as they were not salvagable as a ship. I ran the parts for the Engine Shop and my inventory included close to $300,000 in parts that normally would take three weeks to send back to the States and have them send us one in exchange. We speeded up the process and turned out aircraft in days rather than weeks, again, to protect our own when the Army would sooner play games over money, we were saving lives. Our lives! During my last 6 month extension our company moved up to Quang Tri from Chu Lai. We brought eight companies of helicopters with us. The invasion of Laos was about to begin and we were assigned to a tiny hangar that had room for two ships. We had no barracks and no tents. Light plants were ordered so crews could work outside when the rain finally stopped. We were expectedto do the impossible with not much! Working 12 hours on and 12 hours off, changing shifts from day to night every other week. Over 300 aircraft were turned out a month as I recall, the NVA were very good at defending their location in Laos, they were ready with tanks and SAM missles, 37 MM ack-ack guns and 51 Caliber machine guns with radar assist. Slow moving aluminum flying "beer cans" simply would go poof when hit by a SAM missle.
Keep in mind, for our efforts to do what we were asked to do, with the least support from home and having to wait for permission to even fire back, we were treated like scum. My class "a" uniform went into the shit can at Seatac Airport in Seattle so I could avoid trouble. That was years before The Chicago Welcome Home Parade happened and the worst of my civilian life after the military started to turn the corner. I still keep most of my Vietnam service hidden, and when it comes up, it isn't about me, it is about how poorly we were supported to do a job no one wanted to do, and yet we did what we could with so little it should have been impressive we stayed as long as we did, with so little support.
I did two years in Vietnam so I could get the hell out of the Army as quickly as I could! The Army spent a good amount of time lying to me, and working very hard to get me into Vietnam and the war. Arriving at Basic Training 23 October 1968 and arrived in Vietnam 19 April 1969 on my 19th birthday. After initial arrival in the Americal Division I arrived as a "trained" Turbine Engine Mechanic, a critical specialty . Getting to my company the First Sgt.asked my MOS (Military Operational Specialty) he responded, Engine man, well we got enough of those, you are now a Hydraulic Specialist. So much for the training, which was worse than poor and obviously way to short. I never had so much as touched a working engine and hadn't even seen a helicopter during training. With that said, flight controls were none of my training which was largely my job for a year, When I discovered I could not get promoted working outside my specialty and legally they couldn't leave me in that position. I eventually made my promotion board and was awarded E-5 in my specialty. I went home after 13 months for my first extention leave, and while at home I bought up all the 12 point qurter inch box end wrenches I could find at Sears with my own money. I took them back to Vietnam with me and passed them out, Our tool boxes were not equipted with these wrenches and the hot end section of a turbine engine is held on with 72, 1/4 inch, 12 point nuts. Tool boxes that held tools that were chromium plated, were cheap, and the plating that could peel off these wrenches, would destroy and engine if the plating would get sucked into the compressor section of the engine. Effectively cheap tools that didn't work for what we needed and often didn't even fit the bolts we had to remove! A great example of providing us with what we didn't need! As my example shows, we covered our own needs the same way I bought wrenches for the crew., and we made things happen inspite of the Army. We supported the helicopter companies we worked for including the medivacs, aircraft that were grounded for repairs were not available to supply the infantry, give air cover for operations, insert people, and get the wounded the hell out of harms way, sowe worked especially hard to move aircraft out of our hangar and back into service. We did things we weren't supposed to do, we ordered parts we weren't allowed to order untilthey sent the parts and we did things we weren't allowed to repair, then callDepot for an inspection on what we did! Once inspected and it passed, we were authorized to do the work and order the parts! Otherwise, we maintained an ilegal numberof parts to turn out ships faster and replaced our inventory with the parts we turned in. Our original parts came out of crashed ships that we destroyed in place as they were not salvagable as a ship. I ran the parts for the Engine Shop and my inventory included close to $300,000 in parts that normally would take three weeks to send back to the States and have them send us one in exchange. We speeded up the process and turned out aircraft in days rather than weeks, again, to protect our own when the Army would sooner play games over money, we were saving lives. Our lives! During my last 6 month extension our company moved up to Quang Tri from Chu Lai. We brought eight companies of helicopters with us. The invasion of Laos was about to begin and we were assigned to a tiny hangar that had room for two ships. We had no barracks and no tents. Light plants were ordered so crews could work outside when the rain finally stopped. We were expectedto do the impossible with not much! Working 12 hours on and 12 hours off, changing shifts from day to night every other week. Over 300 aircraft were turned out a month as I recall, the NVA were very good at defending their location in Laos, they were ready with tanks and SAM missles, 37 MM ack-ack guns and 51 Caliber machine guns with radar assist. Slow moving aluminum flying "beer cans" simply would go poof when hit by a SAM missle.
Keep in mind, for our efforts to do what we were asked to do, with the least support from home and having to wait for permission to even fire back, we were treated like scum. My class "a" uniform went into the shit can at Seatac Airport in Seattle so I could avoid trouble. That was years before The Chicago Welcome Home Parade happened and the worst of my civilian life after the military started to turn the corner. I still keep most of my Vietnam service hidden, and when it comes up, it isn't about me, it is about how poorly we were supported to do a job no one wanted to do, and yet we did what we could with so little it should have been impressive we stayed as long as we did, with so little support.