________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
Engineer Advisor in South Vietnam
Q:
Your next assignment was in Vietnam. How did you get that assignment?
A:
Well, that's another story. You can lay it on General Maxwell Taylor. Vietnam was just
starting to get into the news, and in the late part of 1961 President John F. Kennedy sent
General Taylor to Vietnam on a fact-finding tour. He came back and made a recommendation
that we needed to have more advisers there at a lower level with the Vietnamese Army.
As I put it together in reading some other stories, his recommendation included that we
should send some engineers over there to do development in the country. Certainly, when I
was given my alert, which I suppose was in the fall of '61, it was to be part of forty engineer
officers who were going over there supposedly with the mission of harnessing the Mekong
River. I don't think anybody was going to harness the Mekong River, but it may have been a
good cover story. Certainly that's not what I did when I arrived.
Another point was Vietnam didn't have any kind of stature like it later had, and I knew darn
well I didn't want to go over and be an engineer doing design work on something to harness
the Mekong River. I knew I needed to get back to troops and command an engineer company.
So, I wrote to Engineer Branch and said, "I really want to go to Korea instead"--because I
knew I was due a hardship tour and I thought the best thing to do was go to Korea and get
that company. So, I wrote and said, "Look, I'm not fighting going to a hardship tour, I know I
need to do that, but you don't have companies in Vietnam. Send me to Korea."
So, Engineer Branch wrote back and said, "No, it's essential. You've been selected, one of
these key people to fill General Taylor's requirement, really help the nation of Vietnam and
the Mekong." So, in March 1962, I went to Vietnam. I arrived in Saigon and was assigned as
a battalion-level adviser to the 41st--later redesignated the 201st--ARVN [Army of the
Republic of Vietnam] Engineer Battalion, with duty station Pleiku. So, we flew into Saigon. I
had a room in the Hotel Majestic right near the waterfront. I checked in at the desk at the
hotel and shared a room with Ted Bishop, who had come over with me, plus a Marine who
was already there. He'd go out and patrol during the day and come back and stick his carbine
up against the corner of the hotel room overnight, then go out the next morning to do
something else.
In March of '62--this was very early, you have to understand, in the war effort--we would
go up to the top of the Brink Hotel to the cocktail lounge, and we would sit there having a gin
and tonic and watch the artillery fire on the horizon.
A couple of days later our orders came through. Everyone said, "Stay away from II Corps
because the senior adviser to II Corps is Colonel Wilbur `Coalbin Willy' Wilson." There
were four engineers in the group as the orders were announced. One of them was to stay in
Saigon, the next one was announced to go to III Corps, the next one was announced to go to I
Corps, and I had a feeling that when I got mine it would be to II Corps. We were being dealt
with individually. Captain Ted Bishop had come over with me and he stayed down in III
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