Engineer Memoirs _____________________________________________________________________
Now, what the Vietnamese soldier thought? I never could really talk to soldiers. I would see
them around working, but with the language problem and everything else, everything I had
was filtered by the officers. They'd do their jobs, they'd go into the face of fire, they'd do all
kinds of things, but what they were thinking got lost in the translation.
Q:
When did you leave Pleiku?
A:
March of '63. So, I was there from March '62 to March '63.
Q:
How had your perspective on Vietnam and the war changed or developed in that time, from,
like most Americans, not knowing much about the country or the effort there, and it was a
very small effort at that time. By the time you left in March of '63 it was a much bigger
effort. Getting to be, I guess, a more complicated political situation in South Vietnam, though
that may not have come down to--
A:
It hadn't developed yet. All of the things later--self-immolations and the Buddhist
uprisings--were not apparent to me up in Pleiku if they were starting. Those were Saigon
phenomena. We didn't yet have all the coups--[Ngo Dinh] Diem was still in power. We
didn't even sense negative feelings or know things that the folks who were in the senior
advisory positions would. We saw some of our senior advisers out in the field. General [Paul
D.] Harkins came up two or three times when I was there, sat down and was briefed by
everybody.
Once, when I was in Tuy Hoa, a plane came over and waggled its wings and we went to the
other airfield, the big airfield, because it was a Caribou. It was General Harkins and the Chief
of Naval Operations. We saw four stars on each shoulder of two people, sixteen stars looking
at us when we roared up in three jeeps. The Caribou had got off the runway, nosed over and
buried its nose wheel into the sand. We took them back to our compound and started briefing
them. General Harkins said, "Go get me an airplane." Well, I described to you earlier how we
communicated. You just couldn't go out, radio, and get an airplane. Luckily, after about a
half an hour of briefing, our regular shuttle came in. I ran out and I threw about eight smoke
grenades to make sure that pilot knew that we needed him to land. We drove out to the little
airfield and General Harkins says, "I'm commandeering this aircraft." The pilot said, "Yes,
Sir, by all means." The two of them flew off and we said, "Phew." Big relief. We didn't need
all those stars around our little compound.
So, then I made some trips down to Saigon here and there. It was very interesting. I got to see
friends like Jim Ellis, who had arrived by that time. I mentioned to you before that we had
interacted several times. We'd been together in Germany in the 23d Engineers, when he
transferred from infantry to engineer, and been together in Illinois at graduate school. He had
arrived at the University of Illinois a little later than I had, so I went to Vietnam first. He'd
come over that summer when he'd finished his degree and was a battalion adviser down in
the Saigon area.
Even my wife came over once during that period. Her mother had died and her father had
brought her on a round-the-world trip. I got leave to go to the Philippines, Tokyo, Hong
70
Previous Page
