A Protracted TDY
submitted by: Alva Leon Matheson
Everyone else in my unit passed the buck and since I wasn’t there to defend myself, (actually, there was no one lower than me to pass the buck to) I was elected to take the assignment. It was TDY to Vietnam to work with the FACs doing debriefings and securing Intelligence information. Thus began my odyssey.
I was sent to Travis AFB, California to under- go an intense combat training class. Intense? Not quite. It was at Travis that I joined more Intell types. Most were also low man on the proverbial totem pole. Surprise, surprise! After our “intensive” combat training, we joked that we were the forerunners to the SEALS!
Next, we flew out of San Francisco via Pan American World Airways to catch an Air Vietnam flight at Hong Kong. There were about 20 of us on that commercial flight. What a time we had! The civilians couldn’t buy us enough booze. We ran out of everything but wine between San Francisco and Hawaii. They (Pan Am) took on a double load of booze for the next leg to Hong Kong. Needless to say, we drank that all up also. This was the only time I can remember being treated decently by civilians. I guess the war was too new to have anyone turn ugly yet. We landed in Hong Kong and had a three-day layover because of a typhoon.
We next got on our Air Vietnam flight (they served us warm beer and stale sandwiches) to Saigon. We spent a week in Saigon getting briefed and assigned to our units. Boy, do I have stories from that week! Maybe another time.
I next moved on up country to DaNang where I went through more briefings. DaNang was the only place where I ever watched people actually build a building around the supplies that were already stacked there.
From DaNang, my next stop was Hue for a couple of days with more briefings. When I fin- ished at Hue the FACs I was assigned to came to pick me up in a Bird Dog. My first flight, and, boy did I feel important! They came to get me with two planes. I rode with Lieutenant Sipple. We flew to Dong Ha and then took a jeep ride to Quang Tri, which was to be my home for the next five months, until Dec. 24th, 1965.
I have so many stories. It was there that I got to meet Martha Raye, (great lady) and Hugh O’Brien (a real jerk, in my opinion) and others.
I was a FAC observer flying out of Dong Ha from August 1965 to December 1965. I was just an airman second class at the time. But I was an intelligence specialist with a good pair of eyes so I got to fly backseat with Lieutenant Sipple, Captain Shuggart and Captain Boynton. They were a great group of officers. They carefully watched over a 19-year-old kid who wanted to do his part and get an Air Medal at the same time.
We had two dogs in our Quang Tri compound that were poisoned by the VC. We were told that if we were ever attacked, we should try to take out the machine gunner in the Citadel. In the last attack he had fired into the compound. The kids used to throw poison darts at us in Quang Tri City.
I remember Marine Corporal Lamb (Lamby) who used to let me sneak into the compound when I came back late and drunk from the city. At times, as I think of the memories, I cry. It was such a special time in all of our lives. I often wonder what happened to all the people I once knew.
One last story: We had a New Zealander in our compound who was quite a character. When he got transferred back to the line, we gave him a duck. He had it on a leash and told everyone how that duck had been through battle with him. He was quite a BS-er and so much fun to be around.
The assignment was supposed to have been a 90 day TDY, but I wound up spending a lot more time. In fact, I had to remind the people in Saigon that I was overdue to go home.
Meanwhile, my unit (the 355th TFW) had been moved to Thailand. After going home on leave, I went back to Thailand to finish my SEA tour. While in Thailand, I was asked to go to Laos as a FAC observer, but I declined since the United States was not even in Laos, RIGHT?