Encoded for the Experiencing War web site for the Veterans History Project.
The recording of the interview with Thomas Nelson was digitized.
This transcription was encoded with minimal changes to the original text in an effort to preserve original content and idiosyncrasies of the person interviewed. Period language and terminology are also retained. Encoding is literal with regard to the transcriptionist's capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. Spelling errors are indicated with [sic]; however, recurring errors in spelling within a single document have been marked the first time and not subsequently.
Today's date is November 15, 2001. My name is Brian Marks. I will be interviewing Mr. Thomas Nelson of Louisa, Virginia. I'm a student at Mary Washington College and conducting the interview for the Veterans History Project as part of a Historic Preservation 206 Folklore Class out of class assignment. Mr. Nelson served in the Vietnam war and he will be telling us his story.
OK. I'm a Louisa County native. I've lived here all my life. I was born, actually, in the hospital here in Louisa, they have a hospital here, and I went to school in Louisa County school system, graduated 1965 and was going to go to college, to Richard Bland Junior College (ph), which at the time was part of William and Mary, had some scholarships to go but didn't have the money to go. So, on top of it that you would need, you need, like, 1,800 dollars a year then and I had, with scholarships, probably about 800 and that was about it. So, to get the other, I said, "Well, I'll work a little while and I'll do it." So, when I got out of school I worked for the most of the summer that year for a surveyor, Jim Bell, here in Louisa, it was Hart and Bell then, the two of them. During the day I'd work in the field, chopping down the brush and helping with the lines for the surveying and then at night I would come in, because I did have an academic background in mathematics, and I'd help draw the plats with -- at night so I'd get a little extra pay by working extra hours and had done that through the -- till, actually, in early August. And prior to getting out of school I went to a lot of places and filled out employment forms and in early August I got a reply from State Farm Insurance to come to work on August 30th of '65 and because their benefits were good, and I said, "Well, it's going to take me probably a year to get enough money together and I would have some benefits there, whereas working with the surveyor I really didn't have any benefit package, I was making more money, but didn't have any benefits for health insurance or anything such as that. So, I left -- I told Hart and Bell I was going to leave and went to work for State Farm August 30th, 1965, and started working there, had been working there a little over a year and it was about a week prior to my 19th birthday, in September of 1966, I received my draft papers and interesting thing there was the lady who was in charge of the draft board here in Louisa was the sister of the man who I worked part-time for and weekends too at Beeler's (ph) Appliances in Louisa and, so, and her name was Sadie Beeler (ph) and she sent out -- and we were -- and it was a pretty high draft at that time going on and you were by numbers and my number, as well as about seven other guys in Louisa, came up at that time and said we were going to be going down October 25th of 1966 to Richmond for physicals and to see if we would be drafted into the Army. And so I got on the bus at the Louisa Medical Center the morning of October 25th, 1966 along with, at the time, I believe it was five of us because one, Jimmy Novish (ph) was left behind because Garland Shifflett, who was a friend of ours who had been killed in an automobile accident a few weeks -- a few days before, he had to stay for the funeral, but there were five of us beside me -- six of us counting me that went down to be drafted that day. As it turns out there were three of us that were drafted; one, James Sacra, went the RA route and joined the Marines, took an extra year to be in the Marines; Bryant Powell, who was from up in the Green Springs area, was drafted; and I was drafted; and the other two that were -- or three that went down from Louisa at that time were not drafted but then Jimmy Novish (ph) came later and was drafted, ended up being near where I was. After -- oh, some of the interesting things that was when I got on the bus, rather than sitting with anybody that I knew, I ended up sitting by a tall guy that was from Front Royal. We struck up a conversation, found he's from Front Royal. His name was Bruce Colton, C-O-L-T-O-N, and he -- he and I started up a conversation. We got down, got separated there and both of us ended up being drafted and then we left from there to go to Fort Bragg. Once we were drafted, after we passed the physicals and everything, we boarded a bus in the night and were carried to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, probably got there about midnight, something like that. First thing you do is you went in and you sat down and took tests, paper tests. Some people always said, you know, just mess up on the tests and they won't keep you or you'll get an easy job. Well, I'd always heard that you better do good on the test or you're going to be a foot soldier. Didn't want to be a foot soldier, so I did the best I could on the test. And then they carried us through, gave us some clothing, just a straight issue from the Quartermasters to begin with, and then carried us to get our hair cut and I always thought it was interesting the barbers would ask everybody -- and it was people from New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, everybody there then -- and they would ask that -- when you get to the chair, "How you like -- how would you like your hair cut?" And of course everybody we saw come out with skin heads, you know, so couple of the city guys said, "Well, just take a little off the sides, you know, and the edges and, all," and they said, "OK," zip, zip and just zip right through it and the whole thing would be gone, all your hair was gone, and I don't really have the shape of a head for short hair, got kind of a dip in the back of it, so, but it was interesting that they tried to make everybody think -- some of the guys, city guys, were crying and stuff like that when their hair was cut off because they thought it was something to have all that hair. Of course this was the '60s, which was unusual. But from there we started, went and got assigned to our battalions and then to our companies and barracks and ended up that Colton and I were in the same area again, which was good, and actually we both became squad leaders at the time too and --
That was in boot camp?
In boot camp, right. It was rough. I was a country boy. I wasn't very big. I mean, at that time I was probably five -- I say about five-eight anyway, five seven-and-a-half, five-eight, weighed probably 155, 160 at the time and did a lot of work on farms and all but really was not the muscular type and a lot of these city boys I thought, you know, looked like they were in great shape but they -- the physical tests we had, PT tests, you had to score 300 on them to pass and every time we'd have pretests and all a lot of them weren't making it at all. We had a couple of guys who became conscientious objectors and that means that they would not fight, so they put them in Quartermaster Corps or working in the offices, things like that, but I just went ahead and did everything they told me to do, just -- I think the worst thing about boot camp, other than the final test, was probably getting your shots because you went down a line with air guns on both sides and they just said, "Try to stand still," you know, "If you move it will cut you," and all, and they'd pop the shots, you know, as you go through and Bryant Powell (ph), one of them who was from Louisa that went, he got sick from the shots and ended up in the hospital from the shots and that and the fact that he played football and ended up with a bad knee, he got sent home. So there I ended up the only one then really from Louisa, till Jimmy Novish (ph) came along, that stayed from the group that went down. The training was intense, it was in October, November, December -- late October, early November, December. It was fairly warm a lot of times down there. It was also, indeed windy, very cold at the end.
Right
When we trained on the monkey bars, the monkey bars were the small ones like at the schools and all you see now, but when it came to the final test they were the big bars, big round bars, and you had to grab hold of them and of course the temperature by the time of the final test in December had dropped from where it was in the 50's, 60's, low 70's, October, November and early December, to where it became 30's and it was frozen on the day of our final test and once we finished that test we could leave and come home for Christmas holiday. And I had did good enough in most of them, but I knew I had to do well on the mile run because that didn't do anything and if you got under six minutes in the mile you'd get your 100 points, I think it was, or whatever for that, I forget how many points it was, but it was one of the bigger events. We had a boy named Presley, no kin to Elvis, who was actually the one who paced us a lot of times. He was fast, he was a runner in his school and I think he was from Arkansas or something like that anyways, but he paced us going around all the time. We tried to keep him within a half a lap and if we knew we did that we would make six minutes or a little bit over it and get a lot of points for it. Well, on that last day, because we hadn't run a lot in the -- in the cold, Presley fainted on us and we ended up where most of us that were in that group trying to stay together did make it but we made it in about six minutes and 27 seconds I think it was, which in combat boots is not too bad --
Right
-- and all, in cold weather, and Presley, I said, fainted or passed out so he had to do it again, but we -- we made that. The low crawl that day, because the ground was frozen, we skinned our knees and skinned our elbows and, when we got ready to come home, then we had to put on our wool fatigues and of course the wool pants on your -- because they weren't lined -- on your knees didn't feel very good. Of course your arms you had a shirt on, but it was not very pleasant. But after I got home and spent a few days on leave, went back and waited orders and got orders to go to Fort Dix, New Jersey, to radio school, and that suited me fine cause I liked radio and I thought, radio school, that may be something, but little did I know that was Morse code radio school, {Indicates morse code sounds.}
Did you apply for radio school?
No, it was based on your scores that you took on certain tests and all that you did. So when I got there, and I said the interesting thing I thought about that was when we got to Fort Dix there were -- we knew we were going to radio school and here are all these poles right next to where our barracks was and we thought, we didn't come to climb poles or anything and it ends up they make the -- all the troops that are there for training, they would have to march a mile or so to get to where their school was, so the ones that climbed the poles were about a mile away from us and had to come and march to us, where our radio school was a mile the other way and we had to march to that and it was a pretty snowy winter in New Jersey, so we had some times when it was really rough as far as marching in the snow and getting there, but we had to do it and so we did. I ended up in the hospital there with a respiratory ailment, a lot of people had upper respiratory infections because of the weather and all that was there and, silly thing about that, I always thought, was that when they came to take blood and they stuck the needle -- and they don't have the greatest people at all -- you know, they stuck the needle into my arm to get the blood and no blood would come out and so they stuck it in another place and still they couldn't get any blood to come out and finally the -- the -- I think it was a Captain or someone that was doing those, SPEC 4 (ph) maybe was doing it, he said, then he said, "Look, Nelson, if you don't give me some blood I'm going to court-martial you," and, lad, by that time the blood started coming out and all. We stayed there like a day, two days, a lot of us had to -- had been in the hospital for that, but then we got well and went back to the barracks. We did some crazy things too in the barracks during then because you'd been in a little while then. We used to -- of course everything had to be strack spit shined.
Right.
-- you know, and all. Most guys were smart enough, we had one pair of inspection shoes and we had one pair we'd wear otherwise, so when inspection came around you didn't have to worry about shining them too much, you just hid that other pair and all, hope you didn't get caught. There was {coughs}, excuse me, some guys who couldn't make their beds and all, so other guys would get paid for making their beds and it's a, you know, dog-eat-dog world.
Right.
Back to basic training, the funny thing there was that -- if you ever saw the movie "Full Metal Jacket," which I think is probably the best movie about basic training, Vietnam and all that there was because it was more realistic -- the guys who couldn't do things, you picked on them and we had one big guy, like Poindexter was in the movie, who was and was always getting us all in trouble and so we said -- and when he'd sleep at night he'd snore and he would also keep everybody up, so that his beard grew so quick he'd have, you know, that he'd have to shave twice a day and he'd just keep us all in trouble with everything. So, we'd sit and put shaving cream in his hand and then tickle his nose and make him, you know, go up and smash his self that way, which you see some of those things in the movie. It really did happen. But at Fort Dix, once everything was done there, and that went from part of January, February and March and early April, after finishing there I got orders to go to Fort Gordon, Georgia for radio teletype school. Some people went straight out from there, with the radio school, to Vietnam and different places cause they were going to be the forward observers and the radio people for the forward observers and all and, but, again, I tried to do well enough on the test that I ended up going to radio teletype in Fort Gordon and leaving the cold temperatures of New Jersey. And going down to Fort Gordon was very good because when we got down there it was, like, you know, 60 degrees or 70 degrees in early April, where we left 30 degree weather, and the biggest thing I remember there to begin with is when we first got there the little drill sergeant we had was, like in most army things, he was probably about five-foot-four, his voice was the largest thing about him and he would blurt out and he -- his first speech was, "While you're here I'm your mother, father, brother, sister, everything," you know, he just said it right like that and of course there's always a smart aleck in the crowd and he cursed back to him. So, he didn't know who it was, so we all had to do 50 -- push-ups, of course -- and we all learned, though, that sooner or later when they ask for volunteers too you just took a step back and whoever was left out was the one that were volunteers. All these things you learn in the army, real easy. It's part of training. But there, in radio teletype school, we went to classes and plus you had other activities we had to do, marching and different things, and once that was coming toward an end there were three of us, I believe it was, that were picked from that group to do a practice -- well, it was actually six of us picked from the group to do the practice, instructors, and then three of us would be chosen from that to stay. So, we were given a class the one day, we were given the notes on what to do that day that we were going to be doing this class, critiquers (ph) would be in there and then they would grade and go from there and luckily I was -- oh, one of the things that they always told us about being an instructor is when you an instructor you're in charge. Anybody that comes into your room has to listen to you, no matter whether it's a colonel, general, whatever. You're the teacher. You're the instructor. You're in charge. And that's one of the things they critiqued you on and most people would freak when a colonel comes in the room and sits down and all of a sudden the colonel says something, without raising his hand to be recognized or anything, but in my class, when I was doing it, a colonel did come in, he sat down, after a little while he started to say something. He said, "Nelson, what about" -- and I said, "If there's someone who wanted to say something, you need to raise your hand so you can be recognized," you know, and they all -- all the other students in the class, which they were there as students, kind of looked like, you know, boy this is crazy, why you doing that -- it's a colonel, you know, but at the end that's what, you know, he sat there and he said, Nelson-- he asked me, he said, "Why did you do that?" I said, "Because I was instructed that when you are instructor you are in charge, anybody that comes in has to ask to be recognized or else you do not recognize." He said, "That's absolutely correct." He said, "You did the right thing." Luckily I was chosen as an instructor and so from probably August, late August of that year, or mid August of '67 we were into now, I was an instructor there and stayed an instructor working a 3:00 o'clock in the afternoon to 11:00 o'clock at night shift teaching some that were in the -- some of the guys we were doing were the airborne people that were doing some training, lived in the barracks and had their own separate room, where two of us that were instructors shared the room. We rented a TV, watched Johnny Carson, played handball, you know, just -- in the gym. We got up in the mornings any time we wanted and go do things. We were permanent parties on the base, stationed there, didn't have to worry about -- we answered to our people that were in charge of the school and that was it, basically. I was able to come home, get my car, park it off base, because parking on base to begin with -- I finally, toward the end, got to where I could park it on base, but that way I came home, like, every other weekend a lot of times and it was very easy duty at the time, really, other than teaching the, you know, if you're, you know, 19 or 20 years old and you're teaching 19, 20, 21 year-olds, it's not as easy as it seems.
Did you teach regular army and draftees or . . .
Right.
OK.
Because most of the special forces -- there were some special forces guys, airborne guys, all that were there were regular army people and sometimes even people would change their MOS and come in and take the class, they'd go from one to the other and they may have been, you know, in their 30s even coming in and a lot of people, you know, joined the army in their 30s and all too, so you have any type of person in your class, really.
And after some time at the -- as an instructor, you were --
I was an instructor, I say, from probably mid August until in early -- about the second week of November, I guess it was, I got orders that came down, a levy from Washington that had captains, colonels, staff sergeants, first sergeants, buck sergeants, SPEC 4's and I was a PFC still at the time, as being having orders to go to Vietnam cause I thought I had it made. I didn't -- no idea. I was less than a year to go in the army, you know, at the time cause I was into November now and I said, "Boy, they're not going to send me over with less than a year to go." Well, they did. And when I got the orders, I had been dating since the senior in high school the girl who became my wife and we'd kept in touch and I'd see her on the weekends when I came home. I called her the day I got my orders and if you've ever -- if you've been in the army or anything like that, back in those days to get to a phone was horrendous because there were so many who wanted to go and call and there was only certain times of day you could do it cause you were doing other things all during the day. I went and called her and told her that I'd be coming home for a while but then I was leaving to go overseas and she asked where, of course I had to tell then, and so we decided to go ahead and get married before I left, that way Uncle Sam actually would pay for quarters allowance for my wife and we figure we could save some of that money because we knew we were going to get married anyway and save it to help buy land or build a house later on and -- which we ended up doing, really, with the money, so it worked out good that way. That was, I say, about the second week in November and I left the -- might have been closer to the third week cause I left on the last week of November to come home, we set our wedding date for December 2nd and I had to then leave from the states on New Year's Eve. I was leaving from Richmond airport to go to Nashville and D.C. and then from there to San Francisco and from there be bused to Oakland. Well, as it was, I'd never flown before. I go down to Richmond and say all our good-byes, get on the plane, plane taxis the runway in Richmond and the engine catches on fire, so it turned around and comes back. They tell us that on there they said, "Well, what we'll do is give you money to put you up a night at a hotel and then you can catch another flight," and they saw that I needed to get to San Francisco so they said, "What we'll do is we will give you a ticket from Dulles non-stop to San Francisco, leave tomorrow morning, here's the money for the -- for the -- spend the night somewhere and then the tickets to do the other way. Well, as it was, I came home, spent the night, and then I think -- actually, my wife tells me, I always thought it was otherwise but she says it was my brother and her that carried me up to Dulles and I just remember her, of course, but carried me up to Dulles, I thought it was one of her friends, but carried me up to Dulles the next morning, we caught the flight -- I caught the flight from there, supposed to have been non-stop San Francisco, of course this is going to be a pretty good flight. Then, as we're getting near out there, the pilot comes on and says, "Too foggy to land in San Francisco. Too foggy to land in Stockton," which would be the next nearest. We ended up landing in Salt Lake City, Utah, which is right between two mountains.
Right.
And stayed there about an hour or two hours probably and then finally went out and flew out of there and headed into San Francisco and he said he thinks that it's clear enough they can get in. It's foggy all outside, can't see a thing. There's a lady sitting next to me at the window seat and as we're coming into San Francisco -- anybody's ever been there, and I didn't know it because I'd never flown before -- when you come in, and all of a sudden it came through the fog, there's nothing but water on both sides and then you hit the runway and it was a smooth landing. Well, we got there and met a couple other guys who appeared to be army. They had their bags and their gear and their uniforms, you know, ready to go and we all found that we were going to Oakland, so we thought we'd just get a cab together and go. Well, as it was some man came up and said, "Hey, y'all getting ready to go to Oakland to be processed?" We said, "Yeah." He says, "I'll take you down there," and of course most of us weren't from California, we wouldn't think anything of it, we took his ride up, and he ended up going down there. Nowadays I'd never do that going to California, I can tell you that, or anywhere probably, but he was a -- he was a military man it ended up finding out and so we got there, processed, ended up leaving country in -- on January the 2nd actually, started leaving country, and landed in -- first left from Oakland, went to Fairbanks, Alaska; Fairbanks, Alaska to Tokyo, Japan; Tokyo to Bien Hoa, Vietnam, and got to Vietnam on January the 4th actually. So, we left on the 2nd but because the international date line you lose a day going over.
OK.
And so by the time we left -- we left late on the 2nd, so we ended up getting there early on the 4th and got to Bien Hoa, started being processed and the first night I'm there I was supposed to go to Cuchi, which is a small place west of Saigon, and I have a little Zenith portable radio, real small one that Mr. Beeler (ph) who I worked for part-time since I was a sophomore, freshman, in high school gave me along with the New Testament when I went and listening to the radio and they say, "Cuchi is being overrun tonight." So that was real, real, nice. When I -- the next day they do all the processing and I find that I'm going down the delta, they say, "You're going to Can Tho'," it was for the company headquarters there first. So they flew us down to Can Tho', a bunch of us, on a -- just a cargo plane, flew us in there and Can Tho' had a fairly nice airport cause it was a big -- it was a pretty good size city there then and from there ended up going to the company headquarters and being assigned to a little place on the Mekong River called Cao Lanh. To get there I had to drive a deuce-and-a-half, which I had never driven a huge truck before at all and all the gears in it, and had to follow jeeps and everything in it and there were holes in the road. The first thing they told us was, "Just stay right behind us, go every way we go," and every way they went is every way we went to keep from, if you were -- mines or holes in the road, anything that was there, that was for safety purposes. So, did that and I think we -- you have to end up crossing the Mekong twice or something to -- to actually get there and the bridges were not very steady. That's one thing, they would stop before the bridges and tell you, "We're going one at a time over the bridges," even the jeeps, you know, to get there and, so, once I did that and got to the little place, found out I was one of 15 Americans that was at this little place Cao Lanh, we were on a ARVN camp, which is an Army Republic of Vietnam and there were no barracks, there were no bunkers, there was only buildings, out buildings, which they were used as barns basically. (END OF SIDE ONE, TAPE ONE; BEGIN SIDE TWO, TAPE ONE.)
____+ OK. When we got there I said there were no tents to live -- no -- no barracks to live in.
Right.
We had a big tent that we put up and everybody slept in the big tent. You slept in your fatigues. We had been there and ... I say I got there probably around the 6th of January. When I got there, of course, the few that were there ahead of me, they thought, "Oh, here comes a new guy," OK? And you never wanted to be the one with the most time left.
Right.
And the short-timers are the ones they had the least time left. {Coughs}. Well, I got there and they said, "All right, new guy, OK, how long have you got left?" I said, "Well, I got 10 months and so many days." "What?" You know, some of them been there a month and they had longer to stay than I did, but we ended up becoming good friends, everybody that was there, cause it was a close knit group. It's interesting, the ARVNs, they're very small, the Vietnamese, very small, probably 5'2" to 5'4" most of them that were there. We went and -- with the time between then and when things really got rough -- supposedly Cao Lanh had never been hit in the last four years.
Right.
And so we decided that we would fill some barrels, the jet fuel, though, actually helicopter fuel, and barrels of those with sand and then we put some sandbags themselves on top of them and we put that up as kind of a little border along the back of one of the buildings that was there. There was a trench in front of that building also and we put some sandbags up in front of the trench and behind the trench so it would have a little bit of area to -- for safety there. We had some other barrels in different places for safety purposes, we started putting some around the tent too and different things, but we weren't really too concerned about things. Well, when Tet of '68 came and they had the cease fire during that time to -- to let -- during their Tet holiday, which is a lunar holiday like Mardi Gras and New Year and that type of thing. There was a, as I say, a cease fire during that period but then at approximately -- we had just had a drill, actually, that night, since there was supposedly nothing going on, at about midnight we had a drill where we woke everybody up and said this is a practice alert and we'll go out and we all either got in the trench or behind the barrels and all and you had assigned places to go to, most places -- most of the time later on we found out when you get hit you just go where you can get to but everybody had assigned places. It worked out fine. We were doing things. I mean, we used to play around even when there were things like, yes, there was a cat going down the street one night, which we could see across the road, and we shot at the cat, you know, everybody -- one person shooting, all of a sudden everybody starts shooting because they think something is happening, you know, and there wasn't anything going on. But that particular night, after we had an alert, we all went back to bed and we were sleeping and I'm a pretty heavy sleeper and we sleep with your boots down next to your -- your cot that you're in and had your flak jacket next to it and your rifle and we had the old model M-16s instead of the M-14s, and the -- well, we said -- and when the mortars started coming in and I heard a lot of scuffling going on and then I heard something, I look up and everybody's headed out of the tent and I -- so I put on my helmet, put on my flak jacket, pulled my boots on, you don't -- didn't tie 'em up, of course, and then just took out with my rifle, grabbed it, and took out from the tent and really low crawled through a concrete floor building to get behind the barrels that were there and by the time -- I passed three or four people I know cause I was scared to death and actually that night, of the 15 of us that were Americans on that little base, there were only five of us that weren't dead or had shrapnel and I was chosen -- then, the next morning, after we had a little fire between the two and across the road from us in what they called a theater building, there was fire coming from up in that theater building. We had a sergeant who was MAC V (ph) who had a grenade launcher gun and those were neat because big old bullets that they sit there and he puts in there, he said, "I never used it before but I'm going to try it now." So he took it and he shot up in, trying to hit in the window of it and he missed it the first time, hit the side of the building, then he readjusted his site on it and then put it into the opening in the -- where the shots were coming from and we never heard no more shots from up in there. So, he did good on that one, but I had people on both sides of me with shrapnel. A lieutenant was on one side and then another PFC was on the other side, they both got shrapnel in the head and I got nothing. So I thought I was very fortunate but I was chosen -- I don't know whether it was because they thought I was more mature or maybe for my age than the others -- but chosen to go with the dead bodies back to company headquarters and take them back and, one of them was actually a sergeant who had, like, 20-some days left before his 35 years in the army were up, he was going to retire, a black sergeant who actually -- what happened is he went back to try to help someone who panicked. And so the lieutenant had saw him do it and told me what had happened. Listen, at the time some of the rest of us were so intent on getting to where we were going we didn't really see what was happening, but they had the kind that we use basically just what looked like now black trash bags to put the bodies in and fly 'em back on a helicopter to company headquarters and then when I got back and we started building a whole lot more bunkers -- we actually built bunkers then -- there was a colonel on the -- on the base then and that day -- his name was George, I believe it was -- he said -- everybody said, "Well, colonel," so he said, "My name's George. Just call me George. Let's go ahead. Let's work." Everybody's filling up the sandbags, making bunkers, everything on the base and we found out a day or two later that General Westmoreland was coming down through there. He came to see us, which was interesting highlight I thought to come to a little place where we -- like we were but he comes in and of course they want everybody to be strack (ph), even in a military zone. The lieutenants and all go berserk because our -- our head man was a lieutenant, there was a MAC V (ph) colonel there but when he came he said and -- and we had gotten everything together, put on our best dress that we had with us and we were standing up and he comes by, we salute, go to attention and all and he stops the Jeep and he gets out and goes next to a black man who's next to me named -- whose name was Brown. He says -- he sees his name on the thing. He says, "Brown," he says, "you got shrapnel in your head?" He said, "Yes, sir. I had that there and they fixed it up." And he said, "Well, what are you doing" -- well, first of all, he told us, he said, "Gentlemen," he said, "this is a war zone." He said, "At rest," you know, "We don't need to be at attention and all for this." He says, "I'm just like you. I'm a soldier here." And then, when he walked over to Brown, he saw he had a hat on, he said -- after he's asking everybody -- he said, "Take that hat off." He said, "You don't need to wear that hat if you've had shrapnel in your head and you're sewed up from it and all." And I say he was just down to earth. He said, "Smoke 'em if you got 'em," you know, everything like that and he went around and looked over things and told everybody we did a good job. I said down the road from us at the special forces base they had almost were at point blank range there cause they took the howitzers that they had and put them at the level to shoot, 105 howitzers, you know, no angle on them at all they were that close when there were coming in and these are 14, 15 year-old boys and girls who are going in the deltas, the Vietcong and the Cong would go and threaten the kids that they were going to kill their parents if they didn't help 'em and ended up being the ones that dropped mortars in on us and fire fights and every kind of thing. Then they had some of their own Vietcong troops --
Right.
-- too. It was very interesting but, as I say, General Westmoreland was just as plain as a shoe when he came to that. We went the whole time -- from that then we had a few fire fights. I think probably the most -- the thing I remember more after that than anything is that we had scout team that would go out of the MAC V (ph) -- of the foot soldiers -- to check certain areas every day and they would tell these interpreters where they were going so that the people in the area would know not to worry, that the Americans were going to be there then. They were getting ambushed every day and they figured somebody's got to be telling them, so it's got to be one of the interpreters. So they had two men and a woman interpreters, so somebody was smart enough to figure, let's tell them each a different story, and they did and they found that the woman was the one that was telling them. So, they arrested her and all. So, I thought that was unusual.
She was supposed to be helping?
She was supposed to be helping us with it but then she ended up she was telling them where we were going, the Vietcong, and they would set an ambush for the scout troops every day, which luckily I was just a -- I was signal corps, so I didn't have to worry. I was 52nd Signal Corps. The -- then we didn't have much equipment, it was old equipment, an ANGRY 26. I knew how to cut an antenna for it, nobody else had been trained on it, but luckily, being in the instructor school, we had one ANGRY 26 and I fiddled with it some because I liked radios anyway and had been shown how to cut an antenna for that and so -- until we put up a large antenna tower, we just had a wire antenna that was spaced between two poles and all to get things going. Got it working, luckily, and then later on we did build a tower and I say the interesting thing about the tower was most of the guys were scared to climb stuff and heights never bothered me so I did probably the last 15 or 20 feet of it and when I finished, you know, I was down there by the top of the tower and one of them had a camera then and wanted to take a picture of me up at the top and different things and I was taking pictures around from there and they -- I felt things going by and I thought, you know, these guys are throwing rocks at me. So, I hollered down and tell them, you know, "Stop throwing those rocks at me," and they said -- the lieutenant had said, "Nelson, they're not throwing anything. You get down. They're shooting at you from the town," is what it was and you couldn't hear anything -- Q. Right. A. -- because they were far enough away but they were just, you know, type situation. So, survived all of that. That we were eating sea rations to the point in time when our lieutenant worked with the special forces that were half a mile or so down the road from us where we paid them so much a month and we'd go down and eat with them because they had a cafeteria you might call it, but it was food, cooked food.
Right
It wasn't -- it wasn't this unsalted Saltines and stuff like that, crackers, and so we would go down there and do that and they had actually a bar down there and different things too. We'd put on our skivvies sometimes and go down there and different things but they didn't like us because Green Berets didn't like regular -- Q. Right. A. -- you know, anybody other than the special type people, you know, but they were good but every now and then they'd drop a short round in on us, so, to remind us that they were down there. It was interesting that the troops that we would see sometimes would come in and help, the Korean troops, they call them ROK troops, The Royal Order of Korean, I think it was ROK. They were mean troops some of them. They were special or something. Australian troops would come in, which I understand they're helping in Afghanistan now too. Australian troops are rough, very well trained ones that come in. The special forces we had. All those would get together and help go and sweep areas and even in the -- and we weren't getting hit in the delta anywhere as bad as they were in other spots, you know. We always loved to see what was called Spooky come in, which was a big C-147 I think it was, and it would be something like -- I used to think they said it was every 50th round or every 100th round, was a tracer but then somebody told me actually it's every 500th round there's a tracer and you would see nothing but a red line at night where they're shooting into the areas where suspected VC activity and all. So, we felt safe from that. Then the -- you see the helicopter, COBRA helicopters come in, warships that shot missiles from on them, they were in the area some of the time, helped us when they could get close to us. We never had as bad of an attack as we did on Tet, but we had quite a few, you know, little things, but most of the time, because we were staged on the base itself and didn't leave there, those of us in the signal corps didn't have the problems that the ARVN troops, the MAC V (ph) troops and all that had to go out in the field, the special forces and them troops, they were out doing stuff. We knew something was wrong if there was no activity around the town cause we were actually -- between where we were staying to begin with and the town was nothing but a fence from that trench and where we had to sandbag there was a fence and then there was a road which was the road going down to the town and then there was the town on the other side of it. So we were close to the town.
Umhum.
You didn't see activity in the town, you knew things were bad, and when we finally got barracks built in late July I guess it was of that year and they were up a little bit from where we were actually at, so we were a little further from the town, but mamma-san (ph) came in to clean up the barracks and things like that. If mamma-san (ph) didn't show up, you knew something was going on or, if you should happen to drive downtown and you notice there's no activity, you know something's going on, you better get out. So, that's how we learned the different things that ... I -- after I finished -- probably during the -- after Tet and until probably August it didn't bother me at all, anything I -- I did crazy things probably, you know, drink a little too much, do things, sit there on guard duty, you set down on it, play your radio, different things and because we were not in that bad area, let's say, but then, that last month I was there, last two months, actually, I was there, I slept in a bunker every night just cause I wanted to go home unscathed and my first R and R actually was set up to be in August and I was supposed to meet my wife in Hawaii. It fell through. It didn't come through properly. She got her flight plans but mine fell through, we couldn't get the dates right, and so we canceled that one. Didn't know if we were going to be able to do another one but I did get to go to Hawaii in September then, first time my wife had ever flown and so she flew from Richmond into D.C. to LA, LA to Honolulu, luckily I got there before she did and was waiting for her when she got there and of all things as we're leaving to go to the hotel the cab we're in has a flat tire, you know, but a little inconvenience but Hawaii was beautiful, I loved it, it was expensive but it was beautiful, there for like six days I think it was and then I got to see her off before I left too so it was easier that way than anything and I went back for my last basically a month there. I was supposed to leave October 25th but orders came down I would be leaving country -- but the start process in those dug in on October the 15th actually or 14th I guess it was. So, they -- I flew out from where I was at in the helicopter, Huey helicopter, I think it was the 14th actually and went to -- it might have been the 13th even, it had to be because of the way things worked -- and they carried us -- carried me over the Mekong, as we're going in and got the head sets on listening to Radio Saigon, a little rock and roll music. Then all of a sudden one of the pilots says, "There's some activity down on the river. We've got to check it out," and I said, "No, fellas. I'm on my way home. Don't do this." And so they -- they fly down and it's actually missionaries were down there that are taking Air America taking supplies from one boat to another, but they didn't know what they were till they got close enough, and then I went to Can Tho', from Can Tho' then processed out there and headed to Bien Hoa and Bien Hoa the final process out. When I'm there I meet Colton again, who I'd met on my way from -- from Louisa. We came back together from Vietnam. We stopped in Guam and then came into Oakland to process out totally out of the army. Left Vietnam I said 5:35 -- I think it was -- a.m. on October 15th of 1968, arrived in Oakland October the 15th, 5:35 a.m. cause of the International Date Line. So it was neat. I've been -- actually somebody stole all except 10 dollars of my money when we were sleeping the night coming -- getting ready to come back. They were nice enough to leave enough to get a little something there and all -- and a lot of guys got robbed, so somebody coming home from Vietnam stealing money from people I never quite understood that but they did it. I was just glad to go home. We had -- we had all taken off our clothes cause by that time it was a little bit warmer, we were in the -- the monsoon season was about over -- we were in barracks in Bien Hoa, getting ready to go out and while we were sleeping somebody just went around, just pulled the money out of people's pockets. So, crazy. But after processed out there, took the plane from San Francisco, came to Dulles and my wife picked me up there at Dulles and was home for about two weeks, she had taken a few days off from her work and we had gotten a place we were renting in Louisa. She was from Mineral, I was from Bells Crossroad, which is about five miles one way, she was about six the other. We rented a place on Westover in Louisa from a lady who only came home on weekends and started our married life there and after two weeks I went back to work for State Farm and been there ever since.
You were released from active duty in --
In 1968, and because I had served in Vietnam I didn't have to do the summer camp, I didn't have --
Oh.
-- to do the two week service, didn't have to go to reserve meetings or anything, if you served state side you had to do those things and even I think if you served in Germany you had to but if you went to Vietnam you didn't have to do the summer camp, you didn't have to do the two weeks active duty or anything, you didn't have to go to the meetings or any of that.
So as soon as you got the back to the states you were essentially released then.
I wasn't -- I wasn't totally released because I was still on a reserve status for five, six, years, I forgot how long it was, but I was on that status for a while.
But you could stay home.
But I could stay home, didn't have to go to the meetings and all, which was a pleasure for me.
And you went back to your original job at State Farm.
Went back to my original job and moved up very well, I thought about going back to school but then I moved up the ranks there good and been there 36 years, going on 37 years now --
Wow.
-- total, and the time I was in the service counted for me, and -- which was good. But it was an interesting experience. I say I don't know if you've got some stuff here on the other things I just put together in case there's anything left out. You have some questions?
Yeah. Have you joined any kind of veteran's organizations?
I'm a member of the VFW here in Louisa. I'm not real active but I do things for them like when they had the service last week here I played music for them, music in the background, because I DJ now too and that's my radio and I work with the radio station here in town a lot doing things and sports and all, involved with school and different things, but I help them out that way. I pay my membership and just -- I don't go to many meetings --
No.
-- put it that way, but -- but I do -- do support them in every way.
And you still keep in touch with Colton?
Yes. Bruce Colton and I -- in fact the last time that we met -- we've talked on the phone since then, but he and his wife came down and had Christmas dinner with us, a few days after Christmas but it was like a Christmas dinner, it'll be two years ago this year. So we're going to probably try to get together again this year. He lives in Front Royal still.
OK.
Interesting -- I say I think that's very interesting thing because he went to Vietnam before I did but then when we get ready to come back we come back the same day ____+.
OK. Well, I'd like to thank you very much for your -- for your time and information. I really appreciate it and anything else you'd like to add before --
Well, I think any serviceman you talk to, and we heard some ladies talk about it when they were talking about people, is that they would not change a thing probably that they did in the service but they wouldn't want to go back and do it again.