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5 Work Call Life at the National Training Center was insular and self-absorbed. We had a full schedule and not much access to the outside world until the news of a sudden and dramatic North Vietnamese invasion was radioed to us on 1 April. Although details of the fighting were scanty, we were ordered to cancel the training program and prepare the battalions to be trucked to Saigon the following morning. That evening Colonel Ninh gathered all of our battalion’s officers for a special meal that was served on temporary tables set up under some nearby trees. Colonel Ninh provided several bottles of cognac that were soon emptied as a series of toasts were proposed. There was laughing and joking, but also a tough-minded undertone to the evening. Everyone understood we had just received a call to return to combat. While we didn’t know the specifics of the events unfolding beyond our horizon, there was a general feeling that this was serious business and we would soon be in the middle of it. That informal dining-in lasted only a couple of hours, but the event has remained fixed in my memory as a special and poignant experience. There were about thirty officers assigned to the battalion. They were all present that evening,carrying their weapons and wearing their maroon berets. Some were older men with years of combat experience while a few were new to the battalion , replacing others who had been wounded or killed during the previous operation.As I stood among those warriors I recognized how privileged I was to be accepted into their very select club. While I knew something about the human cost of war and fully expected there would be casualties among the group, I was not prepared for the matter-of-fact way they would face and accept death as they led their soldiers on the battlefields of the immediate future. Early the following morning Jack told me I was being moved to a new job. Work Call 21 The team didn’t have enough majors assigned to fill the infantry battalion senior advisor slots, and I was to become the 5th Airborne Battalion’s senior advisor. That battalion was one of the three at the National Training Center, and I knew it was not substantially different in size or composition from the others. As we walked across the parade ground to my new assignment Jack told me there were already two Americans serving with the battalion, Lieutenant Winston Cover and a very experienced and impressive platoon sergeant named Ron McCauley. Confident that I was ready for my new job, I thanked Jack for making the recommendation as I prepared to meet the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Chi Hieu. Colonel Hieu was square built for a Vietnamese, and he had served in paratrooper units much of his career. Proud of the fact he had attended the year-long Infantry Career Course at Ft. Benning, Georgia, he was acquainted with American military doctrine and methods and spoke good English. Jack had mentioned he came from a prominent family and his wife was a wellknown movie actress. Colonel Hieu was certainly very rank conscious and soon made it obvious that he was not happy with a new senior advisor who was only a captain and not the major he was authorized. After some close questioning concerning my military experience, he seemed willing to accept me, but it was clear his approval came with reservations. Our initial conversation closed on an incongruous note when Colonel Hieu confided the worst thing he’d seen when he had visited the United States was American women wearing hair curlers when they went shopping. From his perspective as an upper-class and traditional Vietnamese gentleman I understood his distaste for the tackiness he had experienced when visiting Georgia strip malls. In fact I wasn’t particularly impressed with that aspect of American life either. At the same time I didn’t appreciate him trying to put me in the position of being an apologist for the scruffy side of American society. I knew that the army’s program for foreign officers attending service schools in the United States included both military and civilian sponsorfamilies who provided a variety of contacts in the community.An important part of the program for foreign officers was a year-long schedule of activities giving them a comprehensive picture of American society, so his insistence on stressing the negative the...

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