Dartmouth Veterans: Vietnam Perspectives

“I Never to See You Again”

“I Never to See You Again” ---------------------------------------------------------tim brooks : u.s. army W hen I arrived at Dartmouth in the fall of 1960, the Republic of Vietnam was far from my, or anyone’s, mind. I enrolled in ROTC because I assumed that otherwise I would have to enlist or be drafted, like my two brothers, and if I was going to serve somewhere, I wanted to do so as an officer. So when 1964 came I pinned on my gold bars, entered the Signal Corps, and spent a year with the 518th Signal Company at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Then in June 1965 I was put on a large chartered commercial jet bound for Vietnam. Seven out of eight American soldiers sent to Vietnam served in a support role, and I was one of those, so this won’t be a story of combat. It is, rather, what it was like for the rest of us, a chance to see firsthand how America interacted with a very different part of the world. After arriving at sprawling, chaotic Tan Son Nhut Air Base outside Saigon , I learned that I had been assigned to oversee the signal detachment at Vinh Long, a small helicopter base deep in the Mekong Delta, in the south of the country. It was a picturesque location, a cluster of small wood and cinder block buildings and Quonset huts sitting beside an airfield that was located in the middle of a vast expanse of rice paddies. Occasionally, Viet Cong shelled us with mortar fire, but their aim was terrible, and they mainly succeeded in blowing up the rice fields rather than the UH-­ 1 helicopter gunships lined up along the side of the airstrip. Still, running toward a bunker as explosions went off around me was a reminder that this wasn’t Hanover. The detachment consisted of half a dozen enlisted men and myself, a cinder block building full of microwave communications equipment, and three hastily erected towers. None of us knew more than the rudiments of how to operate (much less service) this equipment. The Army in its haste to get troops into the field had put me into a program that skipped normal Tim Brooks : 71 technical training at Fort Monmouth (the Signal Corps school) and told me to “learn on the job.” So we relied on the services of a civilian contractor from Texas, an older technician who was well paid and who lived in town. Lived well, we understood. The story of how this bulky electronic and tower equipment got to the delta is interesting. Flying it in would have been expensive, and trucking it in would have required a heavily armed convoy capable of fighting off the inevitable Viet Cong ambush. So the Army hired a local Vietnamese trucking company and gave them money to pay off the enemy. Sure enough, the convoy was stopped en route, but the VC realized they had no use for such equipment, and if they blew it up the Americans would just bring it in another way and stop sending bribes. They took the money and let the trucks pass. One is adventurous at age twenty-­ three, and running this little detachment didn’t take much effort, so I soon volunteered to become pay officer for the company, which had detachments like mine all over South Vietnam . This involved shuttling around the entire country, once a month, dispensing piasters (the local currency) to soldiers on payday at bases large and small— ­ sometimes very small, and very remote. Most of the travel was in small fixed-­ wing aircraft and UH-­ 1 helicopters. The latter would lift off with sliding side doors wide open, and some passengers seated facing out, secured by just a seat belt, suspended precariously over open space as the chopper banked horizontally. Clutched tightly between my legs was a large satchel of money. One slip and there would have been piasters (or me) scattered all over the countryside below. Sometimes from the chopper we would see the tracer bullets of a firefight in the distance, or we would be warned of a possible ambush as we jumped into a jeep and raced up a lonely road to a small outpost in the hinterlands. Fortunately the action never got too close. Lieutenant Tim Brooks, 1965 72 : dartmouth veterans I had just obtained my first good camera, a Minolta SLR, and snapped hundreds of pictures...