My recent 81st birthday caused me to recall that on my 25th birthday, which I missed completely while crossing the International Date Line going west, I landed in Vietnam, my home for the next year. Below is my description of that first day.
I left on my 25th birthday from Ft. Lewis, Washington. I went out for dinner and drinks with Dick Johnson, the younger brother of an old friend I had originally met in Yellowstone. Dick was going to college in Seattle.
What was weird is that I didn’t know anyone on the plane. We were all individuals, going over to replace some other individual. It was a 707, with all the normal food, drinks, pretty young stewardesses and movies. It could have been a flight to anywhere, except it was all soldiers – all in uniform. We made one stop during the night in Tokyo. There was nothing to do but wander around the transient terminal of the airbase. My first postcard:
We landed at Cam Ranh Bay, and that rush of hot, humid air as we walked out the door and down the gangway clearly said, “welcome to Vietnam.” We were bused to a compound of tropical buildings (“hootches” – as we later came to know them) near a beautiful beach. We were herded through a supply building, where we were given three uniforms (olive drab, jungle), two pairs of jungle boots, a baseball cap and a steel “pot” (helmet) and several pairs of olive drab socks, t-shirts and boxer shorts. Nametags and rank were issued and sewn on the uniform shirts. We were given a toothbrush and some kind of special toothpaste that was supposed to prevent cavities for one year. In the humidity, underwear gave me crotch rot, so I stopped wearing the boxer shorts altogether.
I was assigned a bed in a hootch, drank a few beers at the officer’s club, went swimming in the South China Sea and slept for a few hours before the plane left to our next destination at 4:00 AM.. I had no idea what was in store.
