I served in the Army, 1968 - 1971.
- Basic Trng at FT Bragg, NC,
- AIT at Ft Sill, OK,
- First Duty Station 2nd Btn 26th FA, 18th Airborne Corps, Ft Bragg, NC
- In Sept, 69 got my orders for an all expense paid trip to the exotic Far East
- Arrived in country after the longest airplace flight of my young life and here is where this story begins. Now I grew up in a small mill town in the piedmont of North Carolina, a little town of around 3,000 people called Carrboro - named after the textile mill that employed about a quarter of the people in town. It is right next to a better known place called Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina.
- Early October, 1969 - The plane touched down at Bien Hoa Airbase. As most remember before you deplaned an Air Force Sgt would come on board and give you a brief oreintation about what you were to do when you left the plane, and what to do if there was a rocket attack. Well, the Sgt that came on board was a guy I had grown up with and lived less than a mile from my home. He was a year ahead of me in school, and we'd played football together in high school. I'd flown 13,000 miles, halfway around the world, and the first person I see after getting in country was a friend from the same small milltown.
- I served my tour in RVN on Artillery Hill outside of Pleiku in the Central Highlands. Yes I was a REMF- Artillery Surveyor and Personnel Clerk, after they learned I could drive a typewriter and had been a Battery Clerk at my previous duty station with 2/26 FA. During my 11 months and two weeks in country it was a tough life. We had to endure paper cuts, sharp staples, confusing report requirements and complicated forms to be filled out daily, angry rats in the houches, cold showers, VC 122mm rocket shows, and frequent free fire periods from the neighboring ARVN camp everytime they heard a noise outside their wire. But I survived without a scratch and in October, 1970 gladly left my home away from home for the last 11 months for out processing at Cam Ranh Bay. Went wheels up a few days later and took the best flight of my young life on Braniff Airlines to SeaTac and processing back in country at Ft Lewis, WA.
- After we were all fitted with new uniforms and got a steak dinner, I left for SeaTac to catch a flight to Atlanta and then to Raleigh, NC. When I walked up to the ticket counter to pick up my ticket there was a guy there that I hadn't seen in 2 years, since AIT at Ft Sill. He'd been stationed in Alaska for the required two year assignment there and was just returning to the lower 48 and a trip home before his next assignment. At both ends of my RVN deployment I'd run into people that I knew. Small world!