The UH1 "Huey" helicopter pictured above was the workhorse in Vietnam. It was transportation for troops, medical evacuation for wounded and gunfire support. Door gunners spent billions of rounds of ammunition to suppress ground fire during trips over Viet Cong held territory. The rumor was the Huey made Linden Johnson a rich man as he and Lady Bird had a big stake in the Bell helicopter company. That, like all rumors, may have some truth in it; I do not know for sure. I can only imagine the troops hated to climb aboard to go to some hellish spot in the jungle, but loved to climb back aboard to get back out of there.
I was sitting watching the movie Good Morning Vietnam, a story loosely based on DJ Adrian Cronauer and his time in Vietnam. Robin Williams plays Cronauer. It is a very good movie and I have the soundtrack from it and listen to it frequently. The movie has a lot of footage of soldiers in the Saigan area and and navy riverboat patrols in the Mekong delta. The footage is mostly day to day events, not like the jungle battle events like those shown on the nightly news in the mid to late sixties. Not like up in Da Nang where it looked to me like any other air force base except for the revetments around the aircraft on the tarmac, the guards at the many checkpoints one had to pass through to get anywhere and not like when the mortar fire that started coming in during the late afternoon.
In the movie, Adrian was handing out MPC which was what the military handed out in lieu of dollars in the early days of the conflict. The idea was to keep US greenbacks out of the hands of those against US interests in the war. That reminded me of being aboard ship later on during the conflict. In order to get paid we had to fill out what they called a pay chit. The pay chit had to have a host of information, including your pay number and how much you wanted to draw for the next two week pay period and everything had to be perfect on the chit or you had to go back to the end of the line and start over. And talk about privacy, your pay number and how much money you had was posted on the ship’s bulletin boards for all the crew to see, unless you were an officer, but then there was no privacy for enlisted men aboard ship. Back then there was a chit to fill out for just about anything. The joke was, you had to fill out a chit to even take a shit.
There’s a part in the movie where Adrian drives up to a traffic jam in Saigon where there are several troop trucks backed up. He begins a funny routine with the new guys on the trucks. He asks where they are headed and when they tell him, he gets a sad look on his face. He knows what is happening in those places. I get sad watching that part, wondering how many of the real young men in those places went home in body bags.
Near the end of the movie, the general who liked Adrian and protected him, had to let him go because a Vietnamese he befriended was a Viet Cong sympathiser. The master sergeant who tried to remove Adrian every way he could, including sending him through a Viet Cong controlled territory that almost got him killed finally got his way to discharge Adrian and send him home. The general pulled the sergeant aside and said the sergeant had gone too far and was too damn mean. He told the sergeant he was transferring him to Guam, not Alaska or any other shithole duty stations, but to Guam. I had to laugh about that, having spent 18 months there. The sergeant said there was nothing happening on Guam. The general said, “that’s why I am sending you there.” Funny but I never remember seeing a soldier on Guam, air force, yes, but no army.
I was sitting watching the movie Good Morning Vietnam, a story loosely based on DJ Adrian Cronauer and his time in Vietnam. Robin Williams plays Cronauer. It is a very good movie and I have the soundtrack from it and listen to it frequently. The movie has a lot of footage of soldiers in the Saigan area and and navy riverboat patrols in the Mekong delta. The footage is mostly day to day events, not like the jungle battle events like those shown on the nightly news in the mid to late sixties. Not like up in Da Nang where it looked to me like any other air force base except for the revetments around the aircraft on the tarmac, the guards at the many checkpoints one had to pass through to get anywhere and not like when the mortar fire that started coming in during the late afternoon.
In the movie, Adrian was handing out MPC which was what the military handed out in lieu of dollars in the early days of the conflict. The idea was to keep US greenbacks out of the hands of those against US interests in the war. That reminded me of being aboard ship later on during the conflict. In order to get paid we had to fill out what they called a pay chit. The pay chit had to have a host of information, including your pay number and how much you wanted to draw for the next two week pay period and everything had to be perfect on the chit or you had to go back to the end of the line and start over. And talk about privacy, your pay number and how much money you had was posted on the ship’s bulletin boards for all the crew to see, unless you were an officer, but then there was no privacy for enlisted men aboard ship. Back then there was a chit to fill out for just about anything. The joke was, you had to fill out a chit to even take a shit.
There’s a part in the movie where Adrian drives up to a traffic jam in Saigon where there are several troop trucks backed up. He begins a funny routine with the new guys on the trucks. He asks where they are headed and when they tell him, he gets a sad look on his face. He knows what is happening in those places. I get sad watching that part, wondering how many of the real young men in those places went home in body bags.
Near the end of the movie, the general who liked Adrian and protected him, had to let him go because a Vietnamese he befriended was a Viet Cong sympathiser. The master sergeant who tried to remove Adrian every way he could, including sending him through a Viet Cong controlled territory that almost got him killed finally got his way to discharge Adrian and send him home. The general pulled the sergeant aside and said the sergeant had gone too far and was too damn mean. He told the sergeant he was transferring him to Guam, not Alaska or any other shithole duty stations, but to Guam. I had to laugh about that, having spent 18 months there. The sergeant said there was nothing happening on Guam. The general said, “that’s why I am sending you there.” Funny but I never remember seeing a soldier on Guam, air force, yes, but no army.
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