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(added
12-10-06)
I got out of boot camp the end of October 1965 and reported
to my duty station, which was Boat Support Unit One in San
Diego. After I was there a couple of days, they informed me
that I would be going to S.E.R.E (survival, evasion,
resistance, and escape) training soon. Well, the middle of
November I started the training. It was a requirement that
everybody in our unit goes to this training. Boy, was this
an experience. I thought to myself, what is a naïve, shy,
seventeen year old doing here? It was the week from HELL.
I think everybody will agree on that word as a description.
The week was spent in the mountains near Warner Springs,
north of San Diego. Some of the others I heard went to
Whidbey Island in Washington for the same training. I don’t
need to go into all the details of this training, we all
have our memories. However, the funny part of this was at
the end of the training. We all where starved and lost a
lot of weight (I couldn’t afford to lose it). On the bus
back to our base in San Diego, the driver stopped at a
small shopping center for us to buy some food, since we were
all really hungry. My eyes were way bigger than my
stomach. I remember buying several donuts at the donut
store and a couple hamburgers, fries and coke. I don’t
think I ate but about 1/8th of all that junk
food. Everybody else was just like me. Our stomachs shrunk
to the size of golf ball.
My job in
the unit started as a low life engineman (FA) working in the
shop on the pier. One of the first days in the shop I was
told by Chief Fox to go make some coffee. Since I didn’t
drink coffee, I didn’t no how to do it. I was very
nervous when I asked him how to do it. In his rough voice
he told me to fill up the large coffee maker pot with water
and add coffee grinds to the inside holder/strainer. Well I
took the pot outside to get water and I looked inside and
saw how dirty it was with coffee stains. So I thought I
would be nice and clean the metal pot with that old cleaning
powder we used for everything. Then I put fresh water and
grinds in the freshly clean coffee pot. I sat down in the
shop and listen to all the talk from the old timers. When
the light on the pot came on to signal it was ready, Chief
Fox jumped up and got the first come of coffee. He took his
first sip and went into a rage about the taste of the
coffee. He wanted to know what I did to make such a bad pot
of coffee. After I told him what I did, I got yelled at
from everybody and felt like an idiot. I learned that you
don’t clean a coffee pot with all the built up coffee stains
inside, that is what makes the coffee taste better, at least
for these navy men. Well, a good thing did come out of
this, they never asked me to make another pot of coffee
again……..
A lot of
us would go to San Clemente Island for simulated PT boat
attacks on the Pacific Fleet. We used boats like the LCSR’s,
Swift boats, and PTF-13 for these exercises. Some of the
more senior people on the boat crew brought rifles (AR-15,
or commonly called M-16) or other weapons. As we approached
alongside San Clemente Island, we usually saw mountain goats
climbing up the cliffs. The people with the weapons always
took a few shots at the goats, but they always missed. When
we docked on the island we had the day to ourselves. Most
of the nights were for our maneuvers with the ships. We
would attack using a flare gun as a simulated torpedo. I
enjoyed the island exercises because the food was really
great at the mess hall and I was able to drink beer at the
club on the island. They never asked me for my ID.
However, one exercise was really memorable. For some
strange reason, we were told one night to go out to sea with
heavy fog and make one of our simulated attacks. We saw the
ship on the radar and made our attack on the ship. We
couldn’t see it because of the fog but knew it was in front
of us, so I shot the flare gun. Just then we saw the ship
right in front of us. We missed the ship going full speed
but caught the wake behind it. Our boat hit the wake head
on and came out of the water. We lost water suction so the
engines shutdown. I don’t recall who was on the swift boat
with me that night, but it was sure scary. We called it a
night and went back to the island. Thank god we were in a
swift boat and not a LCSR. The swift boat was enclosed
whereas the LCSR is open. We would have all fell overboard
if we were on a LCSR.
Since our
mission at Danang was classified secret, we didn’t talk
about it. Now forty years later I think it is public
knowledge what we did. My trip to MST-1 for temporary duty
was from early September 1966 to early March 1967. Our
group from BSU-1 flew in a cargo plane, I think C-46, to
Vietnam. It took us several days with a lot of stops to get
to Danang. Landing at the air base in Danang in the middle
of the night was exciting. To avoid being shot at, the
plane made a steep and short approach to the runway. It
felt like a rollercoaster drop. We could see flares going
off all around the airbase, so I was wondering if the
airbase was under attack. When we landed I discovered the
flares were normal. We had a truck waiting for us as we
landed and then we drove to Camp Fay base where we lived.
Driving in the late night hours to our base was quite
scary. All kinds of things ran through my mind. I thought
for sure the VC was going to attack our truck. Nothing
happened. We arrived save at our base. As it turned out,
things were quite save for us during my time there. But I
didn’t realize how safe until I left. The trip home was on
a Boeing 707 MACV flight to Norton AFB. What a difference
in flights.
I was
assigned to the boat shop at the spook base where the boats
were docked. My job was to take care of the swift boats,
engine on the crane barge, mike boats, and generators for
the base power. We all have numerous stories about things
that happened in Danang and of all the hard work. I think
we had duty watch every three days. So two days out of
three were open for us after work to enjoy ourselves. One
free day I went to our little private beach for a little
fun. Everybody took turns water skiing. Since I was the
youngest there and didn’t know how to water ski, I waited
for everybody to have their turn. Later in the day, it was
my turn to learn how to ski. After several attempts, I
finally got up on the skis. Boy, was I hot stuff…. I don’t
recall who was in the boat pulling me, but they decided to
take me out into the middle of Danang harbor. Cruising in
the harbor was really great, until the motor in the boat
crapped out. I think it ran out of gas from all the use
that day. As I sank in the water I heard somebody from the
boat yell “don’t lose the skis”. Hanging onto the skis,
bouncing in the middle of the harbor, I tried to swim back
to the beach. I was making very little progress.
Meanwhile, a couple freighters passed me by. That wasn’t
fun dodging those ships and getting tired treading water.
Finally, a junk full of Vietnamese fisherman came to my
rescue and took me back to shore. The ski boat got back to
the beach somehow also. Everybody on the beach had a good
laugh about me being stranded in the middle of Danang
harbor. I didn’t think it was funny at the time. That was
the first and last time I went water skiing. I didn’t want
to risk another episode like that. Tom Huston took a
picture of me that day before I went skiing. See Tom’s
pictures, I had the green trunks on.
I don’t
know how many of us Americans at MST-1 actually went on a
mission with the Seal Team, but I believe there were a few
others besides mine. One night I was told that they needed
an all American boat crew ( I don’t recall any of the names)
to go out on a mission with a Seal Team on one of the Nasty
boats. Apparently, they couldn’t find a second Nasty boat
engineman to go on that mission, so they picked me. I guess
most of the enginemen that worked on the Nasty boats where
on duty or working late trying to fix the engines on other
boats, or didn’t want to go. I had almost no knowledge of
the Nasty boat engines, but I was an engineman, so I could
at least help the other engineman on the boat crew. I felt
really honored to be going out on a special mission with the
seal team. Of course, I was also young and stupid. When
night came, our boat left DaNang harbor and turned left to
go to North Vietnam. That sure got my attention! I had no
idea where we were going, but it took a few hours to get
there. We reached a place off shore of North Vietnam and
the Seal Team boarded two rubber boats (Zodiacs I guess) and
went toward the beach. We left the boat engines running the
whole time for a quick getaway. After awhile, one of the
boat engines died on us. Panic struck us all. The other
engineman, who new the engines a lot better than me, worked
feverously for a long period of time to get it started, but
determined that it wasn’t possible for him. Therefore, we
sat out in the ocean, off the coast of North Vietnam with
only one engine. With two working engines we could out run
anything. Everybody, and especially me, were really
concerned about being a sitting duck for the enemy. We were
stuck waiting for the Seal Team to return from their mission
ashore, and also saying our prayers that the North
Vietnamese won’t see us. Finally, the Seal Team returned to
our boat and we left in a hurry on one engine. That night
had enough excitement for me.
Since I
worked in the engine shop, I also had to be the engineman on
some of the boat trips to the island we kept the North
Vietnamese prisoners; we called it Do-Do Island. I don’t
recall what the correct name was. On one of our trips to
the island we took a boat load of supplies and some
Vietnamese guards. Even though I was an engineman, I took
the helm of the boat on occasion and enjoyed steering the
boat in calm water. After we unloaded our supplies on the
island, we boarded some Vietnamese guards from the island to
bring back to Danang. On this particular trip, we got
caught in a storm on the way back to Danang. Petty officer
Martin, the boat driver, and I were in the front of the
swift boat with the Vietnamese guards in the back, smoking
their smelly cigarettes. As we left the island the storm
got really bad with the ocean waves pounding our boat. The
waves were huge, with swells above our boat, and we felt
like a cork as we bounced around the ocean. I looked back
in the boat and saw several of the guards hanging over the
back of the boat, puking their insides out. Awhile later,
Martin told me to take the helm of the boat because he had
to join the guards at the back of boat in the puking party,
for a few minutes. Martin told me, “keep on this compass
course and keep the boat headed into the swells”. Boy, was
that a challenge! That was the longest few minutes of my
life… Keeping the boat straight on course was next to
impossible. I kept thinking the boat engines are going to
crap out on us and we will then get overturned by a wave.
Thank god it didn’t happen. I never wanted to experience
that type of boat ride again. That trip took us probably
three or four times longer than normal to get home.
Joe |
