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 Post subject: Leaving Vietnam and Getting Out of the Army
PostPosted: Sun Nov 04, 2007 1:04 am 
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Feldmarschall
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gschwertley
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(9/19/05 11:13 pm)
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Leaving Vietnam and Getting Out of the Army
________________________________________
I guess a mini-story could be written about this long/short journey. I say "long/short" because it seemed endless at the time, but compared to troop movements in previous wars, or even deployments to Vietnam early in the war, the process was remarkably short. When we got seriously involved in Vietnam, it started out with large movements of entire divisions and smaller units to Vietnam, often aboard ships. Some elements went together as units in USAF transports. Later in the war, men were sent to Vietnam as replacements in commercial airline flights and that's how I went. I never heard about any shiploads of Army men going home; as far as I know, they all went by air one way or another, unless it was by a hospital ship.

When it was my time to go, I had to clear Long Binh Post, just like a stateside PCS, which included sending off my hold baggage, which was just a foot-locker packed with stuff I had accumulated. It arrived home many weeks after I did but intact. I still have the foot locker here downstairs with all kinds of stickers on it.

Next, I got a ride from my unit over to the 90th Replacement Battalion for processing out of country. Once here, we did some more out-processing and then sat around waiting to be manifested onto an outbound flight. I was there for a few days, the result of someone cancelling two flights. While there, I got sick with food poisoning, but they won't let you go home if you are sick, so I feigned wellness to stay in the process. One reason this process seemed so long at the time was because of the lack of activity; there wasn't much to do there and we were confined to the compound.

Finally, a planeload of us got manifested onto a flight and they bused us over to Bien Hoa Air Base where we were to board the commercial flight. We rode over in the now-infamous OD green buses with the screens on the windows. I don't remember the scene where we old timers walked by the new meat getting off the plane; maybe they had already deplaned before we got there. Most of us had ditched our jungle fatigues at the 90th (I saved mine, of course). To this day, I regret not having passed the time by rummaging through the piles of jungle fatigues that had been discarded. Many of these had organization pocket patches on them, while common at the time (and unauthorized but tolerated), but are now quite valuable and collectible.

When we left the 90th, we were in our khakis. This uniform was only good to hold a press for about 10 minutes, after that it looked about as good as burlap; in the heat (for which it was designed) it was even worse. The idea was that as soldiers we would look halfway presentable while in transit, but after 18 to 20 hours sitting on an airplane, I don't know how presentable we were. In those years, we were not allowed to travel in a work uniform; today, I note that soldiers come and go from the middle east in work uniforms. Times change.

We were boarded onto the commercial airliner, which for my last flight out of Vietnam (I had done it two times before by this time), I was on a "Flying Tiger" airliner. Flying Tiger ordinarily specialized in air freight, not passenger service. I suppose as Army soldiers, we were so much bulk freight. When I say commercial, I mean they were operated on contract to the government with a commercial airline. The planes, however, were set up for this strictly government work and had no class separations in the seats. The stewardesses were noticeably longer in the tooth. I don't remember if they served food on these flights, but they must have for the time involved.

Once the wheels left the ground at Bien Hoa, a spontaneous cheer arose from nearly all aboard. Most of the soldiers aboard were PFC's, Spec4's, Spec5's, and buck sergeants. There were a few NCO's and a couple of officers. Most of those aboard were going home and out of the Army.

The flight was to Hawaii and then to Travis AFB, where we were bussed to Oakland Army Terminal. This was where the Army had the major overseas replacement center for the far east, and it was also a separation center for those of us getting out. When you got off the bus, they deposited you in front of an entrance with an elaborate sign over it and you entered a mess hall that is open 24 hours a day and served you a steak dinner when you first got back. Since I was still sick with food poisoning, I couldn't enjoy this part of it.

After the meal, the out-processing started. If you were getting out of the Army, this usually took about 20 hours. One of the things we did was go into a quartermaster warehouse and get issued a new AG-344 Class A Army Green uniform for going home. Part of this was getting our combat patch sewed on our right sleeve. When I went into the room where the patches were displayed on the wall, I pointed to the USARV patch, and the warehouseman said, "Sold out. Pick another." Just like that, my service in Vietnam changed command. Well, I looked on the board and noticed that the 2 Field Force patch was the same shape and colors, so I went home with that on my sleeve.

The following is a picture that one of my friends in my unit who went home in April 1971 took inside one of the warehouses at Oakland where we were processed. Signs on the walls said "no photography" but he must have ignored them. The Army didn't want the public getting a glimpse of how their boys were handled like human cattle at an already sensitive time. In the foreground of the picture, you can see piles of duffel bags and souvenir rifles.



After that, you go in for a physical examination. The Army doesn't want anyone going home sick because it might later lead to a bigger VA claim. Still not wanting to spend time in Letterman General Hospital at the Presidio of San Francisco, I pretended to be well and it worked.

The next step was a long bunch of paperwork. It wouldn't have been quite so long but they discovered an error on my DD214, so they took it back and held up the whole room full of GI's that I was with until it was brought back corrected.

I don't remember if they gave us a pep talk about "a job well done" or not; I don't remember the re-enlistment pitch either, but I have been reminded that it took place.

When we were all done, we grabbed our duffel bags and headed for the door. Outside the main gate were lines of cabs whose sole trade was ferrying separating Army men to the SFO airport. I piled into a cab with five other men whom I had never clapped eyes on before, but we were all together for this one moment in life. We climbed into a 1970 Ford sedan piloted by a young woman driver. I use the word piloted because as fast as she was driving, it could have been called flying low. The faster the trip, the more trips in a day she could make, and the more trips, the more fare money.

When we got to the San Francisco airport, I didn't have a reservation or squat, but in those days you could just walk in and get a ticket without having to pay a multi-hundred dollar penalty for buying a ticket on the spot. Maybe we got a discount for being servicemen, and in those times, we flew standby often because the planes weren't all packed like sardines like they are now. It's funny when you think about it. In those days, often the plane was only half full and the airlines could still make money. Now, they are all going bankrupt and the planes are always loaded to capacity.

While at the airport waiting for a flight, some Army men took their brand new uniform off in the men's room and threw it in the trash and put on civvies they had in their duffel bag. I left mine on and didn't come to any trouble with anti-war comments and the like, but that did happen to some men going home at this late phase in the conflict.

I arrived at the Long Beach Airport in the evening and called my parents to give me a ride home. They were glad to see me. I went home and went to bed for 24 hours.

This process, which only took a few days from start to finish and involved a 10,000 mile trip, was much shorter than when my dad came home at the end of WW2. It took him over seven weeks to complete the same process and he was an officer.
"Sehr schwer, mein Herr"


Well, I came home late in the war, in early 1972, so I think that some of the protest had lost momentum by this time. People could see for themselves that the war was winding down and men were coming home. My journey home was short, also. It's only about 375 miles from San Francisco to my home, plus I didn't have to go through the city of SF, just took the cab to the airport. My home town, which at the time was Long Beach, Calif. was still a Navy town in those days and was not a hot-bed of protest.

Some of the Army men who had to go farther east were exposed to more people and travelled in areas more rife with protest. The name-calling and being spit upon was not a fiction; fortunately, it wasn't universal and it never happened to me.

I don't want this to get too long, but we now look back upon this as an era of protest. We forget that it was also the era of what President Nixon called the "Silent Majority," that body of the public that was supportive to whatever extent, of government policy (even if misguided at times). The Silent Majority was so-called because their voices were not in the news like the radicals -- could it be because they were out working for a living? There was famous news coverage at one time during this era of the "Hard Hats," New York working men who demonstrated in favor of the government. I say in favor of the government, because they were not "pro-war" but were showing their support of the government, and felt at the time that the government was doing its level best in the interests of the country.

When I was stationed at Fort Huachuca, Arizona for a time, I used to hitch-hike home to my parents' home in Victorville, California, which was 650 miles or better away. I always hitched in my uniform, because it made it easier to get a ride. There were very many good people who gave me rides when I hitched as a serviceman. This included one ride I remember with an Air Force sergeant and his family who were travelling from Texas to Disneyland on vacation. He pulls up on the new Interstate 10 near Gila Bend, Ariz., where I had been dropped off in the middle of nowhere. Now this guy already had a station wagon full of kids and he had one of them open a back door and said, "Scooch over kids, make room for one more." He gave me a ride to Yuma, Ariz. and even bought me my lunch before I continued on. There were plenty of good people during this time; they just didn't get the attention of the press like the radicals


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