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 Post subject: Lost Mail in Vietnam
PostPosted: Sun Nov 04, 2007 1:05 am 
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Feldmarschall
Feldmarschall
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Joined: Thu Aug 30, 2007 1:48 am
Posts: 1051
Location: Washington state
(moved from the old YW site)

Lost Mail in Vietnam
________________________________________
Well, I don't have many good "war stories" about my time in Vietnam, so all I can do is tell the lousy ones.

One day our battalion mail clerk rotated home, and they discovered that there was no replacement handy. They checked around and found out that I had a DoD mail handling certificate from a previous assignment. Suddenly, I was the new acting battalion mail clerk. Actually, this wasn't a bad gig at all. I got my own three-quarter ton truck to use and all I had to do was drive to the 38th Base Post Office, get the mail and come back, sort the mail, and distribute it -- twice a day. It wasn't very demanding work, gave me a lot of free time to goof off, and I had a free truck to run around in. Since the line companies each had their own mail clerks, the only mail I had to deal with was our headquarters detachment mail (about 45 officers and men) and battalion headquarters official mail.

Along with the ordinary mail there was also "accountable mail" to some extent. This was stuff that had to be signed for and some of it was valuable. If you signed for it, you were responsible for it.

Among the accountable mail were numbered insured items and registered mail, the latter being the most sensitive mail and often the most valuable -- for which a signee is personally resposible if a loss occurs.

I don't know how it is in the service now, maybe all soldiers are smart these days. This wasn't the case when I was in from 1969 to 72, when we had plenty of dummies in the army. There were a number of unscrupulous jewelry merchants whose main stock in trade was fleecing servicemen who were stupid enough to buy their shoddy goods through the mail. They sold over-priced junk that they mostly advertised on the back covers of comic books. Love-struck soldiers could buy low-grade diamonds the size of pin-heads placed in junk settings with no credit at high prices. Then, when the soldier couldn't pay for the crummy stuff, the mail order jewelers used the army command to collect bad debts. That's another story. Does the name "Oakland Diamond Exchange" for example, ring any bells out there?

These jewelry con artists used the mail, often registered, to ship their goods to the sheep that they were shearing. Often when I went to the Base Post Office, I had a list of registered mail to sign for. Each time, I would carefully inventory each article by number against the listing that I would sign. Knowing that I would have to pay for any losses, I was careful to make sure things went right. I usually checked them over, signed for the load, and then placed them in the glove box of the truck while in transit back to my mail room. Often, I sat them on the running board of the truck and checked them a second time before putting them away.

One day, I got back to my mail room, unloaded the registered mail, and started checking again. One short. Where could it be; I already checked them twice! I looked at the manifest and it had an Oakland, California return address so I knew it was jewelry and would cost me big if it came up missing. I quickly locked up my mail room, even though it was time for the first mail-call, leaving behind scowling and mumbling officers who had lined up for their mail.

Taking a buddy, I quickly drove back to the post office. I asked if they had found the missing item there (like they would have given it back), but they said they hadn't seen it. Then I figured maybe I had left it on the running board by mistake, so we retraced our route back to the battalion headquarters. I looked out the driver's side, and my buddy looked out on the right. Sure enough, after about a half-mile or so, he spotted a tiny box lying in a ditch along the side of the road. As luck would have it, no other soldiers or mamasans had walked along that path lately.

I was in this mail clerk assignment for several months, until the job I had left got bungled so they sent me back to fix that all up again. I have some other stories about "moving the mail in the 'Nam" but I will leave


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