On June, 25, 1969, the Division newspaper, The Old Reliable, ended the many rumors that had been buzzing around Dong Tam for weeks about our going home. The talk had been true, the 9th Infantry Division was pulling out of Vietnam - or at least some of us were going back to The World. The unlucky 3rd Brigade would remain behind in Long An Province under the administrative control of the 25th Tropic Lightning Infantry Division. All of this shouldn't have affected my DEROS (date eligible to return from overseas) - I had been granted an early out to attend graduate school in the fall - but as in any organization designed by geniuses and administered by idiots -  it did - and in a most adverse and perverse manner.

Near the end of June I had received a letter from Seton Hall University accepting me into their graduate school of business. In accordance with Army Regulation AR 635-205, Paragraph 9, I submitted a formal request for early separation to attend school. Everything appeared to be falling into place. I may have literally dodged the bullet.

Special Orders No. 165 - dated June 14, 1969 - reassigned me to the USATRF STA FORT DIX for separation on October 20, 1969. This order had been cut previous to approval of my pending early out for education. On June 18, 1969, my request had been approved for ETS (estimated time of separation) no earlier than August 24, 1969. Then, on June 23, 1969, Special Orders No. 174 revoked Special Orders No. 165. I, however, had already received conflicting Special Orders No. 173 the day before reassigning me to the USATRF STA FORT DIX, but now on August 17, 1969. The Green Machine could screw up the paperwork as much as it wanted - I was getting out of 'Nam…Or so I thought!

I had been long overdue for R&R, and I certainly needed a vacation. Troops typically became eligible for R&R after having served four months in-country. Because of scheduling and my choice of the ever popular, always fashionable, predominantly non-Asian Sydney, Australia; I had already waited over six months. Then on July 7, 1969 - without previous warning and at the very last possible moment - I was told to get my gear and CA (combat assault) over to the heliport to catch a helicopter \bound for Bien Hoa Airbase! My R&R orders, the final issued by the 9th Infantry Division at Dong Tam, had come through. I boarded a Huey Slick and off we went to Bien Hoa. It was fun being the only passenger. For the first time in many months I actually felt important. I sat in the middle of a drop-down, red web, tubular aluminum, bench seat in front of the transmission housing. I must have looked rather smart in my starched, pressed, Class B, summer, kaki uniform with bandsman's chord. One of the door gunners kept winking and throwing me the thumbs up sign. I assumed that he had spotted my AG (Adjutant General) brass and had assumed that I was some clerk who had never been in a helicopter. It was a great ride until we (this may be incorrect helicopter gyration terminology) rolled over, descended at Warp One, and strafed a clump of jungle growth. The maneuver had been executed at great speed. The sensation had been much the same like free-falling with your stomach in your mouth and then a complete reversal in a gravity-defying climb with your stomach at your feet, except it wasn't my stomach - it was my lunch!

I had had five wonderful days in Australia in the congenial company of girls with round eyes and pleasant dispositions! I returned to Dong Tam on July 13, 1969, thoroughly rested and recuperated. On the drive from Tan Son Nhut Airport's Camp Alpha (an out-of-country R&Rs processing center) to Bien Hoa Airbase, I experienced total panic for my first time in Vietnam. Several R&R returnees and I were riding in the uncovered bed of a deuce-and-a-half shuttle truck when an uncouth Ruff-Puff (regional popular forces) spent an entire magazine of 5.56 into the sky. Our truck was passing him at the precise moment that he opened up. I was still in my pretty Class B, starched and pressed, summer uniform reveling in pleasant memories of R&R. I had no weapon! I had no cover! I had no concealment! I was overwhelmed with panic and had to force myself to regain composure. After having enjoyed the warmth of humanity and the comfort of safety for a week, I was now back in the Delta!

Although Special Orders No. 173 clearly reflected my early-out status, the Division's redeployment to Schofield Barracks, HI, complicated and confused my remaining weeks in Vietnam. My old hootch-mate, SP-5 Albany Devers, and I received Special Orders No. 201, dated July 20, 1969, assigning us to the deactivated 3/34 Artillery. This battalion remained on the 9th Infantry Division's TO&E (table of organization and equipment) in name only. After thousands of hostile fire missions, the 3/34's final service to the Division was the administrative processing and billeting of troops eligible for DEROS in the first section of the initial 25,000 troop increment of President Richard M. Nixon's Peace with Honor withdrawal. Ironically, artillerymen with less than 10-months in-country service were ineligible and re-assigned to other units. The Army only wanted the most seasoned troops to leave. Although the ten-month requirement would be progressively shortened and then eliminated, it did complicate and endanger my remaining days in Vietnam.

The few days I spent out-processing with the 3/34 Artillery were a nightmare. The normally night hostile communist became annoying all of the time. Off and on at any time during the day or night Dong Tam reverberated to the whoosh-bang of rockets, the whiz-bam of RPGs, and the thud boom of mortars. My first evening shower at the 3/34 ended in mayhem. Albany and I were in the EM showers with a bunch of other troops when something very near went BOOM! We hastily departed the shower hanging onto the towels around our waists. Someone spotted a bunker and ran to it in a herd.  It was locked! (we later learned that it was  a refrigerated storage bunker for provisions and wine used by the officers club). The rounds kept slamming in. We ran to another bunker and scrambled through the blind opening. It was full of knee-high water. Still, it offered sanctuary from the horror of the mortars. I looked for Albany. In the dim light all of him that I could make out were his eyes. He was looking upwards. I followed his gaze. THERE WAS NO ROOF! This bunker was being demolished.

Having miraculously survived the evening we rose early and walked to breakfast. Today was our last day on Dong Tam. Later in the day we were being flown to Hawaii on troop transports. Spirits were actually running quite high when we all heard the WHOOSH of an incoming rocket. As I instinctively crouched down I caught a glimpse of a vapor trail pointed toward the barracks. It rocketed under the banister of the second story landing, pierced through the screen door, traversed the length of the building, exited through the screen door at the other end, and detonated against the outside banister. The guys inside said that it smoked right down the center isle of the barracks between rows of bunk beds and awaking soldiers!

I didn't get to go to Hawaii with Albany. Some lifer who could add and subtract in addition to read and write discovered the Army's error in calculating my remaining time in country. The Army had mistakenly assumed that I had served my ten months because my latest DEROS orders authorized me to return to CONUS (continental United States) after August 24, 1969. Their logic had been that if my 12-month tour was up in August and it was now July, I must have been in-country ten months or more! I was told that I couldn't leave. Upon my inquiry as to what I was now supposed to do, I was told that they were not authorized to issue orders. I would have to take it up with administration - who and where ever they were. I walked back to DISCOM. The kindly bandmaster said I was welcome to stay with the band until they left in a couple of days!

I had no orders, my personal belongs were flying home in a footlocker aboard a 3/34 Artillery freedom bird, and I had no helmet, flak vest, or rifle. Everything had been taken from me in preparation for the trip back to the USA. They had even taken my gas mask! I no longer felt combat ready, although I did still have my baseball cap.

The band departed Dong Tam as predicted along with a lot of other troops. I walked across the street to the Reliable Academy where I was known from having played a few To the Colors and Taps bugle gigs, as well as a few friendly hands of slightly drunken poker with some of the cadre. I lamented my tale of woe to an older, compassionate, lifer-type, senior-grade sergeant whom I knew. He asked me what I wanted to do. In a moment of madness I told him that I wanted assignment with the meanest, toughest, combat ready unit left on Dong Tam. It had been fairly common knowledge that of late the VC only messed with infantry when easier pickings (like the band) were not available. I was so short I could hardly see above my boot tops - too short to shelled, rocketed, and otherwise fired upon. I sincerely believed that my status as bandsman and training as a personnel management specialist would earn me a clerical job in some HQ bunker orderly room typing reports in quadzillion. What I failed to consider was my Specialist E-5 status. In the realm of military administration, E-5 meant specialist who can read and write and knows absolutely nothing about leadership. In the infantry, however, E-5 meant sergeant who doesn't necessarily have to know how to read or write but can lead small groups of soldiers in the bush.

The CO of my gaining unit was an infantry captain and he said they didn't need any clerks but could sure use a sergeant.

My pal at the Reliable Academy had placed me with a small, recently formed, provisional, unit that escorted EOD (explosive ordinance disposal) personnel from the 269th EOD into the bush to locate and analyze the accuracy and effectiveness of Dong Tam's short range, Four Deuces, 4.2" mortar fire. I can only guess that the roving security patrol used to do this. With everyone processing out of Dong Tam, there weren't many bodies left to do this type of work. I protested my lack of knowledge and experience to the captain. His soldierly advice was succinct, if not frighteningly terse, If somebody shoots - get down! He also gave me a little book entitled MACV HANDBOOK FOR US FORCES IN VIETNAM (click on to view) and urged me to become familiar with the section on booby-traps. It was easy to read; the section covering booby-traps was mostly illustrations.

I spent the my last days at Dong Tam looking for body counts on the south bank of the Song My Tho and on Thoi Son "VC" Island. We never found anything. We just poked around in the heat and rain in the area that the Army or Navy dropped us off until it was time to be picked up. With the Division pulling out no one really had their hearts in soldiering any more. For me it had been a very surrealistic time punctuated by fear, horror, and - ultimately -  tragedy.

The Vietnam War raged for ten years. Someone nameless once wrote that it had been a series of ten one-year wars. For me it had been a seven month ritual of survival that cumulated in ultimate failure and disillusionment. This Polaroid snapshot from early August 1969 is my last image from the Delta. It was taken by someone now forgotten and given to me. I had just returned from an ill-fated venture across the Song My Tho (River) that had ended before it began. It would be my last foray into darkness. Three causalities, a lost machine gun, a damaged radio, and - unbelievably - my uniform and flak vest are spotless. Nothing made much sense in the Delta. Nothing was forever. Legend called the alluvial plain the Land of Nine Dragons, named for the nine branches of the mighty Mekong River whose passage to the South China Sea opened into the symbolic mouth of a dragon - the very jaws from which I had recently emerged!

TICKET OUT OF DONG TAM - While most of the Division was boarding MACV transport planes for unit redeployment to CONUS, I boarded a USAF Caribou bound for Bien Hoa Military Airbase and the 90th Replacement Battalion at Long Binh. A  World Airlines Freedom Bird to Oakland, CA, was in my near future. I was leaving Vietnam the way I had arrived - in the comfort of a military, contract, commercial flight. Military boarding passes had some unusual regulations specific to a combat environment.

My first post Vietnam glimpse of the USA was Honolulu, HI, through the scratched Plexiglas window of a World Airlines military contract flight from Bien Hoa, RVN, to Oakland, CA. The view had been just fine!

Don't stand too close to the nice soldier! A troop's return from Vietnam didn't quite mean that the war was over for him. It still had two weeks to kill you! The government took the health risks associated with Vietnam service quite seriously. Cholera and Plague were not infections common in The World and the US Department of Health, Education and Welfare wanted to keep it that way. This HEALTH ALERT card  was issued to all Vietnam returnees.

From an altitude of 3,000 feet Vietnam looked like any other place I had ever been…well, perhaps it was just a bit greener. Our sleek, aluminum-skinned, commercial jetliner roared in steady ascent. We were rapidly climbing out of a hostile land where circumstance aged young men beyond their years. Our flight's destination was Oakland, CA. We would refuel and take aboard civilian passengers at Yokota, Japan, and then again, at Honolulu, HI.

When we reached cruising altitude, the seat belt warning lights went out, and our pretty stewardess demonstrated how to use the aircraft's emergency flotation devices. She explained, in mechanical animation, the proper procedure for escape in case the plane crashed into the sea. Everyone on board was silent.

The plane’s PA crackled, "Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. It is my pleasure to advise you that we have just departed Vietnamese air space."

Stunned silence. Then…a great roar of exultation! We were out of ‘Nam!

Twenty hours later the plane landed in California. We were greeted at the US Army Personnel Center at Oakland with a large WELCOME HOME sign, a fine steak dinner, and instructions not to fraternize with the troops departing for Vietnam. (A solid 6' high barrier segregated in-processing from out-processing troops.) The green machine didn't want us sharing our experiences with the FNGs. They would have to learn it the same hard way that we did.

The next morning I was fitted with a new, green, Class A, summer uniform¹ (I had departed for Oakland, CA, in January wearing a green, Class A, winter uniform). They sewed and pinned on unit crests, decorations, service and citation cords, and insignia to the sleeves, breast, and lapels of my new uniform. I looked STRAC. The Army didn't waste much time with civilian social re-acclimating but they did give us an hour lecture on the benefits Uncle Sam's veterans were entitled to receive from our grateful nation. All I heard was “No active reserve duty requirement for Vietnam draftees.”  Fuckin A! The VA (Veterans Administration) was boo-coo number ONE! They even gave me a swell booklet entitled: Once a Veteran… (click on to view) I figured that everything I needed to know about being a veteran I could read someday. But for now I was too happy being a civilian.

The Army said that they didn't need me anymore, so with their permission I went home (my early-out ETS had been approved for no earlier than 24 August). I departed Oakland on 13 August. They informed all of us that the moment we removed our uniforms, we were officially out of the Army. Until that time we were expected to behave like soldiers. Some of the guys stripped in front of Oakland's main gate! Me, I waited until I got home. Two days earlier I had been in the boonies. I had to relearn how to behave amongst civilized people.

¹The Class A, dress, summer uniform, was fabricated of lightweight nylon material and included a tan, long sleeve, poplin shirt, black tie, black Oxford style shoes, and a saucer or piss cutter style (also called a c_  _t cap named for a part of the female anatomy below the waist). The uniform pictured here is missing a white on black plastic name tag above the right breast pocket and the 9th Infantry Division, color, Octofoil patch on the left shoulder (I lost the nametag on the way home from Oakland when it snagged on something and fell off unnoticed, and I cut off the Octofoil patch for an Old Reliable who never saved one).