My Culture Shock: Vietnam...

My Culture Shock: Vietnam

The first of many culture shocks that came with my tour of duty in Vietnam was experienced while still in the States.  

How so, you might ask?   Well, it went like this… I was a Buck Sergeant in charge of the on-the-job-training program for my flight (similar to an Army company in size).  This responsibility was thrust upon me at the tender age of 19 by my flight commander, an old Arkansas Razorback, cigar-chewing type who always seemed to have some drivel down the side of his mouth.  Raunchy!

In any event, this job took me off the flight line (the flight line meant guarding the B-52 heavy bombers and the KC-135 refueling tankers) for the cozy – and warm! – munitions storage facility where I had my files and records for the men I was responsible for training and upgrading.  I was pretty successful at my new position and continued in that job for nearly 18 months.  Not bad for a kid from the Bronx…

So how could this be the first culture shock of my upcoming tour in Vietnam?

When the flight commander picked me for the OJT job, I was no longer guarding the big jets in the rain, snow, cold, lightning and thunder, etc.  But!  There were other airmen that had more rank and time-in-grade than I did, so there was some jealousy on their part because I was chosen for that special job.  It was thought that I snuggled up to the flight commander or some such thing, in order to get that OJT job, but I didn’t, of course.

So here comes that first culture shock of my Vietnam duty: I actually had at least one of the senior airmen wish and hope that I would “get it” in Vietnam.  In other words, that I would get killed!  There were also other threats made, but to no avail.  I simply went about my duties and told them to do what they wanted; in a sense, I really didn’t care about them anyway, though we were still brothers…

December 16, 1967: my departure date for Vietnam…

The second “culture shock” came when I flew over the Pacific on my way to Vietnam. We were scheduled to land for refueling at Wake Island.  Now Wake Island was the scene of a big battle between the Japanese and the Marines back in World War II, in any event, as we approached that tiny dot in that BIG ocean, I said to my seat-mate: are we going to land on that??  He assured me that, yes, we were, in fact going to land on that “dot”!  He was a “veteran” of such travels; I, on the other hand, was not!  We successfully landed on that “dot”; refueled, and continued on our journey…

The third culture shock came when I first landed at Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam; not what I expected in the sense of what an air base should be as far as being secure; it wasn’t, at least not from my perspective; I was used to very strict perimeter and facilities security.  I felt these guys were an easy target for the VC (Viet Cong), but I didn’t stay there very long; a quick process in, then boarded a C-130 troop carrier, and off to Tuy Hoa air base in upper (northern) II Corps…

The fourth culture shock hit me like a ton of bricks when that C-130 landed at night at Tuy Hoa… The first thing I saw were the red tracer rounds being fired from the big .50 caliber heavy machine-guns from the Army base to our south.  I could see the tracers bouncing off the rocks of the foothills a couple of thousand yards in the distance.  I thought: Well, I’m really in it now…

The next – fifth – culture shock was the first night on the perimeter; there were no perimeter lights in that section; it was pitch-black; couldn’t see 10 feet in front of us, and the jerk I was assigned with that night to man the machine-gun bunker, kept the M-60 machine-gun wrapped up in the protective covering instead of taking it out and setting it up ready to spit out the 600 rounds-per-minute at the unseen enemy, that is, if he were to attack.  Thank heaven there was no attack that night. That was the first, and last, time I stood watch with that thick-headed brother…

There were many more “culture shocks” I could mention, but one that really caught my attention was an incident that happened on a very quiet night, that is, until about 1:30am… I was on a machine-gun bunker with a black brother; all of a sudden there was the very distinct – and loud – sound of mortar rounds leaving the tube, being fired practically right in front of us, behind the little huts that housed the Vietnamese villagers just off the base.  I quickly called in the attack to headquarters...

We couldn’t see the flash from the mortar, but if we did, I would have opened-up with the M-60 and cut those little huts in half to get at the mortar crew and neutralize their attempt to destroy us and the munitions storage area – their main target. 

As the rounds were coming in, I told my brother to keep an eye on one part of the perimeter, and I would watch another section, as the modus operandi of the enemy was to follow-up a mortar or rocket attack with a ground attack! 

There was no ground attack!!

After the mortar rounds stopped, it was dead quiet again.  Talk about being on pins and needles! 

It was common in a war zone to go from boredom to chaos in seconds.  I was part of many such incidents over my year in Vietnam guarding the perimeter of the two air bases that I was assigned to; the fist six months at Tuy Hoa, and the second six months at Cam Ranh Bay, the base I originally landed when I first arrived in-country…

What is so ironic about my tour in Vietnam, is that the biggest culture shock I experienced was when I came back to the U.S. (we called it the world). 

I was not the same as the year before I went to Vietnam; I had changed; I was different.  It is still with me to this day; it will never leave me; it is always on my mind.  I pray for my brothers every day…

The End?

Gene DeLalla