In 1969, I was halfway round the world, stationed as a hospital medic at Tan Son Nhut Air Base outside of Saigon...in the rear with the gear kind of duty. I had, by that time, two and one half years of Air Force life nearing the title of "combat veteran". Christmas for us was a somber, quiet time...we all wanted to be somewhere else doing anything else.
Tan Son Nhut Air Base was a large base, connected with the Military Assistance Command - Vietnam or MACV. Thousands were stationed there from every participating nation. I was a part of a hospital and medical evacuation squadron. One tiny cog in a massive machine of death. I had not, in that time, figured out the war, I was just doing my duty.
As Christmas approached, the chief morale officer of the base must have approached the commanding officer, a brigadier general whose name is long forgotten, and came up with the lovely, novel idea of decorating the giant radar domes with Christmas lighting. One to be festooned with a huge neon lit cross, the other with a Christmas star. They were observable for miles, for these domes were some of the tallest buildings on base.
Our hooch was located about one hundred meters from the domes and they literally lit the area up at night with these bright decorations. GIs were ambivalent for the most part and some even joked that the garish neon symbols might be offensive to the Vietnamese people as well as being targets. Even so, there was nothing we could do, so we sat around drinking Crown Royal and beer, smoking whatever was being passed around. We all knew it was just another SNAFU.
Some nights later we heard the far off sounds of rocket fire hitting Saigon north of us, usually a barrage of five to seven rockets. These fires were met with counter-battery fire from our artillery. Over the next few nights, more rockets fell, growing ever nearer to the base. Finally one night, the rockets bingoed us, and it seemed as if the sky filled with rockets and the ground shook from impact. The base alert siren blasted, and we all scrambled to gear up and await orders. Rockets kept coming, and while standing around with our aid bags (a standard GI function, regardless of the situation), an ambulance pulls up, the rear doors kicked open, and someone yelled, "we need some medics." Assuming that a moving target was harder to hit, I climbed aboard and spent the next several hours cruising the air base assisting casualties and transporting them to the emergency room. All in all, injuries were few and slight.
Needless to say, the star and cross were shut down and removed. Some knucklehead in headquarters figured out the North Vietnamese were using the star and cross as aiming points and walked the rockets right up through Saigon to the domes. The morale officer was never heard from again. I guess he wound up in Alaska counting blankets in the snow.
It all seems ancient, dreamlike now. While writing and rewriting this piece, more of the story came out through that fog of yesterday. Yet, I can remember a time when I was considered one of the baddest men on earth...a heavily armed twenty year old wearing an American uniform. No one in uniform comes home uninjured.
