VIETNAM CHAPLAIN: SEPTEMBER, 1968

Jack Day's

Worlds

Vietnam Chaplain
Central Highlands Diary
September, 1968: Dak To to the Oasis

Letter to Home, 4 September. Dak To.

Topic of conversation at the table: the engineers had put up a bridge over a culvert yesterday so the MP's could have an easier time patrolling the perimeter, and apparently during the night the whores had taken it down again, not wishing to be patrolled, only then the Headquarters company commander confessed he had gone out to the firing range yesterday and crossed the bridge coming back, only the railing had not been quite wide enough for a jeep with shovels and several other things attached to the side, so he had kind of dragged the bridge with him... Sunday, 8 September. Dak To.

Letter to Home. Very little to do here right now, the rains have really closed in. Haven't been able to get out to the firebases now for over two weeks. The soldiers out there are really miserable, wet, cold, hungry, pinned down by the enemy and unable to get birds in except occasionally the daring pilots of the med evac dust off ships. The wounded who are brought back are in pretty bad shape just from the elements.

Most firebases are OK, but a couple they had just been opening up, thinking the monsoons were over, when they closed back in again. Now every day they say it's going to get better, but when you wake up in the morning – fog and rain and cold dampness everywhere.

The rains cut down the air travel between here and Pleiku, and have also washed out about half the bridges on the road, so no convoys are getting through.

Not needing the tent upstairs for sleeping, we turned it into a chapel in the round, with an altar in the center and seats all around. Bruce wanted some lumber for a floor, went round asking people until the 299th Engineers gave him some. He said it was for the chaplain. They were very willing to give it to him. He was surprised but who looks a gift horse in the mouth? He brought the lumber back. I think I know the score. The engineers also have a chaplain, who is building a chapel over in Alpha City. I'm now waiting for him to come storming in claiming we got his lumber. The floor looks great.

When the convoy comes up there will be a portable organ in it which came from the Conex at Pleiku that I had to clean out. So I'll have an organ upstairs also.

Went out to the 3/8 helicopter pad and waited from 1:30 to 4:30, finally got on a slick headed for Firebase 31 which I haven't been able to get to for a couple of weeks, but halfway up the valley the pilot saw the mountaintop was socked in, so he turned and came back. I did get to play tourist, as we flew over Bridge 3 which no longer exists, having been washed out by the swollen river, which completely did away with our bridge and the old French bridge beside it, which had been standing all this time although without planking. What the VC sappers have been trying to do with explosives all this time, and failed to accomplish, mother Nature did in a week of idiotic weather.

There is a place where a Montagnard can go for six weeks. He will be taught how to care for and raise chickens, and the uses of eggs, feathers, etc. Upon graduation he will be given 300 chickens. Many Montagnards go. Some quit after a couple of days. Some never get there. Some quit halfway through, getting bored. Some graduate, get their chickens, and sell them on the black market. It can get discouraging.

Well, I think we may be leaving soon to try for 31 again. May spend a couple of days there. Will take the camera.

Units visited, according to the sermon record: 3/8 Trains at Dak To -- Sermon 5

Letter to Home. 10 September. Dak To.

Got the word yesterday that we are moving. Just after getting everything fixed up. That's the way it goes, of course. I'm trying to keep the bunker from being destroyed, will probably have to sell the refrigerator to the next occupants or at least loan it out for a couple of months.

I'll probably go down to Camp Enari tomorrow, stay there three or four days, then move elsewhere.

14 September

Units visited, according to sermon record: 704th Maintenance, at Brigade -- Sermon 2, 15 in attendance)

16 September: Leaving Dak To.

While the Batallions expected to move from place to place, moving a Brigade Headquarters was more involved.

Rolling Sidewalks

0119 Leaving meant rolling up the sidewalks.

Truck out of Dak To

0120 We left by truck

Mines

0121 The road had to be checked for mines along the way.

The Oasis From Dak To, the First Brigade located to the "Oasis", beside an airstrip on QL 19 south west of Camp Enari and a few miles east of the Cambodian border.

Oasis from air

0127 Looking down on the Oasis gives an impression of the space required for a Brigade Headquarters

17 September (3/8, LZ Oasis) Letter to Home. 17 September; 3/8, LZ Oasis.

Am lying on a cot in a tent in a rainstorm at the Oasis – 3rd Brigade area where 3/8 has moved, a ½ hour drive west of Camp Enari (Pleiku).

Yesterday Bruce and I left Dak To – we were just about ready, saw our plane land, jumped in the jeep and raced to the airfield, drove to the rear of the plane, got out, got on, and took off. Fantastic timing. Only hit one pot hole art 40 mph and nearly turned over. Arrived at Enari with a half duffel bag. Talked myself into 1 small tent, 1 jeep and trailer, 2 cots by the time I got here. I got a military .license yesterday, so am legal.

Have 4 guys sharing the tent tonight. It's a mad house – water coming in – we didn't dig the ditches too well – leaking thru the tent – we didn't seal it too well – and we're setting here laughing about what's going to happen next, and there inside the door sits a frog, old pimply toad type, very self-assured. We finally evicted him.

Tomorrow I'll fly to one of two firebases 3/8 has here – Kay and Nancy.

HQ Co, which is supposed to supply a jeep, is always short. 3/8 has a surplus. "Sure, Chaplain, you need a jeep? Take one for as long as you want." Down to the motor pool. Feel like I'm buying a car at a lot. Which one shall I take? They all look alike. Got a nice one. Drives funny with a row of sandbags on the floor – can hardly get my heels on the pedals. But's fun driving .

23 September

Monday 23 September -- B Company 2/8 -- Sermon 2, 15 in attendance)

APC ALTAR

0009 Altar on an APC

Unlike the First Brigade units, the Second Brigade had a mechanized infantry unit, the Second of the 8th. One day I was near one of their locations and a chaplain had not visited them for a while, so I provided a Protestant service, with the altar set up on the front of an Armored Personnel Carrier.

24 September (3/8, LZ Oasis)

Letter to Home. We're now waiting for the afternoon convoy to Camp Enari; we're going in for tonight and tomorrow morning at the chaplain conference which I usually try to avoid. Dr. Pat Smith from Kontum is going to speak, which sounds interesting. She is one of these hardy civilian type doctors just out here operating a hospital, not exactly oblivious to the war but not particularly phased by it either.

Took an aerial photo of the Oasis this morning. It's half an hour by convoy from Camp Enari, through a French tea plantation in which Charlie hangs out. The way Charlie and the French hang together here you'd never think they used to be enemies.

Oasis looking east

0126 From the air, looking east from the Oasis toward Camp Enari. Camp Enari is just beyond the mountain, upper right, with a flat top.

Yesterday was an amazing day. The chaplain for 2nd Bn, 8th Inf, which belongs to 2nd Brigade, but like us is in the 3rd Brigade area right now, is sick, so I told him I'd cover his people. Went to find them, the bird let me off at one of their locations, then told me to get back on, I was supposed to go to another place first. Next place I got off, after the bird had gone, I realized from having looked at maps the place was Plei Mrong, where there's an airstrip, artillery, 3rd Brigade forward HQ and now 3/8 forward HQ also. But no 2/8 people. Went to Brigade to see about another bird, they said yes, but wait outside. So I'm sitting on this bunker outside the TOC reading Rabbit, Run, and this man with a bird on his collar asks Bruce what he's doing. We stand up (lock our heels would you believe) and Bruce finally manages to say he's with the chaplain. The man, who I have decided by this time is the 3rd Brigade CO, then adds to his yelling and screaming about not having built a public patio there that he didn't ask for ecclesiastical guidance and would we get the hell out of there and then adds that goes for me, too. Balance the railroad tracks against the eagle and figured I would. Also felt like heading straight back to the Oasis, to hell with these people, it's what you get for trying to do someone a favor, but then figured why should these good kids out in the sticks suffer because of this ass, and anyway why should I change my plans just because of some idiotic colonel? Finally got a bird out and the 2/8 CO nearly fell all over himself with appreciation, so I figured they're not all bad.

Had a good afternoon, but because of bad weather the bird I left on couldn't make it to the Oasis. Would I like to be let off at Camp Enari? No, not particularly, you're going back to Camp Holloway aren't you? Well why don't I just spend the night there and I'll be right with the birds tomorrow morning. (Holloway is where the helicopters sleep). He called in, and I was met at the pad by a jeep, taken to a VIP room with real sheets and a pillow, and hot and cold running water and a flush toilet plus a refrigerator with one cold beer in it.

I like the work here in Vietnam. At this point it is really the only point in staying in the Army... I am tempted to extend for six months. The main reason for this would be that I feel I'm doing something worthwhile here.

Tuesday, 24 September -- C Company 2/8 -- Sermon 2, 23 in attendance) 26 September (3/8, LZ Oasis)

Letter to Home. Went out to Plei Mrong today, had a couple of services. One of our companies is in contact with the enemy, a couple killed. Bad news. Not one person since I've been here killed by bullets – all mortar and rocket fragments.

I'm sitting here in my tent at the Oasis watching Bewitched... Bruce splurged $110 on a TV set at the PX at Enari so now we get channel 11, Armed Forces Vietnam - TV. So we have an illusion of domesticity – TV, refrigerator, a new bed with springs – while out in the hills the fighting still goes on – a few here, a few there – you get used to it in a sense – it's just numbers – until you talk to the people close to them and even then it's so easy to be unctuous like a funeral director or something. The only way to stay human is to get to know everyone personally so that when the loss comes it is personal, too.

Gradually, tho, I think we are doing something worthwhile here. Perhaps the Communists are helping us at this point – ever since TET, they've terrorized the people indiscriminately and turned many against them. 40,000 demonstrated against them in Da Nang today. The ARVNs no longer turn and run like they used to. I think we can win, and that will be the only thing making all this worthwhile.

Col. Yarborough had been CO of 3/8 until recently. I had a long conversation with him one day sitting on his cot in a CONEX on a mountain top, drinking a beer he had offered me. Talking about his family. He has a son starting at Swarthmore this fall. "What will the others say when they hear you've got a father commanding a battalion in Vietnam?" "Well, Dad, maybe I just won't mention it!" The next time I saw Saladin (his code name, related, I think to his being 12 hours short of a Ph D in Arabic History) he was at 71st evac in Pleiku – after his helicopter had been shot down over a hot LZ. Both legs broken, one foot shattered. Under sedation. Back to California now, to the house he was building – but not the way he wanted to come. Who gives a damn about the purple heart?

E Company 3/8 -- Sermon 5 (43 in attendance)

1st Platoon C Company 3/8 & C Company 2/9 -- Sermon 5 (13 in attendance) Civic Action

Our new brigade at the Oasis, on route 19 southwest of 4th Division Headquarters at Camp Enari, opened up new activities.

An activity which did not involve combat was 'civic action' in which goods such as excess food or services such as medical care were provided to the local community as a good will gesture. I accompanied the civic action teams a couple of times. One of these times, I had heard that there was a Protestant congregation located along route 19, and we visited them with a truckload of food. Any such visit was accompanied by obligatory pictures!

Chaplain, Pastor and Children

0005 With Pastor of Tin Lanh ("Evangelical") Church and children on Route 19

The terrain included very mountainous areas near the border with Laos and Cambodia, and then, nearer Pleiku, large valley areas which had small mountains or hills in their midst. These afforded magnificent views.

Mountaintop Firebase

0008 Mountaintop Firebase

View from a Bubble

0108 At the same time, creating firebases meant opening up what had been triple canopy jungle.

Shot Up
0304 LOH With Bullet Holes

0304 One day while flying in to visit a unit on such a mountain, the LOH in which my assistant and I were flying took ground fire, probably from a lone sniper in the valley. The helicopter became harder to control, but the pilot maneuvered it to the firebase until we were about a foot off the helicopter pad, and then we heard a 'pop' and the helicopter dropped the final foot.

On inspection, one round had gone through the main rotor and one through the tail rotor without incapacitating either; one had drilled a hole through the main drive shaft without breaking it; one had gone through the fusilage over the back seat about 6 inches above my assistant's head, and one had frayed the main control cable without breaking it. This was what had given the pilot the control problem, and it finally broke when we were a foot off the pad.

Attaching the LOH

0109 Huey takes on a Load

LOH carried away

0048 In the photo above, a Huey has come the next day to carry the LOH away for repair.

Writing Letters

0049 Large missions required that many activities be coordinated, and from the perspective of troops on the ground, that meant time spent waiting for something to happen. While waiting, many wrote letters.

In Memoriam, September, 1968

18 September, 1968

PFC Michael Edward Zibura, Jr., Boonton, NJ; B Co, 3/8

24 September, 1968

SGT Louis Andrew Niemeyer, Jr; Bowling Green, MO; C Co, 3/8
PFC James E. Pennington, Jr; Atwood, IL; C Co, 3/8
SP4 Joseph Kent Searle, Park City, UT; C Co, 3/8
PFC Thomas Joseph Smoczynski, Chicago, IL; C Co, 3/8

26 September, 1968

PSG Gregorio Meno Camacho, Toccoa, GA; C Co, 3/8
1LT Jack Albert Plucinski, Harvey, IL; C Co, 3/8

30 September, 1968

PFC John Dalton, Riverdale, NJ; D Co, 3/8
SP4 Van Leslie Durham, Seattle, WA; D Co, 3/8

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©1999-2005 Jackson H. Day. All photos taken by Jackson Day or by Chaplain Assistants Danny Warschauer or Bruce Chaffee unless otherwise noted. "Letter to Home" contains actual excerpts from letters written at the time. All Rights Reserved. Updated January 1, 2005