LITMIR.BIZ

      PREFACE

      THERE are as many different pictures of a war as there are eyes through which to view it. We make no claim to having seen or heard it all, for to do so would be foolish and untrue. What you are about to read is, however, what we did see, what we did hear, and what we did feel.

      DON PRATT

       LEE BLAIR

      WHEN the hard-core Boonie Rat returns home from a tour in Vietnam, he has no qualms whatever about telling it like it is. He bombards his friends and relatives with war stories of the first magnitude: tales of devastating fire-fights, of getting cut off or surrounded by the VC, massive heliborne assaults, stepping on punji stakes and mines, mortar and rocket attacks, and just about every other form of wartime violence.

      But when the guy who has spent a tour with a rear-echelon support unit in the relative security of Saigon is asked about his experiences, he will invariably reply: "It was terrible. I don't wanna talk about it."

      * * *

      "GET your ducks in a row, get down to Vietnam, and join the advance party."

      The orders were from the brigade commander, not to me but to Captain John B. Oliver, my boss. I was one of the ducks.

      It was May 3, 1965.

      We bummed a ride on a C-1 30 out of Naha, Okinawa, with a load of Special Forces men. Most of them had been commuting between Oki and Vietnam for years, and their cool quenched any anxieties I had had.

      When we stopped at Nha Trang, the Green Beret contingent left us and we were joined by 97 Vietnamese rangers, also bound for Tan Son Nhut. There were considerably more passengers than seats, and a load of cargo as well. It was hot and stuffy, as only a C-130 can be, and the Viets were extremely susceptible to air-sickness. They had just come off an operation and were loaded down with weapons, ammo, and grenades, for which they had little respect. My anxieties returned.

      We spent the night on the floor of a hut in a Special Forces compound, and met the brigade's main body the next morning. My second night passed slowly in a foxhole on the Bien Hoa Air Base perimeter.

      Some two years later I landed at Tan Son Nhut again, this time after a plush flight in a 600 mph commercial jet. On hand to meet me were two old friends, Lee Blair and Army Master Sergeant Al Corbin. They whisked me through customs and delivered me to an air-conditioned hotel room in Saigon where we celebrated my arrival with a nip from a bottle of fine old bourbon.

      Who said we're not making progress in this war?

      * * *

      MY arrival in Vietnam was considerably less spectacular. There was no one to meet me as my unit knew only that I was expected "sometime in February." I had been in Saigon for a few days in 1955 en route to Bangkok, but remembered little of the visit.

      The heat was uncomfortable, but otherwise I didn't feel much of anything. The air was ripe with strange sounds and smells, and the Vietnamese language seemed to have a lilting, almost musical quality about it. Maybe it wasn't going to be as bad as everyone had made it out to be, and perhaps reports reaching the United States were somewhat exaggerated.