My initial obligated service time was two years. The Army scheduled my first assignment at Fort Lewis so that I would have my last year in Vietnam. Bonnie and I traveled by car back across the United States as I spent 30 days leave prior to being deployed. We visited California, Las Vegas and a number of tourist spots along the way. I remember not having a lot of money and these weren't the days of credit cards so the money I started with in my wallet wasn't much to begin with and there would be no more until reaching my parent's house in Indianapolis. On one night in perhaps Arizona it was one of those occasions where we were looking for a motel and the Interstate exits were few and far apart. Well, we passed up some opportunities and soon it was very late and we were desperate. But an exit came up and it had a motel! I pulled in and was met at the counter by a very nice clerk. Yes, they had rooms. But stupidly I asked if I could see one. They handed me a key and I looked. The room was GREAT! I went back to the reception area and asked how much. The receptionist said $15. I shrugged, put the key up on the counter, and turned away like the amount was too much, but then I turned back and asked if they had a military rate. They did: $12. I don't know what I was doing but I sure got lucky. If they let me keep walking Bonnie would have killed me, and rightly so.

We visited my parents and then drove on to Virginia Beach, where Bonnie would be staying with her parents and continuing her schooling while I was overseas. Soon it was time to go. I caught a military hop from Langley Air Force Base and it got me to Nellis AFB in Las Vegas. Then I caught an inexpensive commercial flight into San Francisco and somehow got to Travis AFB.

I stayed overnight in a BOQ there and my roommate was an Army captain who was there to escort the remains of an officer who had died in Vietnam. Sweet dreams!

I don't remember much about the flight except that it was long. It landed at Bihn Hoa Air Base and the next stop was the 90th Replacement Battalion. Almost all replacements went through there; a three day stop fior processing and to receive one's in-country assignment. While there I met my cousin, Roy Braden, who was also processing in. Small world.

I was assigned to the 169th Engineer Battalion (Construction) in nearby Long Bihn. Long Bihn was a massive American military complex, with a PX and all the amenities. I spent my first day riding around with the battalion commander. He might have been showing me the things the battalion was doing, or he might have been sizing me up. Probably both. Ultimately I was assigned as a platoon leader in Company D. My first project was a massive, reinforced concrete mostly-underground bunker for the Third Corps Tactical Operations Center (TOC) in Long Binh. This project was right in the middle of the corps headquarters so it got plenty of visibility. We mixed concrete by loading bags of cement and boxes of sand and gravel into the top of a concrete transite truck made by putting a commercial drum on top of a five ton dump truck frame. We were in the rainy season, so there were challenges of keeping the site dry enough to work. The project had been started by another unit, but the word was that they were relieved of the job. Someone before me had fabricated massive concrete forms using corrugated metal and angle iron. Good for multiple uses. Ultimately the job would take nearly 2,000 cubic years of concrete and nearly six months to complete. Being in the middle of the corps headquarters area, I had plenty of supervision, especially from the headquarters commandant, who was much into cleanliness and neatness. We worked six days a week; I was at the job site six days a week. The project got lots of visitors. In general it went well. There was a time, however, when boots for the soldiers became a problem. Concrete tends to eat up boots. There was evidently a shortage at the time because we couldn't find any replacements. I found a nearby aviation unit that needed some concrete for a project of they had, something like a barbecue pit, and I traded concrete for boots. Aviators have everything.

I was pulled off the project just once. I was called to run a generator and light set down to the Saigon River to help light the bridge piers so that they could be better defended against VC sapper attacks. There was a taciturn Special Forces major there who was advising the local South Vietnamese bridge defenders. He was a man of few words as I recall. It was tough getting the equipment set up in the slick grass and mud of the river bank but we did it. I was glad when the light set worked. We drove back to Long Bihn that night; QL1 was largely safe. Never knew what happened to that equipment.

After we completed the TOC we moved to a road building project on QL20, restoring a section of the road originally built by the French, but in disrepair. I was put in charge of creating a base camp, which I did on the south side of the La Nga River, somewhat across from the local village and regional forces (RUFF-PUFF) outpost. To do this, I had large timber bunkers pre-cut at our base in Long Bihn and we made the trek up QL20 with an escort from the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. We really just begged our way into the escort, and the 11th ACR was none too happy when it dawned on them that they would be going two hours up and two hours back a dangerous stretch of road. On the way, for example, we passed a battleground, with military equipment strewn around the ground – a Vietnamese unit had been tricked into thinking it was responding to an attack further south but was actually lured into a massive and costly ambush. Upon arriving at the river, we pushed up two large concentric circles of berm, the inside one for us, and the outside one for Vietnamese units that were rotated into the area for our security. We constructed our bunkers, sandbagged them, put lots of wire and trip flares around the perimeter, built a mess hall and showers using Navy cubes for the latter. We forded the river with our heavy equipment and began working our way north with road repairs. Essentially we widened the shoulders, installed culverts for drainage, and prepared the road for asphalt paving. For this task we had an element from the company headquarters for mess and maintenance, two earthmoving platoons (one from another company), and a construction platoon, over 100 men. For daytime security along the road work we had the local forces in the nearby wood line. For base camp security, in addition to the Vietnamese Army and the trip wires on flares, we had a 50 caliber machine gun with a starlight scope in a tower at the center of the camp.

The VC did not do much to impede our progress. We did turn up some mines with our heavy equipment, but our best defense was clearing back the vegetation and opening the road to more civilian traffic. Every now and then the VC would pile rocks in the road that would stop all traffic until we used a grappling hook to drag them off the road. We were ambushed seriously once in March by an NVA unit, and we lost a dozer to a rocket propelled grenade. I was carrying a box of four M-72 Light Antitank Weapons with me on that day. We got to the ambush site and I could see the dozer burning and hear the firing. I guessed that the VC were in the woodline on the west side of the road and my driver Ford and I fired the four rockets into the woodline there. That might have broken up the attack as maybe the VC thought they were getting hit with artillery, but I don't know. I do know that they responded by walking mortar rounds over the top of the jeep. Ford and I ran and got down in a very shallow ditch. The rounds walked over us and while the jeep had something like over 60 shrapnel holes, Ford only got one; he was lightly wounded in the side.

I have written a novel based on many of my Vietnam experiences. It is called QL 20.