My Vietnam Miserable Ride

My Vietnam— Miserable Ride

The ship’s name was the USNS Gaffey (1944-2000) and our Battalion of HAWK missiles along with another departed Oakland, Calf on Sept.11, 1965 after a great night’s sleep in my own private sleeper on a train ride from El Paso, Texas where I had been stationed for about a year. As we left the port, I got to see the Golden Gate Bridge though the port holes while pulling KP.

We were told later that our missiles were being shipped by the way of the Panama Canal because the hippies in Oakland were disrupting some military trains because of the Vietnam War build up since the President ordered it some months before. Prior to 1965 most of the military in Nam were advisors— does it sound familiar to today’s time? We were never told where we were going until we got back on the ship after a 6 hour liberty in Naha, Okinawa. In fact my parents did not know until I wrote them about a month after being in Nam.

The second day out, I along with everyone else stayed on deck because after breakfast no one was allowed below deck all day, every day for the next 19 days it was the same routine. We only went below to our bunks at night. Oh my God was it boring! Some played cards, chess, checkers, cribbage, rolled dice, read, talked, or watched the ocean. After that day, I volunteered to wash pots & pans on KP for nearly the whole voyage just to have something to do.

Our sleeping quarter was something else: little ventilation, hotter than hell (some said it measured as high as 120 degrees), packed in like sardines, bunk beds four high and bolted 6” away with another four high and about two foot between another series of bunks. With hundreds of young men in close quarters their body odor was ripe; not counting if someone had gas and you can imagine the accumulated smell.

I chose the lowest bunk at the end of the big room next to a locked door that had about an inch of cool air coming under it. To be fair we put a couple pieces of cardboard to deflect the air flow to each side and this worked well until a short very fat older E-5 (RA) decided to lie on the floor in front of the door and knocked down the cardboard so that he could have all the cooler air. When I put the cardboard up again he attacked me and put me in a head lock until others pulled him off of me and he was placed somewhere on the ship by the SGT. in charge of this area.

I was sick the whole trip, not upchucking like some others but sick to my stomach therefore did not eat much because of the rocking/rolling of the ship. One learned when going to the toilet be sure to get the middle one so the water would be less likely to splash your butt. After a while we ran out of fresh water to take a shower with and then we were using salt water.

These 19 days were probably the worst, most miserable time that I had spent in the army.

On Sept.29th we stopped to let the other HAWK missile battalion off the ship near Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam. Two days later on Oct 1st at near Vung Tau, Vietnam we go off the ship by LCM (landing craft mechanized) with our weapons and then were rushed to airplanes (C123) waiting for us and then were flown to Bien Hoa. We were able to see recent craters in the airfield from mortars or rockets as we landed. We spent our first night sleeping in an airplane hangar. Large tents were set up just outside the hangars for us where we spent the second night. It was raining heavy that evening and just after dark, mortars started going off. Our captain was yelling “hit the dirt” and some soldiers were jumping into an uncovered bunker with him that was half full of water and just like in the movies there was someone in our tent yelling—“we are all going to die” before we shut him up. As it turned out all the mortars were outgoing.

Welcome to Viet Nam.

Hope you enjoyed another true story from my past. Bobby Floyd