I left the sergeant major's office to head back to my team room. One of the clerks stopped me and handed me a single sheet of paper.
"Tough luck, man," he said sympathetically.
I acknowledged his remark with an absentminded nod as I read the document:
Notification of Pending Reassignment / Permanent Change of Station for:
Jamison, Jody L. RA14269268, SSG, MOSC 11B3S, C Co, 3rd SFG(A), 1st SF Ft Bragg, NC
Unit of assignment: HQ, 5th SFG(A), 1st SF RVN
Reporting date: 15 Jan 1968.
Special Instructions: SM will attend the eight week XVIIIth Airborne Corp limited fluency Vietnamese language course prior to PCS.
I looked up at the still hovering clerk and asked him a question.
"This says I have to attend language school, when does that happen?"
"The sergeant major called over there as soon as this came in and raised hell until they agreed to let you in week after next. He did that so you could have a full thirty days leave before you shipped out."
I wandered back down the company street to our team house, my mind racing a thousand miles an hour. I knew this day might come, and had discussed the possibility with Megan. We'd made some contingency plans, and had even consulted with Megan's parents about me pulling a hardship or combat tour. Of course Mom and Dad Stedman thought that Megan and Shelby belonged in Valdosta if I was deployed. Megan, though, was not sure about that. Megan liked being the woman of her own house and doing things her way.
I stopped my wool gathering when I arrived at our team room and found everyone waiting on me. I looked at them all inquisitively.
"Ashton called and gave me a heads up," Ryan explained.
I tried out a grin.
"Yep, looks like I won't be the team cherry any more," I joked.
The old vets called me cherry boy sometimes, because I was the only one on the team who had never been in combat. My joke didn't fall totally flat as it drew a couple of sniggers. Then Ryan opened his mouth again and I found out what good friends I'd made here.
"I can probably get you out of going, Opie. I know Missus Alexander at the SF assignments branch, and since your orders aren't cut yet, I might be able to persuade her to flag your alert..."
Before he could say anything else, Squirrel jumped in.
"Tell her I volunteer to go in his place, that ought to make it easier. Megan and the baby need him here more than we need him there."
Both men looked at me for an answer. I was speechless for a few seconds as I contemplated what they were offering. It was a great idea with only one problem ... it wasn't right.
"Thanks guys, but they picked me, so it's mine to do. But listen, I'll be around for three more months and I sure wouldn't mind if you guys taught me what you thought I needed to know over there."
Ryan sent me home so I could give the news to Megan. I wasn't real keen on the idea of telling her, but I always tried to be straight up with her. Honesty was a biggie in our relationship.
I called out, "Honey, I'm home," as soon as I walked through the door.
Megan came out of the kitchen with an arm full of smiling, gurgling, chubby cheeked Shelby. Megan suspected something as soon as she saw my face.
"What happened?"
"I've been alerted; I'm shipping out."
"Nam?" she asked.
I nodded.
"When?"
"After the first of the year. I have two months of language school and a month of leave."
She nodded and handed me the baby. Shelby cooed and grabbed my finger with a happy smile. I bounced her in my arms a little and she made another happy noise. Shelby was Daddy's girl. I shifted Shelby so I could cradle her in the crook of my left arm, and wrapped my right around my wife.
"At least we'll be together for Christmas," Meggie said as she burrowed herself under my arm.
Of course, that wasn't the end of our discussing my deployment. I told her about Ryan's offer to get me out of going, and how I'd turned it down. She actually smiled at that.
"They know you well enough by now to know you wouldn't do that, but it was nice of them to offer. You need to invite Jerry over for Sunday Dinner, and I'll fix him some country fried steak," she said.
Megan had a huge heart and an ability to see the good in everyone. She was especially fond of Squirrel Smeltzer, because she said all his weirdness was a mask he wore to hide a tormented soul. I wasn't so sure about that, but Squirrel sure was a different person around Megan and Shelby. As hard as it was to believe, Squirrel Smeltzer, the man with a gun in one boot and a knife in the other, was the only person, other than her mother and Roxanne, who Megan trusted to babysit Shelby. I almost had a heart attack the first time she told me she'd asked him to watch Shelby so we could go out. Megan brushed off my arguments that Squirrel would probably make Shelly a doll out of C-4 or a necklace out of detonating cord. Why would she want a man who fricasseed his next-door neighbor's poodle because the yapping annoyed him, babysitting our precious daughter?
My fears were put to rest when Squirrel turned up that first time with this attractive but stern looking woman with him. It turns out the woman was an Army nurse who worked at Womack at the well baby clinic. Squirrel had hired the woman to teach him how to take care of Shelby.
Language school was only five hours a day, a morning session from 0900-1130, and an afternoon session from 1230-1500. That schedule allowed me to take PT and have breakfast with my team in the morning. For a bunch of guys waiting around to retire, my teammates were surprisingly gung-ho about PT, and after I was alerted for Vietnam, they became even more serious about it. Everyone agreed that stamina was what I needed to train towards, so we did less airborne shuffle and more walking/running with a fifty pound rucksack. Well, at least my ruck weighed fifty pounds; everyone else's looked suspiciously light.
For an hour and a half, three afternoons a week, the old guys held 'keep Jody alive' training. I learned how to be a sneaky, deadly son of a bitch at the hands of masters of the craft. Squirrel taught me about booby traps, both how to make them and how to recognize and avoid them. Ryan taught me about the tactics the Vietcong and their North Vietnamese masters used, and Preacher Hinson taught me how to conduct myself in the jungle. Doc Wilson gave me emergency medical training geared towards survival. Megan almost fainted the first time I proudly showed her the ten stitches I used to close a Squirrel-administered cut on my arm.
I completed the language course at the end of November. I tested out at level two in both speaking and reading. I didn't speak as if I was a native, but I could communicate. S-2/R-2 was also good enough to qualify me for language proficiency pay, a welcomed extra twenty-five dollars a month. My pay and allowance now totaled about five hundred dollars a month before taxes.
I took leave all the month of December of 1967 and the first three days of January 1968. On January fourth, those silver wings of the KC-135 tanker took me away. Leaving Megan and Shelby was hard on me, but I was comforted that I had done everything possible to make sure my family was taken care of while I was away. Megan put on a brave face, but she was clearly worried about me.
In the end, Megan decided to stay in Fayetteville with the support network that Roxanne, Steve, my old team and their wives provided. She also planned on resuming her teaching career when the next school year started. She said the teaching would keep her busy and help the time go faster for her.
I flew from Pope to McChord Air Force Base in Washington State, and caught a shuttle bus over to Fort Lewis. I checked into the overseas processing station and did those things I needed to do for deployment. I flew out of McChord on a chartered DC-7 on January the sixth, stylishly attired in my brand new issue jungle fatigues and lug soled jungle boots.
We lost a day traveling west across the International Date Line, and landed in Can Rahn Bay, Republic of Vietnam on the eighth. Cam Rahn Bay was a beautiful place, with its white sandy beaches and lush vegetation. The base housed the replacement depot, rest and recreation center and a large military hospital. Everywhere I looked, there were GI studiously avoiding acting like soldiers. A harried looking specialist five herded us into a formation. We stood in six ranks on yellow lines painted on a large asphalt pad, our duffle bags at our feet. I had gravitated towards the only other two Special Forces guys on the plane, and was standing next to them.
The two sergeants, both SFCs, were here on their second tour and knew the ropes. They pretty much ignored the specialist five clerk calling names and told me to do the same.
"The SF liaison will be over here for us any minute now; we are only twenty miles from the 5th Group headquarters in Nha Trang, so we don't have to put up with this bullshit," the younger of the two, a commo man named Purvis said.
Sure enough, about then, a deuce and a half pulled up, and a SF master sergeant hopped out of the cab. The clerk noticed the master sergeant and stopped calling names.
"Personnel with assignments to the 5th Special Forces fall out and see Master Sergeant McHenry."
Six people did, including Purvis, SFC Goode, a couple of PFCs, one spec four and yours truly. Goode was the other returning Special Forces guy. The enlisted men were support soldiers, two cooks and a supply clerk.
When we reached the truck, McHenry checked off our names, took a set of our orders from us and told us to jump in the back of the truck. Two guys were already in the back of the truck, both wearing load-bearing equipment and both armed with M-16s. When we climbed in the back, one of the men gave each of us a Korean War vintage M-1 Carbine or an M-14 and three magazines of ammo.
The bed of the deuce and a half had a layer of filled sandbags on the floor and sandbags were stacked up along the side rails. The troop seats had been removed so we sat on the floor. The staff sergeant that handed out the weapons briefed us as we roared off.
"As soon as we are out the gate, lock and load. This area is supposed to be secure, but Charlie still takes a potshot at passing traffic once and a while, so keep your head down."
We made it to Nah Trang without incident; the staff sergeant collected the weapons, and McHenry led us to the group headquarters where we needed to sign in.
I was bent over a clerk's desk, filling out a form when someone grabbed me in a bear hug and gave me a sloppy kiss on the cheek.
"Opie, how they hanging, brah?" asked my assailant, Staff Sergeant Pookie Ramos.
I was happy as hell to see Pookie, and we jabbered like school girls while I filled out my emergency data card and a few other documents. As soon as I finished the last item on the in processing checklist, the personnel guy shuffled the pages together and put them in a folder, before addressing me again.
"Okay Sarge, that's it for me. You arrived at a good time, because I need to fill a vacancy here at group headquarters. I'm going to send you over to talk to the S-3 sergeant major to see if you are who he's looking for."
Pookie and I parted ways, with a plan to meet up at the NCO club at 1800. He was only at the headquarters for a couple of days, picking up medical supplies for his unit.
I secured directions to the Tactical Operations Center which was where the S-3 was located, and walked a short block over to it. I guess it was old home week, because the S-3 sergeant major was the newly promoted Roger Travis, the man who had been the NCOIC of phase one at the Q course. Travis recognized me right away.
"Ain't no possum hunting in these here parts, Opie," he said in probably the worst imitation of a southern drawl ever attempted.
Travis thought I would do fine in the vacancy he had. I asked to be assigned to an A-team instead.
"I don't need an operations guy (graduate of the Special Forces Operations and Intelligence Course), Jamison, I need a grunt to courier classified documents out to the field. That's a good job for a shake and bake rookie, it'll keep you out of trouble."
'Shake and bake' was a derisive term for NCOs who were promoted as a result of a school, instead of serving the time normally required for the rank. Travis's opinion of me hadn't risen much since I was in phase one. I left his office and presented the assignments clerk Travis's okay. He was happy he'd filled a vacancy.
"How long am I stuck here doing this?" I asked.
The clerk was taken aback by my question.
"Hey man, this is a good gig, you get to spend time down in Saigon, and you ain't in the field humping a rucksack. The only way you are getting out of here before you go back to the world is if, after six months, you extend your tour to a year and a half and ask for another job," he replied.
From the personnel section at group headquarters, I tromped over to the orderly room of Headquarters Company, my new unit for administration and control. All the members of the group staff were assigned to Headquarters Company. The first sergeant was out that day, so the clerk signed me in and assigned me a hooch space, so I'd have a place to spend the night. I walked over to the new digs that I would be sharing with the other courier.
I dropped my duffle bag and made up my bunk with the linen folded neatly at the foot of the bed. I checked my watch. It was only 1715, so I flopped down on the bunk and pulled the magazine I snagged from a stack in the orderly room out of my cargo pocket. The magazine was titled The Green Beret, and was published by the 5th Group. Reading about the goings on in the A-Camps scattered throughout the country did not make me a bit happier about my new job.
Pookie was already sitting at a table, taking a long pull off a can of Budweiser when I walked into the NCO Club at 1755. I joined him at his table, flagged down one of the cute Vietnamese waitresses, ordered us both a Bud and filled Pookie in on my new assignment. He looked as confused as the personnel specialist when I expressed my displeasure with the job.
"Jeez, Brah, even with Travis over there, that is a primo assignment," he said.
I shook my head negatively.
"I didn't train my ass off for the last two years to be Travis's go-fer. I want to do what I was trained for, and I think I have enough skill that I would be an asset to a team. Why can't someone who needs a break from the field be Travis' errand boy?"
Pookie laughed and held up his hands in mock surrender.
"Hey, don't take it out on me, Opie; you're the one who fed Travis that suck-ass possum."
Then Pookie dropped his grin and leaned towards me.
"If you are serious about wanting to be somewhere else, I'll talk to my boss when I get back. He's coming down here next week to try to recruit a few people anyway."
Pookie's idea sounded good, except that I didn't know what kind of unit he was in. I'd hate to have pissed off Travis, just to end up driving an ambulance or something. When I expressed that thought to Pookie, he snorted out a laugh.
"I'm in one of the SOG special projects, Jody, and it is the real Sneaky Pete deal. If you get assigned there, your chances of riding in an ambulance as a patient are about a thousand times better than you driving one. Are you sure you want to be involved in that?"
SOG was short for 'Studies and Observations Group. I knew about SOG, because Squirrel Smeltzer had been in it. He was part of a unit called Project Delta. Although Squirrel never discussed specifics about Delta, he did say that there job was to lead a bunch of native mountain tribesmen in dealing maximum misery on the Vietcong's sorry asses. I wasn't trying to be John Wayne, but I figured if I had to be here anyway, I wouldn't mind a job like that.
It was two weeks before I met Pookie's boss. By then, I'd given up on ever hearing from him. By the time he got around to talking to me, I had resigned myself to the crappy job Travis stuck me with. My duties were even worse than I'd suspected, because as I travel to different camps delivering classified maps, operation orders and cryptographic keylists, I received a tantalizing glimpse of what I was missing. When I wasn't traveling, the job was even worse, because just as I feared, I became the S-3 errand boy. I did everything from pick up people at the airfield to fetching toilet paper from the supply room.
I had just returned from driving the Assistant S-3 out to the airfield, when the Command Sergeant Major sent for me. "Now what?" I wondered as I hustled to boss man's office.
CSM Mattox waved me right in when I knocked on his door, then told me to have a seat. I plopped down in a comfortable upholstered chair and took a quick look around the room. Mattox looked as if he were the poster boy for Special Forces. He was fit, crew cut and looked sharp in his uniform. The other man, a master sergeant who according to his name tag was named Walsh, could have been Maddox's taller brother. Maddox was also eyeballing me while I was checking out his office.
"This is the first time I've ever laid eyes on you, Sergeant Jamison, and you already have me in a bind," Maddox growled. "You just fell off the banana boat, and yet here is my friend Billy asking me if he can interview you for an assignment to SOG. If I let you go, it will put my Operations Sergeant Major's skivvies in a bunch. Can you explain to me why I would want to do that just so you can go play John Wayne?"
I took a breath and launched into the speech I'd practiced in my mind dozens of times.
"I'm not trying to be a hero, Sergeant Major; all I want is to do the job I'm trained to do. I might not be some old seasoned vet, but I am a good weapons man, and I know how to work as part of a team. The slot I'm filling now isn't even a Special Forces job; any private with a security clearance can do what I'm doing now. Why not let him, and send me somewhere so I can do what I'm trained for?"
CSM Maddox ended up agreeing with me and sent me off to talk to Master Sergeant Walsh in private. Walsh was quite a guy, he was as gung-ho as anyone I'd ever met.
"I checked up on you, Jamison. I pulled your 201 file and contacted your last team sergeant. I was surprised as hell it was Ryan Ragan. Me and Lyin' Ryan go way back. He said you were a good man and that you were well prepared for what we do. That is good enough for me. I need a reliable man with good judgment and good in the woods. The job is junior man on a recon team made up of three Americans and six Montengards. You want it, it's yours."
I wanted it.
I don't know how he did it, but by noon the next day, MSG Walsh and I were on a C-7 Caribou, headed towards the central highlands. We landed at the air base at Pleiku (pronounced play-coo) City. Pleiku had a sprawling military complex named Camp Holloway, which included the headquarters and one brigade of the 4th Infantry Division.
Waiting off the apron at the end of the taxiway was a jeep with a 50 Caliber machine gun mounted on it, and a deuce and a half without the canvass. Standing beside the vehicles was Pookie Ramos, two other Americans, and half a dozen small dark men in camouflage uniforms. Every person standing there was armed to the teeth and wearing full web gear.
After a bear hug greeting, Pookie did the introductions.
"Jody, this is your one-zero, Fred Armitage. Fred this is Jody Jamison, my bud from the Q-course I was telling you about."
MSG Walsh had given me a general briefing on how things worked with the recon teams, so I knew that the one-zero was the American team leader, his Montagnard counterpart was the zero-one. American team members were designated with a numeral one a dash and a second number sequentially higher than the team leader's. Thus, as the third American on the team, I was the one-two. The indigenous troops were designated the same way with a zero first, thus the newest Montagnard was the zero-six.
Staff Sergeant Fred Armitage was not much taller than the small indigenous troopers, but he was much stockier. Armitage was also much older than the rest of us, if his grey hair and wrinkled visage were any indication. He stuck his hand out with a big smile.
"Welcome to RT Montana, Jody. This is our one-one, Rick Pierpont."
Pierpont was a First Lieutenant, so I snapped him a salute. He haphazardly returned it and shook my hand.
"Don't make a habit out of that saluting shit, Jody. It's like drawing a target on my back. And call me Rick, unless some brass is around."
After Rick and I shook hands, Fred introduced me to the rest of the team.
"Jody this is Bo, our zero-one and this is Kip, the zero-two and our interpreter. These other outstanding warriors are Kai, Lum, Thue and Bing."
The Montagnards all shook my hand and took a stab at saying my name. Jody came out of their mouths as a drawn out Jo-Dee but it was close enough that it worked for me.
I was ushered into the back of the truck, where Rick handed me a short-barreled, collapsing-stock CAR-15 and a set of web gear. Rick hopped into the passenger seat of the truck and five of the Montagnards climbed in the back. Pookie was driving the gun jeep with Walsh as his passenger, and the last member of our team hanging onto the handles on the back of the 50 cal. Fred eyed me owlishly as we stood behind the truck.
"Can you drive one of these things, Jody?" he asked hopefully.
I nodded.
"I'm licensed to drive anything up to a ten ton," I replied.
"Alright!" he exclaimed. "Jump in and follow Ramos, stay about twenty yards behind him."
I nodded, climbed up into the cab, fired up the big diesel engine and away we went.
... And just like that I was a member of Recon Team (RT) Montana, no questions about my experience, no comments about being an instant NCO ... Of course, I learned later that the team's ready acceptance was tempered by the fact that if I didn't meet Fred's standards or fit in, I would be gone as quickly as I arrived. The Recon One-Zero had the absolute last word on who stayed and who left on his team.
I followed Pookie out of the air base and through Pleiku onto a paved road that was marked as Highway 14. We took the road north for an hour or so until we arrived at a small military camp that straddled the highway. Pookie turned into the portion of the camp on the left side of the road, but Rick directed me to turn right. Rick told me the right side of the camp was the Recon Company, helipad and Tactical Operations Center, everything else was across the road. The camp was named Forward Operating Base Two, and my new unit was Command and Control Central. We were part of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam — Studies and Observation Group, better known as MACV-SOG.
We three Americans shared a hooch and the Montagnards shared another. Our hooch was also our team room. Fred and Rick got me set up with everything I needed by the end of the day, and as dusk fell, I found myself sitting with the rest of the team on top of the three bunkers we were responsible for that formed part of the camp's defenses. The camp was on high alert, because Tet, the Chinese New Year, was only a couple of days away and the latest Intel was that Charlie had something planned for the holiday.
In front of our bunkers was a hundred yard deep strip of concertina wire, triple apron barbed wire and barded wire tangle foot. Salted through out the defensive wire were claymore mines, trip-wire booby-traps and fifty-five gallon drums of fogas. Fogas was a deadly homemade napalm composed of diesel fuel and powdered laundry detergent. The activating triggers for the fogas and claymores were inside the bunkers.
I shared my two hour guard shift with Kip the interpreter. I enjoyed talking to Kip and he was genuinely interested in talking to me. The Montagnards, I discovered, were a fun loving and genial bunch of guys.
The next day, we ran a local patrol around the perimeter of the camp. The patrol was partly school for me, but it also served the purpose of checking to make sure the Viet Cong weren't massing near the camp in preparation for an attack. I was amazed at the basic load of ammunition, grenades and claymore mines we took with us. We practiced immediate action drills as we patrolled, and I started learning team procedures. I was damned impressed with the skills of my teammates. And I was happy as hell that I had lucked onto a team that good.
We were about two klicks east of the camp when Bing, the Montagnard point man, found fresh tracks on a small trail. Fred guessed from the signs that at least a squad had passed this way in the last twenty four hours. Fred called in the discovery, then quickly set us up in an L-shaped ambush. If Mister Charlie came that way tonight, he was in for a rude surprise.