Interesting Night in Saigon

I mentioned that I might be compelled to subject you guys to a war story from time to time. This is as good a time as any so here is the first.

In the summer of 1968, at the tail end of the TET Offensive I arrived in Vietnam as a brand new Military Intelligence 2nd Lieutenant. I was assigned the 525 Military Intelligence Group as the Administrative Officer for the Headquarters and Headquarters Company (HHC). For you non Military types a HHC is the unit to which troops assigned to a unit's Headquarters are assigned. The HHC takes care of their orders, transportation, supplies, weapons, personnel and finance records, living quarters and feeding to mention a few responsibilities.

I initially lived with 5 other officers in a villa away from the compound on which the Headquarters was located. That villa was closer into Saigon. After about three months it was determined to leave that house and try to bring the officers back either into the compound or at least closer. Things had heated up a bit and security was getting stricter.

At this point I moved on compound into a room over the HHC offices. Me and two other officers occupied this room. Another 2nd Lieutenant from Ohio and a 1st Lieutenant from New York. It was a good set up. We had a black and white T.V. and a small bar. Whisky, beer and wine were available at the Air Base which wasn't too far away. I remember that every thing on the shelves was $1.00 Except for a high grade scotch which was $3.00.

Now most people you talk to about their Vietnam experience will tell you horror stories of death and destruction and how bad things were. For me that year was the best assignment I ever had in the Military, including the 5 years of active duty, the 1 year as an instructor in an Army Reserve School, the 1.5 years in a National Guard Special Forces unit and the 12.5 years in a Training Command.

I am not going to go into a lot of detail on my job or how we spent our off time. That would be a long tale and off the point of the story. One evening late I was sitting in the room alone having a few drinks watching an episode of Star Trek on the Armed Forces Broadcast Station. I had had enough to drink to be fairly intoxicated. Somewhere around midnight the Officer from New York came busting through the door, muttering and ranting about something. He went directly to the stand up lockers in the back storage room.

I heard him bumping and thumping around. I figured that he was just drunk and getting ready for bed. When he emerged from the storage room he was still dressed and obviously upset about something. I also noticed he had a hand grenade in his hand. I asked him where the hell he was going with that. His response was that those Sob’s at the compound club has refused to serve him any more drinks and thrown him out. He then informed me that he would show them a thing or two and at that point he pulled the pen on the grenade. It was at this point, while jumping from the chair that I became stone cold sober. At this point he was starting for the door but I managed to get between him and said door. I got really close in his face so he could focus on me and began talking really serious to him about what he was doing.

After a few minutes I talked him into giving me the grenade. I carefully removed it from his hand and managed to keep the handle from flipping up and activating the 7 second delay fuse which causes the grenade to explode. He and I then started hunting the pin which he had tossed after pulling it. I finally found the pin under his bed and pushed it back into the holes that locks the handle down.

By this time my roomy was calmed down and I helped him into bed after which I sat down to watch him for a while. I never did get to see the last part of that Star Trek program. About an hour later the other roomy shows up bitching about the girl that got away. I told him I was in no mood to listen to his problems tonight besides it was bedtime. 5AM comes really early when you go to bed at 1AM.