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I am sorry for the lack of pictures, they are gone somewhere
554th REDHORSE 1970-71
These are the ribbons we wore because of the time spent with the 554th in Viet Nam in '70-'71. USAF Outstanding Unit Award w/Valor, National Defense Service Award, Vietnames Service Medal w/Battle Star, VietNamese Cross of Gallentry w/Palm and Republic of VietNam Service Campaign medal
Finding " RED HORSE COUNTRY" and other sites has flooded this old brain of mine with a great number of memories that had been long forgotten. The events related here are true, the best I remember them. I don't think they have been "stretched" in any way.
TRAINING AT WRIGHT PATTERSON:
We were the first unit to train at Wright Patterson and I believe only one other unit trained there before it was decided that training there might have been a mistake. It was in my opinion, for a number of reasons. First, the weather was better suited for parts of Korea in the fall. COLD and RAINING. The raining part wasn't bad except it was COLD rain. The base and surrounding communities were not prepared to have 250 troops, training for a year tour in Viet Nam, in their midst. I think you remember our attitude. "WHAT ARE THEY GOING TO DO SEND ME TO VIET NAM".
We were put up in an old communications area away from the base proper. The "POWERS TO BE" made a good choice. They must have had a premonition.We did get a little wild and loud at times. APs didn't come into the compound, but they did try bullhorns. Of course that didn't work. Before we know anything about Bare Base Defense, we kept the intruders outside our perimeter. I don't know why they didn't want to come in and join the fun.
We took care of essentials first. Set up a store with the bare necessities, Beer, Cigarettes and Candy. Then things started to change. The waking up to simulators blowing up. The running. The Inverted V's. The hand to hand. The running. The Inverted V's. The M60 Machine gun. The running. The Inverted V's. The grenade launchers. The running. The Inverted V's. The low crawl. The running. The Inverted V's. Convoy tacktics...deploying from a truck under attack. Since everyone was so fond of Inverted V's we had a little contest. The team that had the fastest time would not have to do the V's the next day. The group that had the more senior NCOs and Officers was augmented with me and a couple of other younger NCOs. When we were ready, the instructor threw a simulator into the bed of that duece and half and we bailed out over the side rails.That wasn't quite the way we were taught, but, we did have the fastest time. All that pain went for nothing because nobody did any V's the next day. We were going on Convoy and set up a base camp.
The final exercise went well. We had learned that when the convoy was attacked from the right side, the right side returned fire as the left side deployed, formed a scirmish line and continued with the return fire as the right side deployed. This is when we improvised a little bit. Only part of the the right side joined the line. Part of us hit the ditch and moved up the road. When the line started with the smoke and moving up, we circled and came at them from the rear. We had a great time sneaking up on our "instructor aggressors". They also wondered how we got our 16's to fire on full auto without adapters, but a little mud in the barrel worked and when it came out, you just stuck it back in the ground again. They had the audacity to say we cheated, but, you know what they say "All's fair in Love and War and we definately didn't Love them. We did give them quite a few "HIMS" if I remember right."THE BASE CAMP" was set up next to an interstate highway. No problem until dark. It's funny how many people will stop on a highway when trip flares are going off in the air and there is a great amount of automatic weapons fire going on. I guess they thought the war had finally come to Dayton.
It wasn't all work. We did have time to play. The base had given us a bus to use on base to get around. But, the base didn't have all that we needed and somehow the bus found the way to town and some of the local establishments that had the ability to cater to some of our TDY needs. That sure was a smart bus. I think it was a '64 model. I wonder where it is now? I also wonder how many of those RED HORSE stickers are still on the walls in some of those Ladies Rooms. I also wonder how those guys talked the girls into putting them up. I know that's how they got there. The young ladies seemed to like us but the young gentlemen weren't quite so sure and if I remember right some of them were taught to think better of our "fighting men".
FLIGHT TO VIET NAM:
The time to leave the world finally arrived. The powers to be set it up so everyone could go to the NCO Club that night as long as they were in dress fatigues. Bloused boots and blue dickies. We thought it was great to blouse your pants like the cops, but I learned later it was way too hot. Our airmen just loved the idea that they could go to the Club, but I have to admit Airmen's Club activities were not well recieved in the NCO Club. We managed to get everyone out with their skin. We were supposed to leave at 2300 hrs, but we only had about 200 of our 250 men. They showed up a few at a time for the next 4 hours. About 0300 we had everyone accounted for and lifted off for Anchorage Alaska. I have to admit we were well oiled. By the time we hit Anchorage we were back in fighting form. That plane sure flew slow. I had left there a year before, so I knew where the "bar that never closes" was. The bartender tried to lock the door when he saw us coming but that didn't work. we were on a mission, we needed something to get us to Okinawa.
We landed in Okinawa for refueling only. Some Buck Sgt got on the plane and asked if there were any Cols or GS13s or any other distinguished personnel onboard and somebody said "turn around %$#@*%$, we are all distinguished personnel. There was a RED HORSE sticker about a foot tall on the flight cabin door. For the life of me, I don't know where all those stickers came from. I never did have one. We were told not to leave the terminal area. Yea right! Part went downtown, the rest went to the club. We finally got everyone back and lifted off for our final leg. We did get some refreshments from the package store before we left. We hit the runway at Cam Rahn Bay, hung over, but ready to hit the ground running. The only problem was, when we hit the ground it was about 140 degrees on that flightline. I wanted to throw up. But we had made it to "in country".
CAM RAHN BAY:
I didn't stay there long. There was an electrician at DaNang I had OJT'd in Michigan up there, (Carl Blokker from Rochester New York), so I swapped with another SSgt electrician in the second increment. He went to Hon Tre Island and I went to DaNang. Because of these RED HORSE sites, I have found out it was Alex LaMora, that I swapped with. I didn't see Cam Rahn again until I left. TDY...sure...PCS without PCA was the way that worked. When I left was fun too. I just walked around, in stateside fatigues, asking where CBPO was until some jerk laughed because he only had 300 days left and I wanted to know where processing was. Funny, he didn't keep laughing when he heard that I was procesing "out" and only had hours left. I had cheated again, I didn't have my "short timer's ribbon" on with no (zero) knots in it. ( the VO was good wasn't it?)
MEMORIES OF DANANG 70-71
REDHORSE CLUB:
When the 820th ( I think) left DaNang, the equipment was taken over by the base civil engineers ( that's another story) and the old RED HORSE compound became home for the Air Police squadron. The RED HORSE Club was annexed by the base club system. Officially it was an NCO Club annex. Unofficially, it was still the RED HORSE Club, even in the base phone directory. Since it was located in the cops home compound all the MAs were APs. You can guess what that brought about.
REDHORSE CLUB POWER CABLE:
When I arrived at DaNang, one of first things a guy said to me was he sure was glad to have an electrician there for the next time they had trouble with the MAs at the RED HORSE Club. It seems some HORSEMEN got a little rowdy...do you believe that? and were thrown out. In their minds it was still their club. RED HORSE built it, so they could do anything they wanted. Remember, we did take care of our own. Someone had the bright idea of cutting the power to the building. They found a pair of "bare" bolt cutters and someone to get up on the roof to cut the power. Luckily, he cut the phone line instead of the power. This guy felt at least with me there they had a better chance of cutting the right wires. They had a better chance alright, but not with a pair of bolt cutters. I never had to cut the power, but I did have to threaten to do it my way one night. (the Mack)
BAR IN LATRINE:
The first job I had was to take care of some hygene problems. The showers were worthless, so we fixed up a community latrine between the barracks. After we had it in working order, we had another job at hand. I, with a carpenter and a plumber, took all the fixtures out and put them in a pile. Those urnals came in handy. Roger, our supply guy, traded them for some steaks to the Army at Dong Ha. They put them on trees. I guess, it made them feel at home. We had an idea of raising our bar off the floor, so we poured a pad to get it off the ground. About this time the Base Commander of DaNang came through. He wanted to know what we were doing. I told him we were trying to fix up the facilities. He wanted to know what the pad was for, so I told him it was to get the washer and dryer off the floor. He said "you Red Horse guys sure know how to take care of yourselves". We built a bar and booths. Burned the plywood and stained it. Even had a Red Horse on the front of the bar. I had the opportunity to be in the bar, after it was completed, and the Commander came through again. He saw the results of our work and commented again how we could take care of the necessities. We had many a good night with our friends in that bar, including some Marines from Freedom Hill.
REDHORSE CLUB FRONT DOOR AND THE MACK:
I had an "Andy" with me at DaNang also. He was carpenter, the best I remeber. We had gone to the Red Horse Club to have a few. I guess I got a little loud ( I am a small man...Little man syndrome you know). Anyway, this big cop (MA) decided I needed to leave. I did, but, we had driven up there with my truck. By the way, my truck was a 10 ton Mack. I left, turned the truck around and backed it up towards the door. Layed on the horn, Andy came out, and I told him to get our folks out of there because I was coming back in. I didn't want to hurt the truck so I was going to back through the door. The big MA came out and Andy told him I was serious and he believed him. I don't know if I would have done it, but I probably would have. The rest of the night was uneventfull. He did hold a grudge against me, though. But, we did continue to party.
AIRMENS CLUB WITH THE WHOLE DETACHMENT:
A situation came up one night where a couple of our Airmen got jumped coming out of the Airmen's Club. They made it back to the barracks and told someone about it. We went to the club with everyone except the Commander and the First Seargent. They were upset when they found out we had left them out. Otis Brown, the heaviest person I have ever tried to hold up, was in front. We went into the Airmen's Club and crashed the door. We started to look for the people we wanted. They called the cops and things got exciting. A cop came in and, since Otie seamed to be in charge, went up to him and said "hey brother, what is going on". Otie told him he was not his brother and he needed to get the hell out of there. The cops and their dogs stayed outside. I guess that proves the old "discretion is the better part of valor". We never found the people we were looking for, but I will never forget the way we were alway taking care of our own. I saw Otie years later in Texas.
THE CASE OF THE MISSING 20 TON STONE HAULER:
One of our projects at DaNang was to re-configure 4000' of aircraft revetments. The base was moving the gun ships and parking helicopters in their place. Our job, change 20' perpendicular to 10' diagonal revetments. To accomplish this we had to pull the 20's, move the dirt, build and refill the 10's. We pulled sections with a crane and had to move the dirt to a holding pile. That pile just happened to be behind some VNAF family housing. the 10 ton's were good but it was taking too long. We were hauling dirt around the clock to get it done. Someone found out there was a 20 ton stone hauler in the CE compound. They were only authorized 5 tons. It was left there by Redhorse when they were pulled out. They had even painted over the Redhorse on the front of the truck. That made it even worse. Jerry Barnhill, equipment operator and my roomate, said he thought we could get away with "borrowing" the truck. We sneaked into the compound and Jerry asked me "Can you drive that thing"? I told him if he could show me how to start it, I could drive it. We got it out of the CE compound, put a new Redhorse on the front of it and we were on a roll. But, I remember that roll being slooow. We were traveling about 2 miles to dump our loads and I could finally get it up to 25 about the time I had to pull in to dump. But, I have to admit it was a good load. We also kept our VNAF counterparts awake all night. One guy came out his door as I was pulling up to back and dump and he disappeared in front of the hood. I thought I had run over him but, he only got a very good look at a big red horse on the front of the truck. By the way, he didn't come out the next time. I thought I did a commendable job considering I was just an electrician.
PULLING CABLE WITH MACK:
In typical HORSE fashion, I had been in country for a while when I finally had a chance to do some electrical work. Hey, concrete is ok and driving trucks is fun, but I was a hotshot electrician. I needed to do some real electrical work. I got my chance on Monkey Mountain. There were two problems there. The GATR site had expanded to the point that the technical load had surpassed the house load and the generator for the technical load could not keep up. We had to swap the loads. No big deal except, they had to keep it up and running. It would have been eaisier if we had a few more electricians. No such luck. It was my responsibility, as the ranking electrician, so I did it with carpenters, plumbers and equipment operators. If I could have those guys with me right now, I would tackle the biggest electrical job with no fear. It's funny how what your AFSC was didn't matter. Just getting the job done. They were apprehensive and I was scared but we did it. The second problem on the mountain was the power supply to what was called "Panama". I believe it maintained aircraft radio contact to points north. A lot of the bad guys were just north of DaNang, if you remember.
Someone had pulled the feeders to a transformer bank from the generator into two conduits. Not to bore you with facts, that is "BAD". You could fry eggs on the conduits and it kept blowing the line fuses. I told the Colonel in charge he would have to be down for a minimum of 24 hours. He said, "Seargent, do you think I can stop this war for 24 hours just so you can fix my electricity"? I needed 500 MCM cable (big) and there was none in country. He got some somewhere. We went down for about 30 minutes to disconnect and reconnect, laying temporary cables on the ground. Remember, that was non- electricians doing most of the work. We had to pull the cables out of the two conduits and pull all four of them into one. I might add in a "HOT" transformer bank. We had to use a Mack to pull the cables out and to pull them back in. Pulling it into one conduit proved to a challenge. In this day and age we have lubricants to help us when the going gets tough. The mess seargent helped us out with 5 gallons of vegetable oil, even though he wondered what the hell we were going to use it for. I guess he had an evil mind. 30 minutes of down time to reconnect and Redhorse is the hero again. I never could have done that with "real" electricians, only with the HORSE. I thank each and every one them for helping build my ego.
TRIP TO QWANG TRI:
We were tasked with convoying to Quang Tri and building some SEA huts for the Forward Air Controllers. They were sleeping in tents. We needed to "find" the material to build the huts. We did and we prefabbed the buildings as much as we could. We didn't want to spend any more time up there than we had to. DaNang was one thing, but we weren't that excited about going further north. We loaded the buildings on the trucks along with a pallet of C-rations we "found" in the supply yard and headed north. Jerry and I were in tractor with a 45' trailer. I looked in the mirror and told Jerry "you ain't going to believe what Shumake ( mechanic) is doing. He was on the front of a 10 ton and they were pulling up real close to the back of the trailer. He jumped from the truck to the trailer and came up and offered us a drink. We took the drink and he went back to the truck. A short time later the truck hit the back of the trailer with a pretty good jolt. We tried to figure out what Jones was doing. He went around us and into the side of the mountain. The material, M60 and people were spread all over. He had lost his brakes and it was into the mountain or over the edge.
While we were loading what we could on the other trucks an Army hardtruck came by and wanted to know what we thought we were doing. He took us over to the edge of the road and showed us the remains of an Army convoy that had been hit that morning. Needless to say we didn't waste much time transfering to the other trucks. The only other exciting event was trying to get that flatbed trailer to make the turn on the bridge in Hue. Jerry got the job done and we were on our way again.
Our plan was to build the first hut and spend the night in it. That didn't work out. Those hands we moving in before we had the roof on. I hung lights standing on bunks. They put us into a 40 man tent outside the revetment for the OV-10's. Later that night, the rockets started. No big deal, we were from "rocket city". It was when the morters and automatic weapons fire started it got our attention. We set up a 60 and tried to get some sleep. My sleeping partner was my M16 and it wasn't that comfortable.
The next day started out OK until the Commander called "Wild Bill" Eaves, our Detachment Commander in and told him he needed to get us into proper AF uniforms. This was 1971 and people were trying to make it like stateside. Bill asked him if he wanted him to tell us before or after. The Commander asked before or after what? Before or after they load the trucks. Those guys volunteered to come up here and they will go back to DaNang with me or without me. He didn't bother us after that and even brought some beer out to us. The little club they had there closed at dark before we got there but ended up staying open later while we were there.
The following day we were moving a generator and it hung on something buried in the ground. We were pulling with a jeep and lifting and pushing from the back. We didn't know what it was, but when we finally got the axle past it, it sprang back and smashed Jerry's hand. MSgt Urban took him to the Army hospital and raised enough hell to get him flown out of there back to DaNang and the 95th Evac unit. Jerry had always said he would get home before me and damned if he didn't. We finished the rest of the huts and headed back home. The guys there were sorry to see us leave because now the club would close at dark.
CHOW HALL IN MAIN COMPOUND:
We had the job of altering the chow hall in the Main Compound. Everything went well except for a couple of gliches. I had to find a fan for the exhaust hood. We located one in the supply yard and while Roger kept them busy I got it out of there. The first problem I had was the RPMs. Instead of the the normal 1750 or so it turned in the thousands. It would suck you hat off when you walked under the hood. I took all but two blades of and it worked, but the cooks couldn't flip the pancakes too high or they were gone. We also had put up fans all over the chow hall. About 40, if I remember right. Someone (maybe me) forgot to put a keeper in the pipe to stop it from unscrewing and it fell. Right in the middle of the Base Commander's table. Tommy Evans our clerk came to get me and take me to the Chow Hall. The Commander wanted to see who was responsible for the job. Luckily, I had talked to him, not only in the bar, but in the chow hall when I told him he had his hat on backwards and his eagle was in the back. He didn't make too much out of it, but he did remind me of doing things right all the time.
JEEP FOR AIR CONDITIONING:
One day Roger (supply) asked me if I could hook up an air conditioner for the guys in the supply yard. I asked why they didn't get CE to do it and he told me they wouldn't do it. I said I would, but it was going to cost them a Jeep with a credit card. I really didn't think they would go for it, but they did. We only had two jeeps. One for the Commander and one for the 1st Sgt. You ever had to try and hide a 10 ton Mack dump truck in downtown DaNang? We had off base passes so we used them. No other AF down there. Anyway, I went over there, waited until the CE guys went to lunch, climbed this old rotten pole and made my splices. Came down and went in and turned the AC on and just waited. When it started to cool it off in there, the supply Sgt tossed me a key with the credit card attached. I went out and found the jeep. You could see where they scraped off the Army numbers and painted the AF numbers on it, but I didn't care. The numbers matched the numbers on the credit card. When I left I gave it to another SSgt and made him promise not to let anyone over the rank of SSgt use it.
PS:
There are some other memories, but I don't think I should put them in print. You know what I mean. But I will say this. The time I spent with my unit in VietNam will always be with me. Just like it will for any other REDHORSEMEN. If you had to do something in a far off land, you could not ask for anyone better to do it with than REDHORSE. And as long as there is a breath in us the Horse still lives.