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Show Thanks to volunteer ham radio operators, Gls overseas and anxious families at home are inexpensively linked with the crackling call: "Hello, This Is Vietnam Calling!" By LESLIE LiEBER At 2 o'clock on a recent xjL Saturday afternoon 6 a.m. Sunday, Vietnam time a retired civil engineer named George Criteser switched on a shortwave radio transmit- ter in a shack behind his home in Carson City, Nev., adjusted the headset over his sparse white hair, and began twiddling dials. "Alpha Charlie, this is Zulu Tango," he repeated several times as the static crackled and then subsided. "Hey! Aren't any of you fellows awake over there?" Moments later, a GI operator near DaNang, 12,000 rules away, answered loud and clear and soldiers and Marines who'd been standing ir line in the rain stepped forward one by one to talk into the microphone, with Criteser relaying their voices and season's greetings to loved ones via a telephone operator in Reno. By the time he signed off eight hours later, he had helped his 11,000th serviceman in Vietnam reunion hold a precious with home. Carson City Criteser, a councilman and retired highway engineer, is one of more than a score of civilian shortwave hams across the country who are working around the clock with the Military Affiliate Radio Service (MARS). So far they have enabled more than 430,000 of our fighting men in Southeast Asia to call home from overseas a touch of humanity unparalleled in the history of soldiering. MARS maintains 19 military broadcasting stations for homesick GI: in Vietnam, Thailand, and Taiwan. All men overseas are entitled to use c them. The segment of the call which would ordinarily come to a discouraging $25 (and be impossible because the Army wouldn't allow it) is free. Stateside ham operators use a special "phone patch" to feed the messages directly into telephone lines as collect calls, charges based on the distance between the recipient and the ham station. This long-distan- ce five-minu- te line the walls of hie shack. MARS stateside operators have been privy to just about every type of conversation imaginable. They've heard marriage prok from a wounded posals, a Marine in a field hospital to his wife who was about to undergo an emergency appendectomy in a Milwaukee operating room, and several heartbreaking "Dear John" calls. Sen. Barry Goldwater whose modern station AFA7UGA in Phoenix is manned 24 hours a day by volunteers and has handled more than 15,000 calls from the jungles of Vietnam, ships, and planes at sea has had many experiences which illustrate quite clearly both the devotion and often the frustrations of a MARS volunteer. "I've already presided over two 'Dear John' phone patches and, God, r. they were awful," says Senator me to want made break "It in and say something ask them to wait and work things out when the guy returns but I just sat there and threw switches. "Aside from calls like that, I love doing this," he says. "But I get a special charge out of the fact that the Reds, have now started to jam our phone patches. Several times we've picked up Radio Havana calling Moscow on our channels, trying to interfere. And sometimes we get all sorts of scrambling, noises. So you can bet we're having some kind of effect on the Communists a mighty nice fringe benefit. for what usually comes to around $5 amounts to a 12,000-mile-or-mo- re phone call ! The MARS operation is completely voluntary, and people like George Criteser receive no payment, even for their expenses. Paul Wilson, a tv engineer, for example, spent $6,000 of his own money installing a special long-distan- radio tower alongside his rig in Memphis, Tenn. "When I began Gls in 1967," Criteser said, "I had no tower and could pick up messages only at certain times a day. But our local chapter of the Nevada Society of Professional Engineers discovered that Uncle Sam was dismantling a Mercury test site on a nearby mountain that had a radio tower. It weighed 50 tons. The Government earmarked it for us, and we carried it down the mountain. "Thirty of my friends from the society carried the tower down the mountainside piece by piece on their backs. We put it back together at my house, thanks to a crane loaned to us by a construction company down the block." "George spends ten hours a day, seven days a week monitoring these calls," says George's wife Lee ("YL" or "young lady" in ham argot). "We seldom go anywhere, and I eat many meals alone. But I'm very proud of my husband." She has reason to be. Letters from battlefield colonels and generals, and a framed citation from the 5th Special Forces naming him an honorary Green Beret phone-patchi- ng 65-fo- ot " "2 ce pep-tal- Gold-wate- man-ma- " ? G'a y de "We never identify ourselves, but sometimes people do find out, and it doesn't necessarily boost our ego. Not long ago I overheard the military operator in Vietnam talking to a soldier placing a call home. " 'Do you know who we've got on the other end of this line? Barry Goldwater, that's who!' " 'Barry Gold .vater? Who's he?' replied the soldier." Stateside phone patchers consider themselves amply rewarded for their work by the thousands of thank-yo- u letters they receive. Some are radiantly happy, like the note Criteser received from Mrs. Nancy Michaels of Pittsburgh, whose husband's call was put through to a hospital delivery room moments after she had given birth to their first child: "I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. Al was able to learn, two minutes after the event, that everything was fine, and he was the father of a son." And then there are some postscripts, like the one from Mrs. R. Edward Bova, Wayne, Mich., that are sad and deeply touching: "On Sept. 29, 1967, you relayed a call from our son Edward from Vietnam. I wrote to thank you and you graciously answered us. As you can see from the enclosed clipping our son is dead. We are so grateful to you, Mr. Criteser, for having given us that precious last chance to hear our son's voice. Please keep up the marvelovs work." call is relayed by ham radio operator George Criteser. trans-Pacifi- ,0 Family Weekly, December S8, 1969 k1s kwfi' (p&Pfc GI in the boondocks of Vietnam talks to parents in U. I Sa ,. XL.jt. yZ.t- -- - |