Show Page 6 May 11 1995 eonneefien f© Fayth Marrelll staff writer The Vietnam War came to an unglorificd finish on April 30 973 after millions died Saigon the South's capital fell virtually without a fight and America was faced with its first defeat In late March 1973 Da Nang fell to the North Vietnamese President Gerald Ford declared the war “finished” on April 24 It was on April 27 when a surprise rocket attack hit Saigon showing that the North Vietnamese had flexed their muscles The North Vietnamese took the Tan Son Nhul Air Base on April 27 President Ford and Secretary of Stale Henry Kissinger ordered a helicopter lift April 29 Thcsignal: BingCrosby's White Christmas broadcast over Armed Forces Radio Thousands of Vietnamese tried to climb over the US Lmhussy Walls in Saigon trying to board the helicopters that would fly them to freedom and safety These heli1 copters ux)k what people they could and all Americans to llSS carrier Okinawa in the South China Sea - 20 miles off the coast of Vietnam Saigon was renamed after the communisl hem Ho Chi Minh The endless war was finally over It has been 20 years since the evacuation day and on the week of April 17 1995 Robert McNmara Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson expressed shame of America's conduct in this brutal war The Eagle would like to honor two men at CEU who are Vietnam veterans They lived in completely different worlds in the same war One was stationed in the jungle battling with leeches immersion fool snipers and worse The other was stationed in the large city of Da Nang and worked on airplancsand in his spare time played handball Here arc their portrayals of tlic war Phil Brown CEl! instructor of family life and education After receiving his bachelor of arts degree in psychology at (he I Ini versity oi l llah Phil Brown was drafted into the Vietnam War Brown from Salt lake w as a married man so he and his w ife went to Georgia for officer candidate schtxil Since Brown held a bachelor's degree he automatically became an officer At OCS there were 220 other officers all but one held at least a BA The Brown's had one child Nina while he was in training I le was sent to Vietnam in September I 9 I le was in the America! Division l9Kth Brigade 1st battalion comof the filh Infantry Battalion mander was Norman II Schwarzkopf Brown said "I was really scared when I first found out I had to go to Vietnam They told us that our life expectancy was 25 minutes They didn't mention however that this was for a platoon leader in combat which meant there was constant fighting going on" Brown a lieutenant platoon leader was first stationed in the jungle about 50 miles south of Da Nang lie worked in the Chu Lai Peninsula in a little town near the Tra Bong River called Binh Son He worked in what was called the Southern Rocket Pocket He was in Night Time Interference Ambushes for the llo Chi Minh supply line He patrolled the foothills and controlled the supply lines at night He lived in the jungle for six months lie would stay in the jungle 60 days at a time then have a three-da- y break He describes the jungle by saying that mosquitoes and leeches were probably worse than the enemy “We were not in an area that was known for its fire fights or intense enemy engagements It was mostly snipers booby traps and once in a while we'd have a successful ambush in the night" Describing the leeches he said “The ground leeches were worse than the water leeches Water Phil Brown raiding nowapapor from homo leeches were as huge as fish and swam really fast The ground leeches were about as small as a pencil lead until they got onto you They'd go up under your clothes and you couldn't sec them on the ground" lie had one attach to his throat and by the time he'd noticed it it was already as long as his finger Brown squirted a whole hunch of really strong insect repellent on the leach and it dropped off "The sore doesn’t heal it bleeds for days I had scars all over my legs for at least years alter 5-- that" According to Brown (he jungle was so thick in spots that sunlight could not get through the canopy of trees They often had to cut their way just to get through "We'd sometimes spend whole days going a quarter of a mile Sometimes we'd have to cut a landing zone in order to he resupplied and doing that took a day or two" “We walked 5 to 10 miles a day" he added "Usually we only ate one meal a day it was Ux much work to pack any more food than that We were all really skinny hut we sure were in good shape!" Brown's platoon had two Kit Carson scouts A Kit Carson was a Viet Cong who had given themselves up to the llS They would undergo a scries of tests (a process called debriefing) and if they passed these tests they could join the American forces Brown's Kit Carson was named An and the other Fung lie told a story of a mission that lie and An worked on "We came up to this hut in the middle of a rice paddy and wc crept up to the door An threw a grenade into (lie dixir then jumped behind a tree After the grenade went off An went in to search the hut and came out carrying a baby The baby was all right and I guess it was in a bunker underneath the hut An attached a letter to the baby and we llcw the baby out Supposedly the baby was flown to An's wife We found a bunch of ri flcs and ammunition and a North Vietnamese Army member's pistol belt with a silver buckle -- kept that" Brown described the Vietnamese people “There were Viet Cong everywhere and you always had to be careful You could be in a friendly village but there was always at least one or two Viet Cong there They’d try to sell you a loaded cigarette lighter They would even send children in with cigarettes and soda pop for sale while the children were wired with grenades They would blow up their own children - just to get us “There was a little boy wc named Tommy lie was covered with scars I lis father was a VC and he brought us stuff all the lime After he was blown up (his father had strapped a grenade to his stomach) they got him on a Medi vac I Iclicoplcr and got him to a hospital so fast that they were able to save him lie became our friend after that He would do a lot of things for us Sometimes he would tell us wlio to trust and who not to trust" Brown had some positive exI periences while he was in Vietnam When he was working at a place called Fat City there weren't any latrines close by His platoon constructed a latrine and when somebody was using it once it just blew up The guy inside wasn't hurt but nobody to this day knows what went wrong It provided them with a lot of laughs for a few days He (old a story of a funny experience he had while in Dragon Valley Dragon Valley was a zone meaning you could shoot at "A thing hoy’s mom had sent him a popcorn popper and it was really shiny so he had to conceal it The frec-flr- c only place where he could think to hide it was on his head beneath his helmet "We were sneaking up a liill: trail it was really dark in this jungle All of a sudden wc any- the rest of the troop ready and then I would give him a signal Somehow he misunderstood me He had taken off his helmet and he still had this popcorn popper on his head On my way back to tell the other guys I turned around just in time to sec him jump out in the middle of the trail and yell in English which they couldn’t even understand and with his rifle held like John Wayne “Don't anybody make a move” Which was stupid Of course they ran in every direction It was pretty funny to see this guy with a popcorn popper on his head " What was the weather like? "In October the first week I was there it rained 55 inches There were several weeks when it didn't stop raining for days day and night Wc were outside all (he time and didn't have tents We just had to find the nearest tree and hope you could get a little shut eye You were always walking in water Your feet would get what they called Immersion Foot splitting and cracking of your feet sometimes clear to the hone" he said How was the fixxl? "It was Army ftxxl and it was pretty bad When I was first there they would bring us a hot meal no matter where wc were at Sometimes it got dropped from 20 feet as they flew by After the war got pretty intense they didn't have enough helicopter power to deliver us food anymore so wc lived on C rations instead (' rations are not very good" he frowned “Wlien it stopped raining it was very hot That's when wc couldn't find water or food They'd sometimes bring you water and drop it from the helicopter from so high that the containers would break "It got so bad once wc didn't have any water Wc were in a rice paddy that had some mud in the end of it and some water buffalo were grazing It was kind of like a corral Wc shooed the buffalo away and dipped the water in the mud out of (heir hoof prints Wc purified the water with our tablets and actually drank it You can imagine what coral water is like “One time wc got so hungry that wc stole a bunch of taro root drying in the sun and some duck eggs that wc found out later were rotten and some green leaves (we didn't know what they were) from the village and ate that It was pretty gross” Brown said Often limes soldiers fell that there was no reason to go to this war Ilia! it wasn't our war "I didn't feel had about going I didn't want to go but I was willing to serve But it was obvious that the war was be-- very-dr- stopped and word came hack from him that there was ing very much affected politically The war could not proceed like a somchtxly on the regular war because of trail up ahead So the difficulties politiI sort of snuck e up cally There were to him and sure Phil posing with friend on China Beach zones and there were enough there were zones You had four or five guys to ask for ID to sec who sitting on (he trail eating and their guns were (lie gixKl guys were and who the bad guys were It around them So wc got down behind a bush and was very difficult to get anything that had any real I told the boy to sec if wc could surprise them and tactical significance accomplished You had to avoid a fire fight I said I would go back and get get so many clearances even when you were free-fir- no-fi- re |