Chapter 5

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, 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.”

“Vietnam?” 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 toy 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 lighter!

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 welcome 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 a 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, lug soled jungle boots, and what seemed like a hundred vaccination punctures.

We lost a day traveling west across the International Date Line, and landed in Cam 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, a rest and recreation center and a large military hospital. Everywhere I looked, there were GIs 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 men, both Sergeants First Class, 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’re 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 an 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.