Reply #15: I was there in '68 for the Organizational Maintenance Officer Course

[pinboy3niner]

I was a newly-commissioned 19-year-old 2nd lt., fresh out of six months of Infantry OCS at Benning. As desperate as the Army was for junior Infantry officer replacements in VN, its practice was to give new officers at least 6 months of stateside duty (presumably so they could adjust to their new rank and responsibilities) before assignment to the combat zone.

The best thing about my time at Knox was that my class had foreign officers--a Chinese Major and six ARVN (South Vietnamese Army) Lt's. One of the ARVNs and I decided to share a one-man Bachelor Officers' Quarters room so we could each learn more about the other's language and culture. Phung and I had to trade off each night, one man sleeping in the single bed and the other sleeping in the easy chair, but the arrangement was worth it to us.

Phung's government had sent him to the U.S. for training to kill time until he recuperated fully from machine gun wounds to the leg that he'd sustained while leading an armored cav unit in combat. We all got leave when we completed the course, and I invited all of the ARVNs to California and took them to Disneyland. I'll never forget what Phung said that day at the Magic Kingdom: "I wish I could live here all my life." He'd already received orders to return to his combat unit...

I got to see Phung again on two occasions when I went to Vietnam the following year. The first was when my commander allowed me to chopper out to the ARVN 10th Armored Cav basecamp at Duc Hoa for a 2-day visit. (What I remember most was Phung and me getting drunk and driving the armored personnel carriers around the compound, playing 'chicken' like James Dean in 'Rebel Without a Cause.' :) ) The second time was when his parents invited me to their home on Cong-Ly Street in Saigon to have dinner with Phung, his siblings and his wife.

After that I was sent north to I Corps to join the 101st Abn. Div., and I never saw Phung again. After I was wounded and medevac'd back to the States, it was several more years before I tried to track Phung down again by writing to our Ambassador for assistance in locating him. The Embassy replied that Phung had been wounded again and retired from the Army for disability, and he was working as a manager at a bank in Saigon. Then Saigon fell, so contact was impossible. It seems likely that Phung was sent to a "re-education" camp under the new regime.

One of the things Phung taught me was a patriotic song about a South Vietnamese soldier's love of his country, its ocean and its mountains and his sweetheart back home. When I encountered civilians out in the jungle during the war, I'd sing that song and they'd literally be rolling on the ground with laughter. Many years later, friends in a Vietnamese community here would invite me to their nightclubs and put me onstage with the band to sing the song because they got such a kick out of hearing an American do it.

These days I think of Phung when something--like your mention of serving at Ft. Knox--triggers those old memories. Thanks for that, and for the opportunity to share my 'war story' of Ft. Knox and Phung here.