Minemen Around the World
Taiwan/Vietnam
Don Jones tells of his varied career as a Mineman caught between Taiwan and Vietnam. Not many minemen can claim an adventure like this.
In mid-1969, while on MAAG duty in Tsoying, Taiwan, I volunteered for a 60-day non-combat Military Assistance Program (MAP) TDY to Long Binh Army Base, outside Saigon. My assignment was at the Property Disposal Compound. I wore Army fatigues and kept discarding shiny Navy stuff until soldiers stopped saluting me. My boss was a U.S. Air Force Major and his boss was a Taiwanese Army Colonel. They offered me a gun, but it would have been such a hassle, I didn't accept it.
The Long Binh Army base was huge, 10 miles across. But, every once in a while, the VC would lob a rocket into the base, usually at night. I shared a room with a staff sergeant who was on his 3rd tour in Vietnam. Every evening he would put flak jackets on the backs of chairs surrounding his bunk. His wife and kids were in Germany and she would send him audio tapes. It was sad to see him listening to those tapes with tears streaming down his face. He was near the end of his 3rd tour and determined to get out of there alive.
Cumshaw was a work of art over there. Taiwanese Navy LSTs would bring a load of bagged cement to Newport, for which the U. S. paid $20K. One of the LST's forward side-compartments would be full of booze for us to distribute to various units in-country in compensation for things, such as the jeep we drove and our place to stay, etc. We were very busy over the next few days delivering cases of Scotch and other goodies to our on-base benefactors, such as EOD, et al. But, our office in Saigon, at the Metropol Hotel also got a jeep load of booze to distribute to their friends and benefactors in Saigon.
Big trucks, heavily loaded with scrap-metal, had to drive slow and make a sharp turn while leaving the PDC. Soon as it got through the gate, Vietnamese kids would jump onto the trucks and start throwing off small pieces of scrap metal as fast as they could. Since the trucks had to make another sharp turn at the end of the street, I'm not sure how long the kids stayed on the trucks. It was scary seeing those kids climbing on those truck trailers. The drivers must have known what was going on, but just ignored it.
On the way back to Taiwan, the LSTs took back for example, over 50 M-38 jeeps that had been turned into the PDC when the new M-115s arrived. When a soldier drove a nice M-38, with the rounded hood corners, into the compound another soldier would come out, take the keys, and spray paint a PDC-number on the hood. My job was to copy that number down and lay claim to the jeep for the Taiwanese Army. An arbitrator in Hawaii, would decide who got the jeep, Taiwan, Korea, or the Philippines. The payoff: An Army stock catalog would give me the price of a brand-new jeep and that sum would be subtracted from the total MAP funds the country was to receive that year. We heard one of the in-good-shape jeeps was repainted, stenciled, and delivered for use within a few hours of its arrival in Taiwan. Every vehicle had to be shipped with an empty fuel tank; no exceptions. We dumped thousands of gallons of fuel onto the ground. One day I got chewed out by an Army officer for putting some of the to-be-dumped gas into our jeep. He said it could be contaminated with all kinds of bad stuff. He pointed to a fuel tanker truck and told me to get my gas there from then on and I did.
On weekends, I usually returned to Saigon to help a junior enlisted man buy ceramic elephants that were gaudily painted and mail them to big-shots in Taipei, Taiwan. The elephants couldn't weigh over 60 lbs. if they were mailed. They couldn't be insured. They just put a mailing tag on them and away they went. In the photo attached, we are about to set off on a very important ceramic elephant-buying mission. I wish I knew that young fellow's name, he had a good attitude while performing a crappy duty.
One day while exiting the PX, a skinny, scruffy-looking CPO, who claimed to be off a PBR wanted me to use my ration card to buy him cigarettes and booze. Since I didn't smoke and didn't drink much I agreed and he went away happy and I felt so good - until someone told me that all that stuff was probably on the black market in Saigon within hours if not minutes later. Now that was a kick in the gon-yonies.
The Air Force Major and I departed Danang, carrying a small wooden crate that supposedly contained de-milled AK-47s destined for a military museum in Taipei. The crate was addressed to a USA Colonel. The same Army Colonel had promised each of us a Joint Service Commendation Medal for agreeing to and performing the TDY. I would have turned it down, because I didn't deserve it. I got back to Taiwan the day Neil Armstrong walked on the moon [20 July 1969]. My walking Taiwanese dictionary was glad to see me, but about 50 MAAG servicemen including me had to leave the island that month. Ah, but, parting with her was such sweet sorrow.
One day, a Taiwanese sailor was seriously hurt when he fell on one of the LSTs. We rushed him to the 3rd Field Hospital in our jeep. While waiting to hear the prognosis of the sailor, it was depressing to hear them announce the arrival of every Medevac helicopter with a rundown of how many injured was aboard and their condition. I was glad to get out of there, but didn't have much of an appetite when we went to lunch.--Don Jones
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