8 of 12 Vietnam in Transit

After my 30 days of leave I made it out to California. This was the shipping point for the less fortunate solders bound for Vietnam. I got cold feet and went absent without leave AWOL for a few weeks. I did not want to go to Vietnam. I was in no hurry to get there. I thought I could get away with a little time to make my big decision. I had been AWAL before without consequences and how organized could this transit company be? Well to my surprise I received another article 15 and was busted down to privet E3. Oh well my promotion to specialist did not last very long. Any how I was confined to my quarters after the quart marshal was completed and told that once I get on that airplane I am considered a combat soldier and if I was to disappear it would be considered dissertation. The penalty for dissertation was to spend the rest of my life in the stockade and I would do better to be captured by the Vietcong. To make matters worse they did not give me my records this time. The demotion was official and there was nothing I do about it. We refueled in Hawaii during the dark of night and never left the airplane. I think the rest of the flight was 18 hours and the absence of conversation was obvious. The flight ended with my first glimpse of Vietnam and it looked like moon-pocks from the airplane because there were craters everywhere. Jim Raab

http://www.jimraab.blogspot.com/