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Nam Boogie (Tet Version)

By Horace Coleman

Okay, it goes like this: BK (Beau Coup Kilo) and I had just finished a 14-hour night shift at Paris Control. Paris was Tan Son Nhut's (TSN) detachment of the 619th Tactical Control Squadron, which had radar sites scattered from the DMZ to the Ca Mau peninsula. We were weapons controllers, air traffic controllers, scope dopes. People who mostly helped keep the right people stay alive and the wrong ones get dead by playing sky traffic cop.

We were sitting around in the Tomb, the Tan Son Nhut Officers' Open Mess, having breakfast and thinking about knocking back a couple of eye closers before going home, sleeping fast and pulling another night shift. In-country time had long since become a fast-moving stream flowing into a muddy tropical river of jumbled events and sensations. The Land of the Big PX was an almost-forgotten fable we'd once lived in.

Days meant more than nights. More fire fights, more shot up or shot down aircraft. Days meant broadcasting "heavy artillery warnings (B-52 strike)" notifications - so no friendlies would be there when it rained iron and HE. Days meant FACs letting it urgently be known they could use any "spare birds with play time," machine guns, napalm or 20 mike mike to spare.

Nights meant reece birds going "up North" - into northern South Vietnam and southern North Vietnam. You had to coordinate with the Army to temporarily shut down the H (harassment) & I (interdiction) fire that made your radar scope look like a grease pencil-on-glass drawing of the inside of a sliced up beehive. That was so low-flying birds on in-country reece missions didn't inadvertently make aces out of artillery crews.

Monsoon meant cold rain that fell at a 45-degree angle - or higher when the wind blew harder. Which meant more ground action. Which meant more aircraft low on fuel and stacking up in the traffic pattern as they needed Ground Control Intercept hand-offs to RAPCON (radar approach control) for bad weather landings. Tan Son Nhut was the world's busiest airport at the time, having taken the sure enough heavyweight champeenship from Chicago's O'Hare Airport. The Dry Season meant the "usual" mugginess and mania.

All time meant was so many hours (not many) until "work" or how many hours left on this shift (too many). The only time that ultimately counted was the number of unfilled squares left on your short timer's calendar. 15 Feb 68 was the time I was looking for. And a Freedom Bird was the thing I wanted. BK and I never did have that morning drink.

A squawk box in the O Club went off: "All personnel report to your duty stations immediately!" It was a short jog to the radar "shack." There we found out the balloon was way up. For weeks in late '67 and early '68, you could feel the war coming to Saigon. You could hear the B-52 strikes getting closer every night.

Intelligence had given us the news there was going to be an aerial invasion of South Vietnam. All we scope dopes knew for certain was that the NVA had a few biplanes and some helicopters. The MIGs in the North had all been chased out of the air or shot down, for all practical purposes. If it flew in the South, it was either a bird or ours. Nevertheless, we went to our military version of Janes to get "the word" - which wasn't much.

If you think you're going to be involved in fighting a plane, there are a few things you might like to know, like its combat and maximum altitude, its max speed, favorite tactics, its fire control system's lock-on range. Of course the official Air Force manual's skimpy paragraphs on the MIG expected to be coming to dinner were inadequate. But nothing happened at Christmas. After all, it wasn't Tet yet.

When the Tet Offensive was roaring in-country, fighter bombers were taking off from TSN and dumping their loads at the end of the base's runways. These fighter bombers were strays who couldn't get home or had been quickly relocated. APCs and tanks, not normally seen on base streets, were clattering around. Vietnamese and American MPs mixed it up with VC on the base's perimeter and, appropriately enough, in a cemetery.

Some over-anxious young Air Force troop, eager to get in on the action, climbed into one of the radomes with an M-16 to take a whack at the VC. The MPs decided there was a sniper up there and shot him out of the saddle, also knocking out the radar during a crucial period. Which may be why our CO didn't pass out weapons. We were more dangerous to ourselves and each other, in his estimation, than the VC. The MPs would protect us. Which led a few of us to wonder why we inadequately trained TAC [Tactical Air Command ] Trained Killers were in Nam in the first place. That's a joke, folks.

Anyway, the peak of my Tet participation was trying to guide a chopper from Tan Son Nhut to the US Embassy in Saigon. The VC were attacking the embassy. The civilians inside needed guns and ammo to hold them off until they were relieved from the ground.

That chopper never got high enough for me to make radar contact with it. I tried to give the pilot street directions - just like you would to a lost motorist. I used my memory of streets I'd walked and what might show up by air, a street map someone dug up and a VNAF sergeant from Saigon whose English was on a par with my subpar Vietnamese.

The pilot didn't recognize most of the landmarks I told him about as he flew down Trung Minh Ky street. He finally managed to find his way to the embassy anyway. Then I lost radio contact with him after he switched frequencies to talk to the embassy. I called his call sign repeatedly but got no answer. Finally another chopper pilot came up on frequency and said "Paris Control, I just saw a chopper get shot down by the embassy!"

After a few decades, some things are clearer. As in the overall conflict, the US won the major battles but lost the one that counted. The "will of the people" (North Vietnamese, VC, VC sympathizers, anti-Saigon government or anti-American types. And people running hustles or just trying to last out the war) ultimately exceeded our mental stamina.

The losses we inflicted, triggered, supported or instigated in Southeast Asia exceed the pain reflected by, and carved into, The Wall. Asians quickly proved they could trash each other without our help.

We still believe in using the highest technology available to not risk American troops' lives while defending Americans who, for the most part, really can't be bothered to physically defend themselves or their interests themselves.

That seems to apply to most of the messes we've stuck our snouts into since then. It isn't carefree being Leader of the Free World. And we still don't know enough about the people and places we keep trying to straighten out. Or the reasons we're really doing things that benefit we don't know who in ways we don't know.

But Nam was "fun" while it lasted. As some lifers used to say, "Don't knock it. It's the only war we've got." Remember the posters and T shirts that said "Travel to strange lands, meet exotic people, and kill them"? Or "Kill them all and let God sort them out"?

Well, our generation took its turn at the ageless game people have played for ages. And we relearned what people have been relearning forever. Now if we could just figure out what it all really meant....

After a few days of Tet I got a chance to get the word out to my folks and wife telling them that I didn't know what the news was saying but I was all right but might not be home when expected. When I'd been stationed below the Delta, some print stories had gone out about how my outfit had been overrun - when there hadn't been a shot fired around us for clicks in weeks. So God knows what people were hearing now.

One day, when the smoke cleared a little, I got a jeep ride to my on-the-economy quarters and 15 minutes to get some gear together. My Vietnamese landlady asked me, "What we do now? What happening? What about us?" I said "I don't know, mama-san. Time for me to go to America."

That was a lousy answer but it was true. I felt a more intense version of the way I had when a young woman came to the door of the "villa," the floor of the Saigon apartment building my old outfit leased in Saigon. I used to call myself "a Den Dad in a whorehouse." She'd asked where was the GI who'd gotten her pregnant. Gone stateside like we all would. Leaving the Vietnamese to clean up after us. As always.

I'd learned about the pucker factor and keeping your honor (such as it was) as much as possible. How to look out for your people, and to shut up and listen to whoever knew something worth knowing. And to not let rank go to my head. Also, how precious, fragile and random life is. How people react under pressure, when we're scared or when we think no one's looking. That troops with guns don't make good ambassadors. That arrogance and ignorance reinforce each other and can really make a mess.

I learned that, when pushing comes to shoving, I would do what I had to do to stay alive. I'm as human as the next impostor. But, there are lines you shouldn't cross easily, often or without a damn good reason. Not enough people have learned that.

Life is full of decision points and ambiguity. The more chances you handle, the likelier you are to make an error. Besides, you can't beat yourself over the head forever. Give someone else a chance to do it; your arms are tired, aren't they?

My Vietnam experience began when I had to bum a ride with Air America to escape the Transient Barracks and get to my outfit. Sometime before Tet I'd run into the same guy from Chicago that I'd met on a flight to California. We'd hung together in San Francisco, during our last night in the States. We'd wandered the streets, going into and out of clubs. In the A.M. we'd bussed to Travis AFB to catch the morning time machine ride that would change reality. I'd accidentally run into him again at the end of his tour. He'd gotten a little drop and was leaving early.

He'd been a jump-rated air traffic controller, assigned to work with the Army in the field. He had a 500 - if not a 1,000 - yard stare look and a clipped, quiet and ominous tone. It was obvious he'd seen too much, didn't feel like talking about it and thought we weren't doing it right. I wondered why we were doing it at all. I felt glad my request for a transfer to Dong Ha had been turned down.

What did I really learn in Vietnam and during Tet? It took years to sort it all out. It goes like this:

• Military "superiority" (the ability to inflict more damage than the opponent can) doesn't guarantee victory.
• A racist and xenophobic attitude towards a people makes it difficult to truly "win" the heart or mind of anyone worth a damn. Everyone wasn't like that but more than enough were to make me wonder if we didn't make as many VC as we killed.
• The less well-acquainted you are with history, the more likely you are to have unpleasant experiences.
• In most endeavors the primary advantages of youth are brashness, enthusiasm and energy. Unfortunately, they have to be very well directed and applied to be useful in the long term.
• When you televise an unsuccessful, undeclared, unwar in which the unwilling are made by the unqualified to do the unnecessary for the ungrateful, you're really asking for trouble. So, the next time there's a semi-major dust up, news access is restricted, how well costly "smart" weapons work is overstated. And the Pentagon stalls and lies about the health problems the troops are having.
• If you're a support troop, have your own piece. If you don't know (or haven't been taught) how and when to use it, you really shouldn't be where you are.
• We did some good. For instance, many people who didn't want to live under communism got a chance not to. Of course they had to leave the country to do it but they got a chance for a different life.
• America's a pretty good country but you should never love it more than it loves you.

Sometimes, somewhere, someone learns a little something. Maybe not much but something. We may as well use it. We paid for it.

Horace Coleman has been a writer, professor, and public speaker.