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An example of this can be seen at Nui Ba Den, one of the few mountains of useful height in the 1st ID’s tactical area of operation. It proved critical to maintaining a number of the long multi-channel “shots” to the rapidly shifting forward command post locations that filled the surrounding flat land. But it wasn’t enough. After all, it was only one mountain, where 20 were needed.

The answer of course was to erect signal towers. The only problem was that back then the TOE for a Signal Battalion didn’t include equipment for signal towers. Strangely, while no such equipment existed or was authorized, signal towers soon began to appear. Since few people knew that they weren’t authorized or part of a Signal Battalion’s equipment list, few people asked questions. For the most part Captains, Majors, Colonels and the higher ranks that saw them simply assumed that they were supposed to be where they were, or they wouldn’t be there. No one asked how they got there, who authorized them, or anything. And from the rank of Lieutenant on down, no one told. When a tower was needed, it just magically appeared. Another example of American ingenuity at its best.

As to what they looked like, they were usually cobbled together from the two standard issue systems that made up the 45 foot AB-577 and the 65-foot AB-216. With a little judicious use of guy wires these things could be erected up to and over two hundred feet into the air.

How did the troops involved know this? Part of the answer can be traced back to Army Signal OCS, at Fort Gordon, where early 1966 Officer Candidates were shown how to erect towers, guy them, and keep them up in the wind. Because of this fortuitous training, when these same butter bars hit the field in Vietnam and their EMs told them that the way to solve the connection problem was to get the antennas up higher than the surrounding terrain, they instantly thought of the towers they had trained on back at OCS. The fact that this solution involved equipment that was not authorized to their units, or readily available, didn’t matter. What mattered was getting the message through… and they knew that could be done by simply putting an (unauthorized) tower higher than anyone had before. Wet behind the ears as Second Lieutenants they may have been, but intimidated they were not. After all, they had themselves built these same towers back on the fields of Signal OCS and so knew that the equipment was strong, reliable, and not beyond their ability to master.

And so it happened, Enlisted ingenuity and the excitement of Junior Officer command led to signal towers popping up all over the place in the II Corps zone, authorized or not. Find a field command post or forward fire base in Central Vietnam and the chances are you would also find a couple hundred feet of tower sticking up into the sky.

Whatever the cause, whatever the reason, it worked. These off-the-cuff towers kept the VHF and UHF systems on air, providing to every major combat unit the voice of command they needed.[1]

As to what all of this accomplished, it set the tempo and tenor for how tactical Signaleers would face the war ahead. By combining rapidly constructed towers of the kind first learned about back on the training fields of Signal OCS with ground and light air-transportable equipment layouts, wooden boxed pieces of signal equipment kluged from much larger systems, air borne relay stations, and upgraded VHF and UHF equipment, field signal platoons were able to install, operate and maintain backbone field expedient multi-channel trunking and switching systems able to meet the needs of any tactical combat field unit… of any size… any complexity… at any number of forward bases… in support of any combat team with a fire in their belly to find and fix the enemy, and jump to the occasion by moving itself at the trigger of a trip wire from where it was to some other God forsaken location in Vietnam… and then get up and do it all over again the next morning.

Yet while all in all the system worked and worked well, it wasn’t perfect. As the combat units settled into their routines the pace quickened even more, bringing the rate of combat engagement up several notches higher than that which had been set when they first arrived in country.

The case of the 1st ID gives an example. For it the links the commo guys set up between the main command post at Dĩ An and the brigade main command post at Phuoc Vinh worked well, but still only provided basic communication. So too for communication between the brigade command post and the division's forward command post at Lai Khe, and similarly for division support command, which was tied into brigade headquarters at Dĩ An. All in all, basic communication… with a jump capability thrown in to tie together the division and brigade tactical command posts whenever they were deployed. But beyond that, the system simply could not keep up with the evolving needs of the combateers, especially as their commanders grew to spend more and more time in the air. In a nut shell, the combat commander’s growing penchant to spend as much time in the air as they could, applying and employing helicopter borne command and control rather than pacing back and forth in an office back in the rear, put a stress on field communications that the Signal Corps had not seen in all the wars before.[2]

How did the Signal Corps fix this problem? You’ll have to drop back next month to find out that answer. Next month we’ll take a look at the communication problem helicopter borne command and control created, and how the Signal Corps went about solving it. Join us then to continue the story of the Signal Corps’ efforts in the 1965 – 1967 period, when the war began in earnest.

 

             

Footnotes

[1] At Dĩ An base camp the tower stood at 120 feet. At Christmas the Signaleers traded around until they had enough Christmas lights to wrap the guy wires. To make sure the symbolism wasn’t missed, they topped it with a huge star. One written archive of the time stated that when “the Big Red One communicators gathered about the tower, the commanding general of the division commended them for their outstanding work as communicators and, at the conclusion of his remarks, officially lit the ‘tree’.” Little did he know that the tower was not part of the TOE, was unauthorized and built from scrounged parts and materials. As the ceremony proceeded, starting with a few 1st Lieutenants and on down through the enlisted ranks, smiles and chuckles spread throughout the assembly as the idea gained momentum that they were being commended for what was essentially an unauthorized activity and something that flaunted SOP. For most of the higher Officer ranks however, at least for those that noticed the levity and jostling of the crowd, the question was bantered about as to what the troops found so humorous that they could hardly contain themselves. - To return to your place in the text click here:

[2] Dĩ An is a town in Binh Duong province in southeastern Vietnam, about 20 km north of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City). It is 1706 km by rail from Hanoi. As of the 2009 census the town had a population of 73,859. The town covers 60 km².  - To return to your place in the text click here:

Sources

Primary source material, data and statistics used in this article taken from Vietnam Studies, Division Level Communication, 1962 - 1973, Lieutenant General Charles R. Myer.

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