From an eMail received December 4, 2016
I
am Robert L. Fisher, Jr., Signal OCS class 10-67, Fort Gordon, Georgia.
After a year and a half at Princeton University, drinking way too much
beer and smoking way too many cigarettes, I realized that I was not
going to make it through college. Cutting lots of classes was also part
of the equation. I tried enlisting in the Air Force, but my eyesight
ruled that out. I did not want to be drafted, so I enlisted in the Army
in March of 1966 and selected the Comm Center Specialist MOS, not really
knowing what it meant. After basic at Fort Dix, I was sent to Fort
Gordon for AIT and managed to pass a top secret/crypto security
clearance investigation. I later found out that the FBI actually
interviewed my parents' neighbors! Fortunately the FBI did not interview
my college roommates .... I applied to OCS and started after hanging
out as a "holdover" at Fort Gordon for many months, picking up an
assignment at the post Public Relations Office (probably because I knew
how to write and type). During those months of waiting my friends and I
got to know downtown Augusta very well, with many rides on the "vomit
comet" to and from town. No, we never even tried to visit Augusta
National, just the bars and movie theaters. One night five of us went to
Eddie Pease's Tattoo parlor for some ink. Fortunately for me, I was last
in line and did not get my tat before closing. One of my friends was
John Carson, from Stillwell, Oklahoma. I wonder what ever happened to
him. OCS changed everything for me. Fortunately I had quit smoking the
day I showed up at Fort Dix, and I could handle the PT pretty
well. However, learning leadership was challenging, and I worried about
being up to the expectations of my fellow candidates and our TAC
officers. I enjoyed the confidence course, escape & evasion, and
running, not so much low-crawling up a stream at night in the
winter. The most memorable pogey bait event was when Lt. Key found a
large Hershey bar under one of our pillows and made the unfortunate
candidate break it into bullet-sized pieces and lock and load it into
his M-14. We graduated in May, 1967. I was twenty years old.
After OCS I was assigned to the Signal Center and School at Fort
Monmouth, New Jersey for the Microwave Radio Officer’s Course. Fellow
OCS graduates Jerry Ericson, Ed Nesse, Bill Kader, Raby Nance, and I
rented a house in nearby Long Branch for the sixteen-week course. To
protect the innocent and guilty, I will not describe how my friends and
I spent the alcohol-fueled summer outside of the classroom ….
OCS classmate Jeffrey Fisher, from West Catasqua, Pennsyulvania, and I
were then assigned to the 426th Signal Battalion at Fort Bragg, North
Carolina, where things were pretty boring. I was the XO of a company of
uninspired guys, most of whom had rotated back to CONUS and were just
awaiting discharge. The CO was another OCS classmate, Lt. Ronald Amoss. The
highlight of my tour at Fort Bragg was joining the 82nd Airborne Sport
Parachute Club, where I learned how to pack my ‘chute and jumped out of
a UH-1D helicopter at 3,000 feet with it. Needless to say, I packed it
well. I figured I would end up in RVN anyway, so I volunteered to get it
over with. After two weeks leave, I landed at Tan Son Nhut Air Base near
Saigon shortly before Christmas of 1967. After six days at Camp Alpha
with the flu, I checked in at the 21st Signal Group in Nha Trang. One
additional problem was that my duffel bag, with all my clothing and
other worldly possessions, had gone to Dalat, never to be seen again. I
was assigned to Company C, 41st Signal Battalion in Cam Rahn. Needless
to say, my first week in Cam Ranh was awkward without any change of
clothes.
After
getting replacement clothing, toiletries, etc., I settled in as platoon
leader and became the company’s supply officer, property book officer,
motor officer, and mess officer. In other words, I was the DLJO (Dirty
Little Jobs Officer). I was replacing Lt. Roger Wollert, who was
rotating back to CONUS after managing to have his jeep stolen a month
earlier. I hope he never had to pay for it, although he had been warned
that he might be getting a bill. Our CO was Capt. Walter (Dennis) Huber,
a nice guy, ROTC from Pennsylvania. Our company’s primary responsibility
was operating a 2,400-line dial central telephone office. Not exactly
tactical, but quite a few of the guys were at remote sites in support of
Army and other military units in II Corps. About a month after my
arrival, all hell broke loose when the Tet offensive started at the end
of January. We deployed to defend our comm site at the top of a nearby
(so-called) mountain, where there was an array of long-distance
tropospheric scatter antennae. Fortunately the VC and NVA did not make
it to our site. Back to day-to-day stuff: As one of the few officers
with a TS/crypto clearance, I ended up transporting crypto machines,
etc. to some remote comm sites in II Corps. I also ended up being
paymaster for our guys at these sites and would pack up my briefcase
every month with military payment certificates (MPCs), a/k/a Monopoly
money, and hitch rides on C-123's, C-130's, Chinooks, and Hueys to make
my deliveries to Dalat, Phan Rang, Phan Thiet, and Dong Ba Thin, by
whatever was available. Having been warned ahead of time about
occasional rogue incidents, I carried my .45 Colt under my fatigue shirt
and my M2 carbine openly. (Nope, I could not get an M-16 because the RVN
troops had gotten them first.) my M-14 was just too long and heavy to
handle in tight quarters in helicopters. At least I got to see and
photograph much of II Corps. I picked up a Nikon Nikormat camera at the
PX for $130.
As supply officer I was concerned about the lack of security for the
M-14 rifles that had been issued to our troops, but which were kept in
the supply room. I arranged for my guys to obtain (somehow) building
materials, and we poured a concrete slab and built a sturdy arms room
attached to the supply building. As a result I got my ass chewed out by
the battalion XO for constructing a building without getting the
necessary permits. This was in the spring or summer of 1968, when our
military higher-ups were thinking more like civilians and less like
warriors. The MPs were even ordered to enforce speed limits on
roads! The dashboard of very vehicle was required to be stenciled
with: “Maximum speed 25 MPH.”
After six months of being the DLJO in Cam Ranh I requested a transfer
within the battalion and ended up at the 362nd Signal Company in Phan
Thiet, another coastal comm site under the command of Lt. Brad
Cooper. The site was a few miles out of town, where our personnel were
staying in a former Vietnamese hotel with a rooftop bar, near a school
house reputed to be Ho Chi Minh’s former residence. Unfortunately, the
commute to and from town to work was through a large cemetery, and the
raised burial sites were frequently used by enemy snipers. We were
encouraged to do our commuting during daylight hours. One of our NCO’s
had a near-hit from a B-40 rocket fired from the cemetery that exploded
just behind his jeep and perforated the rear tires, canvas, windshield,
and his body, though not fatally.
Phan Thiet was one of many coastal towns that produced nuoc mam, the
pungent sauce condiment made from fermented fish. Basically,
fresh-caught fish are put in a large barrel and left in the sun on the
dock, where they rot for a week or so. The liquid that drains out of the
barrel is bottled and sold. In Viet Nam, nuoc mam (nuoc cham) is as
ubiquitous as ketchup in the US. If you like the taste of kerosene and
formaldehyde, you will probably like nuoc mam. Me, not so much.
After
a month or two in Phan Thiet I was reassigned to Co. D, 36th Signal
Battalion in Dong Ba Thin, just west across the bay from Cam Rahn, and
forty miles south of Nha Trang. Our unit provided comm support for a US
Army attack helicopter squadron and part of the 30th Regiment of the 9th
Infantry (White Horse) Division of the Korean army.
The company was under the (nominal) command of Capt. James
Hammock. Larry Reynolds was XO until he rotated back to CONUS, and I
replaced him. While XO of Co. D, I was appointed trial counsel and
defense counsel in several courts martial, despite having no prior
experience with legal matters. I was told to read the Uniform Code of
Military Justice (UCMJ) and simply follow proper
procedures. Fortunately, I picked up the procedures rather quickly and
managed to get through several courts martial without incident. It was
this experience that eventually led me to apply to law school after
graduating from college.
I was nearing the end of my one-year tour of duty in RVN, when the
battalion XO, Major Hutcheson, took me aside and tried to talk me into
making the military a career. By extending my tour by six months I would
have had a promotion to captain, thirty days leave anywhere in the world
and my choice of assignment within the battalion. By that time I knew I
had to return to college in the real world, so I declined.
Shortly before Christmas 1968 I reported to the Replacement Depot near
Tan Son Nhut Air Base for processing to CONUS. After a couple of days I
was told to report to the clearance center in my khakis for immediate
departure for Fort Lewis, Washington. I happily tossed my jungle
fatigues into the disposal bin, then put my insignia on my
freshly-laundered and ironed khaki shirt and pulled on my pants. The
pant legs came halfway up my calves, literally. The Vietnamese laundry
had obviously substituted a munchkin’s pants for mine, and at the worst
possible time. I asked the administration people what to do, and they
said I would have to stick around for another few days until I could get
another pair of khaki pants. That was not what I wanted to hear. I
retrieved my fatigues and reported to the assembly area, the only
soldier not wearing khakis. Fortunately no one batted an eye, and I
boarded the plane with my briefcase and Montagnard crossbow, with
arrows, which I carried on board a commercial flight from Fort Lewis to
Chicago and then to New York’s Kennedy Airport without
incident. Obviously this was long before TSA was created.
After Christmas I reported to Fort Monmouth and ended up teaching the
same Microwave Radio Officer course that I had taken in the summer of
1967. My friend and co-instructor was Lt. Aaron Spencer Taylor. I also
volunteered to run the Military Auxiliary Radio Station (MARS) facility
on post, as I had an Advanced Amateur Radio license. In my off-hours I
attended flight school at Asbury Park International Air Terminal (sic)
and got my private pilot’s license. At my request, I separated from
active duty on July 31, 1969, after three years, four months, and
twenty-seven days, and returned to Princeton in early September. I
graduated in May, 1972 and went to work for General Services
Administration in Washington, D.C. I returned to Connecticut the
following year and entered the University of Connecticut School of Law,
graduating in 1976. I joined Cramer & Anderson, a general practice law
firm in Litchfield, Connecticut, where I still work full time.
- - -
