FM Viet Nam by Michael Staelens The Vietnam coastline faded quickly as the behemoth C-123 “trash hauler” creaked and groaned skyward. The twin propellers strained and thundered and might have blown out ear drums if not for the yellow foam ear plugs provided to us by the loadmaster. Aviation gas fumes invaded our senses with pungent chemicals that tasted like we were swallowing gasoline. Cargo was piled high and secured in the middle of the aircraft with marines, soldiers and airmen strapped to ribbon seats along the fuselage. When we reached altitude, the loadmaster pulled out a chrome Zippo lighter and fired up a cigarette. He raised his head and said “light em if you got em.” We did and said “thanks Sarge.” Yesterday I was on a Flying Tiger airline jetliner in a plush recliner and devouring meals on plastic trays. Attractive flight attendants provided drinks, pillows and smiles. Today, no one smiled. Half way around the globe, and far from everyone I knew, I was immersed in a foreign culture, suddenly aware of life in a war zone. Two stops later we landed at Tuy Hoa Air Base. It was late morning. The hatch opened and we stepped off in file. My sense of smell was again overwhelmed, this time by a mixture of jet fuel, cinnamon, fish oil, feces and defoliant. I gathered my bulging duffel bag and marched toward the terminal. Vietnamese workers squatted outside in clothing that reminded me of black hospital scrubs with flip flops and straw coned hats. They balanced on flat feet next to the terminal building dining from metal containers with chop sticks or fingers while they smoked cigarettes laughing and speaking rapidly. An overhead PA played music as I walked into the terminal and I heard an announcer giving the time and temperature over the instrumental intro to a Credence Clearwater Revival song. An airman wearing starched jungle green fatigues with black stripes looked at my name tag. He directed me next door to the Base Operations center. “Better get over there quick Airman, they’ve been waiting for you.” I crossed the sand and met MSgt Darryl. He sized me up and down and shook his head. “We expected you a couple of weeks ago. We’re short handed so I need you to start work tonight.” After meeting the officers and men on duty I hopped into an Air Force blue pick-up with the boss. He drove me to an olive drab quonset hut where there was already a bunk for me. The ‘hootches’ formed a perimeter around modular buildings that served as headquarters, support, and administration. MSgt Darryl told me to report to the dorm chief, who would help me get situated and to report to work by 11 PM. My first day in-country was a true learning experience, but I made it through. I worked the mid shift with Diz, an Airman from Colorado. I took a lot of notes. I processed in at at 0900. I found the admin buildings where elegant Vietnamese women in pale ao dais, smiled shyly and glided gracefully from office to office. Vietnamese men in short sleeve shirts with ties, airmen in jungle fatigues and a few DoD civilians also assisted the base commander’s staff. A recreation center, base exchange and barber shop, a post office and other conveniences made life comfortable easing the homesickness a little. A chapel held regular services for us and kept God in our lives. At the end of the block was a chow hall serving pretty good meals for a combat zone four times daily. During processing I filled in countless forms and signed some of the same paperwork I completed before I left home. I attended briefings and lectures on security and what was expected of me. I learned how I should conduct myself in-country. My shots were all current before I reported for duty but, at the medical briefing, I was dismayed to hear that I would need another, a “GG” - gamma globulin shot. “Report to the medics, drop your pants, bend over and hold your breath. Hopefully it will be the most pain you experience in your tour of Vietnam.” He wasn’t kidding. I couldn’t sit or sleep on my left side for a week. That night, someone at work smacked me in the butt with a dictionary. Ha ha. The flight line was a bustling place. F-100 Super Saber jets, AC-119 Shadow gunships and HH-43 Huskie helicopters took off and landed constantly. Maintenance crews raced from plane to plane with efficiency and dedication. Crew chiefs were proud of their craft and had their names stenciled on the nose. I was lowest in rank so I worked the midnight shift. There would be no days off. Every night I walked from my hootch on the far south of the base to the the flight line on the far north, a mile and a half away. Traffic was usually light on the disintegrating tarmac-on-sand roads and I navigated between perforated metal walkways and make-shift wooden paths. Sometimes I saw Shadow gunships taking off on night missions to join other aircraft already firing tracer rounds and kicking flares to illuminate the battlefield to the north. Some called the place “Monkey Mountain,” but I doubt that was the proper geographic name. The daily long hikes helped me lose 90 pounds during my tour and I could afford every ounce. They also put a lot of mileage on my Air Force-issued, green canvas sided, steel reinforced combat boots. We were expected to keep them shined and I applied polish at my bunk daily. 40 beds were aligned in each hootch with lockers as partitions. Smaller huts served as latrines for 4 bunk houses each. During the day Vietnamese women who cleaned our hootches gathered around the washing machines and dryers tending to loads of laundry. It was a way for them to make money from the troops. Our showers were in the same building, so it became quite a trick to maintain a sense of modesty around them. Some of us developed skills with towels, others didn’t bother. There seemed to be two seasons: monsoon and stifling heat. Good sleep was difficult inside the metal cans. Outside, dug out, sand bagged shelters between the hootches provided cover from incoming mortars, if you could get to them. I looked into one once but was never near when the shells flew. I was usually at work in Base Operations when the excitement happened. We donned helmets and flack jackets before we loaded M-16s, ready for whatever came. It was an education in Combat Airfield Management. The job was demanding. Support of air crews with professional ground support was vital to their missions. We gave them what they needed and more. After a while I settled right in. A continuously ticking teletype machine printed out information vital to pilots regarding flying and airfield conditions throughout the country and beyond. They were called NOTAMs (Notices to Airman). We monitored them and ripped the reports and posted them on bulletin boards. We also helped pilots file flight plans and entered their flying hours into the official record, Our radio constantly chattered air-to-ground communications from incoming aircraft. Down the hall was a fully functioning weather station with forecasters and observers. Next door was the Air Traffic Control tower. Each morning I rode with the Operations officer on duty as he performed a runway condition report and I retrieved any foreign objects littering the taxiway. I brought a hand crank field radio and wound it up to contact dispatch for anything we couldn’t handle. Once I noticed an unusual pile of sand that wasn’t there the day before. I turned the crank as fast as I could and nervously reported it to Security Police. They were on top if it within seconds. What they found was classified. Another of my jobs was to run maintenance checks on our pick up truck and station wagon. Outside you could feel the breeze from the South China Sea and the air was fresher. Next door the Pax terminal was always busy. Troops from other countries, civilian passengers, airlifted patients, entertainment troupes and many others traveled on or were airlifted to battlefields. It became a small world, I saw faces I remembered from grade school, basic training and my previous assignment. I ran into a grade school chum during monsoon season. He was a soldier on his way to a fire fight. After we caught up on old times, he complained of wet socks and jungle rotted toes. I knew the feeling about wet clothes, since I slogged through an inch or two of rain every night during the season. I had access to a clothes dryer, so I gave him the five pair of new socks I’d received from home in a Care Package that day. He stuffed them into his pack beaming like I had just given him the key to Fort Knox. A Douglas C-47 ‘Gooney Bird’ was our base aircraft. Our ops officers used for it for base-to-base missions and transport throughout the theater. They named her the “Dragon Lady” and I assisted on several missions by flying along and off loading cargo or managing passengers. We landed at Da Nang, where we delivered equipment to Marines, Nah Trang, where we took bullets in the tail as we departed, and Pleiku, where I drank coffee with local dispatchers while the officers met to discuss something important. The Dragon Lady flew me to Hong Kong for two days after I was awarded Airman of the Quarter. I enrolled in my first college course at the base recreation center where my life changed forever. It was a large air conditioned oasis in the middle of the base. Donut Dollies (Red Cross volunteers) made us feel like someone cared about us, with smiles and good humor. We grinned right back. The REC Center was a lot cleaner and nicer than I expected. A few musical instruments lay on tables in the corner, shelves of books and magazines lined the walls and folding tables provided spaces for games, study, letter writing or discussion. There was coffee and donuts in the TV lounge where you could sit on padded chairs and watch the local American Forces TV Network. Besides seeing Pat Sajak give weather reports on the nightly news, old movies and stale TV shows brought a touch of home. I was glad to have a place like that to relax. I perused the reading materials and passed a bulletin board. A 3X5 note card with a red boarder drew my eye. “Announcers wanted for FM Tuy Hoa. Call Lieutenant Ray.” I found the nearest phone. An airman put me on hold and soon the photo squadron commander greeted me and said to come over to his shop as soon as I could. He told me that first I should step inside the radio station if I had the time. I did. The entrance was an audition suite used for show prep and production. There were turntables, tape recorders, a microphone and a broadcast control board. A complete library of records, left behind by Armed Forces Radio when the station was decommissioned, lined the walls. It was perfectly equipped and foam insulation ensured sound proofing all around. A red and white ‘On Air’ sign hung over the door. Stereo speakers overhead played the radio signal and I heard an announcer say in a deep, resonant voice “You’re listening to FM Tuy Hoa and the hits just keep on coming.” I opened the control room door just as Joe Cass was in the middle of his morning show. When the door creaked, his head snapped toward me and his left arm gesticulated wildly. He pointed to the illuminated On-Air sign posted above the door and shooed me out. I knew I’d made a critical error and sat in the audition suite crest fallen, waiting to be lambasted. Soon the door opened and Joe walked toward me. “Didn’t you see the sign?” “I’m sorry, I don’t know what it means.” “He calmly told me “It means the mic is open and every one in-country heard the squeaky door open when you came in. Next time wait until the light goes out.” He told me the lieutenant had called and said I might be coming over. He introduced himself and began filling me in on the life of a disc jockey. I sat with him in the control room and watched him create magic on the radio, just like the guys I listened to at home. “Welcome to pirate radio. We’re using old Armed Forces Radio equipment left behind when they bugged out last year.” An Army broadcaster named Paul Berry worked to have the station equipment and transmitter transferred to recreational services for morale purposes.” As the next record played, we stepped into the audition suite and I watched him cue up a reel-to-reel tape. “This reel is disc jockeys from New York, Chicago, Miami, San Antonio, and L.A. We want to sound like them and talk about the kinds of things that they do, only make it local. Listen to it and flip it off when you’re through. Come into the control room and we’ll talk when you see the light go out.” Later that day I met with Lt. Ray. He went over most of the things Joe had already brought up and then assigned me a mentor. I was ready to begin my volunteer gig as a radio announcer. Monty Gomery let me sit in on his show the next day and explained how the controls worked and everything linked together. He even let me cue up and start a couple of records. I rapidly learned about platter chatter, when to give time and temperature, proper pronunciation, how to avoid dead air, how to back-time records to meet air deadlines and most of all, how to sound just like my favorite DJs. I read up on diaphragmatic breathing and how to use my bass tones to their fullest I thought I was ready for my first solo shift. Monty went over all the equipment again and told me he expected great things of me. Then he walked outside for coffee. I looked up at a Petula Clark poster smiling at me. I looked down and needles jumped on yellow dials, toggle switches were arrayed over round dials, records were cued on turntables, tape decks were threaded and I was abandoned in the On-Air booth. In a few seconds the AFRTS network news cast would end and my first live show would begin. My neck tingled and I couldn’t breathe. I waited for the system out cue, ready to say hello to the world. My first record was by Edwin Starr with an instrumental lead-in. I flipped the mic switch open and began: “Gene Michaels live, in person, and ready to rock on F-M Tuy Hoa, 89.1 on YOUR dial, in stereo.” The door opened and Monty peeked in and told me I turned the mic switch the wrong way so no one heard me. He gave me a few more pointers and left me on my own. I didn’t have long to feel sorry for myself, the record was ending and I needed to try again. The two hours seemed like two days but I paid close attention and worked everything right the rest of the way. We didn’t use our real names for security reasons. We had “air names” like Joe Cass, Randy Bishop, Green W. Dragon, Bill Keen, Larry Charles, and Gene Michaels. Some of us stayed in the profession afterward. There were very few limits to how we could present our shows or what we could play. We all had different styles and tastes and spoke to our audience in our own ways . We carried the AFRTS feed when Neil Armstrong took “one small step” on the moon. Sometimes we invited callers, but kept a tape loop running with a 7-second delay to censor profanity. Our listeners could get carried away. On July 4th I played all Christmas music and said it was snowing in Vietnam. Troops called in giving ski reports, school closings, and Santa sightings so I put them on the air over the music. It was a fun show. A sniper from the Army Airfield liked to drop by on Sunday afternoons, even though visitors were prohibited in the control room. We patiently listened to his BS stories because he told them like an old cowboy. Once he told us about shooting toward what he thought was Viet Cong infiltrators in the brush a couple of days before. He came to realize that he’d killed a water buffalo. He told us that and then invited us all to a barbecue put on by the Phu Hiep Airfield Commander. We let the lieutenant know. We soon were off to party with a bunch of worn out, overworked Army aviation dogs. Lt. Ray drove us over the rutted dirt road that separated the bases where we all scanned the road for IEDs. It’s hard to explain how out of place and unwelcome we felt at first. The CO thought we were civilian DJs since we never gave a rank on-air but he laughed when he realized we were airmen. He said he always listened, and told us we were doing great things for morale. The food was great. It tasted like Grade A beef, but none of us had the nerve to ask where it came from. We all had different jobs; one fueled aircraft, another worked as a medic, we also had a radar operator. Off duty, we hung out around the station whenever we could talking about radio or Randy Bishop’s band that played at the clubs on base. We kept up with the latest industry news because monthly issues of Broadcasting, Billboard, and the Columbia Journalism Review magazines were always in the station’s in box. When USO shows passed through the base we often brought them in the studio to promote the performance. One group asked me to transcribe the words to a Fifth Dimension song so they could play it at the Officer’s club. I was invited to their final rehearsal. They sounded really good. We learned tricks of the trade from each other, recorded promos and other announcements, and swapped stories about local radio back home. We were home town radio for Tuy Hoa Air Base. I settled in to the 7-11 show. Although our transmitter barely covered the Base and the Army Airfield, as representatives of the English language in a foreign country we held ourselves to high standards. We all made air check tapes to take back with us by recording our shows and editing out the music, leaving only our talking parts. They sounded like the professional tapes we received each month from stateside. My next assignment was England Air Force Base, Louisiana. I found an obscure tome in the base library which listed of all radio stations licensed in the United States along with their addresses. I only had one tape so I sent it to the first station I could find there. My departure date came and, just as in my case, my replacement had a reason to report late so I stuck around for two more weeks. In March, 1970 I left the country from Cam Rahn Bay. The C-141 Starlifter roared toward the night sky as I sat strapped to the fuselage with yellow ear plugs. I propped my combat boots up on a crated jet engine and opened a folder containing my orders, a couple of award certificates, and the last letter I received at mail call. It was postmarked Alexandria, LA: Dear Michael, We listened to your demo and were excited to hear that you would like to work for KALB. Your voice will sound good in our line-up and your pacing is right for our audience. Please see me upon your arrival and we’ll get something started. Bring your FCC license with you. Regards, Bruce Rainey, Program Director, KALB Radio On the hop from Honolulu to San Francisco, the Marine sitting next to me said “Don’t expect anyone at home to believe anything that happened in-country.” I found out a week later when I took my uniform to the dry cleaners down the street from my parents’ house. I told the cashier I just came back from Vietnam She looked at the Air Force blues and asked, “What are you, a bus driver?” I looked up and smiled. It was a different war in a different time but I still think about my Band of Brothers at Base Ops and FM Tuy Hoa. I remember the long shifts we pulled, the bombs we dodged, and pirate radio. Mostly I remember becoming a man.