Jerry Eltzroth, Guest Columnist
I was barely past my 19th birthday when Christmas of 1967 found me half way around the world in the lower hemisphere. This was my first Christmas away from home. The weather certainly was not like Ohio in December where I was raised. Vietnam was experiencing the beginning of its summer season—hot and humid. GI’s don’t have much choice in deciding where they get to spend their holidays. They just make the best of whatever they have at hand.
If the soldiers are lucky enough to be in a barracks as I was, they put up little ornaments that someone from home mailed to us. I was fortunate to have a tiny Christmas tree that I placed on a shelf next to my bunk and mosquito netting.
Our company officer was very creative (or foolish) and decided to decorate the recently erected survey tower in the middle of our company area with colored lights and a star at the top. This survey tower stood 103 feet in the air, which made a great homing beacon at night for incoming enemy rockets. Fortunately we did not receive greetings from the VC while the tower was lit up like a Christmas tree.
We were a topographic outfit and printed military maps, mosaics, etc. for our combat soldiers in the field. These materials were necessary for our troops before the advent of GPS. The towers were used in units of three spaced miles apart to orient the maps.
Within the first two weeks of my being assigned to the 66th Engineers, the Survey Platoon asked for volunteers to guard a perimeter around one of their towers at night while they were atop the tower with their instruments. Feeling as though I could experience some excitement, I volunteered. At dusk, all of us eager volunteers were trucked along with the survey personnel to a hilltop that was crowned with a Buddhist Temple. The monks had previously allowed our survey personnel to erect the tower within their compound. The volunteer guards were spread along the base of the jungle covered hillside. It was pitch black dark. We could see tracers and hear machine gun fire near us but fortunately it was not directed at us. One thought kept running through my mind—“What am I doing here?”
Midway through the night a trip flare shot into the sky and glowed like the sun as it drifted towards the Buddhist Temple. The flare casing hit the roof of the temple and rolled down the clay tile roof making a horrible clatter. It woke up the nearly 20 monks in the temple. They all came outside dressed in their colorful robes and shaved heads jabbering in Vietnamese. I did not understand Vietnamese but I interpreted them perfectly—“What the heck is happening!” I made it through that night and learned to never, never volunteer.
Since Christmas was fast approaching, our house girl, Mau, invited a few of the guys in our barracks to her parents’ house in the local village. Mau came each day to make our bunks, sweep the barracks, and polish our boots. We worked at our jobs 12 hours a day, seven days a week with an occasional Sunday off. Thus, Mau was a big help to us and it provided cash money to help support her family. I was one of the lucky few that Mau considered a #1 GI. If you ever became a #10 GI, you suffered the wrath of her harsh Vietnamese words salted with a few unsavory American words.
Mau and her family were devoted Catholics as were a great many of the Vietnamese people, so Christmas was a special time to them. We were treated like kings at Mau’s parents’ home that night. I still do not know exactly what we ate that evening. I observed the food placed in front of me with a suspicious eye and thought, “If it does not kill them, it will not kill me,” It was all delicious. One of the guys in our group, Petee, had some experience with oriental customs when he was stationed in Korea. He brought along a gift for Papa Son—a bottle of Vodka. That made Mau’s father grin from ear to ear. Our Christmas meal with them was delightful and meaningful to a bunch of homesick GI’s.
Care packages loaded with goodies and cards from home were special treats. I received a can of salted pumpkin seeds in one care package. That may not sound like much but I found an excellent use for them. I would put a pumpkin seed on the rat trap behind my bunk and would catch a rat nearly every time. We were overrun with the varmints. When we were in our perimeter bunkers on guard duty at night, we could hear them rustling on the dirt floor. We threw our bayonets at them for sport. Knowing the rats were in our midst helped to keep us awake.
The enemy had agreed to a holiday truce so we got Christmas Day to attend church, rest and enjoy a better than usual meal at the mess hall.
We were lounging around digesting our meal when Ted McDowell roared up in his deuce-and-a-half truck causing the laterite dust to billow upon us. He hollered, “Jump in! We’re going to see Bob Hope!” Ted had learned that Bob Hope was appearing at Long Bihn Army Base which was a few miles from our outpost. He headed down Highway 1 with an overflowing load of soldiers. It was Christmas Day and Sunday. All of us broke out into a song that was popular then—“Groovin’ on a Sunday Afternoon.”( Did the Rascals sing that?)
Bob Hope’s stage was set up at the base of a natural amphitheater. I found out later that the military audience that day was nearly 30,000 strong. It set a record for a Bob Hope performance that I think still holds to this day. As you can tell from my picture of that day, we were seated on the ground in the ‘nose bleed’ section. The troops billeted closest to the performance site received the ‘lower arena’ seats. What a target for the VC rockets!
I suppose that is why we received such short notice of his visit.
Christmas 1967 turned out to be a very unusual and memorable time for me.
I had seen Bob Hope entertain the troops many times on TV but this was my first and only time in person. I was shocked to see that he read the jokes from huge placards that his crew held in front of him. It did not matter; we thoroughly enjoyed his show. Bob Hope always made the troops feel as though we were remembered. We lost a great American when he passed away. Nobody has stepped forward to take his place.
Remember our military personnel who will be on duty throughout the world and possibly in harm’s way this holiday season.
Merry Christmas to all of you!
