Uncle Sam Ain't Released Me Yet...Memoirs of a REMF, Chapter 20, Next Stop Vietnam

Uncle Sam

Ain’t Released Me Yet

Memoirs of a REMF

Copyright© 2016 by Robert B. Martin, IV

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without express written permission from the copyright owner, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal. I have attempted to recreate events, locales, and conversations from my memories of them.

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Chapter 20

Next Stop Vietnam

“Maybe I’m old school, but I always thought you honor a contract.”.....Brett Favre

Our orders for OCS arrived about four or five weeks before graduation from AIT. Almost two-thirds of the class received orders for Field Artillery OCS. The rest of us were divided between Combat Engineer OCS and Infantry OCS. I was in the group with orders to report to Fort Benning, Georgia, home of the Army Infantry School. I don’t know how the assignment process worked. All of us were “supposed” to go to Field Artillery OCS. I don’t believe the selections were based upon grades because I was not in the bottom third of the class. It’s just how the Army seemed to work back then.

In no time at all I was standing in line at the First Sergeant’s office to sign the papers declining Uncle Sam’s kind invitation to Infantry OCS. The First Sergeant explained that I did not have a contract as the recruiter had led me to believe. It seems the paperwork I signed when I enlisted merely indicated my preference for Field Artillery OCS (even though the form, of which I have a copy, was headed “Enlistment Contract”). Therefore, the Army had made me no promises, said the First Sergeant. I told the First Sergeant that there was no way I was going to Infantry OCS. He was very quick to inform me that I would be breaking MY promise to Uncle Sam and would therefore be sent to Vietnam as an enlisted man in the field artillery. That was OK with me. I really did not want to go as an Infantry Second Lieutenant, yelling “Follow me!” while being the first off and the last back on the helicopter in a “Hot LZ” (a Landing Zone under enemy fire). By remaining an enlisted man in the artillery I would be in a Tactical Operations Center (TOC) bunker somewhere in the rear listening to the Artillery Second Lieutenants calling for fire support on the radio. I would also be out of the Army in two years as opposed to the three that would be required if I were an officer. It would mean not going to the “O” Club, but, although disappointing, I could survive that slight.

As a consolation prize I was offered the opportunity to stay at Fort Sill a little longer and attend an NCO “shake and bake” school. Graduates of the six-month training program received the rank of SGT (Sergeant E-5). I declined the offer because it would prevent me from being home for my son’s birth in July.

As promised, my orders for Vietnam arrived just before graduation from AIT. I would get a thirty-day leave after graduation and then proceed to the Republic of South Vietnam via military transportation. I would not be transferred into the Medical Service Corps to serve as a pharmacist. Uncle Sam, as his representative explained to me once more, had spent thousands of dollars to train me as a 13E20 and by God that was what I was going to be.

I asked my AIT commanding officer if there was any way I could at least get the orders delayed until my baby was born. Carol Ann’s due date was about three weeks after I was scheduled to leave for Vietnam. “Sorry” he said, “See what the Red Cross can do.” Nothing, I found out. They were sympathetic yet helpless.

I began my thirty-day leave after graduation from AIT but it would be over and I would be in Vietnam before our baby’s due date unless I could somehow pull a rabbit out of the hat. The Army certainly wasn’t helping and the Red Cross couldn’t do anything. It was time to call in the big guns, the Senators from Georgia. Richard B. Russell and Herman Talmadge. I couldn’t pick up the phone and call them but mine and Carol Ann’s parents could. My dad had campaigned for Sen. Talmadge and was an honorary Colonel on Talmadge’s Gubernatorial staff before he became a U.S. Senator.

I don’t know the specifics but something did happen and it happened quickly after our parents contacted the senators. I received a phone call from an Army Lieutenant Colonel in the pentagon. He identified himself and confirmed that I was indeed Private Robert B. Martin, IV. I could tell from his tone that he was highly pissed off at having to speak to me, a private soldier, on the telephone − especially at the behest of a U.S. Senator. He asked if Toccoa was near any military installation. I told him that Atlanta’s Fort McPherson was the closest, only ninety miles away. He said I would soon be receiving new orders for Vietnam. I thanked the Colonel and thought briefly about asking him to give my best to Senators Talmadge and Russell but decided that would not be a good idea.

 I received my new orders a few days later. I was to report to Atlanta’s Fort McPherson for six weeks of temporary duty (TDY), which would begin at the end of my current thirty-day leave. This was no small victory. It was pretty big but I had a lot of help. I still chalked it up as another win for me against the machine.

At the end of my thirty-day leave I drove to Atlanta in Carol Ann’s new 1969 Buick Grand Sport, which her father had given her to make my leaving a little more palatable. When I reported in at Fort MacPherson (aka, Fort Mac) the personnel officer asked for my MOS.

“13E20,” I replied. “Fire Direction Control.” 

He quickly informed me that there was no artillery unit on post to which I could be attached. I mentioned that I was a pharmacist so he assigned me to the post hospital where I would work in the pharmacy for pharmacy officer CPT Joseph H. Thompson. The Army would actually put my five-year university degree to good use for at least six weeks, even though they had spent thousands of dollars training me to be a Fire Direction Control Specialist.

I enjoyed working in the hospital pharmacy and it was where I could be of the greatest help to the Army, whether they knew it or not. I discovered that the Army was actually short of pharmacists. They were hiring civilian pharmacists as contract workers! Not only at Ft. Mac but also in plenty of other Army hospitals. Let’s review. I was a pharmacist. I was drafted and being paid a little over $100 a month to be an artilleryman. The Army didn’t have enough pharmacists and were paying civilian pharmacists about ten times what they were paying me. It just didn’t make any sense at all. But hell, that was the Army!

CPT Thompson proved to be a really nice guy and allowed me to leave work on Thursday afternoons and not return until noon on Mondays for the entire six weeks I was there. I would be in Toccoa early on Thursday evenings and not leave until the following Monday morning. I was assigned to a barracks but I only spent three nights a week in the barracks and four nights a week in Toccoa. Other than working in the hospital pharmacy, I didn’t attend any formations or participate in any other activities at Fort Mac. What could they do? Send me to Nam?

I was driving the Grand Sport on post one day when I was stopped by an MP who said I was speeding. He had clocked me at something like twenty MPH in a fifteen MPH zone. I was given a citation and told to see the Provost Marshall about it. It didn’t seem like that big of a deal to me and I didn’t even know what a Provost Marshall was, so I figured, “what the hell,” I would soon be out of there and on the way to Vietnam. So I just ignored it. Bad decision. CPT Thompson received a phone call a few days later. He called me into his office and told me that I was to report to the Provost Marshal’s office ASAP. That’s when I found out that the Provost Marshal was equivalent to a Police Chief in the civilian world. I got directions to his office and hurried over to see him. He gave me a very real reaming out for not coming to see him immediately after receiving the speeding ticket. Fortunately, I managed to get off with only a verbal reprimand by playing my Vietnam and baby cards.

For my entire six weeks at Fort Mac, CPT Thompson and the hospital’s Commandant never stopped trying to have me reassigned to Fort Mac’s hospital as an enlisted pharmacist (see CPT Thompson’s letter in Appendix A). All of the requests made on my behalf were denied because of “the thousands of dollars that had been spent to train me as a Fire Direction Control Specialist” even though the Army was being forced to hire civilian pharmacists. Because my training was in artillery and since there was no artillery battery at Fort Mac I was not allowed to stay.

CPT Thompson had me write a “narrative resume” to use as an attachment to his requests. I was somewhat embarrassed when I re-read this “narrative resume” for the first time after so many years. It really wasn’t very good. I don’t believe it would have impressed anyone in the Pentagon. However, re-reading it after so many years did help bring to mind a couple of things I had forgotten. The first was that I had actually contacted my local draft board in October of 1968 and learned that I would soon be drafted. The second was remembering that I had written letters to the Surgeons General of the Army, Navy, and Air Force about the possibility of a direct commission into the Medical Corps. I never received any replies.

I received my draft notice much sooner than the “few months” mentioned by the clerk of the board. The notice had to have come almost immediately after my contact with the board in October of 1968 because of the “approximately one hundred days” delayed entry I was given before being sworn in on 30 January 1969.

My son, Robert B. Martin, V, was born on July 17, just six days before I left for Vietnam. We named him Robert the fifth because we weren’t sure I would make it back from Vietnam and also because we didn’t wish to disappoint my father, Robert the third, whom we thought may have been expecting us to carry on the dynasty.

Knowing Carol Ann and our baby were safe with her parents, I was as ready to leave as I ever would be. It would be a long year but I knew that I was not the first man to leave a new mom and baby behind in the service of his country. My dad was sent to the Pacific during WWII before I was born and he didn’t see me until I was almost three years old. Still, I did not want to go to Vietnam.

I remember Sunday, July 20, 1969 very well. I was standing in the door of my in-law’s bedroom watching a historical moment on their television. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin of Apollo 11 had landed on the moon. I watched as Neil Armstrong took his giant leap for mankind and thought how I would rather be on the moon with Aldrin and Armstrong instead of leaving for Vietnam in just three days.

I would have the opportunity to vividly relive those memories during the Christmas holidays forty-two years later when I had the honor of meeting and chatting with Buzz Aldrin at a small cocktail party in Sun Valley, Idaho. That’s the only time I have ever talked “rocket science” with anyone.

Continued in Chapter 21, The Oakland Repo Depot…

I'm a Rambling Man

A lazy day so far.  Carol Ann is an early riser and usually wakes me up with a cup of coffee that I drink while sitting up in bed.  This morning was no different except for sleeping a little later than usual.  I didn’t get out of bed until 9:00AM.  I then spent all morning with camera gear, tools, books, and assorted miscellany covering the floor as I attempted to sort and find a place for everything.  We tend to bring everything but the proverbial kitchen sink, which if the motorhome didn’t already have one, we would have brought.  We also had a good hard rain this morning.  It has been following us all the way from Texas and finally caught up with us.  At least we didn’t have to drive in it over the 800 miles we have traveled.  A little later this afternoon we will drive around the park and take a look at Lake Hartwell.

If I happen to jump from subject to subject in my blog it’s because of the way my brain is wired.  I have adult ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) without the hyperactivity (known as ADHD).  It wasn’t diagnosed until just a few years ago but it provided much insight into why a lot of things happened the way they did as I was growing up (although not diagnosed until I was an adult, it’s something with which you are born).  I always had trouble concentrating for very long on one subject.  I was easily bored with things that I was not interested in.  So I tended to skip around from one thing to another, tasting from various plates but never really eating the entire meal. 

I was fortunate in high school.  It was a small-town school in the late 50’s and early 60’s.  There were no advanced or AP courses.  They all seemed to move at about the pace of the slowest learner in the class, which made high school easy for me.  Take for example chemistry.  It was taught by the assistant football coach whose background in chemistry was questionable.  He just read the book to us during class and performed some experiments like he was cooking from a recipe.  During our mostly unsupervised lab sessions we made smoke bombs, stink bombs, black powder, and attempted to determine which chemicals, when poured out of the open windows, would kill the shrubs growing there. 

One of my friends made a large quantity of black gun powder (potassium nitrate, charcoal powder, and sulfur) and filled a pint-sized mayonnaise jar with it.  He punched a hole in the top of the jar and inserted a homemade fuse.  I remember telling him it would probably just fizzle and smoke.  He then wrapped the jar in adhesive tape until no glass was visible and decided to go out behind the school to set it off.  I followed hime with 3 or 4 other guys and watched as he put the jar in a drainage ditch and lit the fuse.  He turned and ran.  The rest of us, although we didn’t think it would explode and were teasing him about it, still maintained a respectable distance from it.  There was a terribly loud noise, a fireball, and a huge cloud of black smoke.  As we turned and ran towards the school’s back steps we were pelted with small pieces of red Georgia clay from the drainage ditch.  We were running up the back steps to the high school when we ran into the principal who was running down the steps to see what had exploded.  Needless to say, we were in a bit of trouble.  I don’t actually recall the punishment but mine was probably not anything nearly as bad as that of the bomb-maker, as this particular individual tended to be in some kind of trouble most of the time.

I rarely had to open a book in high school and yet received (I wouldn’t say “earned”) mostly A’s with a few scattered B’s.  I had some natural “smarts” plus I was popular as evidenced by the fact that I was president of the Beta Club, president of the student council, co-captain of the football team, and Mr. CHS.  I managed to make it through two years of French by reading the day’s lesson in “home room period” each morning.

I graduated 3rd or 4th in my class (there were only 44 of us) and went off to the University of Georgia, as had my mother and father before me.  No other school was ever considered.  I thought everyone went to the University of Georgia.  Why would I even consider going to another school?  Back then people would say, “Herman Talmadge is God and when you die you go to Atlanta” (it should have also included that everyone went to UGA).  Herman Talmadge an ex-Georgia governor and was one of Georgia’s US Senators.   His family had been a fixture in Georgia politics forever.  A few years later he and Sen. Russell (the other Georgia Senator) would have my Vietnam orders delayed for 6 weeks so that I could be home when my son was born.  I went to “the ‘Nam” a week after he was born and Neil Armstrong had taken his “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” (maybe not those same words, but close.)  Now, you see how I have managed to jump to another topic?  I was talking about going off to the University of Georgia.  I figured if I could make all A’s and a few B's in high school without opening a book that UGA would be a snap. 

Because of my extracurricular high school activities and my grades I was one of a group of new Freshmen invited to attend Freshman Camp for a week prior to the start of the Fall Quarter.  I was given an appointment with a counselor to discuss my studies and set up my classes.  He asked me what my major would be.  I didn’t have a clue and had never really given it any thought.  My dad was a physician but I had no desire to follow in his footsteps.  The counselor asked what my favorite high school course had been.  Naturally, I said “Chemistry” because of the fun I had in the lab. The counselor then asked if I wanted to pursue a B.S. degree with a major in chemistry or a B.S. Chem degree.  What’s the difference, I asked.  A B.S. Chem degree was about twice as much chemistry, he answered.  That sounded like a better degree and I would get a better job, I said.  So he laid out my first two years of courses for me.  In addition to at least one chemistry course every single quarter there were courses in math, physics, and German (at that time, the world’s most respected chemistry literature was still in German).  One of my German professors would occasionally allude to “Uncle Adolph” and the good things he gave the German people, such as Volkswagens and autobahns.  In addition to those core courses came a very slight smattering of the liberal arts plus microbiology and vertebrate zoology courses.  I had at least one 3-hour lab almost every other day in either chemistry, microbiology, vertebrate zoo, or physics.  There were no “light” quarters.  I was in class or lab all day, every day, Monday through Friday. 

I had a very difficult time studying.  I never had to work hard in high school and I didn’t know how to study.  My yet-to-be-diagnosed ADD made it even harder.  I could not concentrate on any one subject long enough to learn very much before I had to jump over to another subject.  I wasted a lot of time spinning my wheels while attempting to study.  I just couldn’t seem to learn and retain like many of my classmates seemed to do with ease.  I made my share of D’s and F’s and spent my summers retaking courses.  There was never a break. 

The few times, usually only the holidays, that I would go home, I would sneak down to my dad’s medical office when it was closed (the office key was on his car key ring) and rifle through his samples in search of amphetamines.  Back then, amphetamines, although prescription medications, were not controlled substances as they are today.  They were “just diet pills.”  I never sold them at school, but I did share them with my friends when we stayed up nights cramming for final exams.  When I studied while on amphetamines I really learned things.  I remember studying for a chemistry final and feeling that I knew the subject so well that I could teach the course!  That’s how I managed to pass most of my courses.  The funny thing is that amphetamines are now prescribed for people with ADD!  Since I was diagnosed with ADD I have been taking a long-acting amphetamine every day and I feel great most of the time.  I guess I was just way ahead of my time when I was in college.

After two and a half years of sheer torture, tremendous pressure, and impossibly difficult courses I came to realize that I had made a very big mistake by majoring in chemistry.  I had been reluctant to change my major because I was afraid of my dad and what he might say about it.  Besides, I still had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up.

How I changed from being a B.S. Chem major to my current profession or pharmacy will be covered in my next posting.  This one is long enough.