Memoirs of a Rear Echelon M***** F*****

By Steve Lefelt

This book recounts the author's memories from 1966-67 when he was the 40th Signal Battalion's Adjutant in the early years of the Vietnam war. The book describes some of the turmoil that was roiling this country at home and over there, and the challenges confronting and sometimes terrorizing the author as a soldier not directly involved in the war's violence. It also explains how his experiences fostered his life long love of adventure and shaped his personality, character, and future professional career as a judge in New Jersey's Superior Court, Appellate Division.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543938784

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©2018 by Steve Lefelt

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-54393-877-7 (print)

ISBN: 978-1-54393-878-4 (ebook)

Dedicated to my grandchildren, Ira and Izzy

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

PART ONE - BEGINNINGS

I had no clue.

Cloistered schnooks

Fort Gordon, Georgia

Fort Lewis and A Fortuitous Meeting

History of Our Vietnam Involvement

A Good Boy

Early days in Saigon

PART TWO - LONG BINH

Not Yet the Air Conditioned Jungle

Colonel Cole – An Officer’s Officer

Lieutenant Colonel Lamar – A Fine Officer

Lt. Colonel Wane – The Twitcher

Colonel Brownfield – A Real Piece of Work

Sergeant Major Young – My Nemesis

Warrant Officer Jackson –George Washington’s Personnel Officer

PFC Bressler – a World Class Scrounger

Don Robinson – dinky dau

Peter Friend – A Consummate Womanizer and My Best Friend

Work in Long Binh – My Self Worth

Our Civilian Workers – Shattering My Naivety

Contacting Loved Ones – well before social media

The War’s Violence – best teacher I ever had

Trip to Bangkok with Pete and Meeting Carol in Hawaii

Using My Legal Skills in Vietnam

Leisure Time

Travel to Qui Nhon and Cam Rahn

PART THREE - FINAL DAYS

Finishing Up

Growing Anti-War Sentiment

Arrival Of My Replacement

Leaving Vietnam

FINAL THOUGHTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want especially to thank Steve Heisler for reading an earlier version of this memoir and providing me with quite valuable and constructive criticism. Toward the end of the several years I spent writing, I was tutored for hours by Joel Alpert, one of my friends from Tucson, on the ins and outs of self-publishing. Joel continued to work with me and helped get this book in publishing shape. Any of my failings in that regard are due solely to my ignorance and not Joel’s efforts. My son Todd designed a perfect cover and dealt directly with Darcy, my publication specialist, to incorporate it into the publisher’s system, an impossible task for me. I can’t thank my wife Carol enough for reading this book’s manuscript several times and illuminating for me how much I did not comprehend about writing creatively. Her editorial comments were invaluable and I could not have finished the book without her assistance. Any mistakes that remain, however, are of course solely mine.

INTRODUCTION

I watched as the plane at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport taxied through the dark, drizzly night, flying my wife of three years back to New Jersey, her tear streaked profile framed by the light inside the small window. I wondered if I would ever see her again. As a 26 year old Signal Corps First Lieutenant serving in Fort Lewis, Washington, as Adjutant for the 11th Signal Group, I had just received orders to Vietnam. It was Sept. 1966 during the relatively early stages of the Americanization of this conflict, in which the United States would spend $150 Billion. Of the three million Americans who would serve, 300,000 would be injured and 58,000 would die. The first American combat troops began to arrive in 1965 and the last did not leave until April 30, 1975.

My tour lasted approximately one year. When I returned home in September 1967, I didn’t expect parades or accolades, but I read with anger, shame, and disappointment of how the media and large segments of the public disparaged all Vietnam veterans in the ensuing years. Some members of the public gathered at airports to spit on returning veterans and call them baby killers. This time in our history was before the general public could support the troops but still contest what it considered an immoral war.

I saw no real combat. Instead, I served as part of the hundreds of thousands of support troops in what many believe was the only war America ever lost. The support troops in Vietnam flew and fixed planes and helicopters; drove trucks, built roads, and bridges; and provided interpretation, clerical services, and medical care throughout the country. Clearly, support troops had an easier time than those who actually fought. A soldier running a mimeograph machine in some headquarters was obviously not subjected to the same gut wrenching experiences of a combat infantryman. Recognizing this inequity, combat troops often referred to our relatively secure bases as air-conditioned jungles and to support troops, like me, as Rear Echelon Mother Fuckers (REMFs).

Sure, the guerrilla-terrorist aspect of the war placed even support troops in harms way, but because we escaped the same caliber of violence confronting our combat troops, many of us had conflicting emotions about our service. We were grateful for the relative safety of our assignments, but we felt somewhat ashamed of that safety. I felt happy and guilty about my service.

My memories of that year are hazy. I can see Carol’s face in that plane window quite vividly and I can swallow and feel the lump in my throat, along with an overwhelming fear and deep loneliness. Carol says I told her I got stinking drunk that night, but I have no recollection of the events that immediately preceded or followed the plane taxiing away from my view down the runway.

I wrote Carol every day we were separated, and she kept every letter. She even somehow commandeered many of the letters I had written to my parents, her parents, and her brother David. When I returned to New Jersey, we packed all of the letters in a cardboard carton and carried them with us through our numerous moves over the years. I was convinced I’d use them to write about my life in Vietnam. Shortly after the beginning of the 21st Century, Carol insisted that they were just taking up room in the attic. I should throw them out.

In Mudbound by Hillary Jordan, a book I recently read, a character explains, Those in combat don’t want to talk about it. Only those who didn’t really see any combat want to talk. During the past fifty sum odd years, I rarely talked about my Vietnam experiences. Some of my colleagues and friends don’t even know that I had served. The few to whom I revealed my service seemed to react with shock and puzzlement. I imagined that, no matter how well they knew me, they were wondering whether I had killed babies, burned villages, and turned into a drug addict.

I realize now that I even became embarrassed at having served. As the years went by, the public began to accept that not all Vietnam vets were malicious, reckless indiscriminate killers, and after 50 years, I became more willing to share some memories, but usually only when asked.

Finally, one cold winter day in January 2012, after I had been retired for several years from my last job as an appellate judge in New Jersey’s Superior Court, I dragged the bulky carton from its dusty storage area above the garage and peered inside at hundreds of letters in airmail envelopes with the word free written in place of a stamp, free postage being a benefit of combat zone communication. I carefully opened each envelope, smoothed the thin yellowing, creased pages, placed them in piles by date, and began to read.

I soon realized that these letters were much newsier than I had anticipated, since I thought I had censored my experiences for fear of alarming Carol. With the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, I grew to understand that Vietnam was largely a positive experience for me, though so many thousands of soldiers died in that conflict.¹ Most of my contemporaries know someone, whether friend, spouse, brother, sister, or other relative, who died in the war. The lives of many survivors, military and civilian, had forever changed, mostly for the worse, by that conflict. We know that all these years later, thousands still suffer from their losses. Many of those grieving survivors would find it difficult to acknowledge that any benefits came from Vietnam.

Even President Johnson’s legacy suffers. Because he accelerated the war, President Johnson’s memory is tarnished even though he was one of our most talented politicians whose presidency changed this country. His domestic initiatives led, for example, to the Civil Rights Act, Medicare, Voting Rights Act, Clean Air Act, Head Start, and public broadcasting. His accomplishments were vast, but Vietnam taints his legacy.

I first decided to write these memoirs with the modest goal of providing my family a record of my experiences during the war. After the rough first draft, however, I realized that though we should never have entered this conflict and should have supported Vietnam independence and unification, Vietnam had shaped my personality, forced me to grow up, and helped me develop my core beliefs. I began to wonder if other readers might be curious about my experiences and reflections.

The pages that follow rely upon my letters and faulty memory. I cannot claim that they contain the absolute complete truth or are even chronologically accurate, and I have altered a few names of those I severely criticize, but it is my best attempt to reconstruct what was probably the most difficult time of my life.

Many books have been written about the lessons we should have learned from Vietnam; a great number deal with how we could have won the war, should have won the war, or actually did win the war. I am not a military historian and am not interested in second-guessing the experts on these historical lessons.

I will not glorify or demonize this war, since others have done both. Instead I have wrested images from my inadequate memory to share some of my experiences supporting our combat troops in that distant, exotic country in order to determine and explain how these experiences influenced my life goals, personality, character and professional life as a judge.

---

1 The Vietnam memorial in Washington, D.C. has thousands of names engraved on a shiny black granite stone. That memorial, however, contains only American soldiers who died in the war, without a single reference to our South Vietnam allies. Photographer Philip Jones Griffith has pointed out that the memorial is 150 yards long, but if the Vietnamese dead were added with the same density and letter size the wall would stretch for nine miles.

PART ONE

BEGINNINGS

I had no clue.

My military career had begun when in 1960-61, my junior year at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, I elected to stay in the Reserve Officer’s Training Corp, ROTC. All students were required to take ROTC for their first two years at school because of something about Rutgers being a land grant University, whatever that meant. I volunteered because at this time, the country was drafting into the military all able-bodied unmarried men. I figured if I were to serve, I might as well be an officer.² If I’d known that I would be married at 23 in 1963 after my first year in law school, I probably would not have stayed in ROTC, as my marriage would have exempted me from service. I had no burning desire to be a hero or super patriot.

ROTC was a pretty tame gut course, or easy B. We studied military history, weapons systems, various assault tactics, military culture and structure, and other similar subjects. When teaching activities that could result in death or catastrophic injury, the instructors presented the material in the most general, antiseptic and sanitized version possible. They did a good job, because I was almost completely oblivious to the risks inherent in military service. After all, the Korean War was over and our activities in Vietnam, if covered at all, were buried deep in most newspapers. To me, at this time, the military was just another employment possibility. I was an idiot.

Outside the classroom, we learned close order drill or marching, did some modest calisthenics, and would from time to time run around a local park playing war games.

One fall morning when the leaves were red and yellow and the air, cool with a hint of winter. Our instructor appointed me Lieutenant, divided us into two squads and assigned a squad leader for each squad. He then presented a combat problem. All right you guys, there’s a machine gun placement on that small hill to your right that needs to be neutralized. Lieutenant (pointing at me), take over.

First squad move out toward that tree line on our right flank, second squad, stay straight on, I screamed as leader of both squads. We ran through uncut grass, prickly bushes, and dry streambeds, ducking behind trees while carrying our heavy, but of course, unloaded M-1 rifles. When the squads were about 30 yards from the target, I motioned them to get down, and yelled to the first squad, Lay down covering fire. They dutifully pretended to fire their weapons, making gun like noises. I then leapt up like John Wayne and yelled at the second squad, Follow me, waving my arm forward. We then all screamed, Die, die you bastards and sprang ahead, crunching over the leaves while laughing at our play acting, to neutralize the machine gun emplacement. It all seemed lame – like when I played soldier as a boy. Not once did I consider what neutralizing a machine gun emplacement actually meant: Bloody wounds, severed limbs, paralyzing terror, and deafening noises of combat. I had no clue.

The Army required that we offer several alternatives for possible branch assignment upon entry into active duty, including at least one combat branch. We received forms listing the combat and other branches with space to record and prioritize our selections. For the first time in my entire ROTC experience, I spent a few seconds contemplating the probable dangers associated with infantry, armor, or artillery and then checked the Signal Corp, which was also considered a combat branch.

I knew next to nothing about it but figured it was probably less dangerous than the other combat branches. I also provided another branch alternative as my first choice, which seemed better suited to my education, interests, and abilities: the Adjutant General Corp, which handles military paperwork and personnel matters. I never figured out why the army later assigned me to the Signal Corp.

After my junior year came mandatory attendance at ROTC summer camp at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, then the home of the 82nd Airborne Division. Along with several other college classmates, I was assigned to a platoon headed by a regular army drill sergeant, whose function I thought was to simulate an enlisted man’s basic training. In other words, the Sergeant did a lot of screaming and cursing at our failings and inadequacies.

I lived in regular Army barracks, with two rows of cots and footlockers on either side of the room and an attached large bathroom with several toilets and showers, and no privacy barriers. Each day, our Sergeant selected one of us to serve in one of several platoon command positions, making certain that we all got a chance at commanding: one day I would be the squad leader, another day the platoon sergeant, and the next day the lieutenant in charge of the entire platoon.

As reveille howled over the camp loud speakers, the Sergeant would switch the barrack lights on and off and scream, Ok, you college candy-asses wake up, rise and shine. I would struggle out of bed, scramble into my fatigues and boots, and run outside into the early morning dimness for our morning formation. After making sure that no one had gone AWOL during the night, and as the rising sun removed the evening chill, the Sergeant would lead us in physical training. To his command, I performed jumping jacks; ran in place; fell to the ground for 25 push-ups, then rolled over and did sit-ups -- trying very hard to avoid the Sergeant’s ridicule, if I fell behind or passed out from exhaustion. After the Sergeant finished with us, I stumbled back to the barracks and made my bed, never succeeding in drawing the blankets so tightly the Sergeant could balance a quarter on the bedding, the goal for any one of our numerous inspections. I stripped off my fatigues, ran into the bathroom for a quick shower, dressed in the uniform for the day, and hustled to the mess hall for a quick breakfast.

After breakfast we marched to our day’s training -- whether class room, firing range, or wilderness -- and then waited for the morning’s activity. I hate waiting. And that summer was almost always hurry up and wait. One morning, the Sergeant had us jog, or in Army terminology double time, a few miles to the firing range. We got there so damn early we had to wait almost an hour until the sun rose high enough so we could see the targets.

We marched and led close-order drills at regular and double time, dug foxholes, shined shoes and brass insignia, wore gas masks, and qualified with a rifle. During our final rifle-firing test, I lay on the range’s sand with the heavy M-1, basic infantry rifle snug against my shoulder, right hand on the trigger, left hand holding the rifle’s wooden stock under the metal barrel and resting on a sandbag. I closed my left eye and sighted the bulls-eye target through my right eye. We were instructed to squeeze the trigger so slowly that we would be surprised when the rifle fired. For each qualifying round, I squeezed ever so slowly, trying hard not to jerk the trigger, and then BLAM the rifle would recoil and slam into my shoulder. No matter how tightly I held the rifle, it still hurt like hell. Afterwards, the range supervisors would check the targets. Holy shit. I qualified as an expert marksman. Since I had never before fired a rifle, I was flabbergasted, but proud.

For gas mask training, three or four of us put on gas masks and jogged into a dark green tent smoky with tear gas. One at a time, the instructor told us to take off the mask and shout our name, address, and college before fleeing. The student just before me got so nervous after he removed his mask that he began to stammer and then choke. The Sergeant in charge grabbed the gas mask, slammed it over the student’s head, and yelled: What a fuckin asshole you are. Try it again, Jerkoff. It was then my turn. I whipped off my mask, shouted Lefelt, Teaneck New Jersey, Rutgers and fled in panic, the gas mask flapping in my hand, my eyes searing and tearing.

During another memorable exercise, we had to crawl through a muddy field under rows of barbed wire with what our instructor claimed was live ammunition firing over our heads. The Sergeants all yelled, Keep your mother-fuckin’ heads low as the bullets whistled by. After each student finished the course, the instructors would hose down the ground to keep it as muddy as possible. Ok, Lefelt, go! the Sergeant screamed. I hit the ground as deeply into the mud as I could, and crawled under barbed wires, strung about every ten feet through the course, my M- 1 rifle cradled in my arms. A machine gun strafed bullets somewhere above my head. Please don’t lower that gun, I prayed. As I crawled along, I rubbed my eyes against my fatigue shirt to clear the mud from my sweating face. I was scared shitless. I continued to wipe my eyes and spit mud as I crawled steadily through the course. I kept going another ten yards beyond the last string of barbed wire, just to be safe, and lay in the mud until the machine gun stopped firing. Ok, you’re done, the Sergeant yelled. I sprang up, stumbled, and then quickly jogged back to my platoon, hoping no one saw the stumble.

On another occasion, we heard through the grapevine that during grenade throwing practice, the instructor, as a sick joke, would drop a disarmed grenade after the pin had been pulled and laugh as we all dove for safety. A group of us planned a prank on the sergeant. Instead of fleeing, one of us, selected by lottery, would jump on the grenade ostensibly to save the others. At class, the sergeant was explaining that grenades were perfectly harmless until the pin was pulled. He then demonstrated how to pull the pin and accidentally dropped the grenade, which started smoking. Oh my god!, he yelled. The loser of the lottery jumped on the grenade covering it with his steel helmet. The Sergeant was at first dumbfounded, but then noticed we were standing around laughing. Very funny, he said. You guys are real comedians."

Because we were on the 82nd Airborne Division’s home base, the Army incorporated into our training a jump from the Division’s 34-foot practice tower. At first, I wondered if I could get out of this someway. I thought about one trip I had taken to Palisades Amusement Park where my friends went on all the wild spinning and falling rides while I refused, claiming I didn’t want to throw up my ice cream cone. But as the day for the tower jump arrived, and my platoon seemed eager to play at parachuting, I succumbed to peer pressure and tried to calm down. I carefully climbed the tower’s ladder and entered a structure supposed to simulate the doorway of a plane. I attached lines from my parachute pack to some overhead cables strung from the tower descending in a sloping path to a T-like metal structure on a dirt mound about ten feet high and about 50 yards from the tower. I stood in the tower door and the Sergeant yelled, Go. I yelled Geronimo, of course, and jumped in proper airborne style, crouched and holding my parachute pack and my breath. I fell only about twelve feet or so, but for a split second, I visualized falling from the Empire State building observation tower. Then, the overhead lines jerked taught and I glided to the dirt mound, hung for a second from the T-like structure, unhooked the lines from my parachute pack, and stumbled to the ground.

I actually loved the jump. And not once did I think of the 82nd Airborne’s troopers in the Second World War jumping from planes behind German lines being torn up by heavy machine gun fire.

Toward the end of our training, we got weekend leave. A few of my college friends and I, including Bob Tucker, Stan Wang, Eric Gerst, and Jack and Jerry Roth eagerly drove to an off-base motel to enjoy its pool and any non-army food we could afford. We made the mistake, however, of taking a nap on Saturday morning shortly after we arrived, planning to sack out for a few hours before we hit the pool. We adjourned to our three separate rooms, Stan and me, Jack and Jerry, Tucker and Gerst and all, without exception, slept straight through Saturday and into Sunday, awaking just in time to have lunch and return to the base. We were pissed.

In retrospect, our basic training was a joke – irrelevant to the war in Vietnam. We played stupid war games with all the skills geared to fixed battle situations like those of the Second World War and Korea. We learned nothing whatsoever about guerilla warfare, and most significantly, nothing about dealing with an indigenous population that either suspected our motives and questioned the depth of our commitment, or were secretly supporting our enemy.

After completing ROTC, I owed the Army two years of active duty. The Army granted my requested active-duty-deferment so that I could attend and complete law school. At first, I was happy that the Army seemed so accommodating, but later, I cursed this deferment as