Hot Mics and TV Lights

By Marc Phillip Yablonka and Rick Fredericksen

The Untold Stories of the American Forces Vietnam Network

The American Forces Vietnam Network (AFVN) was the military broadcast network that served American service personnel during the Vietnam War. But much of what has been previously written about the AFVN has been overstated and far f

• Language: English
• Publisher: Double Dagger Books
• Release date: Sep 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9781990644719

Book preview

Praise for Hot Mics and TV Lights

Few people — beyond a shrinking population of Vietnam veterans — know much about a relatively sophisticated radio and TV network that brought the sights and sounds of home to millions who served in one of America's longest and most controversial combat engagements. Fewer still are acquainted with the often miraculous effort and ingenuity that kept the American Forces Vietnam Network up and running, from its earliest iterations as a makeshift, bargain-basement operation to the countrywide news and entertainment medium that kept Americans — and a sizable audience of Vietnamese — connected to the world outside the combat zones. In this new book, that information gap is filled with insights and revelations that kept me alternately grinning and shaking my head. l mean... who knew? As a guy who listened to or watched AFVN at every opportunity during long tours in Vietnam — and was fortunate enough to meet a few of the characters that populated the network — I was fascinated by what I learned. Reflecting their motto and mission of serving American forces overseas, this new addition to the lore and legend of Vietnam is both informative and entertaining. It goes on my groaning bookshelf right up there with the classics of Vietnam literature.

– Capt. Dale Dye, USMC, ret.; actor, writer, technical advisor for Platoon, Band of Brothers, The Last Full Measure, Born on the Fourth of July, and Casualties of War

Hot Mics and TV Lights is very entertaining, interesting, and revealing. I loved the personal anecdotes — from beginning to end. The work kept building up within me a momentum, a feeling, from the opening to the crescendo and to the last flight home. Really a great read. During the first few weeks of my tour, I worked up at 101st Airborne Division HQ, at the main PIO, where I recorded the 6 o’clock AFVN news, edited it, typed it up on a mimeo sheet, ran several thousand copies, and distributed them to division offices by 0600 the next morning. Then, I was transferred to the 1st Brigade PID, where we had no access to a radio (and very seldom had any electricity!). I became a field reporter. So, my experience with AFVN was then extremely limited. What I read from Hot Mics makes me wish I had been able to listen to those programs!

– John Del Vecchio, author of The Thirteenth Valley, The Vietnam War Trilogy, and For the Sake of All Living Things

Broadcasting is widely known as a glamorous profession, perhaps the glamorous profession. But it seldom approaches the adrenaline-fueled excitement of AFVN in Vietnam, doing radio and television in a war zone. Add the occasional terrorist attack and the fact that most of the DJs and producers were draftees working at a level it would take them years to achieve in the civilian world and you have an atmosphere seldom achieved at your local radio or television station.

Take Sp5 Pat Sajak — yes, that Pat Sajak — who extended his Vietnam tour because he liked his cosmopolitan life in Saigon a lot better than the prospect of spending his last months in service picking up cigarette butts at dear old Camp Swampy. Or Dick Ellis, who worked all week as a producer at AFVN and voluntarily spent his weekends flying missions on helicopters and Spooky and Spectre gunships, so he could interview the crews, and, oh yeah, take his turn on the guns. The Armed Forces did not send women servicemembers, except for nurses, to Vietnam. [One exception was] Laurie Clemons, who fast-talked her way into a job as a TV producer in Saigon, where her superiors couldn’t make up their minds whether to require her to carry a weapon or forbid her from carrying one. At one point she was under orders to do both at the same time. Add the origin story of Good Morning, Vietnam, both the AFVN show and the movie, and you truly have a tale worth telling. Hot Mics and TV Lights finally gives these great young servicemen and one servicewoman their due and gives you one hell of a good story.

– Jim Morris, author of War Story, The Devil’s Secret Name, and The Dreaming Circus

The history of the American Forces Vietnam Network is [one] of wartime humor, nostalgia, and tragedy. The men and women who provided a touch of home away from home tell their own stories in their own words in Hot Mics and TV Lights, an insightful look at a radio and television network in a war zone. A flying TV station? Disc jockeys fighting a war? Sporting events shown on TV a week after they took place? News film sent to Japan, then to the US, and then back to Vietnam for broadcast? Radio with the top music in various formats and [announced by] future network stars? This was AFVN. To those of us in the audience it was our unreal reality.

– Rick Fuller, Col. USAF, ret.; Commanding Officer, Spain–Morocco Network, American Forces Radio Service 1964–67; Commanding Officer, Armed Forces Radio & Television Broadcast Center 1990–93.

HOT MICS AND TV LIGHTS

The American Forces Vietnam Network

A black background with a black square Description automatically generated

Marc Phillip Yablonka

with

Rick Fredericksen

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all those in uniform, American civilians, and South Vietnamese nationals who worked for AFVN. It is also dedicated to five AFVN staff who have passed on since Rick and I undertook the writing of this book: broadcasters Adrian Cronauer, Joe Ciokon, Dick Ellis, and Jim White, and engineer Harry Ettmueller. They, like everyone who worked at AFVN, brought news, entertainment, and perhaps most of all, hope to American service personnel in-country. We are forever grateful to all of them for their contribution to Hot Mics and TV Lights and their devotion to the American Forces Vietnam Network.

Copyright 2023 Marc Phillip Yablonka and Rick Fredericksen

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the author.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Yablonk, Marc Phillip and Fredericksen, Rick, author

Hot Mics and TV Lights / Marc Phillip

Yablonka and Rick Fredericksen

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN: 978-1-990644-70-2 (soft cover)

ISBN: 978-1-990644-71-9 (e-pub)

ISBN: 978-1-990644-72-6 (Kindle)

Editor: Jennifer McIntyre

Cover design: Pablo Javier Herrera

Interior design:

Double Dagger Books Ltd

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

www.doubledagger.ca

Table of Contents

Foreword

Good morning, Vietnam: Robin Williams,

Adrian Croauer, and Ben Moses

Pat Sajak: A Belated Merry Christmas from Richard M. Nixon!

Bob Morecook: No Days Off and a Thirteen-Hour Day

Rick Bednar: Dropped Off at the End of the Earth

Bob Wilford: Where We Came from Was a Mystery

Tim Abney: He Wanted to Serve His Fellow Soldiers

Bill Brown: Echoed the Umpires’ Calls

for the Reds and the ’Stros

Michael Goucher: The Feel of Home Was Great for Morale

AFVN Attacked in Hue

Dick Ellis: He Hugged James Brown

Rick Fredericksen: Censorship Was a Difficult Pill to Swallow

JIM McDade: The Army and Johnson Didn’t Give a

Rat’s Ass about My 4-F Card

Bobbie Keith: Have a Good Evening Weather- wise,

uand, Of Course, Otherwise

Joe Ciokon: Good Evening, Vietnam!

Jim White: His Duty Stations Could Fill a Book

Lon Carruth: His Proudest Moments Were at KLIK

Escapades at Hon Tre Island

Bobbie Lischak: They Called Me DINFOS Dolly

Don Fox: Caught in the Crosshairs of History

Barbara Dorr: I Wanted to Go to Vietnam

Preston Cluff: He Went to Fun Every Day, Not Work

Forrest Brandt: He Gave the PIO a Greater Voice

Ken Kalish: He Did Everything but Milk the Cow

Steve Sevits: The New Rising Star in Broadcast Journalism

Rene Johnson: AFTN Helped to Keep Airmen’s Morale Up

Ron Hesketh: Spinning the Records on AFRS

Gene McKinney: A Distinguished Military Career

Spanning 45 Years

Ralph Baldwin: The Sports Voice of Southern West Virginia

Frank Rogers: Two Lives Simultaneously

Peter Berlin: A Sense of Military Bearing

Dixie Ferguson: AFVN Was Definitely OJT

Bill Altman: Not Concerned about Danger... in Saigon

Laurie Clemons: Had Her Pants on Backwards Her

First Week In-Country

Mike Turpin: Dark Mystery

AFVN and the Vietnamese

Randall Moody: Never Really Had a Chance to Grieve

It’s 105 Degrees and the Temperature is Rising

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

Glossary of Terms

Foreword

I have been writing about the Vietnam War ever since finishing graduate school at the University of Southern California in 1990. I joined the plethora of journalists and authors — many who experienced the war first-hand — who have written about its trials and triumphs, its horrors and victories, and, ultimately, the fall of Saigon in 1975. One of the best-known chroniclers of the war, former Green Beret and my friend Jim Morris, has said of me that I write about Vietnam from odd and unexplored angles.

I suspect that is so because some of my journalism, which found its way into the pages of Stars and Stripes, Army Times, Military Heritage, Vietnam magazine, American Veteran, and others, has included interviews of helicopter pilots; Red Cross ‘Donut Dollies’; dog handlers; Air America, the airline most often associated with the CIA; the CIA’s secret war in Laos in my book Tears Across the Mekong; Saigon’s famous and infamous Continental Hotel, home to journalists, military brass, intelligence operatives (known as spooks), and women of a certain intrigue alike; Vietnamese who endured the hell of the communist re-education camps after the fall of Saigon; the civilian press corps; and most recently, in my book Vietnam Bao Chi: Warriors of Word and Film, those who wrote about and photographed the war for the U.S. Military.

Among the profiles I have written is one about ABC-TV’s Wheel of Fortune game show host, Pat Sajak. Unknowingly, Mr. Sajak, who served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam as a disc jockey, was among those who opened the door for me to the history of the American Forces Vietnam Network, the AFVN.

Soon, I found myself endeavoring to write about the Vietnam War through the eyes and minds of those who, although most of them had not humped in the boonies in search of the ever-present Viet Cong, or VC, had the mission of making the tours of their fellow servicemen who had, a lot more tenable.

I then discovered an AFVN online group and announced my intention to write AFVN’s Vietnam stories. One fascinating interview after another came my way. One, in particular, was with U.S. Marine, fellow author, and AFVN Saigon newsman Rick Fredericksen. Through his invaluable historical references, Rick taught me the fascinatingly rich, often hilarious, yet at times tragic, history of AFVN. The truths he provided were of such importance that there was no way I was going to continue this book without partnering with him in the writing of Hot Mics and TV Lights: The American Forces Vietnam Network.

It was Rick who told me that AFVN’s origins, like much of what occurred in Saigon during the Vietnam War, revolved around the historic Rex Hotel, one of the city’s well-known hotels. Even today, the Rex remains a landmark in the center of Ho Chi Minh City. A former car business, billed as the greatest automobile dealership in Asia, the edifice became a war-era hotel with comfortable accommodations for American officers only. Enlisted personnel knew the Rex as a place that was mostly off-limits.

The Rex housed a cinema, a library, U.S. government offices, and a dance hall. Journalists gathered at the hotel for daily war briefings, and notable guests included Gulf War General Norman Schwarzkopf, who served two tours of duty during the Vietnam War.

In December 1961, a Navy vessel docked at the port of Saigon with two U.S. Army transportation units and their cargo of aging Shawnee helicopters, nicknamed Flying Bananas. The soldiers were the Rex’s first guests. They celebrated a delayed Thanksgiving dinner, prepared by their field kitchen, on the rooftop terrace.

A more enduring historical footnote, and one that is central to this book, occurred in August 1962: The Rex was the birthplace of the Armed Forces Radio Service in Vietnam, which would expand into a sprawling network of nationwide radio and television stations.

On the air into the 1970s, the military media giant helped U.S. forces satisfy a yearning for home with its news, music, and entertainment programming. It also spread American culture across South Vietnam, and was the voice of the Allied military effort; ultimately, allegations of censorship rocked the news department, resulting in a congressional investigation. The network was one of the most influential units in-country, even spawning a blockbuster Hollywood movie, Good Morning, Vietnam.

Some of the men and women who operated the stations — more than a thousand throughout the war — were just teenagers; AFVN comprised positions ranging from cub reporters and deejays, to experienced broadcast engineers and loyal support staff that included volunteers and Vietnamese. Despite the fact that AFVN took its share of casualties, being assigned to the network was rewarding duty.

I (RF) was a newsman for the American Forces Vietnam Network in Saigon from 1969–70. Over a 14-year period after the war, I worked in television news in Iowa and Hawaii and covered postwar Vietnam extensively as the last Bangkok bureau chief for CBS News. I later returned home to the U.S. and was the news director for public radio in Iowa. I have been a frequent contributor to Vietnam magazine and am the author of three e-books: Broadcasters: Untold Stories; After the Hanoi Hilton: An Accounting; and Lusitania Diary, a book I wrote with my grandfather, Christian Fredericksen. I also maintain the Old Asia Hands blog, which can be found here:

http://oldasiahands.blogspot.com/.

1962 would be a defining year in South Vietnam: The number of U.S. military advisers rose to 11,000; more than 50 Americans were killed; Agent Orange was introduced on a wide scale; and the Presidential Palace was bombed.

There were also positive events in 1962. One of the most welcomed developments was a new, solid link to home: Armed Forces Radio Saigon was signed on from the Rex Hotel. The improvised studios were staffed by a tiny group of military announcers and volunteers using hand-me-down equipment and a World War II transmitter.

If any one person could be revered as the Father of Armed Forces Radio in Vietnam, it would be Chief Petty Officer Bryant Arbuckle. Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS) came to life in August 1962, and according to Arbuckle’s son Les, he set up all the stuff and ran the station alone for three months. Chief Arbuckle would eventually build a small staff to keep the station on the air 18 hours a day.

Although some of the programming was locally originated, it was supplemented by content from the AFRS in Los Angeles and received in Saigon via short wave. Later, AFRS repeater transmitters were positioned upcountry, expanding radio coverage to much of South Vietnam.

As a teenager, Arbuckle studied at the NBC Radio School in New York and served as a corpsman during World War II. Actor Lee Marvin was his childhood roommate at Peekskill Military Academy.

One of the first shows that Arbuckle hosted would become The Dawnbuster, which would continue throughout the war. As the conflict dragged on, several dozen deejays would host the morning program, including Adrian Cronauer and Pat Sajak.

AFRS’s first officer in charge, Air Force Lieutenant Donald Kirtley, applauded Arbuckle in his biography at www.macoi.net, calling him the savvy/genius of Navy CPO. According to Kirtley, Bryant ‘Buck’ Arbuckle, using rotating TDY [temporary duty] personnel, old equipment and borrowed LPs, brought it on the air from four storage rooms off the back stairwell of the Rex Hotel, and did it within weeks of his arrival.

Arbuckle’s wife and three sons joined him in Saigon, and the boys attended the American Community School. For a time, the family residence was two blocks from the Presidential Palace. Dad, mom, and the kids witnessed Saigon during a time of tumult: terrorism, religious strife, and a frightening military coup that had the family taking cover in their home.

There was no TV, so AFRS was our primary source of American culture, remembers son Lowell. We heard the new hits of the day and got most of our news from the radio.

Brother Lynn said he would hang out at the station. They’d let me take teletypes in to my dad while he was reading the news on air, Lynn said. They’d let me choose songs sometimes, too. That was pretty cool.

Les was the older son in Saigon and had more freedom. He recalled, I was busy finding new ways to get into trouble — that and buying cigarettes. Les Arbuckle wrote about his experiences in the book Saigon Kids: An American Military Brat Comes of Age in 1960s Vietnam.

The Arbuckle family returned to the U.S. in 1964 after a farewell party at the popular My Canh floating restaurant given in the Arbuckles’ honor by its owner, Phu Lam Anh. One year later, the iconic dinner barge was bombed in the war’s most ghastly terrorist incident.

Chief Arbuckle left AFRS an undeniable success; listeners were not only Americans, but also the entire English-speaking community within earshot, as well as a vast Vietnamese shadow audience. As the war effort ramped up and more Allied troops poured into South Vietnam, military broadcasting was there for them too. Television was introduced in 1966, and affiliate stations popped up all over South Vietnam.

Over the years, the network’s name would change multiple times, but the most enduring call letters were AFVN. AFVN has come to symbolize all military broadcasting in Vietnam, from the fledgling AFRS operation in 1962 until 1973, when the primary U.S. audience vanished with the final withdrawal of American troops.

Highlights of AFVN’s intriguing narrative will appear throughout these pages, interspersed with memories from the men and women who were on the air. Many of them returned home and became highly successful civilian broadcasters. Sadly, some of our colleagues didn’t make it out alive.

One of the most interesting facts in the history of AFVN is that, in its infancy, not only did it broadcast from Saigon’s District 1, but its programs also emanated from the skies above South Vietnam.

Of all the aircraft soaring above South Vietnam — from high-altitude B-52 bombers to light observation helicopters gliding over the treetops — it would be difficult to outshine the Super Constellation for eccentricity. Yes, there were aircraft that were faster, more intimidating to the enemy, or more versatile, like the Huey helicopter, which medevac’d casualties and saved lives, but several of the Lockheed Constellations, nicknamed Connies, had something indisputably dazzling: they were used as flying broadcast stations for American television!

Today, spoiled audiences sitting in front of their flat screens might have hundreds of channels to choose from. They couldn’t fathom the confines of a single station, never mind having to stomach a ghostly picture broadcast from an airplane. But Americans in Vietnam were thrilled — one channel was 100% better than none.

The exciting new invention of television was not available in Vietnam until the U.S. Navy introduced it in the mid-1960s. For a small group of about 15 officers and enlisted men, the initial step goes back to May 1965. Their pioneering mission would soon be code-named Project Jenny.

We each received cryptic orders to report to a Mr. Neil Vander Dussen at the corner of Front and Cooper Streets, Camden, New Jersey, recalls Dick Rollins, a young naval officer who was among those hand-picked for the group. The Camden address was a building belonging to RCA Corporation, where we were taught radio and television.

Aerial broadcasting had been tested for years, but never deployed — until Vietnam. It was called into service as a non-lethal tactic for winning hearts and minds, as well as for the morale of American boots on the ground. Navy Captain George Dixon, known as the father of Project Jenny, put it this way: [It was] designed to fight the enemy with ‘show and tell’. . . instead of bullets and men.

Rollins and the others continued their TV instruction, which included onboard training with experimental C-118 aircraft attached to Fleet Logistics Support Squadron 1 at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland. Soon after that, to accommodate the Super Connie airframe, Project Jenny was absorbed into the Oceanographic Air Survey Unit, also at Patuxent.

A hi-tech jigsaw puzzle was assembled at nearby Andrews Air Force Base; engineers squeezed components found in a typical television station inside a Constellation — even space for a newscaster. Turning a 1950s-era transport plane into a flying radio and television station was a monumental task. The specialized aircraft in this small squadron would be dubbed Blue Eagle I, Blue Eagle II, and Blue Eagle III.

Blue Eagle I was a radio-only aircraft. The others were equipped for radio as well, but also for bilingual television broadcasting — capable of transmitting both English- and Vietnamese-language programs simultaneously.

John Lucas was Project Jenny’s senior technician. The challenge was to break it down so I could get two transmitters in there, get a whole television studio in there, get all the stuff that feeds videotape machines, film chains, and all that stuff — get it packed in there so we could operate it and still be able to do any maintenance, Lucas explained. Some people refused to fly, he said, fearing the plane was overweight.

Blue Eagle I was the first to be deployed and broadcast the 1965 World Series opening game play-by-play between Los Angeles and Minnesota. Listeners below could tune in to NBC’s live sportscast on AM radios. Around-the-world TV coverage was not technically possible, but the radio signal circled the globe from Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, the site of today’s Mall of America. It was a resounding success.

Television premiered with scheduled evening programs in February 1966. TV sets with rabbit ears antennas became a hot commodity in Saigon. At one point, Post Exchanges were importing 10,000 receivers monthly. Michigan Congressman Charles Chamberlain considered television a potent weapon in the war effort. The State Department arranged to have TVs and generators delivered to cities and strategic hamlets as a way to secure loyalty from the Vietnamese people.

Viewers in the Saigon region and the Mekong Delta were the primary audiences for Blue Eagle II and Blue Eagle III as they flew in a broad racetrack pattern, showering news and entertainment programs on viewers 10,000 to 12,000 feet below. The black-and-white images were ghostly, sometimes fading in and out, but television was an instant hit, especially for Vietnamese who had never seen it.

AFVN’s Shelly Blunt wrote about that first night of television in downtown Saigon. In a bar not far from the Brink [hotel], we noticed a large group of people on the street, seemingly hypnotized at what was going on inside. At a nearby park where two receivers had been set up, Shelley observed, [it] was jam-packed with citizens like crazy.... It kind of reminded me of sitting in the last row at the Hollywood Bowl.

Dick Rollins, then a flight officer in the video electronics cabin, flew that first summer: I was assigned to one aircraft and we alternated the two TV birds, so I flew almost every other night while I was there. Hazards included lightning and snipers off the end of the runway. He said the only weapon on the aircraft was a .38 revolver in a locked case near the pilots.

The four-prop