White Elephant Gypsies: Before, I couldn't spell Metrologist and now I are one

By Ryan L Robinson

During The Viet Nam war the US Army had a highly trained and specialized group of technicians that roamed the boundaries of that war-torn

country. Their mission was to make sure that everything worked to

• Language: English
• Publisher: URLink Print & Media, LLC
• Release date: Jan 18, 2024
• ISBN: 9781684866618

Ryan L Robinson

Ryan L. Robinson is a retired Quality Manager of a small high-tech company in Southern California. He has degrees in electronics and computer science.One reviewer said, "I was immediately struck by the unusual imagination and technical texture in his stories."He has been writing for many years and White Elephant Gypsies is his fourth book. His other books include, Curing Marxism, Sorrows' Edge, and The Curse of Tecumseh.

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White Elephant Gypsies

Copyright © 2023 by Ryan L. Robinson. All rights reserved.

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The opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of URLink Print and Media.

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Published in the United States of America

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023924039

ISBN 978-1-68486-659-5 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68486-662-5 (Hardback)

ISBN 978-1-68486-661-8 (Digital)

05.12.23

DEDICATION

To all the American service men and women who fought for their country in a place called Viet Nam.

A true expression of courage.

To all who served as Metrologists in the US Army.

To my wife Jeanie, who had a much bigger job than I had.

To Tree and Jo Ann for reading my stuff.

And

To the patrons of the Blue Bark Lounge.

FORWARD

This story happened a long time ago and is both truth and fiction. The situations portrayed and the locations are all true. But the names have been changed and the dialog fits what happened. I tried to make the truth interesting and fun.

This is not all about me. This is also about the great guys I served with and all the other soldiers who supported the war fighters during that terrible war in Viet Nam. They all had jobs to do, and they did them well. We have all heard, seen, and read about the terrible things that happened during that time. I was very fortunate to not be put into the position of shooting at someone or being shot at by someone. And for that, I’m grateful. I can only be honest and share this story through my eyes and what I’ve seen.

I took most of the pictures; however, there are some that were taken by others and given to me.

So, welcome to my adventures trying to find my place as a White Elephant Gypsy.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Graduations

Chapter 2 Getting There Is Half The Fun

Chapter 3 How’s Your Phu Bai?

Chapter 4 This Is Long Binh, Right?

Chapter 5 Make Like The Green Panther

Chapter 6 Are You A 35H20?

Chapter 7 Went To The Castle

Chapter 8 The General Is Coming, The General Is Coming

Chapter 9 Clod Fetridges’ Law

Chapter 10 Stole The Radio Left The Music

Chapter 11 Why I Went To Nam

Chapter 12 The Nha Trang Bubble

Chapter 13 Elephants

Chapter 14 What Are You Doing Thursday?

Chapter 15 Danced With The Habu

Chapter 16 The President Club

Chapter 17 Dinner At Church

Chapter 18 Disappearing Water Buffalo

Chapter 19 A New Sarge In Town

Chapter 20 Calley Was Right

Chapter 21 Vung Tau

Chapter 22 Down And Out In The May Cong

More Pictures Please

Chapter

1

GRADUATIONS

What the heck is a Metrologist anyway?

I never asked that question in what turned out to be a turbulent time, in the late sixties. Lots of protests for an endless list of causes clogged the TV news channels. Half the people had something to say, and the other half weren’t listening. I didn’t care much; my life wasn’t in that kind of turmoil. For me, in the summer of 1968, the time was good. I had a girlfriend, attending school at Fullerton Jr. College, in sunny California. With a major in electronics my outlook could not be beat.

My name is Ryan Robinson, and this is the story of my involvement with the little-known brotherhood of White Elephant Gypsies.

Then the Selective Service Board told me I would be drafted in September. They also told me not to worry, it was all right you see, I would graduate in June. No problem. Wrong.

You see, the country had gotten itself into a war in South Viet Nam. I’m not going to try to explain why we were in this war. I’m not convinced anybody ever figured that out. All I knew was that nobody ever wins a war. One side just loose less than the other. Both sides loose lots of good people.

The Marines were starting to take a lot of draftees. I was not the gung-ho physical type and never did well in sports. Also, the Marines were sending draftees to a war to shoot and be shot at. So, I decided that I had to take my future into my own hands and become a draft dodger.

So, I decided to enlist. The Navy was out, I got seasick. I went to the Air Force recruiter.

Ha, come back in about ten months and we might have an opening, they said.

So, after graduation, I went to the Army recruiter. I scheduled a comprehensive test, took their test, and went back to the recruiter.

What do you want to do? The recruiter asked, looking at the results of my test.

What do you mean?

With these scores, you can do anything you want in the Army. Have you thought about being an MP or going to officers training?

Military Police didn’t sound good. They would probably have me chasing down deserters and draft dodgers. I couldn’t be doing that. And I was pretty sure that the job of ‘General’ was already taken and out of the question.

Is there anything with a long training period? I wanted to put off getting shot at for as long as possible.

He looked at a list. Here’s one for forty weeks.

What is that one for?

35H20, Calibration Specialist and Technicians, forty weeks of training at Aberdeen Proving grounds, Maryland. And then, after that, you’re assigned to either Redstone Arsenal, Germany, or Okinawa.

That doesn’t sound bad at all. So, I signed the line.

I could spend a lot of time talking about BCT or Basic Combat Training at my favorite resort, Fort Ord. But I’m not going to. I’m sure there are many excellent accounts of the trials and tribulations of Army Basic Combat Training.

This whole story is like a flashback. That reminds me of this guy I met in Basic training. He would have flash-backs because of his LSD usage before the Army. Remember this was the late 60s. One of his recurring hallucinations, besides fog on the floor, was a two-story tall black cat that would follow him around. Well, I couldn’t let that one pass.

I had taken the picture of a guy sitting in a breezeway at a base in Viet Nam. I was experimenting with photography and the back lighting made an interesting picture.

Much later I took a picture of my cat, Captain Midnight. I scanned the two pictures into the computer. I then removed everything that was in the doorway and pasted in the picture of Midnight in such a way that it filled up the white space. This is what I came up with. I call the resulting picture, Mouse in The House.

A person sitting in a dark hallway Description automatically generated

After graduating Basic, I got married to my girlfriend, Jeanie. We honeymooned on a trip in her 1962 Comet to Aberdeen Proving grounds, Maryland. Found a tiny apartment at a little place in Aberdeen and was assigned to class Number 502 where I met some nice guys.

Ted Fielding was from Madison, Wisconsin. He turned out to be the hippy of the group. He was also a pretty good artist. And on the tall side.

Norman Henry was a little more cultured than the others. He was a smart guy and I think he was a musician. Like most of the others he had been in school.

Bob Gregory was also from California. His interests were diverse. He was into martial arts and photography. He could bend your ear for an hour on Nikon cameras.

Wes Lindy had a Kawasaki motor bike and was very easy going.

If you say Lindy Kawasaki three times in a row, it will rain. Roberts would tease Wes.

Sergeant William Takamora had reenlisted to get calibration schooling and with it a new job. He was good at telling us how ‘the system’ worked.

There were many others in the program, all great guys.

To get an idea of what calibration and the school was all about, I will explain the Balance Beam and how to calibrate weights. If you have seen a statue of Lady Justice, she is holding a Balance Beam scale. This is so she can measure out the justice.

The Beams we used were large, maybe three feet long. It would be in a glass case. You wouldn’t want the air-conditioner to come on or someone to walk by and cause the air currents to cause errors. Also, it sat on a block of concrete that extended down through the foundation into the ground. This block of concrete was isolated from the building. You wouldn’t want someone to slam a door and cause errors.

The weight you want to measure, called the Unit Under Test or UUT, is placed on one of the plates hanging from one end of the beam. On the other plate, you would place the Standard Weight. For example: one kilogram; this Standard Weight would be calibrated using the US Standard kilogram; and that weight would be calibrated against the higher standard in Paris France. You would know its exact weight, and there would be reams of paperwork to prove it. Also, you would NEVER touch the Standard weight. That would deposit skin oils and change its weight.

With the Standard and UUT on the scales, you would see that one is heavier than the other. Taking small pieces of foil (smaller than your fingernail) and adding their weight to the scale, you would balance the Beam. You would do this with tweezers because the foils are bent ninety degrees. Also, they are stamped with a number that relates to their