Tom Rebant hits the ground running.

This is probably the first time I am talking about Nam to other Vietnam Vets since returning to the states in 1966. Man that was a long ago but it seems like only yesterday as I can still vision the sights, sounds, cries and horror from the time I was there.

After Basic Training in 1964, I reported to Fort Riley, Kansas, 1st. Infantry Division, (Big Red One) Combat Engineers - M.O.S. Cook. In late July of 1965, our whole division shipped out of Oakland, Ca. by Merchant Marine Vessels and we arrived in Nam in mid-September with a one week stop in Subic Bay, Phillipines. I don't know exactly where we landed but pretty sure it was near Saigon in a staging area. We spent the night there and in the morning we convoyed to what would become our base camp in Li Kia, northwest of Saigon, in a rubber tree plantation.
Didn't sleep for the first three days there! I don't think any of us did until we finally dropped. After awhile, realizing these weren't war games anymore and using blanks, but the real thing, especially after seeing helicopter after helicopter returning with wounded and dead comrades, reality set-in. The main problem was, you couldn't tell who the good guys were from the VC! Seems like they all wore black silky outfits!



After about two months our company moved to Ben Cat to build a road between there and Trunglap. We would move our camp ahead approxamately two or three miles and build the road behind us. Every night the VC would cut down trees and lay them across the road as well as booby traps and mines and every morning, the first thing we would do is clear the road before we moved ahead. At one point along this road, in fact right near a South Vietnamese Army camp, we came under a mortar attack. We had just received two new napalm trucks and two of the first three rounds in hit each truck.

(Napalm mixing truck hit by mortar on January 14, 1966. 1st Engineers Battalion, 1st
Infantry Division C Company commanded by Captain J Franz.)

The heat was so intense, it melted all the glass in the instrument panels and flowed to the floor. I can still hear the shrapnel flying by my head.
Finally March of 1966 came along and I received my orders for discharge. In the six months I was in Vietnam we lost half of our company, mostly to sniper fire while they were sweeping for land mines. I also lost my girlfriend
to a Dear John letter which really hurt along with all the protesting that was going on in the states. I didn't know what to expect when I returned but everything worked out fine.
I often think about Nam and how lucky I was to return without a scratch and without doing drugs. I wonder at times how the places and people I saw turned out as I was really amazed to see grass huts and dirt floors. I don't know to this day if they appreciated or resented us being there. I do know that I don't resent having been there and am proud to have done so. If only "all" of us could have made it home alive!

Sincerely, Tom Rebant