Page 105 - Been There… Done That!
P. 105
Been There... Done That!
occurred while traveling was somebody once put a grenade in our gas tank. They had this trick where they would put adhesive tape around a hand grenade, pull the pin and drop it in the gas tank. The gas would slowly but surely eat away the tape and the hand grenade would go off.
The sergeant with us one day was getting into the jeep and suddenly yelled for us to get back. Somebody had seen a Vietnamese put a grenade in the tank. We pulled back and waited until the sergeant said it was all clear. I never saw the hand grenade, but I still didn’t want to ride in the jeep, so I rode in the van.
When it came to traveling to the different bases they flew us in and out on helicopters, except for the times we performed at Phu Bai and Pleiku, as well as in Danang. At the big bases they picked us up and dropped us off on the base, but at the fire bases we just landed close to where we were going to be performing.
In Danang, we were put up in a place called the Grand Hotel and I have to say it wasn’t that grand. It was on that adventure that I saw South Vietnamese soldiers take a prisoner into the middle of a street with no clothes on and they had him begging for his life. Even though I knew the war was going on, it was tough to witness things like that. We also saw some other horrific things over there.
The way the ROK Army (Republic of Korea) would interrogate prisoners was by loading them into a helicopter and taking them up to around 5,000 feet and start throwing them out. And even though we saw it, we were still removed from it. One thing I will never forget is the mental picture of how that one guy in the street
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