Thanks, Gary. My dad was a Finance Clerk in the 9th Infantry Division. That's not what he joined the Army for. When he joined in September 1965, he enlisted to become an Infantryman. After basic training, instead of receiving orders for Infantry AIT, he had orders sending him to Vietnam. What happened was an Engineer whose fist and middle names were opposite of my dad's was supposed to be the one going to Vietnam as a replacement. At the time, my grandfather was working at the Pentagon and told my dad to go ahead to California so he wouldn't be counted AWOL and that he would take care of it. Since my dad had been majoring in accounting before he dropped out of school to join the Army (which drove my grandmother crazy, but probably not as angry as she got when we told her I had joined the Marines), to appease my worried grandmother, my grandfather got my dad orders for Finance School so once he got to Oakland, he was pulled aside, issued his new orders and got sent to Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana. He later joined the 9th Division as it was forming up in 1966 and went over on the first journey of the USS John Pope landing at Vung Tau on 19 December 1966. Since he took high school French and it was determined that Vietnamese civilians would be financially compensated for things like water buffaloes and property that had been damaged by US Forces, he and several other Soldiers were sent to receive Vietnamese Language Training at the University of Saigon. He went on MEDCAPs and other Civic Action missions because of him knowing Vietnamese. Twice a month he would get assigned to a huey crew to fly out to the units of the 1st Brigade of the 9th ID to pay them. When he wasn't doing that, he was often on shit burning detail because his First Sergeant did not like him. After a while, since he ended up flying with the same crew most of the times he went out to pay the units, and volunteers were needed for door gunners, he volunteered to become a door gunner to get out of shit burning duty. So then for the last five months or so of his first tour, he spent a few days doing finance stuff, a few days doing MEDCAP and Civic Action, and several days door gunning. The crew he was assigned to usually flew ash and trash, but they did MEDEVAC every once in while. My sister's best friend's dad, who my dad worked with later at Fort Sam Houston (he reclassed to become an Orthotic and Prosthetic Specialist) was a medic in one of the line companies and my dad's crew picked him and some wounded up. Since the medic was wounded himself and was also holding onto an artery of one of the other wounded guys, he talked my dad through an emergency trech (can't remember how to spell it - cutting a hole to clear an airway).
