Remembering the Vietnam War

“In 1964 we had a big maneuver in the Mojave Desert called Desert Strike.  We had 100,000 men in 4 Divisions of about 15,000 each and other units to practice war.  According to the newspaper reports about the practice war, 35 men were killed during the practice.  It was very dangerous, even in peacetime.  Being in 115 degree temperature for the summer was not fun, especially while sleeping.  

I was in the 160th signal group and I was the lowest ranking officer in the unit, so I was ready to get out of there.  I found out they were sending my unit back to Fort Huachuca, AZ. and I thought, “Oh, my God, I don’t want to go back to the desert!”  One of the officers of my unit got transferred to the 54th Signal Group so I called him and asked if he thought they would have a position available for my MOS.  He told me to call the major at headquarters.  I did and he told me they did have an opening for me and said he would cut my orders.  So, I was assigned to the 54th Signal Battalion which was loaded up on the railcar fixing to go somewhere.  I figured we were going to Hawaii or something!” laughed Nick.  “An old Army adage is, “Don’t volunteer,” but I volunteered for this unit.” 

“That was when the Tonkin Bay incident happened in August 1964.  The Vietnamese gunboats attacked two or three of our destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.  Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, officially launching America’s full-scale involvement in the Vietnam War.”  

“The 54th Signal Group is a Strategic Army Command, and it is supposed to go first.  Our original orders were probably to go to Germany or something, but here we were, they trained us for the desert and were sending us to the jungle!  They decided not to send us right then and backed us off the railhead.  We spent the next year re-doing all of our equipment.  We had top priority and our trucks, and everything were 100% TOE (Tables of Organization and Equipment), once we were ready to go, which we weren’t before.” 

“We had a maneuver at Fort Hood at the time President Johnson made the announcement he was going to send a lot of troops to Vietnam.  I was called in by my commander and was standing at attention at his desk.  He said, “Lieutenant Bollich, your orders are to land on the coast of Vietnam, go 30 miles inland, and establish a base for the battalions!  I suggest you do not take a jeep!  Dismissed!”  “Yes, Sir!”   I left there thinking, “My God, how am I going to do that!  I pictured myself hacking my way through the jungle with a machete!”

“When the Army tells you to do something, you do it!  Another Aggie buddy of mine, Lt. James from Port Arthur, he and I moved the battalion which was the largest battalion in the Army at the time; 707 men, many millions of dollars’ worth of equipment, 200-300 trucks and vans, a lot of signal equipment, plus all the rifles and everything else needed.  Shipping the equipment involved a 34-hour trip by train to the West coast, then by ship to Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam.  The officers and enlisted men traveled the same way, the trip taking one month.  I was invited to be part of the advanced party with the Colonel, we were there before all the big divisions came.  The Advance party included the Commanding Officer, the S-3, and the three headquarters Platoon Leaders as well as the personnel section Warrant Officer. Several high ranking enlisted personnel were also in the party.”  

“We flew from San Francisco to Hawaii.  I’ll never forget when we took off the intercom was playing the song “Boney Moronie” by Little Richard.  From Hawaii we flew to Guam, then the Philippines, and finally into Saigon.  We arrived there in June of 1965.”  

“I knew something was wrong because we came in at 30 something thousand feet and circled the runway until we got down to make a pass at it.  You couldn’t glide into the runway because everything around it was controlled by the Viet Cong.  The Colonel told us to stay there at the 39th signal battalion headquarters and he was going up to Nha Trang, which was 280 miles north of Saigon, to get a camp ready for the Second Field Force Headquarters and the 5th Special Forces, which is Colonel Keenan, (John Wayne played his part in the Green Berets).  I got to meet all those guys while I was there and I learned a lot from them.” 

“We got to see Saigon while we waited, and we were in an open bar on the top of the Rex Hotel.  I looked out and they were bombing a runway right in front of us.  I remember thinking, “This is weird, here I am having a drink and watching the war.”  I was 24 at the time.” I met two of my buddies there, Peter Bennett and Larry Lamb who were at Fort Gordon, Ga. with me and they kind of took me and told me how to get around Vietnam.  They were getting ready to go home, but they took me in hand and scared the hell out of me.” 

“We went up country 3 or 4 days later by military aircraft and my job was to build a camp, so we found a piece of property on the south side of Nha Trang.  I’d had engineering drawing, so I drew up a plan at headquarters and presented it to the battalion commander of how to lay out the companies.  He approved my plan and we deployed.  He was a WWII commander, all my commanders had been in WW II, they were trying to make their 20-years, from ’43 to ’63, 65 to get their 20-year retirement.  It was really an honor for me to be serving with WWII guys, Westmoreland was too.” 

“When we first arrived in Vietnam, we sprayed Agent Orange to kill out the vegetation so we could build the camps.  They didn’t realize then the damage it would do.  I didn’t get as much of it on me as others did as I had the wind off the South China Sea at my back.  It did eat my sinuses up though.  I’ve had to have several surgeries on them.  The concussion from constant bombing all around also destroyed my hearing.  I have catastrophic hearing loss.”  

The photo above is a later photograph of Camp McDermott built according to the drawings of Lt. Nick Bollich with partitions between tent rows.  He said the 3-feet high rows of sandbags around the tents were to protect from shrapnel, referencing the long range artillery shell invented by British officer, Lt. Henry Shrapnel.  Nick said the high ground in the background was Viet Cong territory where the Skyraiders were dropping bombs.  

“The camp we built was called Camp McDermott, named for the first enlisted man who was killed.  He was flying with Lindsey Crow, who was a warrant officer, and they were shot down going over the mountain and landed in Cam Ranh Bay.  We named the officer’s quarters Crow Hill, and the headquarters of the battalion was Camp McDermott.  At the headquarters we had 55-gallon drums filled with sand and chicken wire strung from the 55-gallon drums to the top of the building to keep the hand grenades from coming in.  We were in danger there 24/7.  One of our Sergeant Majors was killed when a satchel charge was thrown in the room.  The army decided we should keep our rank showing, but the first ones the enemy aimed at were the officers.  As soon as I got out of sight of the camp, I would turn my collars inside out and take all the brass off.  It was like cowboys and Indians over there, once you got outside the fort you were in danger of being killed” 

“The first major division they brought in, even before the first Cavalry was the South Korean White Horse Division, as they could fly them in pretty easy as South Korea wasn’t that far from us.  The Koreans were equipped with M-1 rifles from the Korean War. They landed them in Cam Ranh Bay, but they didn’t have any food or supplies.  We didn’t have much but we gave them everything we had except some cans of chili we probably got off a Navy ship.  We ate chili for a month 3 times a day.  Our chef had been in three wars, so he knew how to operate.  He bought stuff from the Vietnamese farmers and spiced up the chili making it the best he could.  It was touch and go for a while as we waited on our troops to arrive.”