Tien Sha
An Incident at Tien Sha
The USS Eldorado, LCC11 sailed into Da Nang harbor on a warm morning, the machine guns had been mounted on the rails and their crews and the crew of the five inch gun were in flack jackets and helmets. The bridge crew was also decked out in these outfits, standard when sailing into a war zone, but just a little bit embarrassing when the speed boat full of off duty nurses roared by pulling one of their own on skis. They waved cheerily at the warriors above. This kind of spoiled the mood, though, after all we were at war here.
I had volunteered as a sort of permanent shore party member whenever our ship was in Da Nang, it meant extra duty and a few more shots but I figured it might be the only way I’d get a chance to actually set feet on Viet Namese soil. The city of Da Nang was off limits to military personnel unless on official business, it was not considered safe for R&R, so when we pulled into port we were restricted to the ship.
I was on deck waiting for shore detail and enjoying the chance to actually see a harbor entrance as my usual "sea and anchor" station was sitting at a radar screen in the CIC. Looking up at the bridge I was amused to see almost all the officers lined up in their war garb, including the chaplain who was right next to the captain. He struck me as a frustrated man, wishing the chaplains insignia on his sleeve was a line officer's star.
We took the launch to the dock at Tien Sha and after delivering some new charts to the launch for the return trip to the ship I was released from duty and allowed to walk around for a few hours while the officers were occupied elsewhere. I stopped next to a Viet Namese who was hanging around and we started talking to pass the time. It was a pleasant conversation about family, and childhood and home and such but it was suddenly cut short.
"HEY YOU!!" and I turned to find a navy CPO bearing down on us at a fast walk. He yelled something in Vietnamese and the guy I’d been talking to disappeared.
"WHAT in the hell were you doing?" I was getting chewed out by some guy I’d never seen before.
I explained that I was just passing time but the chief was having none of it.
"Don’t ever talk to gooks," he said, a little quieter now, "you can’t trust a single one of them, ever."
He motioned for me to follow him. "Come here, I want to show you something."
We walked a ways down the harbor until we were opposite a row of coastal patrol craft.
"Take a look at those boats and tell me what you see."
I looked them over but didn’t see much. He indicated a boat and explained.
"We are in the process of turning over the small boat navy to our ‘allies’ and that boat is where we are, now, in that process. Now look closely at the boats we’ve turned over. There are no searchlights, no guns, not even any fuckin’ doorknobs. They’re stripping them as fast as we turn them over and selling them piece by piece on the black market.
"So you see, we have NO friends here, not even the ones we are supposed to be fighting with. Never, ever talk to a gook. Treat every one like the enemy." I came to find that these had once been his boats, you see, and he was obviously a bitter man.
I went back to the launch, and Tien Sha, already a drab place of dirt and barbed wire became just a little more dreary to me… forever.
This was spring of 1970 and we were already losing the war, it just didn't seem obvious at the time.
This story is true, as I remember it.
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