Meeting Sally


by Mark Orr


The trip up north to my new AO was in a rickety ass C130 cargo plane. It vibrated so loud you couldn't talk. Thinking was the only option, and the thoughts that entered my mind were not exactly pleasant ones. "This plane ride might be the last one I ever get. I'm going into a hot area in the I Corps somewhere... could be rice paddies, could be jungle. Might be shooting as soon as we land! Nah.. surely an airport big enough for this plane would be secured.... wouldn't it?" But the thought I was having most often was "... this plane sounds like it's about to blow up!"

As it turned out, we landed at a too short runway made of perforated steel near Camp Evans in the northern I corps. It was the early afternoon. I forget how long the plane trip was, because I just wanted it to keep on flying. So it seemed short. There were about five or six of us on the plane who had the same ultimate destination although we didn't know that at the moment, and that destination was called LZ Sally. (Landing Zone Sally)

Anyway, My first sight as I walked down the plank at the rear of the plane was a group of about ten Viet Cong prisoners squatting in the heat with sandbags tied over their heads. They were all tied together by a thin rope looped around each of their necks and their hands were tied tightly behind their backs. Two Airborne soldiers stood watch over them. I supposed that they were awaiting transport to some sort of prison where they would be interrogated and locked up. Perhaps they would even be tortured before the day was over. I felt like I suddenly realized this wasn't a game. Of course I knew that before, but now it became reality. No more war games, the enemy is real people. And apparently they would kill us if they could. But these "prisoners of war" had no uniforms. A dirty white muslin shirt and baggy diaper like shorts to match was their fashion, and barefoot was their mode of transportation. It looked to me like either they were cleverly disguised as local farmers... or else they were local farmers. Whatever the case, they hated us enough to die, and such is war. My first close up glimpse of the enemy had shown him severely detained and stripped of any weapons. I hoped they would all look like that.

I and the others waited for a ride to come and pick us up. It wasn't a long wait, but I never could take my eyes off those prisoners. They didn't show any resistance and it was hard to visualized these tiny people dressed in rags as a powerful enemy. Maybe that was because they had no weapons. Yes, I'm sure that's what it was.

I felt like a switch went off somewhere in my head at that very moment though. The people I would meet and the places I would see from this point on would be forever etched in my soul and heart... or completely blocked out... one or the other.

A little toothless dude who happened to be the A 1/501 company clerk drove up in a borrowed jeep pickup with wood plank seats in the back. We piled on to the benches and proceeded to the only main road in the I Corps, Highway 1, and turned right heading south to LZ Sally. The ride took no more than a half hour or so. None of us in that truck knew each other yet, so there was little or no conversation.

The land around Sally was generally flat and sandy although there were mountains within a few miles to the west. The yellowish color of the sandy dirt coated everything in sight because of a constant cloud of dust generated by helicopters and trucks. The vegetation consisted of scrub growth in clumps. I guess it wasn't a good area for farming, because every other flat place around there had a rice paddy on it.

We turned right again onto the quarter mile dirt driveway of Sally's main entrance. No big deal here, it just looked like a small city made of tents and semi-permanent buildings. There was an MP gate that you could just drive right through if the MP on duty recognized you or your vehicle.

Our driver dropped us off in front of one small building with a tin roof and a wood frame reinforced with sandbags on all sides. It was the first building in a row of four or five just like it. Each building had it's own sign up over the doorway. The sign on the building we now stood before read: A Company, 1st of the 501st Infantry. A little Hawaiian first sergeant came out to "greet" us. It wasn't such a cordial greeting. It was more like a cop reading you your rights. "Gentleman...you are now the property of A Company, First of the Five-0-first infantry."

Names and serial numbers were confirmed, and then we were led to another similar building right behind the first one where we were to stash our whatever equipment we had carried with us and "get to work!" This building looked almost comfortable. There were nice cots lined up against the walls with mosquito netting draped over them and the personal belongings of the guys who "owned" them stashed neatly around their "personal areas." It was stifling hot, but I could imagine how comfortable the beds would be at night. So much for my imagination though, I would never sleep on one of those cots nor anything similar. Only REMFs get to live like that. We would pull details this afternoon, and we would pull bunker guard at night. And tomorrow we would leave for the field. It was that simple.

The details we pulled that afternoon consisted of filling empty sandbags with... sand. When we pulled bunker guard they issued us whatever weapons were required from the company armory which was nothing more than a big corrugated steel box designed for cargo on ships at sea. The gas masks and flack jackets we had each brought with us to Sally were also to be used on bunker guard, but after we turned them in the next morning we would never see them again. We could have kept them if we wanted to, but someone explained how much everything else we would have to carry weighed, and since the gas mask and flack jacket weighed about eight pounds and were "optional" we used grunt logic... and left them at Sally.

We had a fairly decent hot meal at the mess hall before bunker guard started, and would also have a nice hot breakfast in the morning when guard was over. There was even a shower at Sally. It was a small building of plywood and screen with shower heads for about eight or ten men. The water that fed the showers was on the roof in a couple of large open air rubber bladders. It was heated by the sun (however in later months they would add portable gas water heaters.) In the evenings the shower was always crowded with those who lived and worked at Sally. I needed a shower most desperately, and decided I would take one in the morning after spending the night in the dirty-ass bunker. The shower was on a schedule however. When I finally got my chance... it was closed.

After breakfast we went back to filling sand bags for about a half an hour and then were called to a small formation in front of the building where we had been dropped off. I now knew this building to be A Company Headquarters. It seemed awfully small to be called something like that. No where around did I see room for an entire company to sleep at night. Presently, I was made to understand that the company itself never came in to LZ Sally. They stayed out in the field.

Hmmf!... just as I was starting to accept this dump. I hated the bunker guard duty where one could only sleep for a couple of hours between "shifts," and shitty job of filling sandbags didn't even require that you have a brain. And it NEVER took place in the shade. However, it looked to me like those fortunate enough to live and have jobs at Sally never had to do that kind of work anyway. Those jobs seemed to be reserved for grunts in transit... like me. (O.K. This is not actually true. Those with rear jobs did always have the risk of being selected for bunker guard on any given night... if there were no grunts available.)

At the formation, the First Sergeant had the "Armorer" issue us all the gear and weaponry we would need at our new assignment in the field where the company was working. A shining moment. Finally besides canteens and a poncho liner...I received my own personal M-16 fully automatic gas operated recoilless bullet shooter. It wasn't so much that I wanted it, but I'd been in a war zone for over a week with no bullets for Chrisake! If they weren't going to change their mind and send me back home I figured at least I ought to have a weapon. As far as ammunition though, we only got maybe a hundred rounds in a bandoleer (useless until loaded into magazines) and about seven empty magazines. "Top" (First Sergeant) told us we would get "plenty more" when we hooked up with the company. Oh well, first mission, load the magazines.

I was much concerned about a few things I hadn't learned yet. Where was the enemy? Compared to that, where was the company? How ready should I be to start shooting when I get there? And also dammit, who of all these Asians I see around me is supposed to be the bad guys?

There was one answer to all these questions. "Don't worry about it yet. You're taking a chopper to LZ Sandy and you won't join the company until tomorrow." He assigned us to different platoons but as I remember, those assignments didn't stick. I (for instance) may have been slated for the first platoon but ended up in the mighty third.

Anyway, we were then allowed to hit the mess hall and enjoy a last cup of real coffee while we waited for the helicopter that would take us to LZ Sandy. In all my training, I'd never gotten to ride in a helicopter. I didn't know about the other guys with me, but personally I was really looking forward to it. I would have this same feeling many times in the year to come. It was strange. I seldom would care where the "huey" was going or worry (like I should) about what I would see at the other end when the Huey touched down. I just purely wanted that great ride in the sky.

Soon, one of the guys who's job it was to unload choppers at Sally came to the mess hall and told us our pumpkin had arrived. We grabbed our clumsy new equipment and headed to (the main part of any LZ...) the chopper pad. Our Huey was idling on the pad. It had no doors. Co-o-o-ol! We threw our new rucksaks in and climbed aboard to find a place to sit on the stainless steel floor. In a few seconds we were (excuse the pun) "airborne." My oh my what a feeling. All of a sudden the temperature and breeze factors reached perfect. Sweat was evaporating. The view became beautiful. LZ Sally got smaller and smaller as we headed East toward the coast and gained altitude. Anyone who knew me before that moment knew someone I used to be. The angry young man was now armed and very dangerous. ("Be all that you can be...")

Orr