P-Training

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by Mark Orr

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I was sick to death of training by the time I went to Vietnam. I was almost looking forward to this new phase of my uh... military career. No more inspections, and no more infantry training. Lemme tell all you hot rods, it was a real pleasure to shift that particular gear.

However, unbeknownst to me the 101st Airborne had filled in my calendar and scheduled me for a week of something called "P-training." A lot of us don't even remember it or remember if we went through it or not, but it was a mandatory training period of about 5 or 7 days that all incoming replacement troops had to complete. (Actually, I can only speak for the ones who were assigned to the 101st Airborne Division.) I remember P-training because it came as a surprise. .. and not a good one. I was naturally disgruntled at being sent to Nam in the first place, but "At least the training and inspections are over with!" That was the only good thing I could think of, and I had repeated it to myself over and over on the plane trip to Vietnam. And then. .. this P-training bullshit. I felt I'd had all the training I could stand already and would have sidestepped it if I could.

Woe... but I could not.

The instructors were exceptional though. And the classes were important because they covered new areas in matters of life and death and survival. They covered booby traps and trip flares and all the other utensils a grunt would later carry in his very own brand new rucksak. It was "here and now" stuff. I soaked it up accordianly. In some of the classes, there were two black cadre type sergeants who kept us all mesmerized by making a real "show" of the classes. They would act out scenarios and keep you laughing while at the same time really teaching us things that might help us stay alive. "Ditty-bop...ditty-bop...wait one..." is a line I heard them use often when enacting a non-enlightened soldier's approach to traversing a jungle trail. I really don't think anyone left those guys classes without learning a great deal about how to stay alive in the months ahead. The previous training (that I was sick of) dealt with weapons usage and maintenance, team combat maneuvers, physical training and drills from hell. These guys were teaching us about how it really was... in Vietnam.

That was the good part. The bad part was that the E5 who was in charge of the fifteen or twenty guys I was with was a typical ass-wipe. When we weren't attending one of the classes I just mentioned, he would aim us down trails and through little jungle areas which he had pre-set with booby-traps and trip wires so that we would trip them and blank charges would go off. Then he would invariably scream at the top of his lungs something like "...You'll all be dead in two weeks!!!"

Nice guy.

I Heard it Through the Grapevine by Marvin Gaye was the soundtrack for P-training, along with Dion's Abraham Martin and John. The climate (in mid-November) was very hot.

In the evening, if you were lucky enough to get out of bunker guard, there were actually some entertainment type facilities available. Nothing big, a movie projector flickered from a tent in the middle of the "parade grounds," and there was a slot machine bank that used special tokens in the "day room" along with pinball, ping-pong, pool etc. That first evening though, I used the dark of night to leave the 101st grounds and follow my ear to what sounded like live music. It was across the street at the First Cav camp. I wandered through their hootches till I got where I could see the source of the sound. It was a little bar! They had an outdoor stage set up beside their tent-building and they had a live "Philipino" band playing on stage. It was cool. The band was playing Knock on Woo. I had to watch from a short distance and didn't dare walk into the bar with my week old brand new 101st Airborne fatigues. I stunk anyway, so after a while I went back to the "temporary" barracks of the 101st base camp. Bien Hoa, Vietnam.

Bien Hoa appeared to be a large and fairly secure area. It was tied in with Siagon too, so it seemed almost like a large city with two major Air bases. It felt semi-safe in other words. I had to wonder... where's the war? and where am I going tomorrow? And the answer to that was way up north in the I Corps. That told me very little. "What's a Corps?

For some good reason I'm sure, the military officials had divided South Vietnam into four sections namely I Corps, II Corps, III Corps and IV Corps. I Corps was the Northernmost sector, III Corps was the Southernmost. II Corps was in the middle and included the Central Highlands, and I don't know where the IV Corps was. I have to say... I wasn't thrilled to learn that I was going way up (that)close to North Vietnam when P-training was over. However, no one had ever asked me where I would like to be stationed.

The training was pretty intense and packed into a short time so you remained exhausted throughout. Especially if you had to pull bunker guard at night, which was bound to happen sooner or later. And just about the time when you got the feel of the area and were starting to figure out where to party at night... it was over. As abruptly as new troops came in, all "P-Trained" troops were herded onto a bus and driven to the Bien Hoa airbase for transport to their respective assigned units. Training is finally over. "Yippee"... I guess.

I was headed to someplace called LZ Sally where I would be further assigned to an infantry platoon in Alpha Company of the 1st/501st. My new home for the next year would be carried on my back, and might be anywhere in the I Corps on any given day And according to the sergeant, "...you'll all be dead in two weeks!"

Cool!

Orr