Bill Zersen

Vietnam--Wartime History

Even though I was officially stationed on Taiwan (CCK), I spent most of 1968 (May) through 1969 (Aug) in Vietnam. We would fly into Vietnam (C-130s) and stay 12-13 days at various places in Nam and then fly back to CCK for 2-4 days and then back to Nam. The Air Force did this so most CCK personnel would not get a combat tour on their records in the event they were needed to be sent to Vietnam for an in-country tour--14 straight days in Nam was required before the time went on your records towards a combat tour.

On one such rotation, I was at Tuy Hoa on the coast. At about 11:00 P.M., the alarms went off, and all us crew members were herded into a bunker near the water's edge. Pretty dumb if you really thought about it, because all it would take was for one Cong to enter the bunker with an AK -47 and wipe out 12 C-130 crews at once. Luckily that didn't happen. Even though we strapped on 45s for our missions, we were required to leave them at the flight line ops when we returned from our missions.

This evening a group of sappers hit the base. The ROKs (Koreans) who guarded the base quickly eliminated the problem--seven sappers were killed--but not before several airplanes were severely damaged. There was no flying for us the next morning until all the damage was checked out.

The ROKs, when we arrived at the flight line, had all seven of the sappers laid out on the tarmac. When I looked at them, I was shaken quite a bit. One of the sappers was the barber who had given me a haircut the day before and who had held a straight razor to my neck during the haircut. Never again did I have a haircut in Vietnam.