A Brush with War

During the time that America was involved in the difficulty in Viet Nam that many refer to as the politically correct Viet Nam Police Action, others call it the Viet Nam Fiasco and still others that were actually in the shooting, bleeding and dying as the Viet Nam War, I was in the United States Army. I was in for just over nine years and was never selected to attend the conflict in Viet Nam. I got stupid and volunteered to go once, but the Army did not take me up on the offer.

Instead one fine day the Army gave me orders to head for Northern Thailand near the Laos Cambodian border with Thailand. Since I was a Military Policeman my chance of having a direct conflict with the locals or the combatants were just about non-existent.

We were assigned to a small base far north of a large Air Force base and near nothing but a very small village and miles and miles of jungle. The jungle there had to be pointed out to me as it was nothing like the mindset I had from having watched so many Tarzan movies and nature programs about the Amazon. But it was what Southeast Asia referred to as jungle, even down to the dangerous animals that lived in the lush vegetation.

I was a senior sergeant on the base and the second highest ranking enlisted Military Policeman on base, so I was in charge of a shift of MPs. Two MPs were assigned to the main gate they also had two Thai civilian security guards and an interpreter accompanied them, when they ran into a situation they were not sure how to handle they were to call for the Sergeant to handle it.

One evening, near supper time for the base personnel, the main gate called the Provost Marshall's Office that they had a situation at the gate and needed the Sergeant. Now. I had the base senior interpreter that I asked to ride with me up to the gate. As I arrived I noticed a huge dark green tank with a large red star painted on the turret, I never was nor am I still good at identifying armored vehicles but it was a tank, sitting blocking the road directly in front of the main gate.