R&R in vietnam

[rickielee]

came across one of the posts here about R&R. It had a great list of the R&R sites . I suspect the time needed in country list was based
on your division requirements. My background: Me and 3 other guys ran the R&R program in Vietnam from June 1970 to May 1971.
We were given the allocations for all the R&R to be given out for all the military in Vietnam. We were located at Army Headquarters,
Long Binh. Seats were given to units based on their populations and some times units coming back from the fronts were given
priority. Our captain, at first, was wornout gungho type. ( Later a free-spirit replaced him.)
We specialists on the other hand felt we were so damn lucky to be at safe army headquarters we had to safe-guard the seat allocations .
There were no rules we put on the units as far as how they allocated the seats other than to not let any seats go empty.

We guys decided that for the Christmas holidays we were going to keep two "books" so our captain wouldnt give away the seats for Hawaii or
Sydney, which were worth gold. Sure enough, week before Christmas a full bird colonel chaplin came wandering in to our tiny place.
My buddy and I immediately hid the true book and pulled out the bogus one. Chaplain wanted 4 seats to Hawaii the week of Christmas. Guys were
dodging bullets out in the field and these spoiled chaplains wanted to flee to Hawaii instead of administering to the troops.I was
furious! Captain came prancing to me seeing promotion in his mind. His chance to impress the brass!!
Told him those seats were given our weeks ago. He turned red and grabbed book from me. Begged us to call our buddies in the units
to see if any seats were available. I asked him " You wouldnt want us to take away a seat from a GI in the field would you?" as I looked at
the chaplain. Both said "oh no , no." Colonel walked out . Captain yelled at us and said he knew we were up to no good. He tried
to go around us and call unit R&R guys. They hated him more than we did.
Reference how many seats we had per R&R site. The Pentagon gave us lots more seats to short haul sites (Taipei, etc.)then
Hawaii or sydney because they were so cheap. For Christmas week they doubled the long-haul flights.
We never did give out the seats to Hawaii to officers.
We also handed out the places for the in-country sites for the Army. Managed to do a day trip to Vung Tao in the south. Amazingly beautiful place.
Hope you enjoyed the behind the scenes details.

[Randy Smith]

Glad to here that you specs were taking care of the lowlife grunts like me back then. Although I didn't get an R&R (I left early--medivac) I know the men appreciated the efforts to give them a break. However in the 1/50th the officers and grunts were indiscernible in the field. They rubbed elbows and shared ammo in the fire fights. Units in the 1/50th held the record all time, at that time,for enemy killed compared to troops lost. That in itself speaks volumes to the caliber of officers we were blessed with. So remember we can't paint all the brass with one brush and as with non-com grunts the bad examples seem to stick out and get more notice. We just didn't notice that many in 1/50th.

[harley hawkins]

I so agree with you Randy. There is no person to ever have a harder job than the vietnam infantry officer. They did it with pride and honor and had to deal with a lot of guys that were drafted
and didn't want to be there.