Blog 3297 – 11.11.2024
Thank You For Your Service
In January of 1970 I arrived in the Republic of South Vietnam as a nineteen year old Specialist Fourth Class in the Army Security Agency. My entire graduating class from the six-month teletype repair course at the Southeast Army Signal School at Fort Gordon, Georgia (now called Fort Eisenhower) had been levied into the Army Security Agency. We were all three-year Regular Army enlisted. Normally, Army Security Agency personnel had to enlist for four years as a six month FBI background investigation for a Top Secret Security Clearance had to be conducted and the Army wanted the additional year of active duty service due to the additional expense. We were held over in our training company and assigned clerical jobs while we awaited our security clearances.
The first of December we received orders to report to Arlington Hall, Virginia, home of the ASA, to there be assigned to casual duty (menial labor like grounds maintenance and such) till our background investigations were completed. But those orders were rescinded and we were told that our security clearances were all completed and we that were being granted a two week Christmas leave after which we were to report to processing centers for overseas assignments the first week of January 1990. One of my best buddies, Vito Ventimiglia and I were to report to Oakland Army Depot, just across the bay from San Francisco on January 6th. Our overseas destination was Tan Son Nhut Air Base just outside Saigon, Vietnam.
When we got there Vito and I met up and were processed for Vietnam and actually flew there together and pulled casual duty on Tan son Nhut while we awaited assignments to specific ASA units, which where designated components of the “509th Radio Research Group in Vietnam. I drew Davis Station on Tan Son Nhut and Vito drew a field assignment to a unit in Phu Bai up near the DMZ, the Demilitarized Zone on the border between North and South Vietnam.
After getting my billet (room and bed) assign at Davis Station (named after the first ASA casualty in Vietnam) I was informed that my security clearance was still in process so I would be pulling casual duty till it came through. So my first two months of service in Vietnam were spent cutting grass and picking up trash. The upside of which was that I acquired the best tan of my life.
Whenever I wear my Vietnam Veteran cap and and someone seeing it says, “Thank you for your service” I always smile remembering that time in my life, flying half way around the world just to cut grass and pick up trash. I did finally get to put my training to use and worked in two top secret communication centers for the rest of my tour in ‘Nam.
Thank you for the opportunity to serve.
Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White
THE SHIRELLES – SOLDIER BOY 1962
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