First Tour - A bus ride in the countryside

The officers disappeared into the air-conditioned interior of the administration building but we enlisted men had to stand on the tarmac for about 20 minutes. Finally, some buses arrived and we boarded them. I used the old standby, RHIP, rank has its privileges, and got on the first bus and took the front seat next to the driver so I could see out the windshield.  Of course, there was no air-conditioning, but at least we could open the windows. It turned out that I was a little bit better off than the others because the driver kept the door open so I had a good breeze.

We left the Tan Son Nhut airport in a convoy but about 10 minutes later the driver pulled over to the side of the road. After getting out to consult with the other drivers, he came back and told us that the gunship that was scheduled to fly cover for us had developed mechanical problems and we would have to wait while they located another helicopter.

After a wait of about 20 minutes, the driver started the engine and, sure enough, we were almost immediately buzzed by a helicopter and off we went. At first, we traveled through a well-populated area with lots of women and children beside the road. This was the first time that I had seen an ao dai, the traditional clothing worn by Vietnamese women. It was also the first time that I smelled nuoc mam, the fish sauce that the Vietnamese seemed to put on everything, like Americans use salt and pepper.

Soon the houses disappeared and were replaced by open fields. We were speeding along the inside lane on a four-lane highway.  The driver told me that he kept the speed as high as possible so that snipers would not be able to get a good shot at us.  I watched the expression on his face as he said this and I believed he was serious, not just feeding a line to a newbie.

The cars in front of us slowed down and the driver moved into the passing lane. I could not see the speedometer but we were obviously going quite fast, faster than I would have driven in that traffic. After a couple of minutes, we caught up with cars in the passing lane so the driver simply slid over into the passing lane for the cars coming from the opposite direction.

I looked out the windshield and saw cars speeding toward us in our lane and the lane we should have been in was full of cars. The driver casually did the obvious thing and move over again. Now we were speeding down the inside lane on the opposite side of the road. More oncoming cars and another shift and we were speeding along in the dirt at the opposite side of the road. We stayed there for at least a couple of miles before the driver made his way back to the inside lane where he should have been so that he could make a turn.

I stopped shaking before the bus stopped at the repo depot.