I'll try to make this short...
I was a medic in the central highlands of South Vietnam serving with the 4th infantry and later flying dust-offs with the 71st Evac. Hosp. in Pleiku.
Near the end of my time in country my paper work got all "Army-ed" up and I was mistakenly ordered to prepare to head State-side.
As I wandered around in-country with fouled up orders trying to get back to my unit in Pleiku... I spent a stormy Christmas eve. night with some brothers sorting Xmas mail in a hangar in Phu Bai.
Eventually I caught a ride on a C-130 with the boys from graves registration hauling a midnight load of sad cargo.
Back in Pleiku I was essentially orderless & jobless for the next 3 weeks - so I volunteered to do the daily mail run on route 19.
"OK Stig, you have a military driving license, right?"
"Well, no." (as a medic, why would I - and my
driving experience was on 2 Honda motorcycles - period!)
"No problem. Go down to the motor pool and get a license issued and select a vehicle from the best of the broken vehicles there."
The PFC there told me to try a certain row of crashed and broken trucks and see if I could get one started.
I found a likely 3/4 ton truck, played with the gears as I had as a kid sitting in my Dad's parked Jeep - got it started and into gear and headed around to the repair shed....where I promptly rear-ended the motor pool SSgt's nice jeep.
This gave me driving lesson #1: stepping on the brake to stop
does not work unless you also push the clutch in!
Bam!When the SSgt. finished cussing, he gave me a paper license and ordered a couple of Vietnamese fellows to bolt a large sheet of white plywood to the front of my truck, lettered: "US MAIL DO NOT DELAY".
My trucked leaked gas badly up front but with no windscreen, nor driver's door I figured it was OK to smoke. The roads were cleared of mines nightly by the brave ARVN's - consequently I drove
extra fast figuring I could outrun any explosion.
For the next 3 weeks I terrorized myself and those on the roads speeding between 3 distant compounds - and learned to drive!
2nd driving lesson learned: when a speeding armored personnel carrier painted with dragon teeth and lettered
"BAD MOON RISING" approaches at a cross road -
HE has the right-away!
My truck looked somewhat like this.
Stateside, I passed the driving test and my wife and I drove cross country in our new VW Bus.
Stig
(Today, my teenaged daughter asked me how
I learned to drive.)
