By David W. Asche
The USS Hector(AR-7) was in Guam the first few months of 1975, leaving Mare Island on Jan 3, and having cruised all across the broad Pacific, via Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, to be laid into by the shipyard workers of the Naval Station there, and have work done to her berthing areas, mess decks and convert the ship over to Naval Distillate fuel.
Upon arrival there, all the crew had to move all their belongings to the barracks on base as the bunks and lockers were all to be ripped out and new bunks with locker space under each one were to be installed. We had to ride busses back and forth from the ship each day, as we still had to work aboard it and do our jobs, as well as help out with the refit.
For the first few weeks, most of us were trying to get used to Guam itself. The hot, humid, steam bath environment we were now in was hard on a lot of us. The next thing we had to get used to was the rain. I mean, I was born and raised in Portland, Oregon and I thought I knew all about rain, that is until I got to Guam. There was a short stint on Okinawa that ALSO taught me about rain, but that is another story!
It rained almost every fifteen minutes on Guam. You could almost set your clock by it. Watching the native Guamanians was also a new thing for me. Most people know to get in out of the rain, but in Guam, they don't bat an eye, they just keep on doing whatever it is and just get wet.
After working hours, we had to find what we could to entertain ourselves. On base, there was an outdoor movie theater, a small pizza hut just across the road from the barracks, a Japanese mini submarine on display outside the barracks and a small snack bar and EM club on the ground floor.
On the Island, there were tours to Tweed's Cave, famous for hiding the U.S. Navy Radioman George R. Tweed who was not captured by the Japanese in WWII, the Tank Graveyard, Talafofo Falls, and of course, the Cock Fights in Tamuning each Wednesday and Sunday evenings. Then there was snorkeling and diving all around the island.
That was about it. After all, how much fun can fit on a seven by two mile Island shaped like a Paramecium? (A Paramecium is a small, microscopic organism.)
In the barracks, one had to also try and endure the heat and humidity to try and sleep each night. I had a top bunk, slept without a sheet or blankets (HELL NO!) and we also learned about the wildlife that inhabited the island. Geckos, for example. I had one land on my stomach one night in the dark and didn't know what it was. I turn on my bunk light and see this cute little lizard sitting on my belly trying to sell me car insurance and...NO. I grabbed him and flung his little azz across the room to pester someone else.
After a few weeks of living in this tropical paradise, word came down we had to help aid the refugees from Vietnam, as it was over run by the communists. All Hell had just broken loose.
It was called "Operation New Life" and was an all-out movement to save as many as could be saved from the fall of the Republic of South Vietnam to the communists from the North.
The next few weeks were a flying blizzard of activity on the island of Guam, and it concerned EVERYONE!
We were put on a "twelve and twelve" work shift. From noon to midnight and midnight to noon, we had to work. Still, there were a few who got to stay on the ship and work on it as well, but most of us had to go to the refugee effort.
Large freight trucks were going at high speed loaded with tents, food, medical supplies, bunks, cots, blankets, and every manner of item to set up a vast refugee camp.
The old World War Two airstrips on the island were hurriedly bulldozed clear of all the brush and trees that had over run them to make room. Tents. My God the tents. EVERY TENT THEY COULD LAY THEIR HANDS ON was flown in and set up to house the people that were now beginning to appear.
I had to work down at the docks, and many more of my shipmates were working in the tent cities to help cook food, hand out bedding and other sundries, as well as help with the medical treatment of these people.
My job was to keep the lines moving as best I could, to keep people from wandering off as they came off the ships. I also learned a few words of the Vietnamese language. I learned how to say "Keep your family together" and I know I learned it Ok because I remember seeing one father grab his wife and kids and hug them in close to him when I said it.
The ships. There were many ships, all loaded with people. Cargo ships. NOT nice passenger liners. These people had been living down in the holds of these ships for several weeks. There were U.S.Marines aboard to keep order, and there were wooden toilets built and hung on the sides of the ship to help take care of so many people on the ships. The wooden toilets were not enough. The people couldn't get to them because it was so crowded.
They left their excrement in the holds of the ship where they also ate and slept. Each ship had over five thousand people on it. We would unload two ships per shift. We did this for several days. My God! How many were there? There were hundreds covered in filth, many more with diseases such as pink eye, typhus, cholera. There were also several who were doing very nicely.
I saw a few families who were clean and well dressed. One I remember even had a whole set of Samsonite Luggage. Then again, I remember one old man, all he was wearing was a raincoat, a coolie hat and a pair of sandals. All he had in his hands were a few tin cans all held together with some wire.
Right in front of me on the pier where my station was, a few guys showed up with some wood and pipes. They built a set of shower stalls right there on the pier so people could wash off the filth they had lived in for so long. A few people used them, but most just filed along in line to the tent that housed the Identification station. The people would go in there and register their names and family members, if any, and be inspected for any weapons, explosives (There were a few!) and be sent out to the tent camps. Any ARVN soldiers were stripped of any insignia badges, military gear and left with only their uniform to clothe them in. They were no longer in an army, they were just people now.
My friend, Andy, told me of how it was in the tent city where he was working. He was passing out plates of food and one small boy dropped his and began to cry, thinking he had just lost his food. Andy just handed him a new plate of food and the boy was amazed at that.
My memories of this time in my life are still there, but beginning to grow dimmer, but still more of it is in my mind than I want to write on here. There were people I saw that were such a waste of time, and others who had never seen a good time, as we know it, and still others who had yet to see what lay ahead for them
After all the years that have gone past, after so many stories of the Vietnamese people going to new homes and things such as the rice paddies set up in back yards, neighborhoods suddenly inundated by mosquitoes, dogs and cats disappearing, it was a new thing for me to one day be assigned to Jury Duty here in Alaska.
I show up and it is being controlled by a Vietnamese gal who was a small child at the time i was in Guam. We talked about it and she remembers being there and how her family was scared and didn't know what or where they were going to go. She got an education, and a job working at the courthouse here in Palmer, Alaska.
So many others, thousands of others who couldn't escape the onslaught of the communist invasion, were murdered and denied the chance to live, to be whatever they could be, all because they were not a part of the communist mindset.
As I watch what is going on in this country today, I sometimes wonder if those who lived forty years ago can still help those who do not know what is coming. There will be no one to rescue us except ourselves. And God.
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