After receiving orders to serve in Vietnam, it seemed like a good idea to learn a little about the country, its history, and some of the language. After all, I might get lost or injured and need help from the locals getting back to the compound. I definitely wanted to learn their numbers and key words like hospital, yes, no, go, etc. Since I had a couple weeks before I shipped out, the base library was a frequent destination after work. They had audio tapes for learning Vietnamese and references on the country's history.
Once I got in country, I tried to refine my understanding of the spoken Vietnamese language. The Defense Communication Agency (DCA) where I worked was not only a joint service Department of Defense (DOD) agency utilizing members from the Army, Navy, and Air Force, they also worked hand in hand with the South Vietnamese Army signal corp. In fact, the administration "building" that I worked in had offices for both United States and Vietnamese military. Some of the Vietnamese soldiers could not speak English, so I had plenty of opportunity to have my pronunciation corrected. Furthermore, the Navy Chief Petty Officer that I worked with was a trained Vietnamese interpreter and he loved correcting me.
The compound for DCA was located just outside of the Tan Son Nhut (TSN) air base which had some food vendors, beer stands, and clothing shops that were run by Vietnamese locals. I often had lunch at one of the "fried rice" stands and after being on base for a few months, I decided to have some shirts, boots, and a custom leather jacket made. After all, the exchange rate was 200 Vietnamese piasters to one U. S. dollar. What a deal!
One fine (warm) day, I walked to the leather shop to check on the progress of my new jacket. Along the way, I passed a beer stand that had one customer drinking the local brew at a table right next to the road on which I was walking. Side note. The local beer was called "33 beer" which is pronounced "Bah Muoi Bah" in Vietnamese. It was (and is) considered a premium export rice beer that cost virtually nothing (remember the 200:1 exchange rate). The 33 rice beer definitely tastes different that American beer and the story goes that the bottles returned for recycling were rinsed with formaldehyde, you know, the stuff they use to embalm corpses. But the brewery would not always allow the stuff to completely dry before refilling the bottles. Yum.
Back to the story. The person sitting at the beer stand was a Vietnamese Air Force captain (There's a joke in there somewhere about South Vietnam actually having an Air Force, but I will let it go.), who apparently had been drinking for quite some time. He called out to me, in Vietnamese, to come over and have a beer with him. Now, a number of things came to mind immediately. First, I was on a lunch break and only had minutes to walk to the leather shop, talk with the owner, and walk back. Second, the captain had just called to a complete stranger, from a different country, in a different military organization, to drink together. Third, if I did walk over to his table and have a beer, it was likely that I would never be able to pry myself away from him. Fourth, he was a captain (albeit in a different organization) and I was an enlisted man which brings concerns with fraternization. Fifth, the captain had called out in Vietnamese to an American soldier so he clearly could not speak English. How did he intend to communicate?
I replied, in Vietnamese, "No, thank you. No time." That was a big mistake. Now the captain thought that I could speak Vietnamese and he definitely wanted to chat. He stood up, shakily, and pulled out one of the chairs from the table and instructed me to sit. I again declined stating that, "I must go, have a good day," again in Vietnamese, and began to back away from his table. This went on for what seemed an eternity with me backing away from the table and him calling for me to come back and sit down. Finally, I turned and started to walk down the road again.
I had only walked about 20 feet when he shouted for me to stop, now. I looked over my shoulder had was pointing his handgun at me, a U.S. issued Colt 45. I turned to face him, and he emphatically stated for me to come back and sit down. Just as emphatically I told him no thank you, I must go. I turned back around and continued walking, perhaps a little faster now. I had only taken two or three steps when ...
The SOB had fired his weapon! I turned and started to walk towards him. To be honest, now he had made me angry and I was going to take that 45 away from him. Fortunately, an U.S. Air Force sergeant in a Jeep slid to stop right next to me beeping his horn. He called for me to jump into the passenger seat of the Jeep, which I did. In the meantime, three or four other U.S. Air Force enlisted men jumped the captain and wrestled the Colt away from him. From the Jeep I could see the captain pointing at me and then at the table, over and over again. I asked the Jeep driver in what direction the handgun was pointing when the captain pulled the trigger. He made his right hand into the shape of a gun and pointed directly at my head. He then drove me to the Vietnamese Air Force command center so I could file a report on the incident.
As it turned out, I never did make it to the leather shop that day and the captain only got a letter of reprimand for firing his 45 on base. From that day on, whenever encountering a Vietnamese national I did not know, my response was always the same."