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I interviewed Norman Nelson in August 2009 and mourned his passing in 2020. We've been learning about Norm's Vietnam service to help us better understand the Vietnam War's impact on our region.
Norm grew up on the family farm, graduating in 1960 from Cottonwood High School. The local draft board selected him for military service in 1965 during in a break in his college education.
He completed Basic Training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri and then learned about artillery survey operations and trained as a non-commissioned officer at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
The Army assigned Sgt. Norman Nelson to the 4th Battalion, 42nd Field Artillery of the 4th Infantry Division at Fort Lewis, Washington. He helped organize an artillery survey team to support his battalion's 105 mm gun batteries as the unit prepared to deploy to Vietnam.
Norm and his survey team arrived in Vietnam in July 1966 and helped organize the 4th Infantry Division's base camp near Pleiku in Vietnam's Central Highlands.
The division established forward base camps and artillery fire bases in the jungle-covered hills of the Central Highlands to support infantry operations. The forward base camps provided communications, survey, and logistical support to the fire bases.
Norm and his survey team spent most of their time at these forward camps. Because Norm's artillery battalion supported infantry units in the field, when the infantry received a new mission the battalion's forward base camp and fire bases had to move to support them.
Norm explained, "We kept on moving. We'd have to pick up and go and start all over again and make a new forward base camp. We were supposed to be on alert all the time."
Life was busy for Norm and his team when the unit relocated its forward bases. First, they flew to the new fire bases to survey the artillery pieces, ensuring they were ready for fire missions. Then they returned to the new base camp site to help clear the site; set up tents; and construct bunkers.
Daily life at a forward base camp was pretty basic, but Norm realized they had it good compared to the infantrymen patrolling the hills and jungles of the Central Highlands. The survey team had a tent with a floor they made from ammunition boxes, their own bunker, and access to a mess hall for hot meals.
Norm laughed, though, when I asked whether they had shower facilities.
"No. We tried to make something - rigged it up. That was a cold experience to take a shower!"
Norm's survey team lived with constant reminders they operated in a combat zone. He explained that sometimes the survey team was pressed into duty helping load out ammunition when the firing batteries were heavily engaged.
"You could tell when it was getting bad because we'd have to help in the ammunition dump. [Artillery ammunition] went into net-like things. They'd just hook on a strap -- a strap hanging out of the helicopter -- they'd hook that strap to your bundle of ammunition."
Norm remembered that those resupply helicopters did not necessarily return empty.
"[There was] a tent for bodies [of troops] that didn't make it. I can't remember when they took them out, but they put them in there for the time being."
Norm also recalled their forward base camp sometimes was targeted by enemy rockets or mortar fire.
"When we'd get hit, we'd end up down in our bunker. They'd lob a few and some would get kind of excited and stay in a bunker a long time, but when it quit for quite a while, I'd go back to my cot and go to sleep."
Leadership responsibility in a combat zone still weighed on Norm decades later.
"Once in a while on a survey mission we drove there. You had to wait for a convoy. [Once] we waited and waited and nobody came, so we went on our own. We were driving through the jungle and you could stick your hand out and touch it, but luckily we made it there and back. I think of that many, many times -- that it could have been the end of all of our lives."
Toward the end of his tour he had a taste of normal life.
"I did go to in-country R&R. It was about a week or so. It had showers. (Norm laughed) I remember that! So, it was more what we were used to, rather than living out in the jungle in tents."
Troops in Vietnam were always aware of their DEROS date – when they would leave Vietnam to return stateside. Norm explained how the artillerymen tracked their last months in country
"[W]e had an ammunition rod and we put washers on there for the number of days left. Each day you'd take a washer off and you'd throw it as far as you could." (Norm laughed)
One day in April 1967 Norm threw his last washer into the jungle. The Army flew him out of Vietnam to San Francisco and then on to Minneapolis.
Forty-two years later in 2009 Norm reflected on his Vietnam service, "I don't really talk about it much. I think about those serving now in Iraq and Afghanistan. I feel for them and for their families."
Thank you for the service you did not talk about much, Norm.
The Lyon County Museum is organizing an exhibit about the impact of the Vietnam War on Lyon County. If you would like to share Vietnam experiences or help with the exhibit, please contact me at prairiev iewpressllc@gmail.com or call Jennifer Andries at the museum at 537-6580.