We have been learning about Marshall’s George Seldat and his Vietnam service. George grew up in Decatur, Illinois, attended a year of college, enlisted in the Army in 1967 after receiving a draft call, and completed Basic Training before advanced training at the Military Intelligence School. He deployed to Vietnam in April 1968. Everything about his arrival at Tan Son Nhut Air Base near Saigon informed him he was in a foreign environment, unlike anything he had ever encountered.

“The pilot came on the intercom and told us to prepare for a sharp descent. The reason was they had been taking fire around the airport with AK-47s, so they didn’t want to come in on a long glide-path. That was an unnerving experience, not having had that kind of a landing before. At the same time, he warned us that as soon as we landed we would taxi quickly; pop open the doors; and get off the plane quickly. The reason for that was snipers. I remember thinking, ‘Well, this is a real trip!’ They opened the doors and the thing I remember was that blast of hot, humid air and the smell — it was just a totally foreign experience — I mean smells that you cannot really describe.”

The new arrivals hustled off the aircraft and were loaded on two-and-a-half ton Army cargo trucks that hauled them to a hotel for the night. The otherworldliness of George’s new situation continued.

“The first thing they had us do was guard duty. They gave you a weapon and one round. I asked, ‘What are we supposed to do with one round?’ They said, ‘You fire a warning shot.’ I replied, ‘What if the warning shot doesn’t work?’ They answered ‘Well, you’d better run like hell (George laughed) because you’ve only got one round.’ Your function was fire a warning shot to alert that site that there would be enemy coming. I thought that was a strange way to start. The first morning I woke up in Vietnam I started to put my boot on and found this cockroach from hell go right up my arm and down the back of my blouse. I ripped that off immediately and killed the cockroach. You knew you had arrived in a country and environment that was totally alien to you.”

George left the reception center within two days, flown with others in a C-7 Caribou, a small cargo plane, north to Nha Trang, in the II Corps region of South Vietnam. The Army assigned him to Detachment 2 of the Intelligence staff of 1st Field Force Vietnam, which was headquartered at Nha Trang base.

George described his new home and accommodations.

“Base camp was a fairly large complex. It was close to the beach, which was on the South China Sea, and the city of Nha Trang, which was a fairly large city. We had a rocket installation; a Special Forces detachment; and an Air Force group. They had fighters, F-100s. (We had) two-story wooden barracks, with screened-in sides. We had a bunk with mosquito netting over it. It was pretty dirty — constant dirt and dust, except for the monsoon season when it was wet.”

George was a sergeant by this time, one of several intelligence non-commissioned officers who worked for the Detachment 2 commander. He explained his unusual mission.

“I had TDY (temporary duty) orders for the entire year. I was sent to forward fire bases or units; would collect intelligence information and bring that back; compile reports; and then do briefings to the command. A lot of it had to do with how they treated classified information. Firing missions, for example; how was that passed from unit to unit? Were they putting information out about convoys and where convoys were moving? Some of the job was to evaluate their commo networks and whether they were using proper techniques.”

He explained the nuts and bolts of gathering the information his commander tasked him to collect.

“The CO (commanding officer) would come in and say, ‘OK, I want you to go there and get this information.’ There was no real issue about getting flights. Most of the time we’d just go over to the helipad and find out where they were going. They’d say, ‘Fine. Jump on.’ And away they’d go. If you were (going to) a forward fire base, you went to the CO there and he cleared the pathway. He’d always say, ‘This guy’s got to do his job. Give him whatever he needs.’ I was never put in a position where I had problems with that.”

George’s mission did not require him to linger in forward positions, but the Army understood his missions and training could put him at risk.

“There was a standing order that if things became too difficult, you would be able to call in a helicopter to leave because there was concern that people such as me, who had that kind of training, would be of value to the enemy. So, they didn’t want you captured.”

George knew that risk was real.

“It was not uncommon for (forward units) to get infiltrated. I had left one unit and as soon as I got back to my site I found out they got overrun. So, there was always that concern.”

The Lyon County Museum is organizing an exhibit about the Vietnam War and Lyon County. If you would like to share Vietnam experiences or help with the exhibit, please contact me at prairieviewpressllc@gmail.com or call the museum at 537-6580.