We have begun learning about Lynd’s Ron Jensen and his Vietnam service. Ron was born in Tyler in 1948 and lived there and in Florence before the family moved to Lynd for Ron’s 6th grade year. He graduated with the Lynd High School class of 1966.

Ron was drafted into the military in 1968 and completed his Army training before being deployed to Vietnam in July 1969. The Army assigned him to Engineer Hill near Pleiku in Vietnam’s Central Highlands. He described his unit and its mission.

“We were called Engineer Hill. That’s where the engineering units were that built the roads up through the highlands. In the middle of this Engineer unit there was a Signal unit. That’s where I got sent. We had 16 guys. The whole time I was there we had an E-6 sergeant who was in charge. The rest of the guys ran the equipment that ran the radar. My job was to keep the generators running that furnished the power for this.”

Ron explained the radar’s purpose and the importance of his generators.

“It was important to keep those generators running because otherwise they couldn’t fire the artillery. The guy on that radar screen could tell there might be North Vietnamese walking through the jungle and the system would tell him the exact distance. He’d relay the numbers over to Artillery Hill. They’d dial it in; pull it; and that round would go and land on top of them.”

Ron described how he learned his job and what it involved.

“When I got there, there was a guy that did that. He was there until he trained me and then he got to go home. They ran 24 hours, seven days a week, so, you had to pull maintenance on them regularly, mostly changing oil. One generator would be running and you’d start the other generator. Now they’re both running, but the power is coming off the first generator. There were switches you had to flip to switch the power. If there was no power for even a short period, then all that stuff in that radar system would shut down. So you had to do it quickly.”

Ron’s Signal detachment and its radar enjoyed extra layers of security because of its sensitive mission.

“When I got there, Sarge was there (the detachment’s senior leader) and he had a dog. We had concertina wire around our area. That dog would patrol and if somebody stepped in there, he’d take you down. When Sarge went home he, another guy, I, and that dog went down to the Pleiku Air Base so he could fly out. That dog sat there and cried.”

Ron described their living arrangements.

“They were like regular Army barracks, but they were smaller, just one story. We had sandbags all around them in case mortars rounds went off. They had one mess hall for the whole cantonment. The food was so bad that most of the time you didn’t want to eat there. Everything was dried: powdered milk, powdered eggs; powdered potatoes. (Ron chuckled) We had access to C-rations and K-rations, so we ate a lot of that.”

When Ron arrived, one of the Signal soldiers showed him their barracks, latrine, and their uncommon shower.

“They had a big water tank up in the air and they’d fill it with water. The sun heated it. That was your shower. In the two years he’d been stationed there that shower got hit by mortar rounds twice. You thought about it when you went out there to shower. The whole time I was there, we joked about it, ‘We’ve got to hurry and take that shower before that mortar round comes today.'” (Ron chuckled)

Ron also described perimeter security on Engineer Hill.

“(Engineer Hill) was the size of five or six football fields. We had a fence all the way around with concertina wire that was fifteen feet high and bunkers all around it. We pulled our own guard duty at night. Everybody on the base would switch off.”

He recalled a perimeter security night when a “Red Alert” went out.

“I didn’t send the flares up. Somebody down the perimeter did. He saw movement. So, they turned the flood lights on and the concertina wire had been cut. If they would try to overrun us, they could just open it up after it was cut.”

Sometimes perimeter security meant going outside the perimeter.

“Once in a while, if they felt the area was hot, meaning there were North Vietnamese in the area, we would go out at night in the jungle. There would usually be six of us. You sat out there at night and it was dark. You could hear stuff moving, but you couldn’t see anything. So, you never really knew what was going on. If you heard them talking, you’d let them clear your area. You’d have a radio and you’d call and say, “Red alert.” Then the guys in the bunkers would shoot up flares so you could see. They’d usually come with a helicopter and start patrolling the area with big flood lights. That was one of the worst things you ever had to do, going out there at night.”

But Ron regularly pulled other extra duty assignments that put him in a different type of danger zone.

The Lyon County Museum is sponsoring a Veterans Coffee at 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 19 for veterans of any armed service from any period. Please join us for coffee, conversation, and camaraderie. The Veterans Coffees will continue on the 1st Tuesday of each month.