We have been learning about Loren Wood, who was born in 1947 in Tyler to Beulah and Harold Wood, grew up on a farm northwest of Balaton, graduated from Russell High School in 1965, volunteered for the draft in February 1967, and completed training as an Army Aviation Communications Equipment Repairer.

Loren took pre-deployment leave at home before departing for Vietnam on Dec. 17 in an airplane full of individual replacements. Some held anxiety that became clear enroute.

“I left from Oakland on a commercial airliner. All the passengers were GIs. We flew to Hawaii to refuel and from there to the Philippines. When we got ready to leave, they had something wrong with the plane. They had to unload us and find rooms. Whoa, some of those boys got drunk! The next day they tried to get them back on the plane. I remember guys were bawling and throwing up. Then we flew from there to Saigon and landed.”

Loren recalled two surprises when he arrived in Saigon, one involved his first helicopter flight

“Oh, it was hot! (Loren chuckled) That was the biggest surprise. I didn’t know a country could be that hot, but it was. They flew us from there to Vung Tao in a Chinook helicopter. With the back door open (a loading ramp) you could see out. (Loren laughed) That was really different!”

Loren’s temporary assignment to Vung Tau, a port city on Vietnam’s southern coast, had little to do with his training as an aviation radio repair guy.

“In Vung Tau I worked with an engineering group and we built barracks. (Loren laughed) I helped them for about a month. Then I got sent to a civilian outfit working on what would be our GPS now. Back then it looked like a clock. You had to work with a magnifying glass because these “clocks” had jewels in them like a watch. But those jewels would wear out and you had to replace them. I was there a month or two.”

The work hours were predictable, giving Loren and his new friends, regular chances to visit Vung Tau’s beaches on the South China Sea.

“Every weekend a bunch of us would go to town and out to the ocean. There were real nice beaches. I remember I burned my eyes there. Ooh, was that painful! It wasn’t from looking at girls, either. (Loren laughed) It was from the sun.”

But the war also reached out to Loren in Vung Tau.

“I was still in Vung Tau when the Tet Offensive happened. They never got close to us, but we were on guard duty a lot for about two weeks.”

The Army reassigned Loren and another Chinook helicopter flew him to a major base near Saigon.

“I got orders to go to Bien Hoa Air Base with the 198th Signal Detachment. That was my final destination. We repaired and replaced radios on Huey helicopters. We were called the Thunderbird Avionics. The Thunderbirds was the name of the helicopter squadron.”

Loren described his living conditions.

“The living quarters were good. It was a two-story barracks, but we had separated rooms with two guys to a room. The ceiling was open. I know this because my folks once sent me cookies, but a monkey living up in the rafters ate all my cookies.”

He explained his work on the Huey’s of his associated aviation unit.

“I worked the flight line. (The aircraft) would go on a mission and if they had radio trouble or mechanical trouble, they would write it up in a log book. When they came back, I would go down the flight line at night and check the log books to see if they needed radio repair. After I wrote that down, I’d go to the main shop and get different radios. If they needed one replaced, I’d just pull one out and put a new one in. I’d take (the old ones) back and the guys on the day shift would work on the radios. If the (aircraft) took enemy fire, a lot of times they would sever wires in the tail section that ran to the antenna. So, we’d have to crawl inside and splice those wires. They had inspection covers on the bottom of these tail sections. You could take these covers off and that’s where you crawled in there. I wasn’t very big then. I wouldn’t fit in there now.”

Loren’s workload was variable.

“That depended on their missions. Sometimes they wouldn’t go for two or three days and then the next time they may go seven days in a row. So, you never knew. If they were flying and came back, I was working.”

The wet monsoon season brought other challenges.

“When I first got there and the monsoon season started, you tried to keep dry. But after a while, you’d give up. It didn’t rain hard, but it was steady and hot and muggy. I’ve never been so soaked in my life!”

Loren was a young guy a world away from home. Sometimes he thought about home in unexpected ways.

“I remember one beautiful night, sitting outside the barracks and looking at the sky. I wondered if somebody back home was seeing what I saw. (Loren laughed) I remember that very vividly.”

Sometimes the war came closer to Loren.

The Lyon County Museum’s Veterans Coffee is 1:30 p.m. Tuesday for veterans of any armed service. Join us for coffee, conversation, and Deb Ahmann’s “Gold Star Family” presentation at 2 p.m. Please invite your spouse and family.