Christmas in Vietnam

A Vietnam Christmas Story

(This is no Shit, it really happened)

by Roy A. Rogers

I was in Vietnam for a year from Oct 67 to Oct 68. Therefore, I was there for all the holidays that year. I don’t remember many of them. I’m sure Halloween came and went without notice, We probably had canned turkey for Thanksgiving at the Mess hall, but I don’t remember that either.

I do remember the 4th of July there; as the year before we had been in flight school in Ft. Rucker, Alabama watching the fireworks display the Army put on. We told each other, “These fireworks are fun, but just think, Next year we will be seeing this for real.”

Sure enough, I remembered that conversation when I was in Vietnam, on the 4th of July. 

Surprisingly it turned out to be one of the quietest nights of the year. Often we had had nights with gunfire in the distance, or aircraft flying over firing mini-guns at some unknown target just outside our perimeter, or even flying at night ourselves watching tracers from both directions. Yet that 4th could have been called, Silent Night, as nothing happened.

Strange as it sounds I may have even been a little disappointed. 

But I digress, as I am easily distracted, and this story is about Christmas.

That December in Vietnam we had been flying missions an hour or so north of our base. We would go out in the mornings, do our thing, and fly back in the evenings. Generally the route we flew took us over a school.  

Whenever we flew over the school we usually noticed the kids playing outside. (keep in mind we flew low level most of the time, less than 200 feet. So they were easy to see.)

When we were out on missions, our meals were C-rations. Sometimes we ate while flying, but often we would land for fuel and ammo, and have our lunch on the dry ground. That way we got to have a hot meal by heating the C-ration cans over a chunk of burning C4.- - -   

But again, I digress.

Usually there is something in the C-ration package that no one likes to eat. One item I remember in particular was ham and lima beans. There are others, like canned bread, or some kind of mystery meat, but the ham and Lima beans was the most popular untouchable.

One day my crew chief began collecting all the discarded C-rations instead of throwing them away. Then the rest of my crew joined in and put aside our unopened C-rations. 

It wasn’t always the things we didn’t like; we also added some of the good stuff, like peanut butter and crackers, and pound cake, Yummm. Plus we threw in a bunch of the 4 to a pack cigarettes that came with the C-rations, and anything else that had been unopened after we completed our meals, often sacrificing even the things we liked.

Near Christmas we bought some candy and other goodies from the PX and the crew chief put them with all the C-rations and stuff we had collected over the days into a large 40mm ammo can.

We all knew the little kids were the ones suffering in this war. They often came around our base going through the trash hoping to find something to eat or wear that we had thrown away. 

Our crew chief loaded the box in the helicopter on our next mission. We went out and did our thing and returning to base we flew over the school and we were happy to see there were many kids outside playing. Instead of flying on by and waving at them as we usually did, I slowed and flew low over the school grounds while my crew chief pushed out the ammo can. 

We watched as dropped don and saw it hit right in the middle of the school yard and splatter C rations and cigarettes and candy all around.

Then we laughed seeing how excited all the kids were as they ran to see what had dropped out of Santa’s sleigh. 

Or maybe they were running to see if the kid the box fell on was OK.

NO, we didn’t hit anyone, just joking.

Uh, that is, I don’t think we hit anyone.

But anyway, that was a Christmas I will always remember.