My sober trip to Bien Hoa.



I worked in the S.O.A.P. Lab on Tan Son Nhut air base after Tet back in 1968. SOAP was an acronym for Spectrometric Oil Analysis Program. The S.O.A.P. Lab was part of the Engine Shop. And engine oil was burned in the S.O.A.P. machine to create a spectrum of colors which corresponded to different varieties and amounts of metal content in the oil. The purpose of this was to predict engine wear. It was some time before Mini-Tet when our S.O.A.P. machine began to brake down. While it was being repaired we had to run our oil samples at Bien Hoa Air Base. My NCOIC asked me if I knew how to drive a stick shift. When I told him that I did he informed me that I was going to drive a two and one half ton truck to Bien Hoa and back. I hadn't driven any kind of a vehicle in the two years that I had been in the Air Force. And I had never driven a two and one half ton truck before. When I objected he said, "I don't care, I'm not driving; so you are!" Saigon was a chaos of pedestrians, ox-carts, mopeds, taxicabs, and trucks. The VC could be anywhere on the trip. I'm sure you can understand why that would be a sobering experience. After a while I got used to driving that truck through Saigon traffic and it wasn't so bad. But once we could only requisition a staff car for the trip. As usual I was driving. And as we were crossing the Newport bridge a Vietnamese bus stopped in front of us. In the oncoming lane was a column of two and one half ton trucks. Suddenly we heard a number of full auto bursts from an AK47 coming from below the bridge. I pushed the accelerator to the floor. And we went around that bus just barely missing the on coming trucks. After we arrived at Bien Hoa we looked over the car. We didn't find any bullet holes but it sure woke us up. In the picture I'm the sober looking airman in the T-shirt on the left. Lol.