“I can still feel the heat”, 11” x 15”, Silkscreen, 2024
Ernest, Army, 1970-1971
After I graduated AIT at Fort Sill, I was awarded leave to come home for thirteen days. So I came home for thirteen days and I left on July 8 from Cleveland and flew to Oakland, California. I stayed all night and went to Fort Ord, California and my time started that day…so it started on July 9 that I was assigned to Vietnam. Within about three hours of being at Fort Ord, I was on a plane headed for Anchorage, Alaska. I got off at Anchorage for just a short while. From there it was Okinawa, Japan; from there it was Ben Wa,
Vietnam. I spent my first week in Vietnam being processed and doing more training before I was sent to my actual duty assignment.
I still can smell it and I still can feel it. When they opened up the doors on that airplane the heat just came rolling in and you couldn’t breathe. It was just like somebody put a bag over your head. Once you got out of the airplane, they put us on a bus to take us to the processing center. On the bus, it had bars on the windows and the bars were not to keep us in, but to keep grenades from being thrown in the bus. The smell…the stench, I can still smell it today. And I can still feel the heat today. We were given about twenty-four hours to adjust to the temperature. This was July. When I was in California it was 56 degrees, got to Anchorage, Alaska and it was in the higher 30s, and I have no idea what it was in Japan. We got to Vietnam and it was 110 degrees. They gave us time to adjust before we started getting into the heavier training. You just sweat the whole time through.
After I graduated AIT at Fort Sill, I was awarded leave to come home for thirteen days. So I came home for thirteen days and I left on July 8 from Cleveland and flew to Oakland, California. I stayed all night and went to Fort Ord, California and my time started that day…so it started on July 9 that I was assigned to Vietnam. Within about three hours of being at Fort Ord, I was on a plane headed for Anchorage, Alaska. I got off at Anchorage for just a short while. From there it was Okinawa, Japan; from there it was Ben Wa,
Vietnam. I spent my first week in Vietnam being processed and doing more training before I was sent to my actual duty assignment.
I still can smell it and I still can feel it. When they opened up the doors on that airplane the heat just came rolling in and you couldn’t breathe. It was just like somebody put a bag over your head. Once you got out of the airplane, they put us on a bus to take us to the processing center. On the bus, it had bars on the windows and the bars were not to keep us in, but to keep grenades from being thrown in the bus. The smell…the stench, I can still smell it today. And I can still feel the heat today. We were given about twenty-four hours to adjust to the temperature. This was July. When I was in California it was 56 degrees, got to Anchorage, Alaska and it was in the higher 30s, and I have no idea what it was in Japan. We got to Vietnam and it was 110 degrees. They gave us time to adjust before we started getting into the heavier training. You just sweat the whole time through.