Although many of the men who valiantly fought in Vietnam didn’t choose to be there, they still bravely responded when the government called on them through the draft for help.
Phil Mosley can clearly recall his experience being called to join the Army and the different areas he was stationed as well as everything that took place in Vietnam.
“I was sitting there watching TV one night and said I was glad it wasn’t me. A few days later, there was a letter in the mailbox telling me to come on,” remembered Phil. “I was at Fort Benning in Georgia. Then, I went to Fort Sill in Oklahoma. Then, I went to Fort Riley in Kansas. From there, I went to Grafenwoehr in Germany. Then, I came back on a levy; that means coming back on a levy to go to Vietnam when we got back from Germany. I got there late in 1968, and it worked out to where I was able to come home at the beginning of 1970. I stayed a year over there, and I was out. I came back to Washington. I left out in California and came back through Washington.”
The group he was assigned to in Vietnam had a specific job to do.
“My MOS was 13 Alpha 10,” explained Phil. “I worked in the Fire Direction Center, which sent a message to tell the guns where to shoot. In other words, if they were in the infantry and in trouble, they would call in their grid. We had a whole place underground covered in maps. We would find where you were at out there and shoot for you to get you out of a bind. We just moved from place to place on helicopters. That’s when we called it the air cavalry. Sometimes, we’d stay at a pretty good sized base for a while until they got a hot place to send us, and they’d send us out there somewhere. That’s pretty much what we did. They’d send us a grid of where they were at, and we’d look at a map to find them and then fire away.”
Every now and then, they may have left their base to do other missions.
“Right there around the end when we didn’t have much time left, we’d be around the base camp and might go out with them and help them find a rice cave or something like that and get all that rice and stuff,” continued Phil. “We mostly lived underground.”
They were constantly alert while on base.
“We had concertina wire, and they would try to come through that concertina wire to get inside our compound,” added Phil. “It would be snipers. We caught two or three of them trying to do that.”
During their free time, the troops would spend time together just doing what they could. The time they spent together both in leisure and fighting allowed them to become more of a family to each other than anything.
“Some days, we would work out and do a little bit of exercising. We couldn’t really do too much because we never knew if there was a sniper inside the compound,” expressed Phil. “You just get used to all the people there and all your buddies, and it’s just one big family. If something happens to one of you, it’s just like it happening to kinfolks.”
For him, the worst part of being over there was handling the death of his fellow servicemen. Even on the happy occasion of flying home, the knowledge of the ones who sacrificed it all haunted the back of his mind.
“The worst part to me was coming outside and helping to load bodies,” proclaimed Phil. “Each place, there was a load. There’d be a black bag with a tan tag on the end of it where you’d put dog tags, and that said who you were. You’d stack them in trucks like wood, and then you’d take them to the airport. The guys going home would be sitting at the top of the plane as passengers, and the bodies would be in the bottom of it. You had to think about it all the way back about how you were sitting up there and the bodies were down there.”
Like the majority of soldiers in Vietnam, he kept track of the time until he could come home.
“The proudest time we had was mainly getting to come home,” declared Phil. “We all had what was called a short times calendar that usually had a picture of a pretty girl, and you would keep your days marked on it up to the day you get to come home. That was one of the things I remember the most was just getting to come home.”
His transition back to civilian life when he first returned wasn’t as bad as some other veterans experienced.
“When I came back, it wasn’t too bad,” recalled Phil. “I was just about half crazy I think. I was just proud to be back and tried to stay out of trouble.”
After making it a year in Vietnam and coming home with barely a scratch, he has considered himself to be truly blessed. No matter what, he will always remember his experience in Vietnam and the other brave soldiers who fought alongside him.
