Charlie Net

When I was in Vietnam, due to lack of any reliable telephone service, we all had multiple radios in our houses and ones we carried with us. I was on several “official” radio nets, but the relatively small number of “common” guys had their own private net — the Whiskey Net…. with call signs like Jack Daniels, Johnny Walker, Old Grandad, etc. One of these days I’ll get around to posting some Whiskey Net stories.

But — back to today’s story…. My first trip to Can Tho (located near the mouth of the Mekong Delta, south of Saigon) turned out to be pretty interesting. I went down to repair a piece of equipment in the communications center of the American Consulate and to consult with a fairly high-ranking ARVN general about upgrading their communications in Can Tho. I was assigned an “apartment”  on the ground floor of a four story building across the street from the consulate. And I was given a radio — the consulate’s radio net was the Charlie Net — I was assigned the call sign Charlie Ten.

I had just barely walked into my apartment the first night, when the sound of exploding ordnance caught my attention. There was the first explosion, then a second, and a third….  my newly acquired radio started squawking and hissing continually. People were asking if anybody knew what was going on, and it seemed like no one did. From the sounds, I figured it must be a mix of mortars and rockets — but there didn’t seem to be any letup in the shelling. The radio was blaring things like, is everybody alright and what’s happening? Then suddenly, I heard, “Charlie Ten. Get up on the roof. We need damage reports.” In case you forgot, I was Charlie Ten. The radio was still babbling and I couldn’t make much sense of all the noise. 

Now during a rocket attack, the last place you want to be is in the open up on a roof — you want to be under cover, near the ground. But I was told to go to the roof, so I went to the roof. It looked like about half the city was burning — some of the embers from the fires were falling on the roof — I stamped them out the best I could. The building I was staying in was surrounded by a wall and I could see big crowds of people approaching from the direction of the fires to get away from the shelling. There was an armed guard at the gate in the wall, but I didn’t see how he could do much if the crowd decided they wanted to come in to the courtyard.

So having gone to the roof and assessed the damage, I went back down to my apartment. The radio was still squawking and suddenly I heard the demanding voice of the Base Chief, “Where’s Charlie Ten?” “Anybody know if he’s ok?” I keyed the mike and said, “This is Charlie Ten.” “All’s well here.” The Base Chief, clearly annoyed, said, “Where have you been?” “Why didn’t you report in sooner?”
I made up some story about the door being stuck and I couldn’t get off the roof.
Luckily, I was able to repair the equipment in the consulate and the meetings with the general went well, so my less than acceptable damage reporting was kind of forgiven.
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