Vietnam Vet recalls Barcs at Qui Nhon

SARATOGA SPRINGS - Hud Armstrong sat at his favorite Caroline Street table, where a tapestry of his drawings cover the restaurant walls, and remembered his time in Vietnam 40 years ago.

'My tour of duty wouldn't rate a movie,' he said, 'but yeah, I went. I was there. It wasn't being patriotic. I was just paying my dues.'

A military draft has been used on and off in the United States since the early 19th century and when Armstrong's turn came, he felt obligated to go.

'My grandfather went into service, my great-grandfather went, and my father was in the Philippines during World War II. He told me, 'If you get drafted, you don't run, you just go. You owe it to this country.' So I figured it was just my turn,' Armstrong said.

'That was one reason I went. The other was that if you don't go, they're going to catch up with you and hang your ass. So I went, having no idea what I would see.'

He celebrated his 21st birthday by completing basic training, then went to see the company commander who would decide his next move. It was 1966.

'He looked over my file and saw I had a background in art. I don't know what it was about my dossier, but something in there made him think, 'Hey, this guy will be really good in amphibians.' So I went for amphibian training and ended up being sent to Qui Nhon,' said Armstrong, remembering the city that sits on the Vietnam coast, south of Da Nang.

'The first thing they tell you in basic training is that you're given a gun to kill, so some of the guys think, 'Oh, we're gonna play cowboys and Indians, we're gonna be soldiers, we're gonna go kill us some gooks.' Then you get there, the door opens and they freak.'

Armstrong served with the BARCs - Barge Amphibious Re-supply Unit - whose centerpiece was an amphibious vehicle that boasted four 10-foot-high wheels for land use, a pair of propellers for water submersion and the ability to carry 60 tons of weight in its hollowed-out center.

'They were huge. You could carry a tank or 100 men inside of it,' Armstrong said.

The vehicle would meet ships in the water, then carry soldiers and supplies back to the shore, as well as make trips up into the mountains of Qui Nhon.

Armstrong remembered his year in Vietnam, cruising along the coast at night and seeing the bright lights of artillery firing in the darkness.

He remembered the eerily silent explosions that mushroomed into fireballs and the big concussive bang that would follow, showers of shrapnel raining down from the sky.

He also remembered seeing body bags being handled 'oh so delicately' by soldiers carrying the bodies of their fallen comrades.

'You'd wear your steel helmet and you'd carry an M-16. Most times went without incident, but you were always aware that you were in Vietnam,' he said.

When word spread of his artistic talents, Armstrong spent a good deal of his last few months in Vietnam painting signs to be posted outside important locations and images of celebrities like Sophia Loren and Ursula Andress that were hung inside officers' clubs.

It was a time when he first noticed the winds of change in the air.

'The last three or four months I was there was when we first started getting guys coming in and asking where the drugs were. That was in '67,' he said. 'People say the Asians did it to us with the drugs, but really we were the ones that were bringing it over.'

Things had changed for America, too.

'It wasn't until I got back that I realized how much the country turned around. I found out the rules had all changed,' he recalled. 'It was an entirely different world. There was this new music, bands like Cream and the Jefferson Airplane, and while I was away, a sexual revolution had taken place. It was more of a shock seeing how things had changed after I got back than was the shock of first going into the Army,' Armstrong said.

'I go down to the VA once a year for a check up. I've been to Washington and seen the memorial. It's mostly out of a sense of respect. I knew some guys I went to BARC training with that perished,' Armstrong said. 'With The Wall coming here, yeah, I'll go down and have a good look at it.'

The Moving Wall is on display 24 hours a day through 11 a.m. Monday at Shenantaha Creek Park in Malta.

by Thomas Dimopoulos
published in The Saratogian, June 11, 2006