50th Anniversary Issue — October 1, 1995

By Mike Mealey

The dreaded letter began, "Greeting. . .''

It was, I thought, the worst thing to come along in my 23 years of life.

I could not have imagined that the draft notice was, instead, a call to two of the most exciting, challenging years a young journalist could imagine -- a passport to covering the war in Vietnam, the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, the rancorous, unending negotiations in Panmunjom and other stories throughout the Pacific.

Thus, when I left my desk at the San Francisco Bay Area's Oakland Tribune to report to the nearby Army induction center in the fall of 1963, I was resigned to somehow making it through 48 months of a military life I was sure I would loathe.

Three months later, at the end of basic and advanced training, I was ordered to report to Pacific Stars and Stripes, Tokyo, Japan, and one couldn't have wiped the smile from my face had he tried to knock my teeth out.

Pacific Stars and Stripes was a famous newspaper, even among journalists with no military experience. By the 1960s it had carved out its reputation by covering the occupation of Japan, then the Korean war.

While I had never seen a copy of the paper before arriving in Tokyo, it didn't take me long to see why it was so appreciated:

It brought news of home to those serving in cultures dramatically alien to our own. With Stripes, they could have Beetle Bailey, Art Buchwald and sushi all in one.

Two weeks into the job I was asked if I would like to cover the war in Vietnam.

At the time, there were a mere 16,000 U.S. troops there, advising the South Vietnamese in a little-known skirmish to stop the advance of communism in Southeast Asia.

I had vaguely heard of it, but back in basic, everyone talked of avoiding assignment to Korea, where tented U.N. forces still lived along the DMZ.

Vietnam?

It was never discussed.

I eagerly volunteered, and thus began a series of assignments that took me to places and people I will never forget.

From day one, I was treated like a god, and being from Stars and Stripes, I learned, was about the next best thing.

There were the Navy housing people who decided that despite being a lowly E-2 I was, after all, from Pacific Stars and Stripes.

As a result, I found myself the sole tenant of a beautiful three-bedroom villa in Saigon, convenient to both downtown and the airport.

There were helicopter pilots who would make extra trips to ferry me to the field. There were officers -- all the way to bird colonels -- who would stay with me at the villa rather than go to the BOQ hotels when visiting Saigon, so they could fill me in on what was going on. Always, they were trying to get me back to write about their units.

In those early days, I mostly hooked up with advisory teams assigned to work with the Vietnamese. We spent endless days slogging around the Mekong Delta or the jungles to the north, fruitlessly looking for the evasive Viet Cong.

Inevitably, it seemed, the battles took place where I wasn't. But there were a lot of human interest stories and a lot of laughs.

There were lotteries about the exact minute snipers would begin their nightly harassments; there were trips with the Navy boat patrols in the Delta, when the VC tracers would light up the sky like the Fourth of July; there were flights with the Air Force to drop supplies or release huge flares to light up the night so ground troops below could see their attackers.

I once marched with a Special Forces team from the darkness of early morning through a scorching hot day, accompanying a Vietnamese patrol to a small town in the Mekong Delta.

We waded through neck-high water full of leeches, were unendingly pestered by mosquitoes, and constantly alert for VC.

After about 14 hours we neared the town, and one ever-humorous sergeant, his beret askew and sweat-stained, said, "They better have a beer in this town or I'm turning around and going back.''

There was Army Capt. Gene Wyles who said the Vietnamese soldiers he advised "treat me like ivory.'' My story about his unit was carried in Stripes, and forever more, Wyles was known as "Ivory Gene.''

As the war picked up -- there were about 365,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam when I finally left in the summer of 1965 -- so did the activity.

The B-52 bombings began, at first so close to Saigon that I awoke to what I first thought was a violent thunderstorm.

The Big Red One and 173rd Airborne arrived, along with the Marines to the north, in what was called I Corps, or "Eye Corps.'' For the reporter, there was always the problem of being one place when the battles broke out in others, but I solved that by hanging out with Medevac teams, who were always happy to take me where they were called, although never to bring me back.

I wrote about some of those fearless men, often to hear of their deaths weeks or months later.

Gen. William Westmoreland, then commanding the U.S. forces, would occasionally let me accompany him on his helicopter forays to the countryside.

I could interview him on the way, then hear stories about him on the ground, from soldiers who had served with him in Korea or knew him when he commanded West Point.

They said he never forgot a name, and I believed it later, when he read of my discharge from Stripes and took the time to write a letter thanking me for my Vietnam coverage and wishing me luck in civilian life.

I still cherish the letter.

Every once in a while, Stripes gave me a break. Editors would call and ask me to fly back to Japan for special assignments. And they were special indeed.

I covered the Tokyo Olympics in '64, writing mainly about U.S. athletes, their victories and travails. Ralph Boston confided that he lost the broad jump because he had tremendous stomach cramps, but made me promise I wouldn't disclose his illness.

The highlight of the games, for me, was when a little-known Marine named Billy Mills won the10,000-meter run. I sat near the great sprinter Jesse Owens in the press box and had the honor of meeting him.

I was sent to Korea to write a series of stories about U.S. efforts there, and got off to an ignominious start by placing an Air Force general in the service of the Army as I described the acrimonious peace talks.

I covered war games with a team of Stripes reporters off a small island in the Philippines, and, thanks to my experiences in Vietnam, was the only reporter not to fall ill to what we called "Chinese revenge.'' I had shunned all the local water in favor of San Miguel beer.

On my final trip to Vietnam, my villa was a madhouse, intruded upon by other staffers as well as circulation wizards and officers from the front office.

U.S. advisors were now few and far between. Capt. Ivory Gene was back on another tour, now a major. His former assistant, a staff sergeant, had been killed along with his entire unit in an ambush. He had asked me to come along that day, but I declined -- I had set my sights on another mission that I was sure was going to bring more action.

Luck. Blind luck.

The war was big news by then, dominating the headlines.

Everything was taking on new dimensions, and I was what they called a "short timer.'' On my last day, I made the rounds of all the "IOs''-- those manning the information offices who had helped me in so many ways to reach the soldiers in the field.

I thanked them for their many favors and tips, and assured themwe'd see each other again, soon. Unfortunately, we never have.

My biggest Stripes thrill was yet to come. Back in California at the Oakland Army Terminal, of all places.

It was my last day in the Army, and, as I sat among about 50 GIs getting discharged, someone heard my name called.

He looked around to glimpse the ID plate on my chest, and asked if I was the guy who wrote for Stars and Stripes. When I said yes, he came over and shook my hand.

I was soon surrounded by 15 or 20 others, all of them saying "Thanks,'' and that they had read my stories in Stripes.

The lump in my throat wouldn't permit me to reply.