Restoring communications in Vietnam

I talk to many old warriors, from different branches of service and different wars. But after the many conversations I’ve had, I’m still in awe of selfless American bravery. One example of this is Maj. William Keller, with whom I recently chatted.

Keller graduated high school in 1968. “Back then,” he told me, “if you had two legs and you could stand, you were going in the Army.” Keller was the sole surviving son of a widow. He qualified for full deferment. “That didn’t feel right,” he said. At dinner every night, his family watched Walter Cronkite give the latest body counts. “It was pretty intense to watch.”

He had a scholarship to a small college to study electronics, but soon after his 18th birthday, he broke his mother’s heart by going alone to the Air Force recruiter, saying he wanted to enlist and go to Vietnam.

The recruiter laughed. Keller had the impression that not a lot of people came in to volunteer for Vietnam. He chose the Air Force because it was the best in electronics, but a lot of training would be required before he could serve in the war. His specialty would be ground control radio. He would work on everything in an airport that talked to aircraft.

After Air Force tech school, he was stationed for six months at a radar site on an island off Taiwan. There, he increased his skill level so he could go to the war. On Christmas of 1970, he wrote a long letter explaining he was supposed to go home but that he’d volunteered for Vietnam. His girlfriend had been so sure he was coming back that she’d sent no cookies or other gifts.

They had only letters, which traveled two weeks. This delay between messages created a lot of confusion and hostility. One argument by mail grew very bad. This much I remembered from my service in Afghanistan. A high-stress situation, complicated by limited communication without vocal inflection or body language, was an invitation to chaos.

A sergeant, qualified to work alone, Keller ran the radio at Camp Radcliff at An Khe in Vietnam. The base was the home of the 7th Cavalry and a lot of Army helicopter activity. “The last flight of each day, we took bodies out on their way home.” The Viet Cong attacked a lot. It was such a large base that enemy sappers sometimes infiltrated.

American troops were being pulled out as part of the “Vietnamization” of the war. This made security difficult. Everyone had to cover perimeter guard duty. “I was a radio guy, not a gunner,” Keller said. He’d been given one belt of ammunition in a brief training session on the M60 machine gun.

One night, when Keller had one month to go in country and one week before the Vietnamese took over the base, the enemy attacked. “The whole runway lit up,” Keller said. Two Viet Cong guys infiltrated the perimeter with rockets and shot the tower. It was a nightmare repairing the radios. It took three hours to restore communications with planes.

The Army sent a temporary tower. Keller and his friend worked four days straight to restore all communications. Then it was wonderfully quiet. He and his friend were awarded the Bronze Star for their great work restoring the radios. He left Vietnam about a month later.

“We were not received well when we came home,” he told me with difficulty.

But there was one excellent part of his homecoming. Keller had bought an engagement ring in the base exchange, and upon returning home, when his girlfriend got off work, he drove her to their church parking lot, where they became engaged. He eventually commissioned and retired a major.

He and I talked for a long time, trading old war stories and comparing our respective wars, both of which were forfeited by our government. But one thing nobody can take away is William Keller’s courage and devotion to America.

Trent Reedy, author of several books including Enduring Freedom, served as a combat engineer in the Iowa National Guard from 1999 to 2005, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

*Some names and call signs in this story may have been changed due to operational security or privacy concerns.