Returning to Vietnam, 41 years later

Michael Moriarty
Posted 1/13/15

Editor’s note: For 12 days in March of 2013, Michael Moriarty – who served with the U.S. Air Force in Vietnam – returned to the country with Gus Marsella to visit Michael Cull, a wartime buddy …

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Returning to Vietnam, 41 years later

Posted

Editor’s note: For 12 days in March of 2013, Michael Moriarty – who served with the U.S. Air Force in Vietnam – returned to the country with Gus Marsella to visit Michael Cull, a wartime buddy who now lives and works there. We asked Mike to share his experiences and thoughts from the journey. His report will be published over several editions.

I was apprehensive and excited about returning to Vietnam after 41 years. When last there, I was in my mid-20s, and now I was fast approaching my 70th birthday.

However, my biggest anxiety was about the 24-hour travel day – including 21 hours of flying – and much less about setting foot in Vietnam again.

I had flown to Vietnam a number of times, but this was only the second time I had flown as a passenger. The first time was in February 1968. On all the other flights, I was one of the pilots sitting in the cockpit with a comfortable seat and a much better view. On this flight, I was in coach toward the back end of the plane, in a smaller seat with limited comforts and view.

My trip was 58 years in the making, and began with a casual comment on a golf course.

Toward the end of a golf game, I asked Gus Marsella how a mutual friend of ours, Michael Cull, was doing. Michael and Gus were tremendously close friends.

Gus said that Mike was living in Nha Trang, Vietnam; that he moved there after he had retired from the Department of Veterans Affairs in Anchorage, Alaska; and that he was headed to Rhode Island in a few weeks for their 50th reunion at La Salle Academy. Gus indicated that he would make sure we three would all get together during Mike’s visit.

Mike and I had met around 1958 in the Potowomut section of Warwick when that area consisted primarily of summer vacation homes. My Aunt Anna and Mike’s mom were nurses together, and my aunt had recommended that Mrs. Cull look into renting a summer cottage in Potowomut. My parents had purchased a summer home there in 1955 and from then on that is where I spent all my summers. So Mike and I, and a few other exceptional guys with whom I have lost complete contact, met and had two wonderful fun-filled summers together.

Gus and Mike met at La Salle around the same year and have been very close since then. Gus and I met at Providence College in September 1963, and during our conversations we realized that we had a mutual acquaintance in Mike, although I had not seen Mike since the summer of 1959.

Gus transferred to URI in 1964, so thereafter we met infrequently, but when we did Mike’s name would come up. One of our meetings was in Okinawa, where Gus was a U.S. Army housing officer. I was flying through in 1971 and he, his wife Violet and I had dinner one evening at the Kadena Air Base officers club.

Mike was in the U.S. Army when he was sent to Vietnam in 1967. He was stationed at Camp McDermott, just south of the Nha Trang Air Base. Camp McDermott was a rudimentary type base with curtailed facilities. Nha Trang Air Base, the western side of which was run by the Air Force, had limited facilities, but much more than Camp McDermott.

Nha Trang Air Base was home to both U.S. and Vietnamese civilian and military airport operations, with the Air Force on the western side and the Vietnamese and U.S. Army Aviation and Medical on the eastern (ocean) side. While stationed in Nha Trang, I lived just behind that civilian terminal in a nine-room, three-bath villa, a few hundred feet from one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. We called our house the “Villa de Brew.”

Ironically, I was assigned to a tenant organization, and we were allowed to live off base and received an additional cost-of-living allowance for doing so. The permanent personnel had to live on base in World War II type barracks, so we took our hardship move off base most readily.

The South Vietnamese Air Force military academy, their pilot training facilities, the U.S. Army 8th Field Hospital and some Army aviation units were located on the eastern side on the air base, and as such, the security for our “villa” area was joint responsibility between South Vietnamese and American personnel. It was a very active base during the war, but today Cam Ranh International Airport, 17 miles to the south, is the primary air terminal for the area. The airport in Nha Trang is now non-operational.

Although Nha Trang was then also considered a resort area by the Vietnamese and French, the facilities today are vastly different from those in 1969. The social atmosphere is totally different and much more pleasant. Indeed, the Vietnamese are a wonderful, friendly and accommodating people. Surely, that kind of description of the people was something unanticipated by me in 1969. Surprisingly, today the vast majority of foreign tourists are Russian.

Gus and I took off from T.F. Green on the morning of March 18, 2013, and flew to Washington Dulles International Airport. We had about 30 minutes on the ground before we boarded a 14-hour United Airlines flight to Tokyo. From Tokyo, we boarded an All Nippon Airways flight for a five-hour jaunt to Saigon. We arrived late on the evening of March 19, as we had crossed the international dateline.

After getting our visas and processing through customs, we met Mike, who was awaiting our arrival outside the air terminal. Both Gus and I had each packed one overhead-sized bag in which we could carry all our clothing and essentials for 10 days. It can be done as long as you can do some laundry during the trip. I had some done in Nha Trang.

Obviously, Vietnam of 2013 was much different from my experiences in 1969. First of all, the people looked a great deal different as they were much more prosperous and cheerful. That was perplexing, for how could that be when we had tried to save them from communism back in the 1960s? And Mike, with his Caucasian face standing out in the crowd, was as alive and cheerful as the Vietnamese that surrounded him. Was this a hoax? Next: Connecting with Conimicut neighbors in Ho Chi Minh City.

Michael Moriarty, a native of Warwick, graduated from Providence College in 1967 and went into the U.S. Air Force. He completed Officers Candidate School in September 1967 and Undergraduate Pilot Training at Laughlin Air Force Base in Del Rio, Texas, in November 1968, and was assigned to EC-47s in Vietnam. During his career, he flew approximately 140 combat missions, receiving several awards including the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medals. He also served as an air traffic controller and air weapons director with the Air Force. He retired from the Air Force and Rhode Island Air National Guard, where he was on active-duty status, in December 1989. He has also served as the NCIC specialist for the Warwick Police Department, and as a volunteer with the Disabled American Veterans, previously as the commander of the Rhode Island chapter and presently as its treasurer.

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