AB8AJ

Cu Chi was one of the largest U.S. Army base camps in Vietnam and home base to the 25th Infantry Division ("Tropic Lightning"). The camp was located northwest of Saigon, close to the North Vietnamese-Viet Cong bastion of War Zone C.  Its placement in the heart of enemy-controlled countryside made it one of the most danger-prone major installations of the war.

I served my first two months as an infantry soldier. I was injured in action and while in the hospital at the 25th Infantry Division base camp I went to the MARS station and talked with Chuck Rinehart. They needed operators so he took my name, unit, etc. There was a freeze on transfers from infantry, but the General granted permission and I was reassigned to the AB8AJ station at Cu Chi. I was the chief operator for my last six months in country. I returned the favor that Chuck Rinehart did in getting me transferred into the MARS station by doing the same to Ron Hubbard. He came in from field operations one day and we talked for a while. I found that he was a ham and I managed to get him yanked into the MARS station. He was sure surprised (as I was!) when he got the orders to report to the MARS Station. He took over as Chief Operator when I left.

The transfer probably saved my life!!  A few weeks after I was transferred to the MARS station, the infantry unit I was in was overrun and most were killed.

Some other stations in our net were: AB8AT AB8AH AB8AAB AB8AS.  My ham call in 1968 was K9VDM

Eddie Lyon, Sgt USA, AB8AJ, 1968-1969

Call Home

You can call your family in the United States from the Cu Chi Base Camp through the services provided by the Military Affiliated Radio System (MARS) station, located in the 125th Signal Battalion area. Your call will go free to whichever stateside MARS station is in radio contact. The stateside MARS station will place a long distance collect call and you can talk for five minutes.

TROPIC LIGHTNING NEWS Orientation Edition 

The 125th Signal Battalion provided the MARS station for the 25th Infantry at Cu Chi base camp and also to the outlying Fire Support Bases through the use of Mobile MARS stations.

Call Home

      MARS facilities

Moments after the end of a recent Viet Cong mortar attack on a 25th Infantry Division’s forward base camp, PFC Ronald Bento scrambled from one armored carrier to another just in time to talk to his wife in Wahiawa, Hawaii.

Bento made use of Vietnam’s first “in-the-field” Military Affiliate Radio Station (MARS) facility now operating at the combat forward base of the 1st Battalion (Mechanized), 5th Infantry.  The 2d Brigade unit is fighting in Operation “Kolekole” 40 kms northwest of Saigon.

The link, developed by SSG C. W. Muninger of Chanute, Kansas, makes use of the MARS radio station at the 25th Division’s Cu Chi base camp tied to the field by VHF radio telephone.

Any time day or night, soldiers coming off operations in the swamps around the unit’s base can hook up with home.

 “At first we had a hard time getting people to try it,” says Muninger, “but now there’s a waiting list.”  The station has handled 86 calls in its two months of operation.

Priority calls are for family illness or disaster but there is plenty of time for just calling home.  “The biggest problem,” says Bento, “is planning everything you’re going to say ahead of time and then getting so excited you forget it all.”

The mechanized unit stays in field combat areas for months at a time, normally giving the soldiers little chance at a regular station.  They say that the new idea has made a big difference.

TROPIC LIGHTNING NEWS     September 11, 1967

Warriors Call Home

    MARS Comes to Boonies

FSB PERSHING -

Now that there has been a trip to the moon, more and more people back in the World are talking about a trip to Mars.  But there are 2d Brigade Warriors here who visit MARS whenever they can, and come away as high as if they had been to outer space.

The Military Affiliate Radio Station, which has been dubbed MARS, has been serving troops in the field for about three months.  The mobile station is now here, at the home of the 2d Battalion, 12th Infantry.

After contacting his parents in Chicago, IL., Warrior Specialist 4 Robert A. Walton said, “Getting to talk to the folks at home really made me feel good.  It’s still hard to believe that I called home from out here in the boonies.”

Staff Sergeant John Bacino of San Pedro, CA, is the noncommissioned officer in charge of the MARS mobile unit.  He described his work by saying: “I have a very rewarding job.  I get to see a lot of happy faces every day.”

A trip to the Vietnam MARS may not be as fantastic as a ride through outer space, but it is every bit as exciting to the field trooper who takes it.

TROPIC LIGHTNING NEWS     September 29, 1969

Want to Call Home? See Men from Mars

By 1LT AL JOHNSON

FSB LYNCH –

"There’s more to the mobile MARS operation than just driving out into the field and plugging in," said Specialist 4 Ron Knight as he swung the heavy field hammer on the steel grounding pin.

Knight and Specialist 4 Peter Kahlenberg completed the installation of both rig and antenna within five hours and settled down to handle the scores of calls at Fire Support Base Lynch.

Under the operational control of the 25^th Division’s 125^th Signal Battalion, the mobile MARS (Military Affiliated Radio Station) began passing calls on August 7 at Lynch.

As in past operations at field sites from Bearcat to Katum, the MARS field rig is making it possible for men at distant field positions to speak with their families in the United States. Transported on a two and one-half ton truck, the MARS van is capable of setting up at practically any location in the 25^th’s area of operations.

"It’s really wild," one enthusiastic soldier exclaimed. "here I am ten thousand miles from home, surrounded by M-16s, sandbags and the monsoon and I just talked with my best girl in Baltimore. It was if she were next door."

Utilizing stateside radio stations, MARS operators Knight and Kahlenberg can place a field soldier in direct contact with any location in the continental United States and Hawaii.

Back at division headquarters in Cu Chi, the 125^th also maintains a MARS station which is open around the clock. Of the thousand or more calls passed to the United States in any given month, priority is given to Red Cross emergency messages and to men from units on standdown.

TROPIC LIGHTNING NEWS     September 7, 1970