Ronald Reams

PFC 1/67 - 10/67

I have been an affiliate member since 1963 (AD4MJF, ACM4MJF and AAR4LG).  I was finishin' up my time in the bush with the 199th Infantry Brigade and was told of a need for operators at AB8AT I volunteered and worked there the rest of my tour.  While at Fort Meade I worked at the station as a volunteer in addition to my duties with the 6th ACR.

I was an IMA at PSF as the OIC HF Radio Branch/MARS Station. 

It was very interestin'.  Most of my stories are in a book called "MARS Calling Back to the World from Viet Nam".      Back to Top     

Ross Palmer

Sgt 4/69 - 4/70

When I arrived in-Country, and processed through the 90th REPO Depot at Long Binh. My orders came through to go up to the DMZ (My first MOS was in Artillery). I mentioned to the "Assignment Team" that I had MARS experience. An E5 called the NCOIC at AB8AT and handed the phone to me. He was a HAM and after a brief conversation approved to have me assigned there.

As mentioned earlier, I arrived in country in April of 1969 and processed through the 90th repo depot at Long Binh. As most of us may remember, we had three formations a day awaiting our name to be called with our orders. The rest of the time, we did detail work until the next formation. I think it was the noon formation of the third day when I received my orders to go to Hue...near the DMZ with some artillery outfit. It was not a place you wanted to go to as a lot of the guys were not making it out of there. During each formation, the E7 that was calling out names reminded us that if you didn't like your orders...too bad about that. You were NOT to go to the building that was marked "Assignment Team" and bother the guys in there because they would NOT change your orders.

However, I decided it was now or never so, it took a lot of nerve on my part to walk over to that building and try to get the orders changed. I approached the building and stood at the door. It was a door that was split in half with the top part a screen door. I looked inside and saw about 20 guys typing orders like crazy. I must have stood there for about 5 minutes...seemed like an eternity. Finally, the E5 closest to the door slowly glanced over towards me and with a sneer on his face said, "what the hell do YOU want private?" In a rather nervous voice I asked if they had received any requests for MARS operators. I swear, once the word "MARS" came out of my mouth 20 guys stopped typing in mid stroke and looked over at me. "You have MARS experience" they asked? I replied that I did and had worked in various MARS stations as a volunteer including Ft. Sill where I received my artillery training. Their attitude changed instantly with one of them opening the door to let me in and offering me a cold beer. He asked to see my orders and shook his head replying..."you don't EVEN want to be going there" and tearing them up at the same time. Of course, they were being nice to me and trying to make sure I gave them priority when they called in their listings. I don't blame them and would have done the same thing. In any case, I ended up at AB8AT and thankfully didn't have to go to the DMZ.

Running phone patches soon became pretty routine for most of us. As most of you know, you could actually read a book while running patches. The only thing you heard was them saying was "over", either at your end or the far end causing you to switch the radio from Transmit to Receive or vice-versa. I eventually stopped listening to much of the conversation except for that magic word. There were times when we had to stop them from telling where they were or what they were doing...even though you briefed them to not do that before putting them on the air. They were so excited to be talking home they forgot about the briefing.

I did hear some pretty sorrowful calls where the guy's wife admitted to having an affair or was filing for divorce.

Those were real heart breakers. One guy was talking excitedly to his wife about meeting her for R&R in Hawaii. She eventually mentioned that it was bad timing for her. I knew instantly what she was talking about but he wasn't getting it. He kept asking her what was wrong and she kept dropping hints. He still wasn't getting it. finally, in exasperation she finally said she was going to be "on the rag" during the R&R. Of course, every other station on the net was listening. It was a laughing topic of discussion the following day as we were waiting for the stateside MARS stations to come up.

We were fortunate in a way...during the Vietnam phone patching era we had one of the best sunspot cycles in many years and allowed us to complete more patches than we normally would have. I remember one night when the frequency was open all night for several evenings and we were able to turn off the Collins 30S-1 amplifier and run the KWM2-A "barefoot". At one point, as an experiment I reduced the "mike gain' to where you could barely see the watt meter move. Stateside still had good copy on us. I also remember saying something to the stateside station and when I released the mike, I could hear a fraction of the last word I said...usually "over" coming through the speaker console. It seemed that the skip was going around the world and returning to the starting point. It was something I have not experienced since that time.

We supported IIFFV Artillery and because of that, we constructed a mobile MARS station in a converted medical hut on the back of a 21/2 ton truck. I built a mobile antenna and fit it on a crank up tower for the 20MHZ frequency we used. We would drive out to the arty encampments, towing a generator and set up the station running patches right at the radio console. I can't believe how appreciative those guys were, being in the middle of a Vietnam jungle, they heard their home phone ringing back in the world and finally their wife's voice coming out of the console speaker. Many left with tears in their eyes and couldn't thank us enough. We had tears too being happy for them.  We were able give them a little bit of reality for 3 short minutes. One day later on, a guy that had just talked to his wife looked up at the portable antenna and was amazed that he just talked 10 thousand miles on shortwave with such a makeshift antenna. I think it was on the frequency 20,560 MHZ...just below the 15 meter ham band

Another site we supported was a signal relay hill about 90 miles away. They could call us on their UHF carrier phone circuit but the quality wasn't very good. By the time we patched them in it was hard to understand what they were saying at the stateside end. So, I scrounged up a MARS issue log periodic antenna and found a short tripod to mount it on. It didn't need much elevation since it was on the top of a mountain...happened to be hill 837 which was 837 meters above the jungle floor. We had been issued a brand new KWM2-A in one of the Samsonite suitcases including power supply. Two cases carried the whole radio. I loaded the KWM-2 and antenna aboard a CH-47 that provided re-supply every day to the hill and rode up there with it to set it up and run patches for the guys on the hill. There was barely enough room for that big helicopter to land on top of the hill.

There was an infantry unit up there providing perimeter guard and a mortar unit. The perimeter guys were in bunkers near the end of the clearing around the hill and were connected to a main building...more like a 'shack' via a small field switchboard. I set up the log periodic and began running patches for those guys. Here they were, in the dark at night sitting in a sandbag bunker talking to their loved ones through a battery powered hand cranked field phone. The quality was actually very good using those field phones.

For a while we took turns on the hill, staying for two week stints. Finally, we trained one of the guys in MARS operation...actually the switchboard operator. We didn't have to go up there any more for the rest of my tour in Vietnam. One other note about the hill.

the first few nights I was on the hill, it was hard to get any sleep as the mortar unit fired all night. We owned the top and bottom of the hill and Charlie owned the middle. Charlie lobbed shells at us all night but never seemed to hit the top. We lobbed shells back at them all night but we obviously never hit anything either since they keep shooting back at us. Finally, after the third night, I was able to sleep through it all.

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