The winter of 1968 found me taking U.S. Army basic training at Fort Bragg, N.C. I was assigned to the 4th Platoon of Company A, 4th Battalion, 1st Brigade, and we were about halfway through basic training when the North Vietnamese launched the Tet Offensive in South Vietnam. In those days news traveled much more slowly, and because we were lowly E-1 trainees, we just got our news in bits and pieces. We gathered that "all hell had broken loose" in Vietnam, but it did not get real to us until sometime in mid-February. Because Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base were located so close to each other, we could actually see part of the base runway from the basic training area. Starting sometime in early to mid-February, we began seeing one C-130 troop transport plane after another take off from Pope. Every time another C-130 took off, our drill sergeant would announce to our platoon that the plane was filled with 82nd Airborne or Special Forces replacements headed for Vietnam. I am still not sure if all those C-130s that I saw leave in February 1968 actually contained soldiers headed to war like our drill sergeant said, but it is still my most vivid basic training memory.

Robert E. Parker Jr.
US Army, December 1967 - December 1970