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Vietnam from behind the wheel: Hauf keeps the supply lines moving as a truck driver in Vietnam
By Neoma Foreman
Special to the Daily Mail
"I had the front tire shot out on my truck by a mortar, but that was my closest encounter. Basically, driving a truck in Vietnam was almost like a normal job at home. We'd load our truck the night before, deliver where we had to go, and unless it was a long trip where we would spend the night and go back the next day, we went right back."
James Hauf, of Nevada, enlisted in the U.S. Army in January of 1971; because he thought it was the right thing to do, and because he could have a choice in a career.
He went to Kansas City for his physical and was sent for basic training at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri that June.
"I got close to what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a diesel mechanic, but the school was already filled. They sent me to truck driver school. Since I grew up on a farm driving tractors and trucks and knew how to drive, they put me to being an instructor." Hauf said.
Along the way, it became evident that not everyone is cut out to be a truck driver.
Hauf said, "I had one guy from the Bronx who'd always lived in apartments and took a bus or subway. I could not teach him how to drive. Finally, my patience wore thin and I told the commander there was no hope for him to be a driver. He wondered what he would do with him. I suggested he could take almost any kind of food and make it taste good, why they didn't make him a cook. The commander's eyes lit up and he said we'd use him in our unit right now. Problem solved."
Hauf left Missouri and headed for Vietnam on a flight that made a stop at Anchorage, Alaska, where it was snowing, dark and cold; then, by the time they reached Tokyo, the weather was moderate, and when they reached Cameron Bay in Vietnam at 7 in the morning, it was a hot 95 degrees. The entire voyage took about 20 hours.
"After they assigned us to squads, they put me to driving a truck. I delivered supplies, ammo, and fuel. I pretty much drove the same truck all the time and that was good because you get used to one vehicle and it works better. We had breakdowns, but we always had two wreckers, two flatbed trucks, and two jeeps on long convoys. We either fixed it up, or loaded it up, and went on. We did have to fix our own tires. I got to where I could do it all. But there was one thing for sure, the troops weren't going to get much done if we didn't get the fuel to them," Hauf said.
A million and a half gallons of fuel was kept in a tank farm. "The North Vietnamese would shoot some rockets at it sometimes, but for the most part, it was pretty quiet. It was heavily guarded. One time they did hit a tank and blew it up bad, but fortunately it was empty," he said.
The delivery duty offered Hauf the chance to see many areas of Vietnam, and he said was impressed with the scenery.
"There's lots of country besides the jungles. There are rice paddies, flat land where they farm, and high mountains. There are a lot of banana trees. We'd stop and chop a stalk of bananas off a tree growing along the roads, throw it on top of the tanker and let them ripen. Pretty good eating. They're a little smaller than our bananas, but taste like ours," he said.
Driving trucks up the mountains proved to sometimes be a hairy experience. If the lead truck couldn't make it, a big truck from behind would push. "One mountain was nine miles high, but it took us 28 miles to get to the top. It was full of hairpin curves. The road was single lane. We had escorts on both ends, but sometimes a Vietnamese bus would get in there and try to mess everything up, but it didn't happen often."
The trucks weren't equipped with air-conditioning, either, which made the hot days uncomfortable; but the drivers did the best they could with what they had. "We rolled down the windows and drove like heck! The hottest it ever got was 130-degrees in the shade--if you could find any. However, during the monsoon, the weather changed and it got cold. One morning we woke up to eight-feet of snow. It was up over my truck door. They had to call in a couple of dozers and graders from 25-miles away."
There were other hair-raising experiences, too. Hauf related an experience he had in the course of keeping a pad used for aircraft refueling supplied with fuel. "It was near the village of Deloti. It is an old French/Dutch settlement in the mountains. There are beautiful homes. The mountain people were completely different from the delta people. They stayed to themselves, still ran cattle--and let the war go by. You didn't mess with them. Even the North Vietnamese didn't bother them or if they did, they killed them first and asked questions later. Once I went by and a North Vietnamese was hanging on the gate by his neck. He was just swinging in the breeze. They have a sign on the village gate, 'Enter at your own risk.' We didn't enter!"
In 1972, the governments were working on a cease fire agreement. The GIs were put to work tearing down the bases and shipping the material back to the United States. Hauf helped tear down and ship two complete bases. He was sent back a month earlier than expected. He boarded an airplane in May in Saigon and flew non-stop to San Francisco. He'd always wanted to see Hawaii, and he did -- but it was from a height of about 30,000 feet.
From 1972 to 1974, Hauf was stationed at Ft. Ord in California, in the Experimental Division. "They did a lot of interesting stuff. They had me driving a truck the first year, but the last year they made me a dispatcher. I hated that -- too much bookwork."
When asked how the people treated him when he got home, Hauf said they were fine once he was back in Missouri, but the people in California gave him some trouble. "One woman came up to me in the airport and yelled, 'Baby killer!' They were so ignorant. They had no idea what was going on. I'm glad I was transportation and not in the infantry. They saw and had to endure so much more and then to come home and be treated like that ... Also, they said the drugs came from the soldiers in Vietnam," but he encountered more drugs in California than he'd seen in Vietnam.
As to his time in the service: "I'm glad I could do it. I think every young person should be required to serve three years for their county. It's the best experience you can get. I got to see countries I would never have seen on my own and was trained for an occupation."