NO ONE SEEMED TO NOTICE « Jenny La Sala

31 May

NO ONE SEEMED TO NOTICE

jennysala Uncategorized 0 0

My name is Kenneth Bisbee Sp/5, U.S. Army, and I am a Vietnam Veteran.

I enlisted in the Army through some perverted patriotic sense, and with my people having been in America’s wars since the Revolution, I felt it was just my turn to go. I was a helicopter mechanic in Germany for 9 months from 1968 to 1969 and later transferred to Vietnam in 1969. I spent 9 months in Dong Ba Thin (near Cam Ranh) and later transferred to Phu Bai for another 9 months. I was a crew chief on a UH-1H Huey. We were a small aviation unit attached to the 45th Combat Engineers and did all the recon work for roads, bridges, LZ’s – firebases, etc. We also flew paperwork to all the engineer places in I Corp and some of II Corp.

My father was on the aircraft carrier Shangri-La during WWII. He never talked much about the war, and he had issues with it that I never understood until I came back from Vietnam. My older brother, Ross, was in Military Intelligence at Nha Trang the same time I was in the ‘Nam’. What bothered me most about the ‘Nam was the stress and anticipation. We would fly over jungles from the DMZ, the Ashau, and down to II Corp. Since we were a recon-helicopter, we flew alone all the time and got shot at a lot. But the stress was in the 10 to 12 hours a day waiting to get shot at. The only general killed in the Vietnam War was when one of our choppers was shot down (flying alone). My biggest fear in the ‘Nam was getting killed and then being left there to rot and flying alone just made the problem worse.

I was a stick-in-the-mud kid from Wyoming, always joking and kidding around. But after 18 months of Vietnam, I was an 80 year-old man with no sense of humor, no joking, and no kidding. I am still that way. When I got back to my hometown no one seemed to notice that I had been away, nor did they care. They all had real problems to deal with.

My wife died last year and I decided not to work for the man anymore. After the ‘Nam I worked at approx. 100 or more jobs. The longest job I held was 4 years. Some jobs only lasted several weeks with my anger issues and PTSD (didn’t know what it was then) continually keeping me in the job search market. I mostly worked as an industrial mechanic and for about the last 12 years, I worked drilling rigs in the oilfield.