THE FRENCH SET THE STAGE

 The country now known as Vietnam did not make newspaper headlines in the United States until the 1950s and 1960s. However, western influence in Southeast Asia began in the 1600s when French Roman Catholic missionaries began arriving in what was then known as Dai Viet. For centuries prior to that time, present-day Vietnam had either been controlled by China or had been the scene of seemingly endless struggles between ruling families and their emperors. The Chinese left that part of Southeast Asia in 939 A.D., and the Vietnamese established a state that remained independent on and off for more than nine hundred years. During those nine centuries, the Vietnamese gradually built a small empire.

 The struggle among various families for the throne resulted in frequent changes in power and internal fighting, ironically often with forces in the North opposed by those in the South. In 1802, Emperor Gia Long declared himself emperor of Dai Viet, and he renamed the country Vietnam. Members of his family remained emperors of Vietnam until the end of World War II in 1945, although they had little power after the 1850s.

 The French Roman Catholic missionaries converted thousands of Vietnamese to Catholicism, but the country's rulers became suspicious of the missionaries and persecuted them. Consequently, in 1858, French forces began to attack parts of southern Vietnam, partly to stop the persecution and partly because France intended to be a colonial power in Southeast Asia. The race by the western European powers to see which could stake out the most territory on a world map was then in full swing. The French seized Saigon in 1861, and by 1883 they had taken over all of Vietnam. They subsequently forced the emperor to sign a treaty giving France almost total control of the country. France then divided the country into three areas: Cochin China (southern Vietnam), Annam (central Vietnam) and Tonkin (northern Vietnam).

 After Germany defeated France in World War II in 1940, Germany's ally, Japan, took control of French Indochina, and Vietnam remained under Japanese control until Japan's defeat in August 1945. Shortly thereafter, Ho Chi Minh arrived in Hanoi from China and gained control of most of northern Vietnam and formed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) on September 2, 1945. In March 1946, France recognized the DRV as the government of Annam and Tonkin and later approved the formation of the Republic of Cochin China by non-Communist Vietnamese leaders in the southern part of the country, but relations between France and Ho Chi Minh's government gradually worsened.

 On December 19, 1946, Ho Chi Minh's forces, the Viet Minh, attacked French forces throughout Vietnam, and what was called the Indochina War began. Starting in 1949, France and the other Western powers supported Emperor Bao Dai as the leader of the State of Vietnam and Saigon as its capital.

 Fighting among the various Vietnamese factions and the French continued until May 1954 when the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu. Shortly thereafter, the country was divided into two parts as a result of the Geneva Conference. Although elections were scheduled in 1956 to unite Vietnam under one government, they were never held, and Vietnam remained divided. The Emperor Bao Dai ruled South Vietnam briefly, until in 1955 Ngo Dinh Diem was elected president of the Republic of Vietnam. In 1957, Communist guerillas, the Viet Cong, began to attack villages in South Vietnam, and that fighting would eventually develop into the Vietnam War.
 

THE UNITED STATES GETS INVOLVED

 The involvement of the United States in Vietnam dates back to the early 1940s when the Japanese occupied parts of Vietnam and garrisoned 50,000 troops along the coast. The China-based Fourteenth U.S. Air Force supplied money and radio equipment to businessmen and anti-Japanese partisans in Vietnam in order for them to transmit information about Japanese naval movements and targets for American bombers and also to aid the escape of downed American pilots. Late in the war, the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in China infiltrated agents and radio operators into Indochina, and one of these teams even worked with the anti-Japanese guerilla band led by Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap. Ironically, at the end of the war, Ho Chi Minh used the OSS radio network to broadcast a request from his mountain hideout that the United Nations recognize Vietnam's independence from France. He also asked for a copy of the American Declaration of Independence on which he could base his own proclamation of independence.

 Immediately after Japan surrendered, the United States sent a twelve-man team to Hanoi to arrange for the release of American prisoners. That team included four Signal Corps men who established the first non-clandestine American communications station in Vietnam at the Hotel Metropole in Hanoi. It provided the only firsthand information available to officials in Washington who were trying to determine the proper American position towards Indochina.

 At about the same time, the OSS sent a team from its base in Ceylon to Saigon to represent American interests in southern Vietnam, where the struggle for power between the French and Vietnamese independence groups had caused more confusion and violence than in the North. Only a few weeks after its arrival, the team's command post on the outskirts of Saigon was besieged by Vietnamese terrorists who apparently mistook the Americans for French officers. Major Peter Dewey, the team's commanding officer, was killed during the incident on September 26, 1945, and he became the first American soldier slain in Vietnam.

 Ironically, Major Dewey, a nephew of New York Governor (and GOP presidential candidate) Thomas Dewey, was killed the day he was scheduled to leave Saigon to be reassigned to India. He had gone to Tan Son Nhut that morning for a 9:30 flight. However, his flight was delayed, and he decided that there was enough time for lunch at the OSS compound not far from the airport. For nearly a week, Saigon's back roads had been blocked by the Viet Minh guerillas attempting to stop the movement of French and British troops, but Major Dewey had never experienced any difficulties passing the roadblocks. At 12:30 p.m. as his vehicle approached the last roadblock only five hundred yards from OSS headquarters, a burst of machine gunfire struck the vehicle, and Major Dewey was killed instantly. His companion, Captain Bluechel, reached the compound where a few U.S. soldiers and a couple of war reporters held off the Viet Minh. Because the attackers had cut the compound's telephone lines, the team's radioman had to contact the OSS base in Ceylon via high-frequency radio to request help. The call for assistance was then relayed from Ceylon to British Gurka troops stationed in Saigon who rescued the Americans. Ho Chi Minh later apologized for the incident. By December 1945, the American radio stations in Hanoi and Saigon had closed down, and the last OSS agents left Indochina. Thereafter, for the time being at least, the United States decided not to get involved in the internal turmoil of Vietnam and became more preoccupied with other international crises.

 After the Communists gained control of mainland China and invaded South Korea, fears of Communist domination in all of Asia caused the United States to abandon its neutrality position in Indochina. Consequently, the U.S. started providing military aid to the French Expeditionary Corps, which was then trying to put down the insurgency by Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh troops, and at that point America started to become more directly involved in Vietnam.

 That involvement was stepped up in the fall of 1950 when the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group, Indochina (MAAG) was established. This 65-man group was primarily concerned with the distribution and use of the 3,500 radios the United States had shipped to the French forces, who wanted neither advice nor training support from the Americans. The signal advisers' duties consisted of inventorying and inspecting U.S. communications equipment coming into Indochina, with occasional trips into the field to monitor its use.
 
 

PLANS ARE MADE FOR LONG-HAUL COMMUNICATIONS

 The Phu Lam communications facility can trace its origin back to 1951. That year, the Chief Signal Officer of the U.S. Army sent a small team of Signal Corps men to Saigon to establish a communications center and a four-channel radio-teletype link with Clark Air Base in the Philippines. That station became part of the Army Command and Administrative Network (ACAN), a network of radio stations that made up a thin thread of Army strategic communications binding the U.S. military missions and outposts around the world. The communications capability of the station was limited, having only a single 2 1/2-kilowatt PW-981 transmitter, an AN/FGC-1 radio-teletype terminal and an AN/FRR-3 receiver. It was located on the second floor of the MAAG headquarters building, which would later become known as MACV II. The equipment had been shipped in from Japan, after it had been refurbished. The Saigon ACAN station was the only American communications connection between Vietnam and the outside world at the time. It served not only the small MAAG team but also the U.S. embassy, which provided most of the station's traffic until 1955, when the embassy established its own direct communications link with the U.S. embassy in Manila. By that time, the station was also handling all of the traffic between the French command in Saigon and the headquarters of the U.S. Commander in Chief, Pacific, in Hawaii.

 The Geneva Agreements, signed after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, divided Vietnam at the 17th Parallel into two zones, which later came to be called the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the North and the Republic of Vietnam in the South. The agreements also stipulated that the number of foreign military advisers in Vietnam could not be increased beyond their strength in the country as of July 20, 1954. Therefore, the American advisory group had to begin training and advising the fledgling Vietnamese Army with no more than the 342-man force (which had grown from the original number of sixty-five) that had done only the logistical accounting for the military aid program. By that time, the United States had supplied approximately $1.1 billion worth of military aid to the French.

 For a while, the remnants of the French Expeditionary Corps that remained in Indochina after the signing of the Geneva Agreements joined the U.S. military advisers to form the Training Relations and Instruction Mission to shape the South Vietnamese Army into a 150,000-man force of ten divisions. The French troops also operated administrative communications, consisting of telephone exchanges and teletype centers in key cities and bases throughout the country. However, French dissatisfaction with what they considered insufficient U.S. financial aid and increased unrest in their colonies in North Africa led them in mid-1955 to begin withdrawing their French Expeditionary Force. When that withdrawal was completed in April 1956, the South Vietnamese and their American advisers were left with staggering logistical problems since the French had shipped the best of the American-supplied military equipment then in Indochina to France or to their troops in North Africa.

 At the same time, concern mounted about American equipment falling into the hands of the Viet Minh forces and then being used against the South Vietnamese as the French troops were withdrawing. Consequently, the United States sent a 350-man Temporary Equipment Recovery Mission to Vietnam to recover and return to the U.S. all abandoned American military assistance equipment. The men assigned to that mission also covertly acted as advisers to the South Vietnamese Army, particularly in dealing with inventory problems in depots and warehouses. With the addition of the Temporary Equipment Recovery Mission, the advisory group in Saigon was renamed the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group, Vietnam. The group, which had 740 men assigned to it in late 1955 and included forty-eight communicators and other support troops, also used the ACAN station in Saigon to communicate back to the United States.

 As the number of American advisers in Vietnam increased in 1955, it was decided to separate the high-frequency radio transmitter and receiver sections of the ACAN station. Consequently, in 1956 the transmitter was relocated to what had been the French transmitter station on Plantation Road and the receiver station was moved to a site at Ba Queo near Tan Son Nhut. The latter location would serve as the receiver site until 1967 and would later also be used for the first satellite ground terminal in Vietnam. The communications center remained at the MAAG compound.

 In July 1959, the Viet Cong attacked a U.S. advisory detachment at Bien Hoa, killing two Americans. The incident further convinced U.S. advisers and embassy officials that communications to support the Americans in the country at the time were inadequate. However, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which were a strictly enforced ceiling on the size of the Army and the commitments of the United States in other areas of the world, little improvement was forthcoming.

 By 1960, however, as Communist forces stepped up their attacks in Vietnam and tensions increased in Laos, American strategists had developed a number of communications contingency plans to deal with what they saw as a rapidly widening conflict that the United States might be drawn into further. Linking Indochina with the Pacific Command headquarters in Hawaii with a higher quality system than high-frequency radio could provide was essential. Therefore, a contract was awarded to Page Communications Engineers in May 1960 to build a 7,800-mile communications system, called the Pacific Scatter System and which used troposcatter and ionoscatter propagation, to link Hawaii to the Philippines via a series of terminals on the chain of islands in the western Pacific. This system was limited to two voice channels, one of which could be multiplexed into sixteen teletype circuits. However, since this low-capacity system extended only as far as the Philippines, the United States still had to rely on the Strategic Army Communications (STARCOM) Net, the new designation of the Army Command and Administration Network, and its high-frequency radio systems that were subject to jamming and interference, to reach Indochina. To further improve communications, the military planned to lease circuits on a commercial undersea cable system that the American Telephone and Telegraph Company was building from Hawaii to the Philippines. To close the link from the Philippines to Vietnam, the Joint Chiefs of Staff also approved a plan to build a military submarine cable from the Philippines to Vietnam in mid-1962 known as Wetwash.

 Not only were the links into and out of Vietnam marginal, but in-country communications were also woefully inadequate in case of a significant build-up of U.S. forces in Vietnam, which by that time seemed likely. Therefore, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in January 1962 approved the installation of troposcatter equipment within South Vietnam to provide the backbone of a strategic network known as Backporch, which would connect major cities in Vietnam with Thailand. Phu Lam would play a key role in the Backporch network by serving as the connecting terminal for Saigon. Troposcatter was chosen because the alternative, microwave, would require three times as many men to operate it and to guard the larger number of sites needed for the shorter range radios. A microwave network would cost only half as much as a troposcatter system; however, in those days of personnel ceilings, money was easier to obtain than men.

 Secretary McNamara directed the Air Force to install the Backporch system at six nodes, five in Vietnam and one in Thailand, where the Army could link into the backbone with spur systems. The Air Force was then to transfer the completed system to the Army. Since neither service had any experience with troposcatter communications equipment, the Secretary of the Air Force awarded Page Communications a $12 million contract in 1962 to install the system and also to operate and maintain it for a year. The cost of each terminal, such as the one installed at Phu Lam and which provided the primary link from Saigon to the outside world during the entire war, was approximately $600,000 for equipment, $600,000 for installation and $350,000 for operation and maintenance for a year.

 The Backporch system designed and installed by Page Communications was designated as the AN/MRC-85 and consisted of three ten-ton semi-trailers, one each for a radio, a multiplexer and two 150-kilowatt generators. To overcome anticipated tropical propagation problems and improve range, the usual 30-foot transportable antenna was replaced with a 60-foot-square billboard-type antenna set in a concrete foundation. The final system provided seventy-two voice channels, or sixty-eight voice plus forty-eight teletype channels, between Saigon, i.e., Phu Lam, Nha Trang, Qui Nhon, Da Nang, and Pleiku in South Vietnam and Ubon in Thailand. Page had approximately 130 civilians working at the five Backporch sites in Vietnam.

 Shortly after the Backporch program was initiated in early 1962, the United States established the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) on February 8, 1962, as a joint subordinate command of the Pacific Command to oversee all American activities in South Vietnam under General Paul D. Harkins. MACV took the place of the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG). By that time, there were 3,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam, advising and supporting the South Vietnamese regular military and paramilitary forces. To handle administrative and logistical support of Army units, the U.S. Army Support Group, Vietnam, was established. Headed by Brig. Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell, the group was subordinate to the U.S. Army, Ryukyu Islands, on Okinawa. Among the first men assigned to the new Support Group was an advance party from the 39th Signal Battalion, which was assigned to operate the switchboard for MACV headquarters as soon as the 39th arrived in Vietnam.

 The 39th Signal Battalion played a key role in providing communications to many American Army units in Vietnam during the entire war and was closely affiliated with Phu Lam at various times. In early 1962, the battalion received the mission of providing communications support to MACV, including the operation of the Backporch stations. With headquarters at Fort Gordon, Georgia, the battalion was made up of the 178th, 232nd and 362nd Signal Companies. The 232nd from Fort Huachuca, Arizona, and the 178th from Fort Sam Houston, Texas, were to man the signal centers. The 362nd, the unit assigned to run the tropospheric scatter equipment, underwent several months of training at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, supplemented with practical experience at factories and testing grounds, before it joined the rest of the battalion overseas. The 178th established headquarters at Qui Nhon to install and operate communications in the northern half of the country. The 232nd was headquartered at Tan Son Nhut and took responsibility for communications in the southern part of the country, while the 362nd was located at Nha Trang, a central location from which to manage the many troposcatter sites it was responsible for. The 39th Signal Battalion's official date of arrival in Vietnam was March 23, 1962, when the battalion's headquarters and the 232nd Signal Company set up operations at Tan Son Nhut. Meanwhile, the engineers from Page Communications finished the installation of Backporch in September 1962 and gradually turned it over to the 39th Signal Battalion.
 

PHU LAM TAKES SHAPE

 The establishment of the communications site at the small village of Phu Lam (which translates into “Rich Forest”) on Highway 4 on the western edge of Saigon can be traced back to late 1961 when President John F. Kennedy sent General Maxwell Taylor to South Vietnam to evaluate the situation there and to recommend an American response. General Taylor advised the president to take quick action, and, among other recommendations, he urged that the communications capability between Vietnam and the United States be improved to help the Pentagon and the president formulate and execute future strategy.

 In response to that recommendation, in December 1961 Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatrick approved $2.2 million for the upgrade of the four-channel, high-frequency radios at the STARCOM station located at the MAAG/MACV compound with single-sideband equipment. The latter was less vulnerable to atmospheric noise and was capable of transmitting three voice and sixteen teletype channels.

 Although the 39th Signal Battalion's headquarters was located at Tan Son Nhut, the Page Communications engineers decided to locate the Saigon Backporch troposcatter station just outside the city at Phu Lam to avoid the congestion and electrical interference around the airport. Phu Lam would then be connected via tactical microwave equipment with MACV and Site Octopus, which was the signal center being built at Tan Son Nhut by the 39th from which the tentacles of the countrywide network would extend.

 As part of the response to General Taylor's report, plans were underway to provide additional high-frequency radio circuits to augment the Saigon-Philippines path, and consequently more space would be required. Specifically, circuits were to be added to Bangkok and to Okinawa, the latter having become the Army's staging area and logistics base for Indochina. Therefore, the signal adviser to MACV, Colonel Jack G. Hines, decided to move the STARCOM station from the cramped facilities in the advisory group's compound, where it had been located for a decade, to Phu Lam. That decision was based not only on the need for more space to install the large high-frequency transmitter antennas but also to minimize electrical interference from city traffic. With the decisions of the Page Communications engineers and Colonel Hines, the blueprint for Phu Lam's role in the Vietnam War was established.

 The South Vietnamese government took over the land to be used as the site for the communications station, paid the owners a nominal rental fee for its use, and made it available to the United States free of charge. It is interesting to note that when the Diem regime was toppled in November 1963, the original landowners petitioned the new government and the American ambassador to adjust the rents they were receiving for the land, which had been their rice paddies. A building on the site at Phu Lam was planned to be used for the high-frequency radio transmitters, but it was originally constructed for South Vietnamese use and was not up to American construction standards. According to Phu Lamer Lou Oshier, based on information from one of the Vietnamese radio technicians who worked at Phu Lam, the site was originally built by the French for their radio communications and that it was also used as a site for an AM radio station. When an attempt was made to move some of the U.S. transmitter equipment in, floors started to sink, cable trenches gave way and water seepage became a major problem. Consequently, construction was soon started on an addition to the original building to serve as the main transmitter building, which would be completed in early 1963. The only other building on the site at the time was a small security building which would, in later years, be used by the Maintenance Branch and would eventually house the MARS station. Activity at Phu Lam during most of 1962 was highlighted by the installation of the Backporch system, consisting of two large billboard antennas and the associated trailers housing the radio equipment and electrical generators.

 By early 1962, the number of U.S. advisers in Vietnam had increased to four thousand, and the need for strategic as well as tactical communications continued to increase throughout the year. It became increasingly evident that the build-up of U.S. forces would continue and that the size of the communications mission would expand accordingly. To implement the decisions that had been made to turn Phu Lam into a major communications hub, contracts were let for the expansion of the transmitter building, construction of a tape relay building as well as a power plant, an air conditioning plant, additional guard towers, and an improved security fence.

 In January 1962, the communications center at the MAAG/MACV compound handled 53,292 messages, a figure surpassed in a single, typical day in 1967. By April 1962, the Phu Lam - Bang Pla, Thailand; Phu Lam - San Miguel, Philippines; and Phu Lam - Fort Buckner, Okinawa high-frequency radio trunks had been activated.

 On June 25, 1962, what had been the ACAN Station was officially redesignated as STARCOM Station (6725), Vietnam. By that summer, the detachment, which would later take on the Phu Lam name, had grown from 22 to over 130 men, and the U.S. Army, Ryukyu Islands, to which the unit had been assigned, reassigned it to the U.S. Army Support Group, Vietnam to afford better supervision. General Joseph W. Stilwell, Commanding General of the Army Support Group, attached the Phu Lam STARCOM station to the 39th Signal Battalion in September 1962, thus extending the 39th Signal Battalion's responsibility to operate a portion of the worldwide STARCOM network. At that time the station had 134 officers and enlisted men assigned to it. The station had previously become part of the worldwide Defense Communications System after the establishment of the Defense Communications Agency on May 12, 1960. In 1962, the mid-range plan of the Defense Communications Agency assigned responsibility for the Defense Communications System in Vietnam to the U.S. Army, and technical control and direction of the Phu Lam station became increasingly subject to the Defense Communications Agency over the years. Major Roland J. Farrell, Major V.L. Ward and Major Lucian R. Millar commanded the Phu Lam STARCOM station successively during 1962 and 1963.

 Installation of the Backporch systems at the five sites in Vietnam and the one site in Thailand progressed well through most of 1962. In the meantime, the men of the 362nd Signal Company were feverishly getting trained on this new, sophisticated communications technology which had barely emerged out of the R&D stage. The men spent time at the production lines of the Radio Electronics Laboratories plant on Long Island, New York, and also several weeks at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida where a modified MRC-85 transmitter was being tested. When the training was completed, the men were relatively familiar with the tactical troposcatter equipment, the TRC-90, but would be dependent on the Page contractors to help with the more sophisticated MRC-85 equipment of Backporch.  When the 362nd arrived at Nha Trang in late June 1962, they watched the Page technicians install the MRC-85 terminals (still painted Air Force blue) but were not adequately prepared to operate or maintain them.

 In September 1962, a significant milestone in Phu Lam's history was reached when the Phu Lam - Nha Trang MRC-85 system became operational. An AN/TRC-24 microwave shot was also activated at the same time that connected the Backporch system at Phu Lam to the communications center that was still located at the MAAG/MACV compound. With the final testing of all of the terminals in September 1962, the Air Force turned over the responsibility for Backporch to the 39th Signal Battalion. Although the big troposcatter radios were on the air, Page engineers, rather than the men of the 362nd Signal Company (Tropo), were operating Backporch. Awed by the complex equipment and discouraged by the civilian technicians from interfering with delicate adjustments, the men contended themselves with administrative and support tasks. They left the technical work to the civilians, who were required by contract to stay on the sites for one year to help operate and maintain the Backporch system.

 A noteworthy step was taken into a new era of military communications when the Phu Lam STARCOM Station activated its first data circuit on the high-frequency radio trunk to Okinawa on January 14, 1963. Because Okinawa was serving as the prime logistics base for the U.S. forces in Vietnam, this circuit would be used primarily for materiel supply messages. It signaled the advent of data communications on a much larger scale by the later implementation of the Non-Automatic Relay Center (NARC) and the AUTODIN switch at Phu Lam.

 At the same time, the base at Phu Lam was starting to take shape. The major expansion, which had been approved by the Pentagon in late 1961, was underway, with a number of buildings in various stages of completion. By early 1963, the high frequency radio transmitters were operational at the new site, while the receiver section was still located at Ba Queo. The STARCOM Station, Vietnam was then operating sixteen teletype and three voice channels to Okinawa, sixteen teletype and three voice channels to the Philippines and twelve teletype and three voice channels to Thailand. In addition, the Backporch tropospheric scatter circuit from Phu Lam to Nha Trang was up and running. The station still operated the principal message relay center for the U.S. communications centers throughout South Vietnam as well as the Saigon Overseas Switchboard in facilities at the MACV compound built over a decade earlier to serve the original, small advisory mission.

 Because of primitive equipment, cramped quarters and understaffing, the communications center at MACV regularly had a backlog of messages. Meanwhile, the switchboard rarely completed more than twenty telephone calls a day, primarily because of the unreliability of the high-frequency radio circuits. The switchboard itself was an SB-22, a tactical board normally used with field wire by infantry companies and capable of handling only twelve subscribers. The STARCOM communications center and switchboard were connected to the Phu Lam site by several twelve-channel TRC-24 tactical microwave radios while a 45-channel tactical microwave link connected the receiver site at Ba Queo to the transmitter site at Phu Lam. Other multi-channel systems connected the Backporch terminal at Phu Lam to Site Octopus at Tan Son Nhut, from which all in-country circuits were extended to the various subscribers in the Saigon area.

 Construction of the tape relay building, the addition to the transmitter building, the power plant, as well as the installation of the communications equipment, proceeded at a much slower pace than had been anticipated for a number of reasons. First, work was delayed by lengthy negotiations with South Vietnamese authorities for acquisition of the additional land around the site for security fences and minefields. Second, construction was hampered by swampy ground, causing foundations to sink when heavy equipment was installed. Third, for several months of 1963 it appeared that the Diem government might be turning the tide in the war and that it might be gaining the upper hand against the Communists. Consequently, United States political and military leaders became optimistic about the outcome of the war to the point where in mid-1963 a small withdrawal of U.S. forces, consisting of one thousand men, was announced. This withdrawal, which was completed in December 1963, included seventy-nine soldiers from the 39th Signal Battalion. As a result, the U.S. military leadership in Vietnam was not sure which direction they should go, i.e., forge ahead or wind down. In retrospect, that optimism proved premature. The political situation in Vietnam deteriorated drastically with the overthrow and assassination of President Diem in early November 1963, just three weeks before the assassination of President Kennedy. Almost immediately, the military tide turned dramatically in favor of the enemy.

 Lastly, an apparent act of sabotage delayed the expansion. On June 14, 1963, it was discovered that the wiring for the 550-kilowatt generators being installed at Phu Lam had been cut in four places. Since more cut and broken wiring was discovered the following day, sabotage was suspected. Alarmed by these incidents, it was decided to make a check of all facilities before further attempts were made to start the generators. This incident delayed the start-up of the generators, which finally became operational in mid-August, by approximately one month. Following this incident, the MACV commander, General Paul D. Harkins, appealed to the South Vietnamese government to incorporate the Phu Lam site into the Saigon defense network because the base had assumed a critical role in the war. However, the South Vietnamese declined. Instead, a platoon of Civil Guards was assigned to Phu Lam to help the Americans guard the strategic communications hub.

 The tape relay building shell was completed on February 28, 1963, and installation of a 50-line torn-tape relay was begun on March 4 by an installation team from Okinawa in preparation for the planned activation of the relay on July 1, 1963. However, that date would be missed by almost exactly six months. Installation of the 550-kilowatt generators in the new power plant building, which was sabotaged a few months later, was also started at that time.

 On March 25, 1963, work was started on the new four-position Saigon Joint Overseas Switchboard at Phu Lam, which also would not come on-line until the end of the year. This part of the Phu Lam expansion was delayed because of a debate among the military decision makers about whether the switchboard should be located at Phu Lam or at Tan Son Nhut.

 The receiver site at Ba Queo was also having its problems as the rest of the station was having growing pains. In January its water well went dry, and work was done on the well to prevent a recurrence. Since the site was operating on commercial power, it was also constantly plagued with voltage and frequency instabilities. Consequently, 60-kilowatt military generators were installed, which solved Ba Queo's power problems.

 A microwave building was also constructed on Tan Son Nhut to house the relay and terminal equipment for a microwave link between Phu Lam and Tan Son Nhut. The installation of equipment, which was operated jointly by STARCOM and Air Force personnel, was delayed several months due to deficiencies in the construction of the building. As other local systems were activated, such as the microwave shot between MACV I and MACV II, these were also operated and maintained by STARCOM Station, Vietnam troops. As Phu Lam's mission increased, so did the personnel strength, although the authorized strength always exceeded the present?for?duty strength considerably.

 As the station began taking shape as a fixed plant facility, some of the original equipment was replaced by more modern, higher-capacity gear. This process was started when in June 1963 the AN/TRC?24 system linking the transmitter site at Phu Lam with the receiver site at Ba Queo was replaced by an AN/TRC?29. Since the tape relay building at Phu Lam was not yet operational, the received high-frequency radio signals were relayed from Phu Lam to MACV via the microwave link.

 By the middle of 1963, the numerical designation of the STARCOM Station, Vietnam had changed, and Major Jimmy C. Sutton had assumed command. By then, the authorized strength stood at 250, although only 157 officers and enlisted men were actually present for duty. Due to slippage in the arrival of equipment, the new communications center installation proceeded at a slower than expected pace.

 High-frequency radio was still the only available means for establishing out-of-country communications, with a major problem being the limited number of usable frequencies. Therefore, placing an overseas call required about “ten percent patience and ninety percent luck.” The switchboard logs consistently included entries such as “out”, “out to fair”, “poor to fair”, and “out all day”. As an indication of the few telephone calls the board was handling, during a typical three-day period in July nine calls were completed with Okinawa, forty-seven with Clark and one with Bangkok.

 In September 1963, the STARCOM Station, Vietnam was operating with 144 men. Since no billets existed at Phu Lam yet, all the men were housed in the Saigon/Cholon area with 116 of them in the Plaza Hotel and sixteen in the Capitol Hotel. Every effort was being made to consolidate and move all of the men to the Plaza, but because of a two-month waiting period for this hotel, this was not possible. The authorized strength then was 249 enlisted men, eight officers and one warrant officer, and new personnel were constantly arriving to approach the authorized manning level. By November, 217 men were present for duty, and they were billeted in eight different hotels, with the majority still in the Plaza and the Capitol. On December 15, 1963, the number of troops assigned had grown to 252.

 As an indication of the traffic volume being handled then, during October 66,534 messages were sent and 50,864 were received for a total of 117,398.  This averaged out to 3,787 messages per day. During the same period, the Saigon Overseas Switchboard handled 1,033 calls, for a daily average of thirty-three calls.

 Although the details are not known, the South Vietnamese Army also used Phu Lam as a communications site during this time. Specifically, the ARVN Signal Corps operated TRC-1 equipment mounted in a 2 1/2-ton truck that was located on the rear portion of the site, near the troposcatter vans. The ARVN radio operators were housed in tents that were situated near the large Backporch billboard antennas.

 As the end of 1963 approached, Admiral Harry D. Felt, U.S. Commander in Chief, Pacific, who had pushed for the development of the high-capacity troposcatter network in South Vietnam two years earlier in October 1961, exerted his influence, and the Phu Lam expansion project was expedited.

 In late November 1963 the big move from the MACV compound to Phu Lam was finally begun. The Plant Branch was the first to be relocated, followed by the Administration and Operations Sections on December 19, 1963. The installation of the communications equipment was virtually complete by this date, and the final checkout of equipment and circuits was begun on December 26, 1963, with the aid of several TDY personnel.

 Two significant decisions were made in 1963 that would affect Phu Lam for the rest of the time the base operated. First, it became more and more apparent that with the expected continuing growth of the facility, it would be much more efficient to house all of the troops on base instead of billeting them in several hotels in the Saigon/Cholon area. The construction of billets at Phu Lam had been discussed for some time. However, because of the original layout of the high-frequency radio transmitting antennas, it would have been necessary to construct the barracks under and adjacent to the antennas, which would have been contrary to good engineering practice. It was for this reason that the U.S. Army Support Group, Vietnam had previously disapproved STARCOM’s recommendation to construct barracks. However, the original antenna layout was eventually changed, and the final go?ahead was received in 1963 for the construction of the one-story billets. The occupancy date was set for July 1964.

 Second, the decision to connect the Philippines with Vietnam with a submarine cable, which had been made in mid-1962, was finally being implemented by late 1963 when the Air Force awarded a contract for its construction in November of that year. That cable would be part of the system that would interconnect Korea, Japan, Okinawa, Taiwan, the Philippines, South Vietnam and Thailand. It would also link up with commercial undersea cables to provide circuits from Hawaii to Japan and the Philippines. The part of the system between Vietnam and the Philippines would consist of a 55-mile microwave system between Clark Air Base and San Miguel in the Philippines, an 800-mile submarine cable between San Miguel and Nha Trang in South Vietnam, code-named Wetwash, and finally, a tropospheric scatter radio shot that would link Nha Trang with the STARCOM station at Phu Lam.  The Wetwash cable was completed in January 1965 and had a capacity of sixty voice channels. The Air Force was charged with operating the system from the Philippines to Nha Trang, and the Army was responsible for operating the tropospheric scatter portion.

 At the end of 1963, significant investments had been made or been committed to provide high-quality, long-haul communications both within Vietnam and between Vietnam and other U.S. bases in the Pacific and in the United States itself. At the same time, it was anticipated that along with the withdrawal of U.S. troops, the 39th Signal Battalion could be phased out. Consequently, the battalion took on the additional mission of training South Vietnamese troops to operate its mobile radio relay equipment as part of a master plan to turn over all U.S. communications facilities in Vietnam to the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces. That plan assumed that the Viet Cong could effectively be eliminated by the end of 1964.
 

REMINISCENCES

 Although the physical assets at Phu Lam were valued at millions of dollars, particularly after the addition of the AUTODIN Facility, it was not only the physical resources that made Phu Lam a key element in U.S. military communications in Vietnam. Rather, the human resources made the base “work” and gave it character.

 Those human resources ranged from young American “kids” just out of high school, who had been drafted or had enlisted and suddenly found themselves half a world away from home, maybe really not quite sure why they were there. They also included “lifers” who had put in enough time to have that magic twenty or thirty years of service in sight and who just wanted to get through this final tour of duty before retiring.

 There were also junior officers at Phu Lam who felt they “owed something” to their country (or wanted to escape the draft), had taken ROTC in college and had decided that spending a year in Vietnam as a lieutenant would probably be better than being a private first class. Finally, there were some “gung-ho” career company-grade officers who looked upon an assignment in Vietnam as the perfect stepping stone to a quicker promotion to colonel - or beyond! The officers did, in fact, escape one of the duties all of the lower grade enlisted men were subjected to: guard duty in those towers all Phu Lamers remember.

 It was the several thousand of men who spent time at Phu Lam over its approximate ten years of existence who really “made” Phu Lam what it was. The following are reminiscences of some of those men who called Phu Lam “home” in the early days of the base.

KENNETH TERRY
 I was stationed at Phu Lam from February 1963 to March 1964 as a Fixed Station Transmitter Repairman. I could only receive one promotion while I was in Vietnam, so I ended up as an acting sergeant, as a trick chief. I remember the Vietnamese civilians who worked with us at the transmitters: Mr. Taoi, Mr. Hoan, and, I think, Mr. Tong. Mr. Chin was our driver to get us back and forth from our hotels. We also had two men there who were on TDY from Okinawa who helped us maintain the equipment. Spare parts were hard to come by, and during one of the IG inspections, the sergeant from Okinawa was running at full speed ahead of the inspector putting fuses into the main fuse boxes. I had no idea that we were using plain wire for fuses…I lived at the Capitol Hotel in Cholon for a while and later moved to the Plaza Hotel in Saigon. Until I saw the Phu Lam web site, I had no idea that Phu Lam had grown so big over the years…In 1963, our STARCOM station call letters were ADK, and we had circuits going to ADD, AIC and ADL [Bangkok, San Miguel and Okinawa]. The troposcatter system was starting up, and we had civilians there who maintained it for the U.S. Government.

 Many things happened during the time I was there: The old Presidential Palace had just been destroyed when I arrived, South Vietnamese President Diem was assassinated, there were a lot of bombings and threats of terrorism, and President Kennedy was assassinated. We had a nice theater for a while, but it was taken out by satchel bombs…I remember that we had a fluorescent light bulb taped to the transmission line so that we could tell if the transmitter was on the air…We had to have passports while stationed in Vietnam, and organizationally we were part of MAAG and then MACV…We had ARVN troops for perimeter guard duty, but the main protection was provided by U.S. troops who were brought in every night from Tan Son Nhut Air Base. We also had contact with helicopter gunships at Tan Son Nhut via a radio we kept in the transmitter room to communicate with them as quickly as possible should we need them. We used the call sign “Limelight,” and they were “Little Joe.” In addition, we had a small detachment of American MPs for guard duty. Anyway, those were the good old days!

RONNIE BOLDON
 I was a radio relay operator with the 232nd Signal Company, 39th Signal Battalion, from January 1963 through November 1963 at Phu Lam when they were just starting to build the site, and I lived on Tan Son Nhut Air Base. I also remember that we had to take showers in the middle of the day, because we only had warm water that was heated by the sun in a storage tank and then gravity fed through the showerheads…They were still working on the road coming into the site. There were three companies at Phu Lam back then: the 232nd, which operated the radio vans, the 362nd, which was also part of the 39th Signal Battalion and operated the troposcatter communications equipment which used the big billboard antennas, and an MP company. We had four vans - two painted Army green and two painted Air Force blue. There were some buildings closer to the main gate including a communications center, which had contact with MAAG/MACV Headquarters, and a radio transmitter building. However, those of us who worked at the part of the compound where the vans and the large antennas were located were not allowed to enter those buildings because of the classified work going on there. The men who worked in those buildings were also part of the 39th Signal Battalion I think, and they took the same trucks to and from Tan Son Nhut that we did.

 I also remember the guys from the Army Security Agency (ASA) [3rd Radio Research Unit] who were there. We did not think much about them, since they did their thing, we did ours, and we always got along. I think the ASA guys were monitoring the communications that were probably going through the equipment I was operating…From the pictures I've seen recently, I recognize the big round antennas that were installed while I was there. The little antennas on top of the big billboard antennas were connected to the equipment I operated. Close to the billboard antennas, the ARVN had some tents where their radio operators slept since they also operated some equipment at the site using AN/TRC-1s mounted in some 2 1/2-ton trucks that were located close to the tropo vans. The tents were also used by some ARVN guards. When I left, just a few days after President Kennedy's assassination, some of the equipment was being moved from the trailers into permanent buildings. While I was there, the whole compound was pretty much in the middle of a rice paddy.
 

TUNG PHAM TRAN
 After working at the United States Embassy in Saigon for the United States Information Service as a technician, in November 1957 they transferred me to the MAAG Communications Branch Saigon receiver site located between the Vietnamese Armed Forces Headquarters and Tan Son Nhut Airport, near the entrance to the airport. I remember when the coup happened in November 1963, seeing the picture of the body of President Diem in the Pacific Stars and Stripes after he was shot in the armored personnel carrier. I was really shocked. I think the receiver section was still at the MAAG compound at that time, although we might have been at the new site at Ba Queo by then…At Ba Queo, we shared a building with a Vietnamese Army communications unit. Here we only had one non-commissioned officer in charge, and the Vietnamese civilians like myself basically operated the receiving station. The sergeant/advisor only spent a few hours a day at the station, and he lived like a king. He and his family had a villa in Saigon with two maids, one to take care of the cooking and the house and the other to take care of his children. Another Vietnamese civilian who also made it to the United States after the war, Tu Hoa, also worked at the receiver site until he was transferred to the transmitter section. At Ba Queo, they later built the big radomes for the satellite system antennas. Otherwise, I don't think anything unusual happened at Ba Queo.

 In 1966 we started the move of the Receiver Section from Ba Queo to Long Binh. In early 1967, the Viet Cong blew up an ammunition depot at Long Binh close to where the receiver site was being built, causing some significant damage. I was really impressed how efficiently the Americans repaired the damage to our site with all the special cranes and equipment that they had…I remember that we helped a local orphanage, the Ngu Phuc Orphanage, which took care of about sixty to seventy children. For example, the OIC of the receiver detachment arranged for drilling a well for the orphanage, and the orphans also received food and other materials. When the receiver site closed several years later, we collected all kinds of building materials and other things that we gave to the orphanage. We even tried to give them an Army truck. However, the Catholic sisters did not want to take it because they felt it was too risky to have a military vehicle in their compound. I do know that the kids at the orphanage really appreciated everything the Americans did for them.

JIM O'KEEFE
 I was assigned to the 39th Signal Battalion from July 1963 until May 1964 as part of the original security force that guarded the facility. During that time, the 39th was in charge of Phu Lam. To make up the security detachment, they took guys from all over Vietnam and put them into a “no-name” group. Sergeant Godsey was in charge of our group, so we called ourselves “Godsey's Minute Men,” but this was later changed to “The Dirty Dozen.” In those early days, there were no bunkers at Phu Lam, just four guard towers around the perimeter and two guard posts by the antenna dishes. The towers were numbered One through Four, and the posts by the antennas were Five and Six. Later, the ARVN troops built bunkers with sandbags for posts Five and Six. The nights were really scary. I remember climbing those guard towers many times and often hearing “pings” during the night as we were occasionally shot at.

 For weapons, we had two .30 cal. and one .50 cal. machine guns, some M-2 carbines, some .45 cal. “grease” guns and .45 cal. pistols. Later, they took our World War II weapons and replaced them with M-14s. The problem was that when we went to get ammo for the M-14s, we were told that they didn't have any yet. So we went two days without ammunition for our M-14s! Luckily, there were no firefights during that time.

 The security force consisted of “The Dirty Dozen” from the 39th Signal Battalion, a couple of MPs to man the front gate and some Vietnamese Civil Guards. During the night, we had about thirty men guarding the site. The Vietnamese Civil Guard troops slept most of the time, however. Consequently, we were the only ones really on guard, not the Vietnamese. There were no accommodations for us at first, so we slept in one of the two communications buildings until they built a hut for us to sleep in. As a matter of fact, for the first two months we were there, we slept at our posts, with one man sleeping and the other on guard duty. Besides the two communications buildings, there were two billboard antennas and communications equipment vans on the back part of the site, in the direction of Saigon/Cholon. The vans were operated primarily by civilians from the American company that had installed the equipment.

 I remember when Diem was assassinated. We happened to be coming back from the rifle range that day, and we saw a column of trucks and jeeps heading into Saigon. At the head of the convoy was a jeep with a couple of Americans in it who appeared to be dressed in Vietnamese uniforms. (What did the U.S. really know about this incident?) I also remember the day that President Kennedy was assassinated and that the 39th did not even lower the flag to half-staff. I also remember that in December 1963 some of the guys from the 39th Signal Battalion went home earlier than they were originally supposed to as part of the 1,000-man withdrawal deal.

 I don't have any pictures of Phu Lam in those early days because we were not allowed to have cameras, but I have a sketch showing the main features of Phu Lam back then. The sketch gives an excellent bird's-eye view of Phu Lam in its first year of operation. The main entrance from Highway 4 was guarded by MPs in a guard shack, next to which was a guardhouse. The principal weapon at this location was a .50 cal. machine gun. Guard towers One and Four were located along the side of the base that fronted Highway 4. There were two communications buildings with guard towers on either side (Towers Two and Three) with rice paddies in the back of the buildings. One of the buildings would most likely have been the main operations building which housed the tape relay and the switchboard, while the other building would have been the high-frequency radio transmitter building.

 The entire base was surrounded by barbed wire. In the easterly direction (towards Saigon), a path connected the main part of the base with the area where the two billboard antennas were located, along with guard posts Five and Six, each of which was equipped with a .30 cal. machine gun. The vans that housed the troposcatter equipment that went with the antennas were located close to the billboard antennas.

RALPH LANHAM
 I arrived at Tan Son Nhut in November 1963. I lived in a transient hut for a few days and then moved to a hotel by the name of Dai Nam, the first floor of which was a movie theater. I slept in what had been a dining room of a nightclub, and I never did get a room at the Plaza Hotel. I eventually ended up at the Ambassador Hotel, sharing a room with three Navy and Air Force guys. The Ambassador was just a block from the Continental and the Caravel, and it had a small PX on the first floor. I often ate at a Vietnamese snack bar, just outside the side gate, which had good, but strange-looking steak sandwiches. I recall that the food in the local restaurants was extremely good.

 At first, the tape relay guys worked in the basement of the MAAG building. Depending on how many people we had, we would usually work shifts of twelve hours on and twenty-four hours off. All of our circuits used high-frequency radio, and during late 1963 there was so much sunspot activity that radio transmission conditions were very bad, and the circuits would be out three to six hours every night. Because of the backlog of messages, I had to make a courier run to hand-deliver the messages we could not transmit over the radio circuits. I carried several bags of tapes to Clark Air Base in the Philippines, making up the logs for the tapes while on the flight. The accommodations on the transport plane were less than ideal: I sat in the cab of a truck that was going back to the Philippines for repairs! On my return trip, I also carried two bags of messages that Clark had been unable to send to Saigon. For the units in the Saigon area, we would quite often have to hand-deliver the tapes because of the constant, large backlogs. We also had to power down the equipment when the temperature reached 100 degrees inside the room.

EMMETT PAIGE
 I recall that when the move of the teletype relay was made from MACV to Phu Lam, the site was down for almost a week. Those were some dark days before the Wetwash undersea cable from the Philippines to Nha Trang went in and before the satellite terminals were installed in Vietnam. It was high-frequency radio from Clark Air Base to Saigon, Okinawa to Saigon and Bangkok to Saigon, and none of the circuits were very reliable and would go to hell about every midnight! We still had those crystal-controlled systems in the Army communications stations and had a hard time finding frequencies we could bootleg on because of the crystal-controlled rigs. When we started to get the synthesized transmitters, we thought we were in heaven. The Navy had the synthesized Technical Materiel Corporation transmitters in all of their sites, and we finally had them transfer and install some of them at Phu Lam…The Backporch AN/MRC-85s troposcatter terminals that the Army had installed all over Vietnam in the early 1960s under a contract with Page Communications Engineers did not meet the Defense Communications System (DCS) standards, and they too were very unreliable. Things did not get any better until we got the Wetwash cable completed with the troposcatter link, built to DCS standards, between Nha Trang and Phu Lam. That eliminated the perpetual traffic backlog between Phu Lam and the rest of the world. However, there were still problems between Phu Lam and other locations in Vietnam and Thailand.

 (Note: Emmett Paige, Jr., although never stationed at Phu Lam, is one of the most knowledgeable individuals on the strategic communications systems of the Vietnam War. Before retiring from the U.S. Army Signal Corps in 1988 with the rank of lieutenant general, he held a number of key communications-related positions that included Deputy Project Manager of the Integrated Wideband Communications System. He was previously responsible for the training of the first contingent of troposcatter equipment operators who were sent to Vietnam with the 39th Signal Battalion. In 1965, he was assigned to the field office of the Defense Communications Agency, Southeast Asia Mainland, in the Philippines, and in June 1969 he became the commanding officer of the newly designated 361st Signal Battalion, which had been the Long Lines Battalion - North. From 1984 to 1988 he was the Commanding General, U.S. Army Information Systems Command.)
 
 

Copyright 2001 Josef W. Rokus