As a captain assigned to the 1st Marine Air Wing Judge Advocate General’s office in Danang, Bill Proctor spent much of his tour of duty on the battle-scarred highways of Vietnam, traveling from case to case.
Nearly 40 years ago, Hanoi was a faceless, threatening specter in my mind. When I arrived in the central coastal South Vietnamese city of Danang in July 1968, the North Vietnamese capital was a menacing metropolis that I never expected to see. It was just a target we bombed and a breeding ground for big trouble–a supply and staging area not only for North Vietnamese regular troops, but also for the Viet Cong insurgents who orchestrated the rocket and mortar attacks that made me a sitting duck on a battleground with no front lines.
As a JAG (Judge Advocate General) captain assigned to try criminal cases and conduct investigations at the 1st Marine Air Wing in Danang, I spent my first night “in country” sleeping on a stretcher because there was no room at the inn: The old French officers’ quarters, where pilots and staff officers were usually housed, were filled to capacity. When I finally shifted to my regular quarters, I spent more nights that I could count wearing a helmet and flak jacket while I slept, rolling off my “rack” when incoming rounds roared in, ripping the roof off nearby “hooches,” or living quarters.
Read the entire article in the November 2007 issue
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