14 VIETNAM
COURTESYMARC^LEEPSONWHAT DID YOU
DO IN VIETNAM?
pany in Qui Nhon, a port
on the coast of central
South Vietnam—a safe
area in the rear. After
coming home from the
war, I wound up with a
great assignment: com-
pany clerk for an Army unit in Washington,
D.C., where I went to college.
Other than thanking my lucky stars that
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July day 50 years ago when I left the Army.
I was just happy to be back in civilian life and
have my military service in the rearview mir-
ror. I took a temporary full-time job and then
started graduate school. Life was good.
But not completely. Like nearly every other
Vietnam veteran coming home to a bitterly
divided country, I quickly figured out that
hardly anyone wanted to hear about the war
from those who had served in it. So I did what
nearly all of us returning veterans did: I shut
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ished graduate school, got married, screwed
around for a couple of years and then em-
barked on a writing career at age 28 in 1974.On July 10, 1969, I walked out of an administration building at Fort
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two years. I felt damn good. I also felt very lucky.
On July 11, 1967, the day I was drafted into the Army, I felt a lot
of things, but lucky was not one of them. As I slogged through eight
weeks of basic training, the drill instructors rarely missed an oppor-
tunity to tell us draftees that we would be headed for infantry Ad-
vanced Individual Training at the notorious Fort Polk in the swamps
of Louisiana, before going straight to Vietnam—where we’d be lucky
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My good luck began after basic training when I received orders for
clerk school. It continued after I arrived in Vietnam on Dec. 15, 1967.
After four days at the giant Long Binh Replacement Station near
Saigon I got orders to report to the 527th Personnel Service Com-REFLECTIONS
By Marc Leepson
The demeaning response to men
who said they served in rear areas
Working as a clerk
far from the jungles
and rice paddies, Marc
Leepson was in a
relatively secure area.
Even so, four men in
his unit were killed
during the war.