"From Saigon, The Beat Goes On"--AFVN Channel 54 Aircheck

In-country reverberated to the sounds of AFVN. From the Delta to the DMZ, LBJ's finest were locked into a mystic rock and roll on full auto.

AFVN on the hour, with all the in-country and world news, read to you by Army Specialist Gary Peers...But first, a word from our sponsors...Let's talk about tracers: they sure are pretty, but they burn up your barrel.

So let's use more ball ammunition...There must be some way outta here..some way to get some relief...More troops turned out for James Brown than for the Bob Hope yearly USO extravanganza at the Long Binh Ampitheatre...Know what Charlie can do with this golf club, this trampoline. With Ann Margaret...amid the Stalingrad rubble of Saigon's 8eme mini-Tet, tracks and dozer tanks made everything a bad acid trip.

Hail, Hail, Rock and Roll, everyone locked onto full automatic...jungle fever supplied by Creedence... dedicated to the blue-eyed soul brother in the mess at Pleiku...to the jive knights in the bunker at Sanh Khe...and here's the Sergeant Pepper ski report...20 to 40 inch Base at Big Bear...the Grateful Dead, the Stones giving satisfaction wherever a top sergeant could tolerate the vibes.

Count Malaria reminding you to take your chloroquine phosphate pills...Junior Walker wailing point with a shotgun...Do it...Getting down to the beat...and the beat goes on...generals protesting the airing of Jose Feliciano's Star Spangled Banner...Confederate flags on whip antennas...only the strong survive...The 101st actually owned Hendrix for a while...the transistor couched in a turret.

Are you Experienced?...can you feed an M60 machine gun, a '79 grenade launcher...do you want to get some...this is the end...reach out and touch the hand of someone you love-manic depressions...a hard day's night...days are just as bad...at the automatic tone it will be twelve noon...and here is the news compiled from commercial and military sources.

The 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment were attacked by an unknown number of enemy in a night position. The mechanized infantry used their organic weapons and machine guns to...Lord, I'm 2000 miles from home, my feet are hurting real bad...that is organic...the enemy's offensive is of little importance...come on baby light my fire...only the strong survive...one sound we may never hear if we don't check our vehicle before starting...you never do hear booby traps...so let's talk about recreational facilities...let's talk about riding an LST full of 155mm shells up the Hue River...this is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius...so do your thing...the final body count after the battalion-sized attack is 198 VC dead, 13 U.S. KIA and one wounded...a concentrated attack is to be made to rid the country of illegal and dangerous drugs....the hits keep on coming...the beat goes on.

This is army specialist Donald Moore, it's 82 here in downtown Da Nang at 0700 hours...it's blowing in the wind...I can't get no satisfaction...putting out firepower in the Michelin plantation...born to be wild....that's what I say.

I can't get no....but I am a believer...your future, your decision, your army...nothing but a heartache, that's the Flirtations, or was that Wilson Pickett, sorry about that...even General Abrams flashed the ridged V of peace...for hard core Paul and his fire team at Polei Klang...play a song for me...the hits keep on coming...can you see that I'm not...just everyday people...the army needs recruits...I'm a believer.

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah...and now the Go radio program brings you Booker T and the MGs; one of these nights, we're going to hang 'em high...everyone staying high...hippies converted to firepower.

It's entertaining, music-minded, informative, swinging. The American forces VN network, four little words that signify six years of broadcasting to the serviceman in Vietnam...people everywhere just want to be free...the new Colony Six from Chicago...are you returning to civilian life after Vietnam...can you picture what we've seen in a desperate land...sign up here in Da Nang with the University of Maryland...sign up to fuse 250 kilo bombs on Yankee station...on the U.S.S. Midway, the Constellation, the Enterprise. light my fire...just by yourself...come touch me baby.

From The Army Reporter October 25, 1971

DIVERSITY IS THEIR MOST IMPORTANT PRODUCT

 By Spec. 5 James M. Conolly

SAIGON--An artillery man on a firebase, a grunt in the field, or a clerk in an orderly room can certainly recognize the phrase "from the delta to the DMZ."

From Can Tho to Quang Tri, that phrase is heard over AFVN--the American Forces Radio & Television Service (AFRTS) outlet in country.

The Vietnam station made its first broadcast from studios in Saigon's Rex Hotel. At that time the radio facility employed several volunteer announcers and utilized borrowed equipment for its 18 hour a day transmissions.

The facilities and the staff were expanded with the American troop buildup. With the increase to 24 hours daily, the installation of FM equipment and the construction of a two-way Pacific cable linking Saigon to Los Angeles, radio became an accepted feature of the American presence.

By March 1966, not only had radio broadcasting reached a professional level, but television had made its debut.

Five years after the first broadcast, "American Forces Vietnam Network" became a reality on July 1, 1967. Based in Saigon, AFVN has detachments in Qui Nhon, Da Nang, Pleiku, Cam Ranh Bay and Hue/Phu Bai.

"The selection of the proper mix of programs from the resources available to us is not done haphazardly," says Army Lt. Colonel Robert Souville, officer-in-charge of AFVN. "We must decide between our in-country capabilities and what is sent to us from the states. Highly-accurate audience surveys are conducted to determine the preferences of our patrons.

One of the more unique aspects of AFVN radio is the type of audience to which it caters. A typical station in the U.S. is geared to a particular market. One station may appeal to an "easy listening" audience while another may be geared to provide "hard rock" preferences. A commercial station will rarely present a format appealing to all tastes. AFVN devotes a portion of its radio programming to many different tastes, country & western, easy listening, soul and old and current music.

It is not necessary to conduct a Harris poll to determine what percentage of the men prefer girls on the screen. Consequently, the affable and energetic "Janie" appears on the 10PM newscast informing viewers of the temperature in Rokney, Alabama or Podunk, Iowa. Janie, who volunteers her services, is to the weather watchers what Betty Crocker is to cake bakers. Further north, high atop Vung Chua Mountain in Qui Nhon, nurses from the 67th Evacuation Hospital add a little sugar and spice to the weathercasts in the coastal section of the country.

Whether it is a recent sporting event telecast over AFVN-TV or keeping the hits coming over radio, AFVN furnishes a Stateside atmosphere and brings the world a little closer.

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Broadcaster Chuck Neil describes the last weeks, days and years at AFVN/American Radio Service from 1973 until late April 1975.

By Chuck Neil

I had been in Vietnam since 1967 working for various companies. In 1973, I was working for Federal Electric Corporation-ITT, and a friend said to me, "Hey, the military are leaving and they're going to have civilians take over their radio station. Why don't you apply? I've gone through your records here and I see that you've had radio and TV experience."

And I said, "Yeah, but mostly behind the cameras in TV, and in radio, I've done some announcing but it's been years.

He said, "What the hell, give it a whirl. Call Colonel Hutchison at the radio station." He was the military manager of American Forces Radio.

So I did call the colonel and he set up an appointment for me. I went in and auditioned and interviewed. They had a master sergeant who was one of their program directors. Hell of a nice guy. He got in the engineer's booth and I got in the announcer's booth opposite him. He gave me the material to read--one page with a lot of words, names, place names, including President Nguyen Van Thieu's name, and he had Cairo, Egypt, and Cairo, Illinois. They wanted to see if you knew they were pronounced differently. Then they had a script to read, some type of Public Service Announcement. And they had me rip and read some news. They had three teletypes there at that time. AP, United Press International, and Armed Forces Radio & Television Service Washington.

I forgot about it, for about ten days.

Then I got a phone call saying, "you got the job." So I went to the station I met E. M. Turvett who had been with FEC and I recognized him. I was acquainted with him. And they had a young fellow who had been an Army lieutenant there, by the name of Mike Monderer. He was the other announcer who had won the job. A real sharp kid, young guy. And at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, he was on the radio station part time. He majored in communications. Then we had a chief engineer. There were four Americans. As an alternate engineer we had a fellow by the name of Ed Powers, so if our engineer wasn't available for the transmitter, Ed would come in and troubleshoot.

Of course the military was still there when we first came in and they sort of segued us into the job gradually over the period of a couple of weeks. And when the military left in March, they kept one American GI there who'd been at the radio station for several years. They kept him to help in the transition. He was supposed to be invisible, because all of the American GIs were supposed to be gone. But he was still there along with several others a month or so after the official exit. They were sort of shadowy figures. Some wore uniforms so they could claim they were attached to the Defense Attaches Office (DAO); which actually they weren't.

So there we were, four Americans, taking over American radio. In fact, we changed the name. Ian and I got together and said, what can we call it? We can't call it American Forces Radio, or Armed Forces Radio, any more, so we came up, simply enough, with American Radio Service, Vietnam.

We had a regular format--news, music, sports, twenty-four-hour day, one hundred thousand watts, FM radio.

My job title was "news announcer." But when we got there it was expedient that I do everything. The first few weeks we were on the air I did quite a lot of live broadcasting. News, live DJ shows, et cetera. We had Vietnamese personnel who were fluent in English who'd been with Armed Fores Radio and we retained them.

Several things were taped for us. We call them "actualities"; tape with a congressman or senator making a statement. But we got those primarily from the feed that we had, the twenty-four-hour-a-day feed, a satellite shot to the Philippines, and cable over to Vietnam. We were getting shortwave and a feed from Washington, D.C. and we had a bank of tape recorders and we'd just take that right off the feed.

The station was Number Nine, Hong Thap Tu, right in town, only about six blocks from the Embassy. It was a separate entity, a compound. I'd say about half an acre, quarter of an acre.

Well, about '74 we started to feel that Congress was going to take a hands-off approach to Vietnam, which they subsequently did. I wasn't aware how serious that was until just a couple of months before the fall. I kept hoping. Most of us did that were there, that Congress would allocate some money to the Vietnamese to subsidize them and keep them going. And they didn't. That's what caused the fall.....

We were privy to a lot of news from DAO, and when we heard they were abandoning the Central Highlands, Jesus Christ, we were flabbergasted. We thought, uh oh, it's the beginning of the end.....

I don't remember how we got started on this thing of the early warning, but we knew that somehow we were going to have to notify the Americans there. A lot of Americans there were not connected with the government. They were working for private U.S. government-invited contractors and they might not have any means of knowing, "Hey it's time, get your butt out of here. Just about a hundred percent of the Americans there listened to American radio because it was the only radio station around. There were a couple of Vietnamese stations, but it was all Vietnamese or Chinese music mostly. As a matter of fact, a lot of Vietnamese listened to American radio because we had great music on the station. I could walk down the street by some Vietnamese villa or apartment house and hear my radio station, hear my voice come on.

Ann Bottorf of DAO and some of the security people got together and said we'd have to have an early warning. So Turvett and I were called up to the Embassy to the security office and we tried to figure out what we could do on the radio to alert people to move out to their evacuation point or staging area for immediate evacuation.

So I said, "Why not play a recording of something that every American will recognize in a split second?" Plus the incongruity of the thing being played in the middle of summer would alert them to the fact that they'd have to take a hike. So why not play "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas?" Of course I was thinking about Bing Crosby's rendition, the biggest seller, but of all the thousands of records and tapes we had at the radio station, I couldn't find Bing Crosby's recording, so I got Tennessee Ernie Ford's. It didn't matter who I had; but I noticed Frank Snepp and several other people said that it was Bing Crosby. It doesn't make that much difference.

Then I announced after the song, "The temperature is 105 degrees and rising." That was the signal, then, that the evacuation was on. We recorded that and put it on a tape cartridge.

That was the plan, but by the time it all came down, every Vietnamese in town must have known what was happening....

The night of the twenty-eighth of April, even the twenty-seventh, was bad news. A lot of heavy concussions and explosions. By the twenty-eighth, some of our radio station personnel, most of them young ladies and their families we had already gotten out...But some of our loyal personnel elected to stay and help us through the final days--about four or five Vietnamese. They got their families to come down to the radio station for the last two days, because we all knew there was going to be an order to evacuate but we didn't know exactly when. They were so afraid of being left behind that they were sleeping and living right there at the radio station.

These Vietnamese families are not small. We must have had two hundred people in there. The toilet facilities were only built for a couple dozen. They were overflowing and inoperable. The place started to stink, and it was just awful, but there wasn't anything we could do about it. You couldn't say, "Clear out."

So on April 29, about 11:30 or 11:40 in the morning, I got the call from DAO, some colonel. I answered the phone and said "This is Chuck." And he said, "Chuck, how many Americans do you have there right now?" And I said, "Four." And he said, "Well you are ordered as of right now to evacuate immediately and proceed to the U.S. Embassy for evacuation flight."

I hung up the phone and went in to Turvett, and said, "Hey Ian, this is it. Evacuate now." So we had a little plan with our Vietnamese employees that we were going to take them first because they had elected to stay and we had assured them we would get them out. We didn't want to panic the Vietnamese who were there, but we had no means of getting them to the Embassy--two hundred people. We had a van and two pickup trucks there. So we took the van around to the side and alerted our Vietnamese engineers. We said, "just don't say anything to anybody. Just walk out this side door into the van." Which they did....

We had a big Gates Automatic Programmer. We programmed most of our day on that machine. And I went back in there and took the cartridge with "105 degrees and rising" and "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas," and popped it in the slot and punched it up. And that was my final act at the radio station....

So we were armed to the teeth. We got into that van. By this time there were hundreds of people outside the radio station. The only thing that kept them back was a big chain-linked fence. People were trying to climb the fence. Some were succeeding.

But we got out. We had to honk the horn and people had to part for us to get out. They couldn't see that in the back were our Vietnamese engineers and a couple of Americans. So we started down the street. It was only about six blocks to the Embassy, but right at the intersection there was a checkpoint and they wanted to see--they didn't want to see any Vietnamese being taken out. These guys had M-16s locked and loaded. And I don't know if you've heard but these ARVNs were quick to pull the trigger. Just shooting in the air even. And they looked mean.

Turvett was driving. I was sitting on the passengers side on his right. So we stopped and said a few words. I reached into the glove compartment where I had a carton of Salems and I just threw the carton of Salems and the guy said "Thank you," and waved us on.