Postell kept supplies moving in Vietnam war zone
After Ray Postell arrived in Vietnam, a sergeant called out his name along with several others and told them they would be going on temporary duty to Saigon to unload ships. He didn’t realize it until years later, but he believes a job in civilian life — and the grace of God — led to his time in the war being served in logistics.
After graduating West Fannin High School in 1964, Postell couldn’t find work in Blue Ridge and moved to Dalton.
“I found it difficult because I was still 17 and didn’t have transportation,” he said of looking for a job. “I turned 18 and registered for the draft in Whitfield County, and finally found work at World Carpet. After a few months, I had saved enough money for a down payment on an old four-door ‘55 Chevy. Finally, I was able to travel back to see my family and friends.”
On one weekend trip, a friend from school who managed the Food City store asked him to return to Blue Ridge and help at the grocery, and with a newspaper route.
“I was interested, but I was called by the draft board to go take a physical and report for induction,” said Postell. “By this time I had already moved back to Fannin. Someone wiser than me suggested I change residency and draft registration from Whitfield to Fannin, and that would give me more time, which I did.”
The time was needed. In the fall of 1965, he met “a very beautiful girl that stole my heart” by the name of Carolyn Watkins.
“We had about two months to date before Uncle Sam caught up with my draft transfer,” he said of going into the Army in January 1966. “We agreed to wait until my tour was over before marriage.”
After boot camp at Georgia’s Fort Benning, it was off to Fort Polk, La., for “nine grueling weeks of heat, humidity and mosquitoes — the training facility for many of the infantrymen going to Vietnam.” And there Postell went next, initially as part of the Replacement 1st Infantry Division. However, the job unloading ships pulled him out of his infantry unit.
En route to Saigon, the “deuce-and-a-half” (2.5-ton truck) carrying troops had its back and side flaps rolled down, even with the heat and humidity, to prevent a Viet Cong soldier from tossing a grenade inside. Postell explained that America’s military buildup in 1965 had 350,000 troops in Vietnam but not enough supplies.
“Over 120 ships were waiting in the South China Sea to get into port to unload, and the U.S. only had the use of two berths at Saigon’s port,” he said. “However, the urgency of the problem persuaded the South Vietnamese government to open up four more berths.”
In June 1966, as part of the 4th Transportation Command, Headquarters Company of the 1st Logistical Command, Postell joined that effort. There was an urgency to get the troops food, medicine, ammo, rifles, lumber, hammers and nails, and “a hundred other things.”
“Early on, I remember shiploads of lumber for barracks, mess halls and hospitals,” he said. “Ships called ‘reefers’ (refrigerated) were frequently at our docks with fresh meat, poultry, fish and fresh vegetables. Anywhere you find soldiers, you find a PX (post exchange), and there were shiploads every day with clothes, watches, dishes, radios, televisions and cameras — and beverages of all sort from sodas to wine, beer and whiskey. Two other high-priority items were Agent Orange, which we didn’t know much about then, and (razor-sharp) concertina wire.”
Staying alert while working
Postell noted that although his unit was not in combat zones with infantry outfits, they still had to be on their toes.
“We weren’t out in the jungle wading through swamps and getting shot at, but many of the Vietnamese dock workers were Viet Cong sympathizers,” he said.
As work continued apace ,there were other risks.
“We were always quite busy checking off the transportation number on the item with the ship’s manifest to account for it, see who ordered it, what location in-country it was to be routed to, and then tell forklift drivers where to stack it,” Postell said. “We all had our close calls with a load swiftly coming down and missing us by inches.”
Not everyone was as fortunate — two soldiers from the 4th Transportation were ambushed and killed one night as they went to check on other men unloading ammo onto a barge outside a gated area.
“The Viet Cong created a disturbance near the place, and when the sergeant on duty and his driver left in a jeep to check on our guy, they were ambushed and killed as they drove the quarter-mile to the unloading area,” he remembered.
There were also accidents caused by Vietnamese dock workers who became careless or sometimes smoked opium.
“(They) were unloading U.S. Army tanks onto a barge, and they put one tank on the edge of the barge correctly, then the next tank they placed on the same side and it flipped the barge. The two tanks and all the workers went into the Saigon River,” said Postell. “All onboard the barge, men and machines, were lost. The river was wide and deep, and the current was very strong.”
Another time a Vietnamese worker climbed up onto a stack of lumber during a night shift to get some sleep, and an unaware forklift operator set another load on top of him, killing the man instantly.
“Once we got a shipload of surplus World War II and Korean War jeeps that the U.S. was giving to the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam),” he continued. “A small contingent of ARVN soldiers were sent to drive the jeeps away. They were proud of the new jeeps, and a few would make the tires squeal on the hot cement as they took off. One unfortunate soldier mistakenly put his jeep in reverse, and with the motor revved up he popped the clutch and went backward into the river. The jeep was never seen again, and the soldier’s body was found about a mile away the next day.”
Making peace
Some men in his unit actually asked for a transfer into the infantry.
“Their reasoning to be placed back in a combat unit was what we will tell our grandchildren when they ask, ‘What did you do in the war?’” said Postell, who added the question also burdened him “for many years.”
“I have not spoken at length to anyone about my rear-echelon duties because for a long time I felt I didn’t fulfill my duties that I was trained for,” he revealed of his infantry preparation. “It took a long time for me to make peace with myself — but now I am at peace with God, with man and with myself. I know I did all that the Army asked and told me to do. We worked around the clock — seven days a week for a few months, two 12-hour shifts — until the (supply) backlog was erased.”
With six months left in his enlistment, Postell was sent to Patrick Air Force Base at Cape Canaveral, Fla., where he helped ship supplies to five Caribbean islands where Air Force personnel were stationed.
“About 20 years ago, I was relating my story about serving in Vietnam to a 26-year Army veteran and mentioned that I had often wondered why I was taken out of an infantry replacement unit and placed into a cargo-handler status,” he said. “He asked what I did in civilian life before induction, and I told him I was a stock boy in a grocery store. He said they needed someone who was familiar with handling inventory.
“As I looked back on June 20, 1966, at about 10 a.m — not any sooner nor any later — the Army needed someone with my limited experience, and I saw how God had delayed my arrival for several months with my job transfer and draft board transfer. It gave me time to train as a stock boy and then arrive just in time to fill that job.”
And the rest of
the story?
“That beautiful girl I was dating when I went into the Army was waiting when I got back with an honorable discharge,” said Postell, who now owns and operates North Georgia Computer Brokers in Ellijay.
“We were married a few months later, and now 54 years have gone by, and we are still in love and inseparable. God intervened in my life, without me realizing it until many years later.”