I thought, ‘Toto, you aren’t in Kansas anymore’
By Bill Vossler
After landing at Dalat, South Vietnam in 1970, Gene Kiffmeyer, Officer in Charge of the 556 Signal Company, was offered the chance to stay there for orientation, or convoy 7,000 feet up to the company’s site on Pr’Line (praline) Mountain, returning that afternoon. “I chose to get on the convoy,” the St. Cloud man said.
Halfway up, the convoy took small arms fire from the ridge. “The convoy halted,” Gene said, “and we deployed on both sides to engage the enemy, a single sniper who bailed out as soon as he fired at us. After a brief wait, we remounted and resumed our trip.”
After counting heads at Pr’Line Mountain, they found one man missing. “We had left one soldier at the ambush site. Two vehicles headed back and found him walking toward Pr’Line. He was scared beyond belief. Apparently he hadn’t heard the order to mount up, or fell asleep. Disaster averted. A very exciting first trip to Pr‘Line.”
Meanwhile Gene heard of a convoy two months earlier that took heavy fire when the enemy blocked them in a small village. “Two signal corps members and four civilian communications engineers were killed. That gave me a great sense of apprehension,“ Gene said.
Gene knew well about deaths of American soldiers in Vietnam. “In the summer of 1969 the military assigned me to present awards at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, to the families of soldiers killed in Vietnam. The soldiers had been returned home for funerals. You could feel each family’s grief and anguish. It was all still pretty raw, a brutal reality. I thought: ‘But for the grace of God, there go I.’ Their sorrow fully resonated with me, and I thought of my family having to go through something like this.”
Army Background
After graduating from college and becoming 1-A, “In order to gain some control over our fate, a friend and I met an Army recruiter who said if we signed up for Officer’s Candidate School he could guarantee the signal branch. That sounded great, as the last thing I wanted to be was an infantry officer.”
Following six months of OCS training in the states, mostly geared to make him a better leader, Gene knew he would head to Vietnam. “Most difficult was the apprehension of heading into a war zone. My orders were to go to Da Nang, in the midst of heavy fighting near the Demilitarized Zone.”
When Gene landed at Ben Hoa Air Base in Saigon, he said, “I looked out the window and noted bunkers every 100 yards, manned by soldiers with fully automatic weapons. I thought, ‘Toto, you are not in Kansas any more.’”
“That’s when I found out the military will put you where they need you. More apprehension.”
After six months at 73rd Signal Battalion Headquarters in Cam Ranh Bay, Gene was transferred. “I was assigned as the Officer in Charge of the 556 signal site on Pr‘Line Mountain.”
Pr’Line Mountain
Pr’Line stands for “Primary Line Site,” Gene said. “It was an isolated signal site in the Central Highlands, a beautiful area like northern Minnesota. The site was 25 miles from the nearest U.S. Military installation at Dalat. Pr’Line was one of the critical sites in all of Vietnam, critical to short-range communication of 30-60 miles, and longer of 250 to 300 miles. I was the officer in charge of the 556 Signal Company, one of 200 regional sites in Vietnam, including the 362 Signal Company, attached to the 556th. We gave field units access to the wider communications network, and every unit in Vietnam, including artillery, air strikes, dust-offs (retrieving wounded and dead), and unit extractions (pulling units in trouble out of combat zones).”
Their mission was two-fold. “To keep communications running at peak performance, and get everyone home to their families at the end of their tour, including the field troops who relied on our communications for support.”
“We never had proof that the local workers who did our laundry and cleaning were sympathizers, and might have used our systems to pass on intelligence. We think so because no North Vietnam Army units came in our area, which means they didn’t want to destroy our communications equipment.”
Living on the Mountain
Gene was in charge of the 556 Signal Site with another officer in charge of the accompanying 361 Signal Site, all on Pr‘Line, which was 200 by 100 yards. Some non-commissioned officers reported to him, and some reported to the officer of the other site. “We had some really great NCOs on site while I was there.“
Along with a large number of people. “Sixteen people to maintain the systems, 30 support people like cooks, motor pool people, clerks, and a dozen who monitored the signal systems. We also had 50 military police, and 80 Montagnards from the Vietnam army who provided security. So we were pretty packed into that area.”
“With all the troops and a fire zone of 100-200 yards cleared all around and encircled with concertina wire, and bunkers, I felt safe the whole time.”
For food, Pr’Line soldiers’ mess hall prepared three meals a day with provisions brought twice a week from Dalat. “That road was fairly dangerous, with switchbacks that required slow speeds. Going down the mountain was pretty tense, and when I went I felt quite apprehensive. The enemy could attack at any time, so we had a military police escort halfway down with a couple of armored personnel carriers with 50 caliber machine guns mounted on top. They accompanied us through the most dangerous part of the trip, then waited, and escorted us back up when we returned after picking up our mail, water, food, fuel, and ordinance.”
After Gene heard about food complaints, “I got a chef from Dalat to come up, and told him, ‘Don’t just cook. Teach my guys how to cook.’ So for the next two weeks we had great food with those same provisions, but as soon as the chef left it turned back into the same old, same old. We also had a small club with burgers and drinks for sale.”
Every unit had a guy who could acquire stuff. “If you couldn’t get it through supply channels, you could trade something you had for something they wanted. Maybe a case of C-rations for a box of steaks. Beer and BBQ was always a welcome distraction!”
Soldiers were on for 12 hours keeping the site running, and off for 12, seven days a week. “But during their time off, most men were also assigned other duties, like filling sandbags or working in bunkers. One signal man was an apprentice electrician, and did our electrical work. Another mechanically inclined man provided diesel maintenance for the generators. Someone always stepped up to fill the need.”
War zones are always dangerous Two months before Gene arrived, four signal people were killed on site. “One day they were messing around with a Claymore, or mortar round, and whichever went off and killed all four.”
Only one signal guy was wounded during Gene’s tenure. “He went on patrol with the MPs to install new batteries into listening posts that told us if anything was moving around on the perimeter. A South Vietnamese unit waiting in ambush got a little trigger happy and blew a Claymore and damaged both legs of our man pretty badly.”
Another dangerous trip was to Cam Ranh Bay to get needed system equipment. “We took two several ton trucks and drove as fast as we could,” Gene said, “because it was dangerous.”
The weather was fairly comfortable except during the monsoons from September through November. “It was overcast with daily rain and wind, just ugly. Winter temperatures were from 60-70 and summer 80-90s, but not a lot of humidity.”
Soldiers at Pr’Line were quite relaxed, Gene said. “The uniform was whatever allowed us to get our jobs done. No spit shine, no Brasso, no starch, and no saluting. When we heard that the Brass were going to visit, we spruced up as best we could. With no forewarning, the Brass saw us in our normal condition, so we were asked if we were really ‘part of this man’s army,’ (the Brass referring to himself of course.) We politely answered ‘Yes, Sir!’”
Shenanigans
There were always shenanigans, Gene said. “Life on Pr’Line could get pretty boring. Outside of our work we had very little to occupy our time. The American soldier is very creative when he gets bored.”
Prior to the monsoon season, all the metal roofs on the site were inspected to insure the monsoon winds would not rip them off. “The fix was to place sandbags all over the roof to secure them against the wind. One morning the Company Commander called and asked if I had inspected the site recently. I had, but he suggested I climb the tower and take another look. From there I saw one roof with a naughty message spelled out in sandbags of two foot letters. I had the sandbags rearranged. Nothing came of it, and I didn‘t seek the culprit.”
Some situations could be more serious. One soldier probably on drugs, Gene said, fired his M16 into one of the huts with soldiers. “I sent him down to Dalat to let them handle him, and get him off the site.”
A couple of guys took a jeep to Dalat one night, and returned in the morning. “It was dangerous going both ways, and they shouldn’t have done it.”
In a book about Pr’Line, “In the Clouds: Voices of Pr’Line Mountain, Vietnam,“ Gene discovered that some of the soldiers there lived in constant fear. “Most of the troops dealt pretty well with it, as far as I could tell.”
“I overlooked many things on Pr’Line--mostly harmless things that did not affect the mission, or the safety of the men. At our reunion in May 2022, many incidents came to light. Most were harmless morale boosters. It was probably good I was unaware of them at the time or I would have felt the need to address them. Morale was a precious commodity.”
With Gene in charge of the telephone center, you’d think he would call home a lot. “I called my wife several times, but it had to go through a ham operator, who stayed on the line and listened. As a one-way link, we had to say ‘over’ when we finished our part of the talk. Then the link was switched so the other party could respond. It just didn’t work. So I only called home three or four times.” Instead he and his wife wrote letters, she regularly, he more sporadically.
Coming Home
Gene was not surprised when he returned home in November 1971 to negative reactions. “I had seen media coverage of the protests before going over. My wife and parents met me at the gate, and so did protestors, crying ‘baby killer,’ and some spit at me. They blamed the soldiers instead of the politicians who put us there.“
That incident affected how he talked about the war afterwards. “Three friends that I spent a lot of time with never talked about Vietnam until 10 years ago at one of our breakfasts. Someone mentioned Vietnam. None of us knew the others were there. We hadn’t said anything because we didn‘t know how other people would react. We were all proud of our service and knew that we had done our duty to the best of our ability.”