Message-ID: <20001231221427.9351.qmail@web5204.mail.yahoo.com>
Date: Sun, 31 Dec 2000 14:14:27 -0800 (PST)
From: MPCgram <mpcgram@yahoo.com>
Subject: MPC Gram 212
To: mpcgram@yahoo.com
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

====================================================  
                      MPC Gram
====================================================  
  Covering the Entire World of Military Numismatics
----------------------------------------------------
 Series 002-Number 212     Sunday - 31 December 2000
 
          Personal Viet Nam Reflections

by Howard A. Daniel III

  I arrived back in-country in November 1971 straight
from Heidelberg, Germany, but I had a 30-day delay
in-route leave in Thailand built into my orders. A few
hours after landing, I was on my way to Bangkok, to
everyone's amazement. When I returned a month later, I
was shuffled off to the replacement depot on Long Binh
a couple of days before Christmas, as I believe, as
punishment, and not sent to my unit. The day after
Christmas, I was picked up by my unit down on Tan Son
Nhut AB.
  My first few weeks were learning my job very quickly
then jumping in with both feet with everyone else to
do our jobs. The job was to zero out every one of the
remaining U.S. Army aviation units and depots in
Vietnam. This required people in the field inventoring
everything, entering it into our computers and
comparing it to what was supposed to be there, then
finding a place to ship existing stuff to the
Vietnamese who needed it, then out of country to our
Allies. Some of it was not wanted by anyone, and we
had it dumped into the South China Sea. The really
non-valuable stuff was dumped into some of the many
huge quarries between Saigon and Bien Hoa/Long Binh
along Highway 1. This stuff and from other units was
steadily taken away by civilian Vietnamese to use for
their purposes.
  As Fred suggested, I read the MPC Reg at the back of
the MPC book. I cannot remember if the JAG officer in
the Hqs MACV Legal Office was reading this Army Reg
and/or a MACV Reg when he gave me his opinion. But his
reply to me was something like "it would not be
illegal to send back invalid MPC to the States.” He
did not use "no longer legal tender,” but I do seem to
remember the word "invalid" was in his reply. 
  It has been over thirty years since I had my
conversation with this officer, but I am pretty sure
he told me the MPC I wanted to send back could no
longer be spent, could no longer be converted to the
current MPC and something about it going into the
collector arena and not to be reintroduced into
MPC/financial channels.
  As for the sources of my MPC, he said something
about it being as valuable as wallpaper to my sources
and he himself had observed some old MPC glued on the
wall in a bar, and because it was worthless, I was
just sending worthless (wall)paper back to the States.
So when I wrote in my article that I was not doing
anything illegal, I was basing it on what the JAG
Officer told me. If he was wrong, then I was wrong.
Now for Mr. Wilson. I do have a few pieces of paper
from him. The key is a light yellow 3x5" piece of
paper with "A Quickee Note from Jim Wilson" printed
across the top and "House of Hobbies, Minong, Wisc.
54859" in small print below it. Then he typed "Dear
Howard:-/CAN YOU SELL OR TRADE ME/ANY MILITARY PAYMENT
CURRENCY/Ship all you can with best price/JIM."
  I cannot find anything on the what I charged him for
the old MPC but my strongest memory is that it was
10-25c each over my cost plus postage. The paper is
undated, but it had to have been mailed to me sometime
in early 1972. As for the lack of CU 692 $5 MPC. It
had to have come in-country to Saigon and processed
somewhere through Hqs MACV. Why I did not ever know of
this office, and not visit it, is beyond me. As a
collector of MPC and already looking for information
about Southeast Asian numismatic material, I should
have been looking for and saving paper, regs, etc.,
about MPC too.
  I do remember regularly going to the American
Express Banking Facility on MACV Annex on a regular
basis looking for $5's because my workplace at Hqs 1st
Avn Bde was only about two to three hundred meters
from it, and just across a road from MACV Annex on Tan
Son Nhut AB. I do not remember going to anywhere on
Tan Son Nhut AB for them, and cannot remember why I
did not check over there because I visited the very
large AF BX there about once a month. The 1st Avn Bde
decided which aviation group was to stand down on what
dates. We usually had about a week to take care of
each large group of aviation units and it's depot(s).
If we did our jobs ahead of schedule, we took a day or
two off, then started on the next group.
  It was a hectic schedule and as the war was closing
at the end of 1972, the pace was faster, so I had
fewer days for personal tasks. Then there were several
large offenses by the NVA and our units were needed to
assist the Vietnamese rather than leave country. As
the last unit/depot was completed in November or
December 1972, we started packing up our mainframes
and arranging to ship and accompany them back to the
States. But there was much higher priority cargo all
over the place, so we sat around most of my last month
there. Phung was the daytime (12 hours) shift
supervisor in this unit. There were five of us NCOs
and three officers with 125 or so Vietnamese. I was
the last NCO to arrive in December 1971, then all of
our enlisted men were sent home and replaced with
Vietnamese. In October, I asked Phung to marry me and
we were married on December 14. Our boss, Major Norman
Winter, gave me a three-day pass (can you imagine that
in Vietnam?) for our honeymoon in the Unisys villa
(one of our mainframe's company's headquarters in
Vietnam) in Saigon. Her visa processing was very slow
in the States and it was getting clear that she would
not ship out to the States before me.
  Then the Army discovered I had not attended a couple
of military ADP schools over most of my career and I
was scheduled for my first class toward the end of
January 1973 at Fort Harrison, IN. This bumped me up
to flying back with the first computer(s) and the
other guys would have to wait. The first available
space for two computers was on January 10, 1973 on a
C5A. Two of us climbed on the plane as the computers
were loaded because we were part of the manifest to
guard them. Our C5A could not unknee but it could not
stay on Tan Son Nhut AB because the NVA would mortar
it overnight.
  We took off with the wheels only about halfway up
and sparks flew as we took off. They radioed ahead to
Clark AFB in the Philippines that we had an emergency
landing with the wheels only halfway down. They foamed
the runway, but there was still a huge shower of
sparks out behind the plane as we landed. The base's
firemen were around the plane and foaming it within
seconds and we did not catch on fire.
  SFC Jim Flock and I headed for the NCO Club and
promptly got drunk. It took three days to fix the
plane (and we stayed drunk), then Jim's computer was
off-loaded onto another plane and flown to Hawaii and
I stayed on the original C5A with a destination of
Dover AFB. We stopped in Japan on the way. After
landing at Dover AFB , I was quickly on my way to Fort
Harrison via commercial means.
  Phung arrived in Chicago in February and I took a
day off from school and picked her up and drove her
down to the apartment I had rented for us. 

====================================================  
                       Editorial
----------------------------------------------------
Lots happening on every front: books, FUN, research
and holiday schedule. There is no way to keep up. If
you watch the news carefully in the next 48 hours, you
might catch a glimpse of Port Clinton. At the new year
we lower our sacred symbol--the Walleye in the town
square. The has received national media attention in
recent years so watch for us. I will be the one
wearing the Fest T shirt!
====================================================  
                       Mail Call
----------------------------------------------------
Hi Fred, 
If one watches the History channel enough the
implications are that we knew that the Japanese fleet
was heading due East and that FDR more or less allowed
this attack on Pearl Harbor to get backing for his
declarations of war...

Cheers, 
Colin

Dear Editor,
I like the Gram ads, and would like to see more use of
this valuable purchasing and possible trading section
of the Gram.  
Thanks 
    Frank C.
Departments
---------------------------------------------------
WWII numismatics seminar at ANA Summer Seminar 2001
---------------------------------------------------
Not only does the scholarship fund have an official
identity but also has a bank account! Any further
donations should be paid to the order of "Military
Numismatists Scholarship" and sent to:

Military Numismatists
c/o Marcus Turner
8103 East US Highway 36
Suite 163
Avon, IN 46123

THE UPDATED LIST OF SCHOLARSHIP BENEFACTORS 11/22/00
Mike Cummings
Ed B.
Doug Bell
R. A. Medina
Harold MPCKid Kroll
Bill McNese
Marcus Turner
Larry Ski
Fred
PK6
Joel Shafer
World Wide Ventures
John & Nancy Wilson
Neil Shafer
-----------------------------------------------------
                   MPC Fest II
-----------------------------------------------------
MPC Fest is the annual feast of MPC. After some
difficulties of coordination we have not changed the
dates and tentatively scheduled 9-11 March 2001 for
MPC Fest II. If these dates cause a problem, please
write the gram immediately. 
==================================================== 
Post/Base Exchange 
(PX/BX/NEX) Dump your dupes! Your classified
advertisement for items for sale will be run here for
free. Send your ads to the gram. This service is for
everyone, most humble dealer or most advanced
collector. The point is to make the gram more
interesting. Send in a list of items for sale and we
will list them here in the gram. In all cases confirm
your order via email first.

MPC Series 472 25c CU, $180, David Seelye,
coinman@rochester.rr.com.

MPC Series 641 $10 with flipper serial number (the
number is still a number when held upside down) f-vf,
$22. verify at fred@papermoneyworld.com.
==============================================
Staff: publisher and editor:
Fred Schwan - fred@papermoneyworld.com;
assistant editor - Phil Goldstein
critic: Harold Kroll - MPCKid@papermoneyworld.com;
index manager: Ed Beaman
webmaster & technical advisor: 
Doug Bell - (Wiz): doug@papermoneyworld.com; 
The Boss: Judy Schwan



=====
MPC Gram is published by BNR Press and papermoneyworld.com as a free service to the community of military money collectors. Your suggestions, criticisms, complaints, editorial contributions, letters, and even praise are very welcome. The entire contents including linked illustrations are copyright protected by the publishers. In the case of contributors, the copyright is protected on behalf of the creators. Please send all correspondence regarding the gram to MPCgram@yahoo.com. Thank you very much for your participation.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Photos - Share your holiday photos online!
http://photos.yahoo.com/