It was my 1st day in country and I was 19 years old. We landed on Cam Rhan Bay AB. There were about 50 of us.
When we landed and deplaned immediately the VC started shooting at us from the edge of the flight line. This base is enormous and just finding the enemy on base took days.
We had a bus waiting to pick us up and the driver parked about 50 yards from the aircraft we just landed in. When the shooting started the bus driver yelled RUN! Like we needed to be told! The funny thing to me was that the driver was standing on the safe side of the bus but he wouldn’t get in the bus and drive closer to us.
This was the 1st time in my young life that I was shot at and needless to say it scared the cr@p out of me as we had not yet been issued weapons!
We apparently were just out of range of the AK47’s but we could see the tarmac being chipped up by the rifle fire. Fortunately no one was hurt and no one had their feet shot!
This was my 1st indication that perhaps the wrong folks were running this war.