Sager serves in Vietnam

— Editor’s Note: This is the second in a three-part series on William ‘Bill’ Sager. Part 3 will publish June 14.

Ritzville – Barely out of his teenage years, Bill Sager was drafted into the Army in May 1969.

“I had a feeling deep in my heart that if I went to Vietnam as an infantryman, I wouldn’t come back alive,” he said.

So he joined the regular Army, which required a three-year commitment. He signed up for a seaman course and went to basic training at Fort Lewis.

Because of his prior manual labor in the woods, he was already physically fit.

“I was in worse shape after I got out of basic training than when I went in,” he recalled. “I actually ran the mile slower at the end. Basic training was a cakewalk.”

From Fort Lewis, Sager headed to Fort Eustis, Va., for

seaman training. There he learned to read and send code, as well as the skills required to operate landing craft.

“We trained on landing craft and tugboats, including 60-foot Landing Craft Utility boats, 105-foot landing crafts and 65-foot tugboats,” he said.

The Army and other military services used all three types of boats in Vietnam to patrol rivers, carry troops and equipment, and perform minesweeping duties.

“I finished that school in mid-December, spent Christmas at home and reported to California on Dec. 28,” he said. “The next day I left the states for Vietnam.”

From California, Sager flew to Hawaii, then The Philippines, then on to Tan Son Nhut Air Base, located near the city of Saigon in southern Vietnam.

“Then I made the mistake of saying I could type,” he said. “So, instead of being stationed on a boat, they made me company clerk.”

His initial duty station in Vietnam was the port city of Vũng Tau. Once a popular French colonial seaside resort, it had a beautiful beach called Crescent Beach, he recalled.

“We’d swim and body surf on our days off,” he said.

Later his entire company moved upriver to Cat Lai, an old French villa.

“We were stationed next to a South Vietnamese mortar compound,” he said.

His company was housed in two-story wood structures. The lower half of the walls had sloped boards to deflect rain; above were screens.

“At night, around 10 p.m., the mortar company would start sending off shells,” he said. “Every time a 105 (105mm round) went out, the barracks would shake. On the nights when they shot 155s, the screens would go ‘whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.’”

His company established a Mobile Armor Radio Station, and when he extended his enlistment, he was reassigned to that unit on the Mekong River Delta.

“The tugs pulled barges up and down the delta to provide supplies to troop outposts along the river,” he said.