Mile High Jump

Lee Bishop

Here are a few reminiscences about my experiences in Vietnam, where I was a linguist and cryptographer. Here is one of the tamer stories:

Mile High Jump 

I'd just rejoined Detachment 3 of the 3rd Radio Research Unit at Tuy Hoa after coming back from an assignment with a Special Forces unit. Someone got the bright idea that I should go right back out to do some work with a radio relay station (1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division).

I got my gear together, hopped a Huey that was assigned to transport me, got to the site, and was told to jump because the ground was too rocky to land. We were a mile up in the air, all five thousand two hundred eighty feet of it.  I was loaded down with equipment, no parachute, but what the heck... I jumped.

Fortunately there was five thousand two hundred and sixty-five feet of mountain underneath me and I actually only fell twelve feet.  It was still quite a jolt when I landed, and I did lose two toenails (today I have arthritis behind those two toes).

The assignment was interesting. This mountain just jutted up out of the rice fields to the north and west of North Field. You had a tremendous view of the city of Tuy Hoa, North Air Field, the ocean, the river flowing into the ocean, and, of course, the rice fields.

One night, to our northeast, I watched an attack on one of our ammo dumps. It ignited and there were fireworks galore. It was pretty, but it ripped you up thinking about the seven kinds of hell the guys on the ground were going through.

Contributed by Lee Bishop
Columbus, Ohio

**Thank you, Lee, and Welcome Home. ~CJ


“I am only one, but I am one. I can't do everything, but I can do something. The something I ought to do, I can do, and by the grace of God, I will.” ~Everett Hale