Stars and Stripes Articles

The articles below are donated by Art Jaeger of the 40th PIO, 199th Infantry Brigade.  Many of the articles, which are in PDF format, were written by 40th PIO personnel.  Click on the icons below to read each story.

Here’s the way the process worked.  Every evening at the forward HQ, our guys would check in with the TOC to get a summary of what happened that day.  Sometimes it would just be routine, “Five enemy soldiers were killed and two suspects captured in a firefight seven miles southwest of Saigon….” Or, if we could find something a little unusual or oddball, we would include that.

We would phone in the summary to USARV PIO at Long Binh Post, where our stuff, if it was found worthy, was combined with stuff from all the other units and included in the stuff given out to the media the next day in Saigon at JUSPAO (probably have the acronym wrong and I never knew what it stood for).

The correspondents in Saigon would rewrite everything, of course. As a small unit, we didn’t have much hope of getting in the NY Times or Washington Post or even the wire service summaries. Getting a short story in Pacific Stars & Stripes was about as good as we could do. And we found we did better with the oddball stuff than with “Five NVA were killed during a sweep around Binh Din Bridge.”

My first job when I was reassigned to the 40^th PID was to assemble and phone in that summary. This was at the Fishnet. I seemed to have a knack for getting stuff in the Stars & Stripes. And, I loved doing it, it was the best time I had in Vietnam. Unfortunately, I was later sent back to the rear to work on Redcatcher! Not nearly as much fun.