Richard Armitage received his Navy commission in 1967 via the Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. He was 23-years-old when he first arrived in Vietnam as an engineer aboard a Navy destroyer. He volunteered to go back, and he was assigned as the ambush team adviser on a South Vietnamese Navy coastal group in Binh Minh Province in III Corps. He explains, “The Vietnamese Navy is a little different from the U.S. Navy. They had both junk craft that plied the rivers and they had the semi-marine force which was the ambush team.” He describes his living conditions and how his impression of the Vietnamese people changed over time. In a second adviser tour on the ground in Vietnam, he served the River Patrol Division in Tay Ninh, and then did a third tour in Bong Son. After resigning his Navy commission in 1973, he returned to South Vietnam with the State Department. Two meaningful days from his time in Vietnam were freeing two VC captives after a skirmish near Sa Dec early in his time there, and his last day, during Operation FREQUENT WIND in April 1975, when he organized the evacuation of 31,000 Vietnamese. He says he took away more that was positive and useful from Vietnam than he invested in blood sweat and tears, “The memories of Vietnam, appreciation for the history, the culture, for the sociology of the nation.”

Key Words: Naval Academy (USNA), Viet Cong (VC), ambush, Military Assistance Command-Vietnam (MACV), Áo bà ba Duyên, Operation FREQUENT WIND, Foster’s Beer, PRC-25, Chiêu Hồi, Philippines, Gulf of Tonkin incident

Key Names: Erich von Marbod, Lee Kuan Yew, Maya Lin, Joe Galloway, LTG Claude M. “Mick” Kicklighter