Kevin Hanretta earned one of the first two Army ROTC scholarships awarded at Sienna College in Albany, New York, and the Army commissioned him in 1968 as a field artillery officer. He arrived in Vietnam in June 1970 as a 22-year-old after attending advanced camp, Ranger school, Airborne training, and some time at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. He thanks his above-average C-ration culinary skills to lessons taught in the military adviser training course he attended in-country. He fondly recollects waterskiing on the canal to Can Tho for recreation but admits, “anything that moved slow was a target.” He describes spending six months as an adviser on a Mobile Advisory Team outside of Can Tho in IV Corps, then credits luck and "being in the right place at the right time" for a one-year assignment as an Airborne Ranger adviser, of which he spent his first 30 days constantly conducting combat operations. He describes the U.S. Army Combat Infantry Badge, South Vietnamese Army Ranger battalions, and typical operations assigned to the ARVN Rangers; including one mission that involved finding an Australian sailor missing near the Nam Can naval facility. In late 1971 the U.S. Army Ranger advisers were reassigned from Ranger battalions to the ARVN Ranger group headquarters, where they (the advisers) would facilitate ARVN Ranger support to the special operations units. He confides his worst memory of Vietnam was being unable to obtain supplies on Christmas Day in 1970 and eating a hotdog as Christmas dinner, but he fondly remembers attending Bob Hope’s Christmas Show in Tan Son Nhut in 1971. Of his Vietnam experience Hanretta says, “...it was a positive, life changing experience... coming out of Vietnam I was very comfortable about who I was. I had discovered fears I never knew existed. I did things I never knew I was capable of. I knew that I was proud to be an American citizen having fought for my country. I was equally proud coming home.”

Key Words: Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC), Fort Sill, Shake ‘n Bake, Military Advisor Training Academy (MATA), Di An, Regional Forces/Popular Forces (RF/PF) ‘ruff-puffs’, mobile assistance team (MAT), Vietnamese Army (ARVN), Vietnamese National Defense Force, VC Lake, Combat Infantryman’s Badge (CIB), movements to contact, the Green Berets, Christmas, Black Pony, rest and relaxation (R&R), 82nd Airborne Division.

Key Names: Lieutenant Colonel Harry Ball, Staff Sergeant Gary Carpenter, John Wayne, Hanoi Hannah, Bob Hope.