Status: U Return-Path: Received: from web5203.mail.yahoo.com ([216.115.106.97]) by tyner.mail.mindspring.net (Earthlink Mail Service) with SMTP id tgihsu.mus.37kbi5q for ; Mon, 21 May 2001 12:51:42 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <20010521165140.5445.qmail@web5203.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [172.147.53.120] by web5203.mail.yahoo.com; Mon, 21 May 2001 09:51:40 PDT Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 09:51:40 -0700 (PDT) From: MPCgram Subject: MPCGram 344 To: MPCGram@yahoo.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii ============================================== MPC Gram ============================================== Covering the Entire World of Military Numismatics ----------------------------------------------- Series 002-Number 344 Monday, May 21, 2001 My Vietnam-Era MPC Experiences, Part 2 By Howard A. Daniel III About a week after my arrival in Vietnam, I was informed that my briefings were coming to an end that afternoon. My orders were to report to my quarters at the Metropole Hotel the next day, the same place my friend already knew were assigned to me several days ago. And the day after moving into my quarters, I was to report to a U.S. Navy Commander Van Hook at an address near the Cholon PX. I walked out of my compound and took a taxi to the Metropole Hotel. I registered at the reception desk and was assigned to a 5th or 6th floor room. It was a long walk up to it, and as entered it, a Vietnamese woman followed me and said she was my maid. I looked around the room and it was pretty sparse but it was all mine. There was a huge crack with many small cracks under a new coat of paint in a wall near a balcony door. I asked the maid what happened and she told me the hotel had been bombed a couple of months ago. Several of the rooms on the lower floors were destroyed, but mine was just shook up. I did not know whether to feel good or bad. My only other instruction for the day was to take my medical records down to a clinic on the first floor to see if I was up-to-date on my shots. I pulled out my medical records and took them downstairs. The medic looked them over and said all I needed was an Elephantitis shot. What the hell was that? The medic said it was very painful and that I needed to quickly get to my room until it wears off. He gave me a helluva shot in one of my cheeks, then I started walking fast to my room. I was on about the fourth floor when the pain hit. I went down on all fours and groaned. I slowly crawled up to my room and lay in bed until dark. I rose, showered, and dressed in new civilian clothes. I slowly walked down to my friend's Tran Hung Dao bar. He was not there and my leg was still too sore to walk to his hotel and up several floors to his room. I sat on the last stool at the bar and fought off about ten bar girls. I ordered a beer from an older woman behind the bar who was playing solitaire. I looked around while she played solitaire, then she asked me to play blackjack with her. Our bets were in MPC. There seemed to be more MPC than dong in the bar!. Several gamblers had taught me to count cards and watch faces. After a couple of hours, I was about $50 ahead. While we played, I learned she owned the bar, and two others. When she left to talk to one of her girls, I pushed my winnings to the other side of the bar and walked away. On the way out, I said "Good night" to her. I slowly walked up to my room and went to bed. The next morning I rose, dressed and walked across the street to a consolidated mess operated by the Navy. There was a ton of food available and at least one hundred tables. I paid for my food in MPC at a cash register. I noticed the place converted to a club at night and there were a bunch of slot machines along a couple of walls. At that time, I did not know what military tokens had to be purchased to use the machines. I ate in a few minutes then walked outside to find a taxi. I told the taxi driver to take me to the Cholon PX. I paid him in dong a got out at the front gate. The sign had opening time at 10AM and I was two hours early. I used the directions to find Commander Van Hook's two-story house a couple of blocks away on a quiet residential street. I walked through an open front door and was greeted by a young American in civilian clothes with a .45 caliber pistol in a shoulder holster. I told him I was looking for the commander. He took me to an American woman, who was his secretary. He was in Hong Kong on R&R and I could wait in his office for him. It took me just a couple of days to read everything I could get my hands on in his and her offices. There was nothing classified and nothing of real interest to me. My breaks and lunch were at the Cholon PX and snack bar. All of my purchases were in MPC, but I just ate and bought a good supply of toilet articles. One day near the PX I found a store that sold Suzuki motorcycles. I looked at them and the owner said I could buy one with MPC or dong. Was there anyplace MPCs were not used? But I needed the right papers to operate it in Saigon. The commander appeared early one morning in civilian clothes and found me at his desk. I jumped up, excused myself, and he replaced me in his chair. He was very casual and we introduced ourselves. I handed him my personnel file and other papers given to me. He looked at them and told me he was representing Major General McChristian to me. I did not know what to say, and for one of a few times, I was smart to keep my mouth shut. He started to describe the intelligence situation and the general wanted to automate it in an IDHS unit within 90 days. After about an hour of talking about the requirement, he asked me if I could handle the job. I said "Yes sir." Then he asked if I had any questions. I said "Yes, what was an IDHS unit?" I thought he would faint! I followed it up with "I can do the job sir, but I have no idea what the hell is an IDHS." He said it was an Intelligence Data Handling Systems unit. As I was getting ready to leave, he told me there was authorization for the unit, but it was not until October 1, so there was no official money or people. This was mid-January and he asked "Could I still do it in 90 days?” I knew midnight requisitioning was my solution and I had never turned down a job, so I said "Yes sir." Then he said I was temporarily assigned to the Combined Intelligence Center, Vietnam (CICV) on Tan Son Nhut (TSN) Air Base. There was a Specialist Sixth Class Leroy Lewis out there waiting for me. He had just reenlisted out of the artillery for ADP and would work for me. There was also a 2LT John Lalli, an intelligence analyst, who would sign any papers needed signing by an officer. And that his boss was a COL Gains Hawkins. If the 2LT was not useful to me, I was to ask COL Hawkins for another one. I thanked the commander and departed for my hotel. I sat at the small desk in my room and started laying out a plan to create the unit. After I had about fifty items, I tore them into individual slips and reordered them into the right sequence. I added more subtopics and merged them into the slips. A few hours later it was lunch time. I went downstairs for some Scotch tape and went back to my room to tape all of the slips together and covered them with tape too. I folded up about three pages and put them in my shirt. I walked over to the Navy Mess, paid for it in MPC, and ate lunch. After lunch, I went back to my room, pulled out the papers and started writing again. By nightfall, I had almost ten pages of a project plan, taped on both sides and locked in my duffel bag. I burned the old pages and my notes in a trash can on my balcony. I looked down at the bar and went downstairs to it. The bar owner warmly greeted me and told a bar girl in English to get off "his" barstool. Instead of the Miller beer I was drinking last night, she handed me a San Miguel. This was new to me and it tasted better too, so it became my favorite whenever I could get it in Viet Nam. She told me about finding the $50. in MPC I had won from her. As a result of my actions, I never had to pay for another beer in her bars and I could go home with one of her girls a week for free. Things were looking up for me, but there was a war out there somewhere and was it ever going to meet up with me? We talked for about an hour and I drank about three beers. As I got up to leave I put some MPC on the bar. She pushed it back at me. I said it was a tip for the barmaid and not paying for my beer. She smiled and said I was a very tricky man. We shook hands and I went up to my room and bed. The next day I dressed in regular fatigues and leather boots. No jungle fatigues and boots available for issue in Saigon, so when things wore out, I was told to replace them on the black market. I went to the Navy mess, paid for my breakfast in MPC, ate it and walked outside. I had watched small groups of Americans waiting outside and everyone climbing on various buses every few minutes. I asked one man for the TSN bus and he said it was any blue Air Force bus, so I boarded one. It drove through the city and eventually onto a long straight street that took it through the main gate. All of us got off at 7th Air Force headquarters. I asked people about CICV and no one knew what I was talking about. Several hours later I was back where I started. I walked inside and asked a clerk about CICV. He immediately gave me the directions to it about five blocks away behind the old fire station. I had walked around the base when I could have walked fifty feet and gotten my directions. Damn! My walk to CICV took me past a foul smelling building. When I got to the front side of it, the sign had "Morgue" on it. Remains were being processed inside it! Ugh. I walked past a Vietnamese "housing" area and there were several outside snack bars with stools around the counters. Americans and Vietnamese were eating at them. I walked over and ordered a soft drink. The sign was in MPC and dong. I paid in MPC and I think it was 25 cents. I found the old fire station and it was facing tens of concrete revetments with Air Force fighters in them. Behind it was an old warehouse with U.S. and Vietnamese vehicles parked all around it. I showed my ID card and orders to one of two MPs at the front gate and two more inside the front door. The building was PACKED and the second floor was sagging under the weight of men, office equipment and other stuff. I immediately walked away from being under it and found COL Hawkins office. I knocked on his door and reported to him. I could see he was a very busy man, but when he heard my name, he immediately stopped, got up, come around his desk, and shook my hand. He acted like he was very happy to see me and guided me away from his office to a desk with a very skinny 2LT sitting at it. He introduced me to my 2LT John Lalli. The 2LT was to do anything I needed for the IDHS. Did we both understand? We both said "Yes sir" to him at the same time as he disappeared. The 2LT took me to a nearby desk and introduced me to SP6 Leroy Lewis. He was a large muscular black man and looked way down at me. He said he outranked me but he did not know anything about ADP, so he would work for me. We shook on it. I asked the 2LT what he knew about ADP and he said he had an Introduction to ADP course at Notre Dame, but he could remember only a little about it. I told them to work on whatever they were doing before I arrived and when I was ready for them, I would call on them. I walked back to the bus stop and climbed on the next one. At my hotel, I got off and walked straight to my bar and "my" barstool. I was really dry from walking around that large hot and dusty air base and drank six beers before I knew it. I walked over to the Navy mess, paid for my dinner in MPC and ate it. Then I was in my room. My maid was not happy to see a very dirty uniform and boots. I took off everything and showered for an hour. I went to bed before it was dark and slept all night until dawn. After dressing, I walked down to the reception desk and asked for a military telephone book. I took it to my room and started writing down all of the unit names, addresses and telephone numbers that might have ADP in them. I returned the telephone book and walked over to the Navy mess for breakfast. The cashier said there was no charge in MPC for coffee. I sat there over several cups of coffee prioritizing the list of units. The Data Processing Unit (DPU) my friend was assigned to was number one. If any of you remember a Van Hook Navy officer, please contact me about him. I really want to talk to him again. I will write more about my Vietnam War numismatic and related experiences in future Grams. Hope you like them. =============================================== Editorial ---------------------------------------------------- We are back in business! Yes, all of the crashed data has been recovered! The hard drive itself is a monument to the “back up gods.” The book is back in progress. The other books that were in jeopardy were also save. Of course all of the projects are now terribly behind schedule. I would really love to tell you the details of the recovery, but I will not. The complexities were quite amazing. In fact all problems are not solved, but all, or virtually all, data are saved and we are back at work. Thanks to everyone who offered suggestions or even just encouraging words. =========================================== Mail Call ---------------------------------------------------- Dear Gram, A friend recently told me of her experiences with MPC right after WW II as she was with her folks in D-Land. There was a lot of illegal trading done in MPC, particularly by the wives of reserve officers. They used it where ever they could and ultimately the chief of security, a colonel, was sent home because his wife was such a flagrant trader in MPC. The reserves did not want to be there and were perturbed that they had to work with the regular officers. I have asked her for more details of her use of MPC and I hope she comes through. Nick Editor, I loved the defense bond story and I learned a little today. I hope to be soon working on Ruth Hills chit collection and other items and I expect to include some in the 2002 CPMX sale, probably with the debut of our world paper money sale which is coming along very nicely. Lyn Knight =================================================== Departments --------------------------------------------------- WWII numismatics seminar at ANA Summer Seminar 2001 --------------------------------------------------- Not only does the scholarship fund have an official identity but also has a bank account! Any further donations should be paid to the order of "Military Numismatists Scholarship" and sent to: Military Numismatists c/o Marcus Turner 8103 East US Highway 36 Suite 163 Avon, IN 46123 THE UPDATED LIST OF SCHOLARSHIP BENEFACTORS 3/22/01. These folks have generously provided money or material to finance scholarships to the ANA WWII Numismatics seminar. Your contributions will help promote collecting WWII material and be greatly appreciated. Many donations were received at CPMX and MPCFest. Mr. Anonymous Donor, Mike Cummings, Sue and Keith Bauman, Ed B., Doug Bell, Tom Denly, Continental Coin Invensor, Inc., Denly's, R. A. Medina, Harold “MPCKid” Kroll, Leo "Paymaster" May, Mrs. R.C. Matherne, Bill McNease, Marv Mericle, Mel and Jeremy Steinberg, Marcus Turner, Larry Ski, Guido, Fred, PK6, Joel Shafer, World Wide Ventures, Pam West, John and Nancy Wilson, Neil Shafer, W. E. Yanchick, Mark Watson, Al Glaser, Phil Goldstein, Rod Hardy, Wesley Hardy, Gary Hicks, Jack Lippincott, Ian Marshall, Kevin Maloy, David Seelye, Nick Schrier, Elmer Smith, Dan Swartz, Tom Warburton, Dick Freyser, Tim Kyzivat ==================================================== Post/Base Exchange (PX/BX/NEX) Dump your dupes! Your classified advertisement for items for sale will be run here for free. Send your ads to the gram. This service is for everyone, most humble dealer or most advanced collector. The point is to make the gram more interesting. Send in a list of items for sale and we will list them here in the gram. In all cases confirm your order via email first. FOR SALE Your items for sale will be listed in the Gram for FREE. Send your listings now. Netherlands Ministerie Van Oorlog 25 Gulden Pick M.3 A.UNC-UNC $900.00. Or Japan series 100 "A" 10 Yen GEM UNC $240.00. MPC FEST II series 011 accepted at par, premium for replacements. Confirm please coinman@rochester.rr.com. WANTED Collectors may submit lists of items wanted for their collections for listing here. Dealers and collectors who have these items are then encouraged to list them or sale in the above section. This is a trial, if you like it, send your list. =================================================== Staff: publisher and editor: Fred Schwan - fred@papermoneyworld.com; assistant editor - Phil Goldstein IWANTMYMPC@aol.com Tuesday columnist Joe Boling – JoeBoling@aol.com Thurski columnist Larry “Ski” Smulczenski – ski@papermoneyworld.com critic: Harold Kroll - MPCKid@papermoneyworld.com; index manager: Ed Beaman webmaster & technical advisor: Doug Bell - (Wiz): doug@papermoneyworld.com; The Boss: Judy Schwan ===== MPC Gram is published by BNR Press and papermoneyworld.com as a free service to the community of military money collectors. Your suggestions, criticisms, complaints, editorial contributions, letters, and even praise are very welcome. The entire contents including linked illustrations are copyright protected by the publishers. In the case of contributors, the copyright is protected on behalf of the creators. 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