Joseph Stern:  

In June of 1965 when I graduated the nightly news was all about the escalating Vietnam War. With the increasing numbers of men being drafted, I tried to join the Air Force, but they weren't interested in people who were color blind, so I ended up enlisting in the US Army and entered January 3, 1966. Because of great test scores, I got training in the Intelligence field and got assigned to the Army Security Agency which is a military branch of the National Security Agency which took its orders from NSA instead of the DoD. I ended up attached to a unit supporting the 101st Airborne Division, and I shipped out to Vietnam on December 7, 1967 with the entire Division. A little less than 2 months later I had the fabulous adventure of participating in the Tet Offensive. With the 101st I was stationed at Bien Hoa a little north of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) and then to Camp Eagle in northern South Vietnam. From Camp Eagle I was transferred to a unit supporting the 9th Infantry Division way down in the Mekong River Delta and then after a year, I was transferred back to the United States and worked just outside Washington, D.C. for ...Expand for more