Pleiku

His base in Pleiku housed 600 men, in the shadow of Artillery Hill. During battles, 155mm Howitzers rolled out, fired on the enemy and rolled back to reload. O’Connor sometimes found himself accompanying convoys to Quin Nhon Harbor. Their missions were to take military trucks back to base.\

Coming back often proved difficult. Enemy soldiers made efforts to blow up the convoy’s lead truck, creating a roadblock.

“Half of them would make it back,” O’Connor said.

At the base, mortar and rocket attacks were a nightly affair. Some detonated inside the base meters from O’Connor and other soldiers. O’Connor’s most disturbing memories are of Vietnamese soldiers stepping on land mines.

Overhead, Air Force planes dropped bombs and fired miniguns, adding to the 155mm rounds from Artillery Hill on the battlefield.

“They just murdered everything,” O’Connor said.

O’Connor was never wounded. His only physical affliction came from a mosquito bite. He suffered encephalitis from the bite, acute inflammation of the brain. Penicillin helped.

A 3 a.m. siren awakened O’Connor to the Tet Offensive, the bloodiest period in the war. Soldiers fought to get their weapons out of storage, which were locked up because of Vietnam’s called cease-fire.

O’Connor left in June 1968 in a plane that climbed rapidly into the sky to avoid ground fire. His time served in combat was hard, but he has not forgotten the relationships he forged.

“You fought alongside everybody,” he said. “People fought for each other and they loved each other.”