Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
8:25 | After a lengthy background check, Bob Havens was cleared for top secret work in Thailand with a Navy unit that was placing listening devices along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. It was a dangerous job for the air crews, who had to fly low and slow.
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His father didn't talk about it much, but Bob Havens knew his Navy experience in the South Pacific was a big part of his life. Perhaps as a tribute to his father, who had passed away by then, Bob impulsively enlisted in the Navy on a lunch break.
After a freezing boot camp at Great Lakes and photo intelligence school in Denver, Bob Havens was assigned to a patrol squadron in Maryland. The unit shadowed and tracked Russian trawlers and submarines off the East coast.
There was no information for Bob Havens regarding his new assignment to a unit in San Diego. He didn't know what he was being groomed for but he was undergoing intense training, including the SERE course - survival, evasion, resistance, escape.
His brief stop in Saigon was eye-opening, to say the least, but Bob Havens was going on to a secret air base in Thailand. No one knew what the Navy unit was doing in the middle of the jungle, but it was disrupting enemy movements on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Bob Havens salutes the memory of Dennis Anderson, a Navy pilot who was among Observations Squadron 67's first casualties. There are two stories, one funny and one poignant.
During the battle of Khe Sanh, there was confusion about the enemy forces besieging the Marines there. Bob Havens was part of a clandestine Navy unit placing listening devices on the Ho Chi Minh trail and this outfit was brought in to gather intelligence.
Truck kills increased fourfold on the Ho Chi Minh Trail after Bob Havens secret Navy squadron dropped listening devices to monitor the movement. It was top secret work, and when the unit was disbanded, the men were scattered through the service so they couldn't talk about it.
He was in the Navy, but it wasn't until the last few months of his enlistment that Bob Havens actually served on a ship, and that ship was tied up in Long Beach. He turned down reenlistment and tried to go back to college, but instead lucked into a rewarding career working with children.
Bob Havens recalls a sweet story about seeing Raquel Welch at a Bob Hope show during the Vietnam war, and then meeting her twenty years later. Then, he has some observations on his experience in that war.
