20 July 1969. (Or
maybe it was 21 July, since I was over the International Dateline.) I was in Quang Nam Province in Vietnam, on
Hill 34 at Bunker 6 and it was a quiet night for us on the perimeter. There was a fire-fight going on about a
kilometer out to our right-front and flares were lighting up that area. Because we were not immediately under
direct threat we had one of us up and alert while the other two got some sleep
close by. I was the one up.
Our handset phone, connected by wire to the guard-shack
bunker in the middle of the perimeter, sounded.
“Bunker 6”, I answered.
The Sergeant of the Guard was on the line and said, “I just
wanted to let you men know that the astronauts just landed on the Moon". (All I could say in answer was, “Wow!”) He continued:
“I don’t think they have got out of their spacecraft or are walking
around yet, but they have landed safely.”
It was sometime in the middle of the night for us and we were groggy,
and since there wasn’t much else to say we just left it at that. I told my relief about it later when I woke
him up.
After dawn we were updated as new developments were reported. We went around kind of dumbfounded, as these
events were, literally, more than a world away and they were so new that they
were hard to conceive.
-Zenwind.
