50 years ago today, July 12, in sunny Vietnam-land - Where were you?

The 2nd Brigade of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division began to arrive in South Vietnam.
The brigade was initially responsible for providing security for Bien Hoa Air Base near Saigon.


The troops embarked on the Navy transport General W.H. Gordon, with three other ships moving the brigade's equipment.
The Gordon departed on 25 June.
Once under way the men were officially informed of what they had long suspected: They were en route to Vietnam.

The brigade's destination and mission in Vietnam changed a week before its arrival.
Instead of establishing and maintaining defenses for port and supply facilities under construction at Qui Nhon in northern II Corps two of the unit's infantry battalions, the 2d of the 16th and the 2d of the 18th, were to go to Bien Hoa to assist in securing the air base, while the third battalion, the 1st of the 18th, and an artillery battery proceeded to Cam Ranh Bay, about two hundred kilometers south of Qui Nhon, to provide security for the new port being built there.
The Gordon reached Cam Ranh on 12 July, stopping just long enough for the infantry and artillery to disembark.
Continuing south, the ship arrived at Vung Tau on the fourteenth.
Over the next two days the troops made their way to the Vung Tau airfield, where they enplaned for Bien Hoa Air Base.
Upon arrival, they moved by truck to their prospective base camp, about three kilometers southeast of the airfield, a site chosen because it lay astride a line of approach into the air base. There, for the first few days in Vietnam, Colonel Simmons' force came under the command of MACV [U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam], but on the nineteenth the 173d Airborne Brigade assumed operational control.
The arrangement lasted until the 1st Division headquarters reached Vietnam in October.

The change of station from Qui Nhon to Bien Hoa created supply problems.
Food stores and ammunition earmarked for the brigade and prepositioned at Qui Nhon were now unavailable, and could not be easily replaced out of the Army warehouses scattered about Saigon, which were having trouble supporting the American buildup. For the rest of the summer Simmons' brigade lived hand to mouth, and only the presence of a Navy commissary not far from downtown Saigon kept the men from subsisting on field rations for weeks at a time.
Even then, ammunition became so scarce at one point during the summer's operations that the brigade had to borrow artillery rounds from the South Vietnamese