First day in-country
This is one of my father's stories from his first few hours in Vietnam. Some of the errata is probably incorrect, but as I'ma need a séance to get the details straight, you get this from my memory banks.
So, October-ish 1971. Pop is a USMC pilot, flying the LEGENDARY A6-A, to go and bring peace and democracy to North Vietnam (and possibly also Cambodia and Laos...). He initially is flying from Cherry Point, NC, with an ultimate destination of Da Nang, if memory serves. Being that this is 1971, there are surprisingly no direct flights from CONUS to the Republic of Vietnam. So, dad's travel path is something along the lines of this -
Cherry Point > San Francisco > Hawaii > Guam > Da Nang. (There is/are/were entirely likely other stop-overs in this trip, but you get the general gist). All told, Pop is on a series of planes for 30+ hours, with naught but the drone of the engines to entertain him.
Pop finally lands in Da Nang, gathers his luggage, and is eventually shown to his quarters in one of the USMCs FINEST quonset huts. In his words, dad squares his shit away, does the needful as quickly as possible, grabs a rack, and promptly passes the fuck out.
Some time later, Pop is rousted by one of hunger/bodily functions/shouting, wakes up, and stumbles outside to see people running around like madmen putting out fires, with smoke drifting across the airfield. Dad asks a nearby service member exactly what is going on, as he's in the land that timezones forgot at this point.
Pop is then informed that he had just slept through a whole-ass NVA rocket attack at the other end of the airfield. Pop is surprised by this, as he DID NOT BUDGE from his rack during ANY of this. He *DID* quickly learn that when he heard the incoming calls/sirens, to grab his pillow and blanket, and roll UNDERNEATH his bunk to continue sleeping in the future.
Pop only spent about 5 months in Vietnam before the Marines were pulled out in early 1972, and spent the rest of his tour in Iwakuni as a legal assistance officer, or something of that ilk. There's a good story from his time there as well, but that shall wait for another day.