Howard Kramer

Schaefferstown, Pennsylvania - United States Army

We were all scared that we were going to be sent to Korea because it was cold there.  We didn't think too much of Vietnam.  We got there at night and it must have been 120 degrees.  We were in this bus with wire mesh over the windows and they jammed us in there.  They drove like crazy and we're going, "Where the hell are we?  This place stinks.  When are we going to eat?"  We got to the 90th replacement battalion and they had us in these big wooden barracks.  Then everything just stopped.

I was 11-B, Infantry and then went to sniper school where the motto was "one shot, one kill." One night me and my partner, Deono Miller, were out in the rice paddies walking along this dike and heard Vietnamese voices.  We got down to look and here come a group of Viet Cong.  They had uniforms and everything.  I said, "Miller, what are we going to do?"  

He replied, "We're going to shoot them.  You start in the front, and I'll start in the back." 

That was it.  That's what we were trained to do.