50 years ago, Norwalker John Rey was among first U.S. soldiers sent to Vietnam War

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NORWALK -- When U.S. Marine Corporal John Rey was told to "mount out" in November 1964, he assumed he was going on another training exercise in the desert outside his military base in Twentynine Palms, California.

"But they told us, 'Pack all your personal gear and your winter uniforms and ship them home,'" said Rey, now a Norwalk resident. "We went, 'Whoa, we never did this before.' So we're all packing our stuff and questioning. Nobody knew what was going on."

Rey had enlisted in the Marine Corps in September 1962 and looked forward to his three-year enlistment ending in 1965. Instead, the corporal hailing from Woodside Queens, N.Y., was among the first U.S. troops to arrive in Vietnam as part of the rapidly escalating war that would last 10 years.

He and other members of Battery A of the 1st Light Anti-aircraft Missile Battalion arrived by C-130 transport in Danang in February 1965 -- a month before the 9th Marine Expeditionary Bridge came ashore by landing craft.

And unlike those Marines, some of whom were welcomed by Vietnamese girls carrying flowers, Rey's introduction to Vietnam was unsettling at best.

He recalls landing at the U.S. airbase in Danang after dark and riding several miles atop, rather than inside, a troop carrier and passing checkpoints in route to his post on the airbase perimeter.

"If we get ambushed, what's the first thing the guys are going to shoot? The driver and anybody in the front with the driver," Rey said. "Then they're going to come around the back and shoot inside the truck."

Rey and his fellow Marines arrived safely, filled sandbags, dug fighting holes and soon enough saw combat.

He said Viet Cong sappers got inside the airbase on Easter Sunday 1965 and blew up napalm containers and military trucks.

On July 1, North Vietnamese Army regular soldiers attacked, firing mortars and sending suicide sappers.

"I'm in my tent and I start hearing explosions, boom, boom, but I think nothing of it. I figure the tanks on our position were firing out," Rey said. "Then all of sudden, my tent flap flies open and there's Staff Sgt. Walker, 'We're being attacked!' When he opened the tent flap I saw it was daylight -- at least I thought it was daylight -- but it was the choppers dropping the flares."

Rey credited his sergeant -- a World War II veteran of the Battle of Guadalcanal -- for getting him through his Vietnam tour alive. Rey spent eight months in Vietnam, leaving in September 1965, and another four months in the U.S. Marine Corps.

His deployment to Vietnam was not his only tense time as a Marine. Rey said the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 and assassination of President John F. Kenney in November 1963 also caused war jitters.

After returning to the United States from Vietnam, Rey settled back in Woodside Queens. He later met his wife, Rosemarie, and the couple moved to Norwalk in 1977, where they raised a son and two daughters. Rey worked as a contractor.

Looking back, Rey said he never imagined himself going to war.

"I joined the Marines to get away from the neighborhood and do something. I never envisioned war. I never envisioned going to war," Rey said.