Jeff Danziger
Jeff Danziger was an advisor to the ARVN. Danziger possessed knowledge of the Vietnamese language thanks to a 47-week course he took at Fort Bliss. This distinguished him from other American advisors, who often did not know the language and used translators to communicate orders. Attached to the 1st Air Cavalry Division, Danziger advised the 9th ARVN Division and was given various assignments in which he put his Vietnamese-language skills to use.
Jeff Danziger in Vietnam, courtesy of Jeff Danziger
One of these assignments put Danziger in charge of a group of ARVN interpreters. With only a month left of his service, Danziger was assigned to take part in Operation Lam Son. In the build up to Lam Son, Danziger and his interpreters would provide assistance in communications between the American helicopter pilots and the ARVN ground forces. During the operation, he recalls, “My orders, never written out but generally voiced by three different superior officers with inexact parameters, were that my interpreters and I would fly from where we were in the south up to a base near Khe Sanh, a firebase near the demilitarized zone. And there we would be assigned jobs listening to radio sends from the ARVN on the ground calling for more rockets, or, as I could imagine, desperate calls for evacuation of the wounded. If the radio signals weren’t clear enough, we would have to move as close to the Laotian border as needed.”
Halfway through the journey to their assigned firebase—waiting for another helicopter to take them on the rest of the journey—the seven interpreters deserted, leaving Danziger to make the journey to Lam Son alone.
Danziger recalls that many ARVN soldiers shirked orders during the operation: “They kind of made sense. They didn't want to go… they don't want to get off the helicopter. You can't make them. They all have guns in the first place. And after a while, the helicopter pilots just said, ‘No, we're not going to do this anymore.’ So people were refusing orders all over the place.”
Danziger arrived at Firebase Matthew—though he says he may have imagined that name because Matthew was his son’s name—without his interpreters. At the firebase, he manned the radios, interpreting radio messages from both ARVN forces on the ground and American pilots in the air requesting artillery strikes, air support, medivac, and more. He also joined some night missions. Mostly, though, “I waited,” Danziger recounts, “putting all my now-considerable dilatory skills into the appearance of activity, and counting the days [until his service ran out]." Once he received his orders for DEROS (The Date en Route Overseas), he left.
The Jeff Danziger DVP Interview
Jeff Danziger showing off his mug
This oral history explores the life and Vietnam War service of Jeff Danziger, award winning cartoonist who currently resides in Brattleboro, Vermont. Danziger, a New York native, attended the University of Denver before moving to Plainfield, Vermont. Danziger was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1966, and tried to avoid deployment to Vietnam by attending language school and becoming an officer. He served in Vietnam from 1970-1971, where he worked in various capacities for the First Cavalry Division and also served as an advisor to the South Vietnamese Army during the period of the “Vietnamization” of the war. In addition to discussing his wartime experiences in Vietnam, Danziger also reflects on postwar writings and films about the war, American attitudes towards veterans, and his return to Vietnam as a journalist years later.
Interview Transcript and Audio Recording
Please click this link to access the audio recording and transcript of the interview.