Saigon, Vietnam
$12.00 (1963)

Oslo, Norway
$6.82

Notes: In 1964 a one way ticket on the Hong Kong Star ferry was raised from $.05 to $.06 from the mainland to the island.   The Hong Kong workers had protest marches because they were only making $45/month.   In order to understand the emotional outburst, you need to know that $6 Hong Kong equaled $1 in U.S. dollars.   The Vietnamese lived on $15/month.   I was paid $50/month as a Private in the U.S. Army until I got to Vietnam where I made an additional $50/month in hazardous duty pay.

Unfortunately, the payroll clerk stole my first 3 months pay when I arrived in Vietnam.   I requested and received money from home until my Commanding Officer sent me to Saigon to collect the 4th month of pay from the Payroll Officer.   The irony of my predicament was that I was the Payroll Officer for all the Vietnamese workers at II Corps Headquarters in Pleiku, Vietnam.   And this was just one of my duties during my 24/7 work week as a diesel powerman for our Troposcatter Communications site.

If the power went out, a soldier was killed every minute we were down plus it cost over $10,000 for ten minutes of communications outage.   I was proud of the fact that we went 3 months without a single power outage among the 6 Troposcatter Communications sites in Vietnam.   I worked as the only U.S. Powerman along side Page Company Engineers most of my tour of duty in Pleiku.   When it was time for me to rotate back to the U.S., my Commanding Officer requested and received 4 U. S. Army Powermen replacements to relieve me.   As a footnote, I never received my 3 months of stolen pay. End of Notes: