Captain John E. Christiansen, U .S. Army – Serving in the Army’s Air Force in Vietnam

For almost 100 years, Land Grant universities in the United States required male students to participate in military training. Freshman and sophomore men received training in military drill, physical fitness, and military science. For Captain John E. Christiansen, U.S. Army, the military training he received at the University of Maine literally showed him that the sky was the limit on what he could do in the Army. Three years later, he found himself flying reconnaissance missions over South Vietnam in support of U.S. and allied troops on the ground. His experience helped shape the rest of his life.

John was born in 1940 on the Fourth of July in Newton, Massachusetts. His father worked for Raytheon in nearby Waltham, and the family bought a home within walking distance of the company’s headquarters just after the end of World War II.

John attended public schools in Waltham and had a keen interest in farming. When he was fourteen, he tried his hand at it over the summer on a farm in Wisconsin. He enjoyed the experience, and the following two summers he worked at a small farm in Weston, Massachusetts, riding his bicycle six miles each way to work every day. However, when he turned sixteen, his father got him a job in the art and photo department at Raytheon, and his thoughts of farming faded away.

John graduated from Waltham High School in the late spring of 1958. He enrolled at the University of Maine in the fall to pursue a degree in chemical engineering. While there, he developed a love of theater and became heavily involved in the Maine Masque, the university’s theater group. He even traveled with the group overseas during the spring semester of 1962, delaying his graduation by a full year.

The other activity occupying John’s time at the University of Maine was Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) training, which was mandatory for all freshman and sophomore men. John applied to continue participation in ROTC during his junior and senior years because he assessed world events might result in another war soon. If that happened, he thought life would be better as an officer rather than an enlisted soldier. The ROTC program also paid for John to take flying lessons and to become a licensed pilot. On one of his early training flights, the instructor told him to maintain an altitude of 100 to 200 feet and follow the river coursing below. John felt a freedom he hadn’t experienced before and committed himself to flying. His ROTC unit committed itself to John, too, making him the commandant of cadets during his senior year.

John graduated from the University of Maine in June 1963 with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering. He had enough credits for a minor in theater, but the minor was not available to him because of his engineering degree. To celebrate graduation, John took his mother for a ride in a twin-seat Piper aircraft. Although John tried to make the flight as smooth as possible, his mother sat white-knuckled the entire time.

Normally, graduation meant John would begin to serve on active duty as a second lieutenant in the Army. However, he had selected the Transportation Corps as his service branch, and its Officer Basic Course would not begin until April 1964. John did not mind waiting because he wanted to fly, and the Transportation Corps had the most flight training slots available of all the branches. What he did not want to do was sit idle for ten months waiting for the next Officer Basic Course to begin. Accordingly, he requested a further delay of his start date so he could earn his master’s degree in theater at Northwestern University in Chicago. The Army approved his request.

With his master’s degree in hand, John reported for active duty to the Transportation Corps Officer Basic Course in August 1964 at Fort Eustis, Virginia. He and the other new second lieutenants found the course challenging, but John excelled. After he completed the training, he reported to the 1099th Boat Company, also at Fort Eustis, where he served as a platoon leader for a boat platoon. The platoon operated LCM-8 landing craft, which could carry one tank or one platoon of men to a beach for disembarkation. John was in charge of the men operating his platoon’s boats and was responsible for ensuring the boats remained combat ready. Although John enjoyed his work in “the Army’s navy,” he soon applied for Army aviation training so he could put the piloting skills he learned in college to good use.

As had been the case when John graduated from college, he had to wait for an aviation training slot to open before his training could begin. He followed up throughout the latter months of 1964 to find out his start date, only to be told it would not happen before February 1965. Relying on that repeated assurance, John proposed to his sweetheart, Diane Thompson, and they set their wedding date for January 16, 1965. Then, just before Christmas 1964, John received orders to report to flight training on January 5, 1965, less than two weeks before his wedding. John called Diane and his parents and told them they would have to reschedule the wedding. His mother would have none of it. On Monday morning, she was in her congressman’s office. He was a powerful member of the House Armed Services Committee. The next day, John received a call from a major at the Pentagon. The major politely asked whether Second Lieutenant Christiansen would find starting flight school at Fort Rucker, Alabama, in early February “satisfactory.” John responded he would, and he and Diane were married on January 16th as planned.

Army flight training at Fort Rucker brought new challenges for both John and Diane. To begin with, there were no vacancies in married officer housing in February, so they had to get an apartment in nearby Enterprise, Alabama. As John needed their car to drive to the base each day, Diane was left stranded in their apartment. Fortunately, Diane made friends with the wife of an enlisted soldier who lived in the complex, and she offered to take Diane to the base commissary and exchange whenever Diane needed to go. When John’s command became aware of the situation, the colonel’s wife met with Diane and chastised her for fraternizing with an enlisted man’s wife. Diane pushed back, arguing she didn’t have a car and none of the officers’ wives had offered to help. It worked, and Diane retained her friend.

John found flight training less confrontational. He flew the single-engine Cessna L-19 Bird Dog, which was essentially a glorified Piper Cub. It had two seats: the pilot seat up front and an observer seat immediately behind. Its mission was to reconnoiter enemy positions, mark them with smoke rockets, direct artillery and naval gunfire support, and call in air assets to attack ground targets. The job was extremely dangerous because to successfully complete the mission, the pilot had to fly low and slow over enemy positions, exposing the plane to deadly ground fire.

John loved flight training and excelled. His class was divided into two sections, one flying in the morning and attending classes in the afternoon, while the other took classes in the morning and flew in the afternoon. The two sections swapped schedules each week to ensure everyone had the opportunity to fly given the many spring and summer thunderstorms that often prevented afternoon flying. John particularly enjoyed practicing spins, taking his L-19 to 5,000 feet and then spinning toward the Earth three full times before recovering. Doing so reminded him of the freedom he first felt when following rivers under the watchful eye of his instructor pilot at the University of Maine.

One aspect of flight training did prove problematic for John. Every time he flew with his instrument instructor, an Army captain, he developed head congestion. He went to medical and they diagnosed him as having allergies. To solve the problem, they gave him a concoction he had to inject himself with once a month. Oddly, the problem only occurred when John flew with the captain. When he later flew with a civilian instrument instructor, the congestion went away. Still, he took the shots as prescribed each month. He also had to drop back into a later flight training class because of the instruction he missed while getting his condition diagnosed.

After graduating from flight training at Fort Rucker, John reported back to Fort Eustis for the Aviation Maintenance Officers Course. There he learned what he needed to know to keep his L-19 operational. He completed the course in May 1966 and readied himself for his next assignment—Vietnam. Diane had to ready herself, too, especially since she was pregnant. But duty called, so John headed to Vietnam and arrived in June 1966, just as U.S. involvement in the war escalated rapidly.

When John arrived in South Vietnam, the first thing he noticed was that he had left his allergy medicine in the United States. Although he was initially concerned because he was now in a new environment with lots of things to be allergic to, his allergies never bothered him again. Feeling healthy and strong, he reported as ordered to the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) in Pleiku, which did not operate any L-19 Bird Dogs. Accordingly, he was transferred the next day to a detachment of the 221st Aviation Company operating out of Can Tho in the IV Corps area of responsibility. His mission was to provide support to U.S. Special Forces units operating in the Mekong Delta.

Shortly after he arrived, John went on a familiarization flight close to the Cambodian border. The Special Forces soldier in the back seat warned him not to stray across the border because the Cambodians would shoot him down. He also showed John the location of the Special Forces camps he would be supporting and helped him understand the lay of the land. From then on, John and his observer were on their own.

One of John’s first missions involved flying with a Marine observer over Phu Quoc Island off the southwest coast of South Vietnam. John’s job was to crisscross the island looking for Viet Cong guerrillas and to radio their locations to a Navy destroyer sailing just off the coast. The destroyer would then use its five-inch guns to pummel the enemy’s position identified by John and his observer. After flying over the trails and finding nothing, John turned the plane to fly away. Just as he did, he heard AK-47s firing at him from below. Because he had not yet identified and reported any Viet Cong positions, he turned around to search for them, exposing his low-flying plane to enemy fire. He soon located a Viet Cong platoon taking cover in a foxhole, and his observer radioed the platoon’s position to the destroyer.

With the initial part of his mission complete, John flew nearby in a racetrack pattern. From there, he watched the Navy destroyer fire on the enemy platoon while his observer radioed instructions to the ship to help pinpoint its fire. Suddenly, the plane’s engine quit. Without panicking, John began the restart procedures he’d practiced at flight school. When he reached the step for switching fuel tanks, he threw the switch and the Bird Dog’s engine barked back to life. John had gotten so wrapped up in watching the destroyer and correcting its fires that he’d let his airplane’s primary fuel tank run dry. It was a lesson he would never forget.

As the destroyer’s gunfire subsided, John flew around the backside of a hill. This time, he heard a .50-caliber machine gun start to fire at him. Unfortunately, the Navy destroyer was on the wrong side of the island and could not take the machine gun under fire. Since there was nothing John could do on his own, he decided to fly away, having already satisfied his quota of excitement for the day.

In July 1966, John transferred to the 221st Aviation Company’s headquarters at the Soc Trang Army Airfield in Ba Xuyen Province. More specifically, he was assigned to support the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) that assisted South Vietnamese Army forces operating in the area. Given that the MAAG was based in the town of Soc Trang, John lived in the MAAG compound in town rather than with his company at the airfield. That made for a strange chain of command in that he reported to the 221st Aviation Company’s commander, but his flying assignments came directly from the MAAG. As a result, John’s company commander largely left him alone to do his job, although he did notify John of any upcoming company parties at the airfield. Aside from that, John’s only contact with the airfield occurred when he took off or landed there.

All but one day every month, John flew missions in support of MAAG and South Vietnamese Army objectives. He provided cover for convoys, spotted for artillery fire, and searched for enemy forces. On the one day he had off each month—when his plane was down for maintenance—he hitched a ride on helicopters to visit the U.S. MAAG advisors deployed with South Vietnamese troops in the district towns. He felt doing so built mutual trust, which was essential because the soldiers on the ground relied on him to help them find the enemy, and he relied on the soldiers to rescue him if his plane were to ever go down.

Some of the daily missions John flew supported the South Vietnamese Army Regional Forces and Popular Forces, which John’s MAAG team called RF/PFs or “rough puffs.” Although these forces were typically poorly trained and armed with obsolete weapons, the South Vietnamese Army relied on them to provide security in their towns and villages, particularly at night. During one daylight clash between an RF/PF patrol and a Viet Cong patrol, John was called upon to provide targeting information on the Viet Cong forces. He soon spotted one Viet Cong guerrilla running away from the fight on a path while holding a giant palm leaf over his head. Clearly, the palm leaf did not provide the level of camouflage protection the guerrilla thought it would. Another guerrilla tried to hide in a stack of hay on a nearby farm, covering his head and upper body with hay but leaving his AK-47 and tell-tale black pants fully visible. Finally, John watched as a third guerrilla ran into a “hooch.” To mark the third guerrilla’s location, John fired one of his four 2.75-inch rockets at the hooch and managed to put it right through the door—quite an accomplishment given his only sight was a grease pencil mark on his cockpit window.[1] Needless to say, when John reported the location of Viet Cong guerrillas or marked their location with his rockets, it often turned out very badly for them.

On one of his non-flying days, John finagled a ride on a helicopter heading to a Navy swift boat detachment operating on a branch of the Mekong River. One of the swift boat crews then took him out on their river patrol. John found the experience terrifying because the river was no more than about 400 yards wide, meaning the boat was never more than 200 yards from shore. John could see nothing along the riverbanks except thick mangroves lining every inch of the shoreline. He knew that the Viet Cong were hiding in the mangroves and could fire on the boat anytime they wanted provided they were willing to accept the consequences. Although the consequences would be severe, that provided little comfort to John and the boat crew, who knew they would have to absorb the first shots before they would know where to fire back. After the patrol, John was happy to return to flying his L-19 Bird Dog.

Although John felt comfortable in his Bird Dog, flying low over the jungle was anything but safe. On one flight, his plane took a bullet to the engine, although it did not cause critical damage. After another flight, John discovered a bullet hole in the cockpit just two inches from his head. On yet another occasion, he found a bullet hole just inches from his foot. In fact, over the course of his tour, his plane was hit by bullets a total of twelve times.[2]

Enemy bullets weren’t the only source of danger. Sometimes John had to fly so low, fronds from palm trees lodged in his landing gears. Only the quick work of his crew chief in removing the fronds kept John from getting into hot water with his commanding officer for flying so low.

Despite these close calls, what John feared most was an enemy attack on the ground. The Viet Cong mortared the Soc Trang Army Airfield four times while John operated from there, with one round landing very close to his parked Bird Dog. Of even more concern, John felt vulnerable living away from the airfield in the MAAG compound. His only weapon was an AR-15 with a collapsible stock, and when he was in his defensive position behind some sandbags, he knew the Viet Cong could position themselves in the surrounding buildings to take him out any time they wanted. Still, John felt he had it better than the infantry soldiers on the ground because when John landed on the airfield at the end of daylight, he could relax in the officers’ club. The infantry soldiers had to continue their fight well into the night, never secure no matter where they were or what time it was.

John survived his year-long tour in Vietnam and returned to the United States in June 1967. As he still had time on his service commitment because he had gone through flight training, the Army assigned him to Hunter Army Airfield adjacent to Fort Stuart in Savannah, Georgia. Diane and their new daughter, Charlena—who had been born the previous December while John was in Vietnam, joined him there until John received his honorable discharge in January 1968.

Once a civilian, John moved his family to Iowa City so he could attend the University of Iowa to pursue a doctoral degree in theater. Unfortunately, anti-war protestors harassed Diane in married student housing because of John’s service, and John ran out of money before he could earn his degree. To attempt to remedy the money situation, John taught theater at Stephen F. Austin University in Texas and Emporia State University Teachers College in Kansas. Still not earning enough, John moved his family, which now included daughter number two, Allison, back to Massachusetts. There, he leveraged his chemical engineering degree to snag a position as a sales representative for various chemical companies. At the same time, Diane taught middle school French and German in Beverly, Massachusetts.

Based on her experience teaching, Diane thought John would enjoy teaching high school math. Eventually, she convinced him to study for and take the state licensing exams to become a teacher. John spent his final eleven working years teaching high school chemistry and physics, both of which involved lots of math, in Beverly, Massachusetts. Sadly, Diane passed away in 2003 after they had been happily married for thirty-eight years.

A few years later, John reconnected with his high school and early-college girlfriend, Deanna Harrington, after reviewing Classmates.com in preparation for his fiftieth high school reunion. They met and had lunch and soon rekindled their relationship. They were married in December 2007.

John is certain the three-and-a-half years he spent in the Army profoundly influenced the rest of his life. His service taught him to act responsibly and to solve problems with the tools he had available to him. It made him comfortable with change because he knew change was inevitable. It gave him witticisms he would use for the rest of his life, such as, “You don’t have to like it, soldier. You just have to do it.” And it gave him a sense of belonging and camaraderie he would never forget.

Voices to Veterans is proud to salute Captain John E. Christiansen, U.S. Army, for his wartime service in Vietnam. Routinely exposing his L-19 Bird Dog to enemy fire, John flew hundreds of combat missions in support of U.S. and South Vietnamese troops, providing them with the information they needed to engage the enemy and win battles. After his service, he returned to the United States and led a fulfilling life with his family. We thank John for all he has done and wish him fair winds and following seas.

If you enjoyed John’s story, please sign up for the Voices to Veterans Spotlight monthly newsletter by clicking here. Once each month, you’ll receive a new written veteran’s story directly in your mailbox. Best of all, it’s free and you can unsubscribe at any time.

[1] Another time John fired with pinpoint accuracy, he sank a sampan.

[2] A total of 194 Bird Dogs were lost in the Vietnam War from 1963 to 1977, resulting in the death of 111 crew members and 1 crew member being taken as a prisoner of war. VietnamAirLosses.com, “Loss Statistics: O-1 Bird Dog,” database of fixed-wing aircraft losses in Southeast Asia, 1963–1972, accessed January 22, 2026, https://www.vietnamairlosses.com/index.php/statistics/loss-statistics.