TIFTON— When Dr. Herbert Shippey was growing up in Calhoun County and Albany, he had no idea that he would find himself as a young adult in the belly of a plane at night over Southeast Asia. His task was to record secret transmissions in a language about as far from his native South Georgia dialect as a language can be, while at the same time worrying if his plane was about to be shot down by a North Vietnamese fighter jet.
Shippey, a retired English professor at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, served as a linguist with the United States Navy Fleet Support Detachment in Da Nang in South Vietnam from 1971-1972, where he flew reconnaissance missions over the Gulf of Tonkin and Laos.
Shippey, who continues to teach parttime at ABAC, chronicles these experiences in his new book, “Flying with the Spooks: Memoir of a Navy Linguist in the Vietnam War.” His job was to monitor and translate radio transmissions of the North Vietnamese air force to protect U.S. ships and aircraft from attack by MiG-21 fighter jets.
To honor his service to the country and the college, the ABAC School of Arts and Sciences will host a reading by Shippey from his new book on April 26 at 6 p.m. in Edwards Hall. The public is invited, and light refreshments will be served.
Shippey said he waited until now to tell his story and that of his fellow “spooks” because until recently their activities were classified. The work by Shippey and his colleagues was considered top secret because the safety of men, as well as ships and aircraft, was at stake.
Shippey said that he felt compelled to tell this story as soon as he left Vietnam, “but for decades,” as he states in the book, “I had to remain silent.” He states also that the book he wrote is different from the one he would have written as soon as he left Vietnam, adding that he thinks the book benefits from the “perspective of older years.”
The experiences of combat troops in Vietnam have been well documented in movies, novels, and memoirs, but the experiences of members of the military who served in the intelligence services have not, likely because their activities until recently have been classified.
Shippey has carried these memories with him for over half a century, re-living the vivid “sounds and sights, especially the sounds of rockets exploding in the middle of the night.”
Shippey remembers “being airborne over hostile territory at night, realizing that we maybe had a hostile aircraft coming in our direction. We didn’t know if we were the target or if someone else was the target.”
Not only were Shippey and his fellow translators in peril in the air, they were also in danger in their barracks, where they were subject to rocket attacks any time of the day or night.
Like many of his fellow service men and women, Shippey felt the effects of the war long after the fighting ended. He suffered many years from an eating disorder that he first experienced when he arrived at Da Nang.
“I was very nervous the whole time I was there,” Shippey said. “I had trouble eating and swallowing, and I kept that for decades. I would feel I was choking on food in a restaurant. I would have to eat something smooth. For years I wouldn’t eat rice because it broke up into granules that were hard to swallow.”
On his return from Vietnam, like most veterans of that war, there were no parades or welcoming throngs. Some returning soldiers were even subjected to verbal and physical abuse.
Shippey says in the book of his return home to Gordon Avenue, “When the bus pulled into the station in Albany, I went to the pay phone and let my father know I had arrived. This is how I returned home from the war and active duty in the Navy – no fuss, no fanfare, no crowd holding welcome banners and waving American flags, no glorious sunset – just my father waiting for me in the truck and my mother at home turning on the back porch light for me.”
However, he adds, “That was enough.”
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