“River Rat” Robbins

Hal Robbins and his wife, Mary, enjoy a quiet life out in the country, living in a log cabin home they built themselves in Crooked River Ranch.

This lifestyle is in sharp contrast, however, to the life Hal lived during his time in the military. During his 30 years of service with the U.S. Coast Guard, he spent a year living in the jungles of Vietnam, sharing a 30-foot living space on a boat with 11 other men.

Hal, now 81, said he joined the Coast Guard in January of 1953 because he was tired of going to high school, and he liked that it was smaller than the other branches of the U.S. military.

“I knew it was a hard outfit to get into,” he said. “When I joined, there were only about 25,000 people in it back then.”

Hal is also proud of the fact that the Coast Guard is a family affair for him — his uncle served 41 years, his son served 25, another son served 4 years and his granddaughter is currently serving.

“That’s a lot of combined time,” he said.

“I like the Coast Guard missions, they are good ones. It’s the only service that has jobs other than war,” Hal said, adding that search and rescue and oil cleanup are Coast Guard duties that he appreciates. “The rescue end of it interested me a lot. I was able to get into that early on.

“One of the neatest things that happened (in Vietnam) was when we’d take a doctor and go visit villages and take care of the little kids,” Hal continued, sharing a story about how he helped a little boy who had sat on his mother’s hot hibachi. “We worked around the same villages all the time, so we got to know them and they got to know us. We got to know them better than the other branches because we stayed the longest.”

Hal — who described himself as a “river rat” — served in Vietnam for one year, in 1966. He was stationed in Cat Lo, and his division was tasked with cruising upriver to Vung Tau in search of enemy ships, arms and troops. His mission was part of “Operation Market Time,” he said, which had the responsibility of stopping all boat traffic.

“If it floated, we stopped it. The Coast Guard made a heck of an impact on the war. We literally stopped them from running down the coast,” he said. “The river was 600 yards across, so we were always a moving target. But after about 60 days, they learned not to shoot at us from boats. They’d always lose big time. They didn’t have a chance.”

Hal’s mission was so dangerous, in fact, that during his time in Vietnam, his mother asked him to stop writing letters home to his father about what was going on because it was making him a nervous wreck.

“It wasn’t safe,” Hal emphasized. “The enemy was along the edges of the rivers.”

During his stint, Hal served as Chief Boatswain, and his crew had five-day patrols, with two-day rests in between. The men lived on the 82-foot boats for a year, sharing the front 30 feet that were the living quarters. The back of the boats were dedicated to combat artillery, including large mortars similar to canons.

“The year I was there, we took three Chinese communist travelers (boats) out of North Vietnam that had enough arms and ammunition for 800 men,” Hal recalled, adding that the crew continuously boarded junks on the river to search the passengers for papers, taking hostages if needed. “This took place 24 hours a day. It never stopped. You don’t get much sleep at night. We had to sneak off during the day to catch three or four hours.

“I came home so bloody tired.”

Despite the stress, Hal said he and his boat-mates got along well, and he is still in contact with some of them.

“All the crews got along really well. They were great; we never had an argument,” he said.

Hal was born in Massachusetts, then his father moved the family to Mt. View, California, where Robbins attended high school. He met Mary while in high school, and the two married in February of 1954.

“I went to Korea, then came home and we got married,” he said. The couple eventually had four children.

“I had to adjust,” said Mary Robbins. “I took care of the children and finances while he was gone. We moved a lot. You go where he has to go and make the best of it.

“Those who came back from Vietnam don’t get over it,” she continued. “Things happened, and they can’t talk to other people about it. They saw things that nobody should have to see.”

Though the lifestyle had its challenges, Mary said she enjoyed seeing the country while her husband was in service, particularly the East Coast.

“We met a lot of neat people,” she said, adding that because the Coast Guard was somewhat small, they would generally know people wherever they got transferred.

Their marriage weathered the military life, and the couple has been married 62 years.

“Now, we’re just stubborn old people,” Mary said with a chuckle.

“It was a good job, and a fun job,” said Hal, reflecting on his Coast Guard career, and reminiscing about a time when he was in Bandon, Oregon, having lunch and received a strange phone call.

“A buddy at Port Orford called and said a Russian ship had come into harbor, and that I needed to come down, get on the boat and not let them leave,” Hal explained.

This was in 1968, he said, right after Navy intelligence vessel USS Pueblo had been captured by North Korea. The ship had been engaged in routine surveillance in international waters 16 miles off the North Korean coast, but was captured and the crew taken hostage and tortured by the North Koreans for 11 months. During that tense time, Hal said, boats from Russia didn’t just sail into U.S. ports without notice.

Robbins went to Port Orford and boarded the ship. The Russian captain, Hall recalled, was cordial.

“He knew where he was, but there is an international law that allows ships to seek harbor refuge in foreign countries if there is an emergency,” he said.

In this case, a crew member had an injury that needed medical attention, so the ship was allowed to stay overnight while the man was treated.

“Stuff like that goes on in the Coast Guard all the time, and no one knows about it,” Hal said with a laugh.

During his 30 years of service, Hal and his family were stationed up and down the west coast, from San Francisco to Alaska, and then in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, on the Canadian border. The Robbins family spent six years in Michigan, where Hal was in charge of keeping the locks open on the Great Lakes during the winter.

Of his 30 years of service, Hal spent 13 serving as commanding officer of his own ships and stations on land. He worked his way up through the ranks, retiring in 1982 as a W4 Chief Warrant Officer, the highest-ranking position in the Coast Guard at that time.

By the time he retired, Hal had received many awards and medals, including the Coast Guard’s Accommodation Ribbon, Achievement Medal, Combat Action Ribbon, Campaign Medals for Korea and Vietnam and a Navy Commedation Medal.

Hal said he retired in Oregon because he had claimed it as his residence while stationed here. His last tour in the Coast Guard was in Astoria.

After retiring from the military, Hal took a job working for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department in corrections, a job he held until he had a heart attack in 1995. The family has lived in Crooked River Ranch for 32 years in the home that they built together. As a long-time CRR resident, Hal served as the second paid fire chief of the area, and worked as the area’s security officer.

In his free time, Robbins also served as commander of the VFW post in Redmond for two years, and continues to volunteer there and at the Veterans Outreach Ranch located between Bend and Redmond.

Now retired again, Hal enjoys hunting and fishing, and spending time with his children and grandchildren. All four of his children live in Oregon, so Hal and Mary get to see them regularly.

Upon reflection, Hal said, “I’ve seen a lot, I’ve done a lot, and a lot has happened to me.”