Vietnam War vs. "Bonanza"

Two wars ago, if you skip Kosovo, Somalia, Panama and Grenada, there was the Vietnam War.
I was in that war as a newspaper reporter, and as such was probably one of the few people who enjoyed the war. Vietnam is in an exotic clime, and when people started shooting, I could leave!
Many stories come to mind about my time in Vietnam, but the strange ones are the ones that hang with you the longest.
Here is one of the strange ones that still has me scratching my head for some reason.
The story begins with a beautiful, story book trip on a helicopter (Huey) from Cam Ranh Bay to Chulai, both large military bases on the South China Sea.
Most of the way to Chulai the pilot flew over the stunningly blue water--to keep out of range of enemy gunners who might be on the ground. Flying in the helicopter with its doors open made you feel as if you were truly a part of the beautiful Vietnamese country side we flew over. I still remember being so close to the ground that once I waved to a man plowing his rice field with a water buffalo. The man looked up and waved back.
Another time the pilot suddely banked the craft in a sharp u-turn--so sharp that I felt had I not been buckled into my seat I'd slide right out into the water directly below. He flew back over a tiny island, and looking down I saw why he turned around. There was a volcano crater in the center of the island. Everyone on the helicopter who had a camera took a photo of the crater, then the pilot flew on.
It was dark by the time we reached Chulai, and as we neared the military base the pilot flew the helicopter around a peninsula of land. One of the crew members told me the Vietnamese town on the peninsula was the birth place of Ho Chi Minh, apparently still a hot bed of Vietnamese insurgency.
As we neared the big American base at Chulai, I saw a fire fight going on just south of the base perimeter. The pilot flew into the base from the north, following one of those metal runways the helicopters use and settled into a parking spot.
The pilot turned off the helicopter engine, but it was not silent. We could now hear all the gunfire and exploding bombs and grenades from the fire fight just over the perimeter fence, maybe 200 yards away.
I stood waiting for the crew to put the helicopter to bed, and I looked at the fireworks in the dark sky from the firefight. I was the only one, however, who seemed interested in the life and death battle going on so close. No one else even paused to look that direction.
The crew walked back down the runway to their hooches, just off the runway. I trailed along as one of the crew members had offered me a cot for the night in his hooch.
We reached his hooch and just inside in a sort of front room, a soldier was watching something on the wall to my left. I looked: it was a television. I looked again and could tell he was watching "Bonanza," the television western. I looked back at the door, and, sure enough, the firefight still raged with all sorts of fireworks lighting up the sky and the sound of explosions very loud.
For some reason, it struck me that someone among us ought to go out and give a hand to those people in the firefight--ours.
The fellow watching "Bonanza," was the only one to comment about the firefight, and he simply said after a glance in that direction, "I wish those guys would quiet it down out there so I can watch my program."