1. Somewhere in Sàigòn.
1. Somewhere in Sàigòn.
INTRODUCTION
I was drafted in late 1968 and was inducted into the US Army in January of 1969. I enlisted for three years of active duty and received my choice of school, MOS 32D2, Tech Control. I was sent to the Republic of Việt Nam on January 16, 1970 and I returned on January 17, 1971.
I was stationed in Phan Thiết initially, but after not quite two months there I was transferred to Củ Chi. Phan Thiết was one of the first steps in “Vietnamization;” it was turned into a school for Vietnamese to instruct them in Tech Control.
I was a member of Company B, 369th Signal Battalion, Củ Chi Detachment, part of the First Signal Brigade. I attended a Combat Leadership school and made Sergeant out of that, whereupon I was put in charge of the Tech Control section. This lasted until around October of 1970, when orders came down to dismantle the site and ship it back to the US. This, too, was part of Nixon's “Vietnamization.” I spent the last two months maintaining the shipping lists for all the crates we sent back. I don't remember exactly how many crates, but there were at least a couple of hundred, possibly as many as four hundred. We even shipped back almost all the toilets, and at the end there was nothing left but bare concrete pads and a lonesome wooden hooch inside the chain link fence of our compound.
I loved Việt Nam. I hated the Army and its idiotic ways, but I am grateful for the opportunity to have served in such a remarkable country. If I had been single at the time, I would have extended my tour there. I am still stunned by the beauty of the land and the people.
When I first went to Việt Nam, I bounced up- and down-country for almost three weeks before I finally arrived at Phan Thiết. One of the last things I did in that time was get paid in Long Binh (at Finance Center East), so that I had nearly two months worth of pay in my pocket. Before shipping out of Long Binh on the last leg to Phan Thiết, I bought a camera, a Canon FT with a 58-mm lens. All of the pictures on this and the following pages were taken with that camera, although not always with that lens. I apologize for the condition of the images, but that's what thirty years of haphazard, uncontrolled storage will do to slides.
There are three panoramas I took while in Củ Chi. The first can be found here. An aerial view of the compound is to be found later on this page.
2. Feel the Heat!
3. We were all just tourists, ma'am.
4. Life in the fast lane.
5. Buy that transistorized bikini.
6. In June of 1970, I went through a "Combat Leadership
Course" in Củ Chi. This is our class picture. All these guys
were rangers or infantry except me. I'm in front, far left.
7. Me, not too long after the group picture above was
taken (I made Sergeant out of the course); the hat is an ARVN hat, not
the baseball hat we were issued, which sucked. My friend Sgt. Vinh
bought the hat for me. It was the largest size made, size 78.
It was still a bit small. Later on, after returning to the world,
I stuck a signal corps pin in the middle front panel.
8. We got our jeep painted at this place on the
highway between Củ Chi and Long Binh. Cost us 12 cartons of C-rations,
I think.
9. This tire cover cost us another 4 or 5 cartons
of Cs. The hammer has a little label on it: "BMFH," which stands
for "Big Mother Fucking Hammer."
10. Inside the place that painted our jeep
11. The Painted Jeep. ...
12. An aerial view of our compound. For ten
months, this place was home.
13. Another aerial view of our compound. Next
to the hooch is our bunker. We never used the inside of the bunker
for anything except storing cases of C-rations. The roof, however,
was a different story. That was where we did most of our drinking,
either alone or at parties, and most of our socializing. Just in
front of the bunker, you can see the small swampy area where we tossed
our empty beer cans. During the day, you could look off to the East
(to the right of the picture) and see Núi Bà
Đen, “Black Virgin Mountain.”
14. We had flush toilets and hot showers at the
detachment, but the septic tank had to be pumped every year or so.
That was a lot better than being put on shit-burning detail.
15. Núi Bà Đen. At night, we would
sit on top of our bunker, drink and watch the war. Most nights, there
was some kind of action going on at the mountain, usually Cobras or Puffs
firing tracers into the sides. Pictures from my 2002 trip back can
be found here.
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