Typical sights one one see on or around a firebase
I thought I would share some pictures with you guys, since a good number on here are either still active duty or have served and the rest of you may have some interest…..or not!
Anyway I have been working for the last few months to clean up and catalog some of my pictures from my younger days and recently scanned in a bunch of stuff from my tour of duty in Viet Nam. I was there for most of 1971 and a significant portion of 1972 with a 3 month break to recover from a facial injury…..but that is a long and boring story so I will skip it. Get enough beer in me and I may share it…good beer, I'm not cheep, actually it will probably take Bombay Sapphire Gin to get it out of me. Any way what I am posting here is some pictures to show what life was like for part of my tour in RVN. Now please understand I was not a REMF and we only spent 3 days out of 40 on a firebase….the rule of thumb was you spent the 40 days in the bush, came in on the 40th afternoon, got beer, beef, ice cream and showers and clean clothes and drank all night. Next day we were allowed to sleep in till 8 AM.
Not much like Hollywood is it?
Then got mess and assigned duties, these duties were anything from burning shit….well there is no nice way of saying it that's what we did, mike diesel fuel with the cut off 55 gallon drums that were used to slide in to the latrines on the firebase, mix well and throw in a flare to ignite it, and try not to burn down the latrine…(guilty) or duties were repairing the berm around the base, checking the razor wire, filling sandbags and then pulling guard on one side of the base…..during the 3 days we ate, drank and pulled the duties and tried to get our gear back in shape and getting re supplied with the kinds of things you could not get in the bush.
Line up, whip it out, fill it up, zip it up and go get chow.
We also had a variety of sick calls that we had to attend, see pictures, as well as getting haircuts etc. During the dry season it was dusty and there were flies and gnats everywhere, during the rainy season there was mud, flies and gnats everywhere with some of the biggest basest mosquitoes that ever sucked blood. We stayed under netting when ever we could…but I digress. The pictures here are just something to remind us old timers of how things were back then…..
Of the pictures of me, well I am not trying to brag or show how good looking and skinny I was back then but more to the basic load I was carrying as well how the surrounding terrain and vegetation was so try to over look my boyish charm, heck I was only 19 back then, turned 20 over there. You will note that in one picture I am holding a captured AK-47. I engaged a combatant there that turned out to be a Chinese military advisor, in fact I still have his hat. The AK he was carrying caused quite a stir among the guys that had more time in country than I did, there was something special about it….it was new, no rust, beautiful wooden stock. Most of the old AK's and SKS's we recovered were in bad shape, many would be scary to fire to someone like us. Of note to you AK guys when I was fiddeling with the AK and took it apart we noticed that the hand guard for the forward barrel assembly had been packed with Cigarette butt filters, we assumed to help keep the hand guard cool enough to hold during rapid and continuous fire, unfortunately my Chinese advisor was in no condition to tell anyone but Buddha if our assumption was correct.
Any way I have lots more pictures and once I scan them if anyone wants to see more I will oblige. I hope these are of interest to you.
Just getting ready to go into Tripple Canopy
Eating C Rats while sitting on a Termite mound.
During my Stint as RTO, man those old PRC' 23's were heavy.
We usually went out on patrol so we took a 3 day supply of food, ammo etc.
If we were on ambush duty we took out a 5 day supply, obviouslyto stay undercover longer.
