Rubber Tree Plantation

In March 1970 we were out on patrol and walked into an abandoned rubber plantation.  The French must have left it behind during the First Indochina war in the early fifties.  There were no homes or remains of homes out there that I remember.

What did remain was rubber trees laid out in a very orderly rows.  Jungle plants were slowly but surely taking over.  I would bet in twenty years the plantation would be unrecognizable.

All of the trees were bleeding rubber to some extent.  Raw rubber doesn't look like what you might expect.  A sticky, sap-like substance similar to Elmer's Glue bled out through fissures in the bark.  It was so unusual, I gathered some of it into an envelope and send it home to the kids along with a letter.  I described what it was to my Mother and asked that she let the kids take it to school for a show-and-tell.  The raw rubber from those trees was the first souvenir I sent home from Vietnam.  Years later my Mother gave me the letter back with the samples of rubber inside.  I held on to it for a long time.

Recently I donated the letter, the samples of rubber and a number of other souvenirs to the Smithsonian in Washington D.C.  I gave them chu loi leaflets found on the jungle floor, a piece of bamboo from the jungle that I had cut with a machete, a pair of ho chi min racing slicks that were removed from a Vietcong soldier who no longer needed them, parachutes left behind from white phosphorous flares, a jungle shirt, 1st Cavalry magazines, boonie hats, an example of the military money we used in Vietnam, and finally, a copy of my book 21 Months, 24 Days.  They were quite impressed.  I felt that if I didn't donate everything, it would all end up in a trash can when I died.

Maybe that is what the Smithsonian did with it when I stepped out the door.