Bird's Eye View of a Small Firebase

This is a birds-eye view of one of the small fire bases we worked from as an infantry soldier.  I took this snapshot while flying above the fire base in a Huey helicopter at around 700 feet.  Those are my knees and another guy's knee at the bottom of the picture.  We were sitting in the open door with our legs swinging in the breeze.  None of us had seat-belts on.  One good push and I never would have been able to provide a description of this picture.

I was member of an infantry battalion called 2nd of the 12th Cavalry.  A battalion was made up of four infantry companies.  Three of those infantry companies patrolled the area around the fire base looking for enemy soldiers to destroy.  The remaining company protected the fire base by guarding from the outside perimeter.

The outside perimeter consisted of a berm or embankment with fighting bunkers spaced evenly around the circle.  The berm was formed by a bulldozer.  Even from 700 feet you can clearly see the berm.  The circle shape was common in there design.  It was easier to defend from a circle.  Settlers moving west in the 1800's learned that lesson when they would circle the wagons.  

Just inside the berm were metal culverts that infantry soldiers slept under.  More toward the center was a supply tent, a cook tent and a 105mm howitzer battery consisting of about six guns.  The howitzers were there to back up the infantry if they were caught in a firefight and needed help.  The maximum range of a 105mm howitzer is seven miles.  So when working the jungle, we always stayed within range of those guns.

Home Grown Booze for Sale

In September 1970 we were near Phuoc Vinh Village waiting for helicopters to take us back to the jungle.  Villagers swarmed out to meet us with stuff for sale.  In the nine months that I had been in Vietnam, I had never experienced anything quite like it.

Any time I had been near a village close to the jungle before, we never saw civilians.  One reason for that I guess is the war was more intense then.  Civilians found themselves caught between the Americans that were trying to help them and the Vietcong who lived in those same villages and were trying to destroy us.  If villagers had shown any interest in us, they could have been shot.

But that was then.  Now we were on the other side of the Cambodian Incursion.  The North Vietnamese and Vietcong soldiers had been badly beaten.  Now villagers were bold enough to meet with us and sell things without fear of being killed themselves.

It was a lot of fun.  They would sell us the beads and other trinkets that we wore around our necks to make us feel like a rebel.  Villagers also sold us bottles of booze for a buck.  I never did buy a bottle.  I remember looking at those bottles and wondering what kind of rot gut it contained.  If we drank it would it kill us?

Later that month, a friend opened a bottle and it didn't seem to be hurting him so I tried it.  Back them I would try anything.  I remember it was thin tasting and didn't seem to have much alcohol content.  I was expecting a burning sensation as it passed down my throat like you get from whisky.  I had no idea what it was back then.  Now I know that it was a very likely a locally made rice wine.  

Resupplying for a Combat Assault

This snapshot of infantry soldiers milling around on a fire base looks chaotic but it was not.  We were loading up with supplies before heading back to the jungle.  Food, water and munitions were there for the picking.  We usually carried enough food and water for three days.

Food available to us was boxes of C-rations and long range patrol packets or LRP's.  C-rations were mostly canned goods that I would eat for breakfast and lunch.  I would grab canned fruit, coffee cakes, ham & eggs, beans and franks, and ham slices.  For snacks there were crackers and cheese and cookies that came in cans.  C-Ration boxes also contained powdered cocoa, coffee, salt and pepper and even cigarettes.

Long range patrol packets were eaten  at supper time.  The food was freeze dried.  There was spaghetti and meat sauce, Chicken and rice, beef and rice and chili con carne.  Open the packet of food, add hot water, let it steep and you had a hot meal.

The water we received was heavily chlorinated.  We drank it, cooked with it and washed with it.  We laced the water we drank with a little kool-aid to help make it more palatable.  We each carried eight to ten quarts of water for three days.

Munitions were those things we ran out of when fighting a war.  There was M-16 ammunition, M-60 ammunition, claymore mines, fragmentation grenades, smoke grenades.  A firefight was no place to find out that you did not have enough ammunition with you.

Altogether, our pack would weigh around eighty pounds when fully loaded for three days and ready to go.

Vietnamese Moonshine

It was March, 1970 and the rainy season had not yet started.  I was near the area where drinking water was treated for FSB Buttons when I happened to run across this crude looking still.

The only part of the still that is clear to see in this snapshot is the condenser.  The condenser is the black bucket that you can see near the center.  Inside that bucket must have been a coil made of metal tubing, probably copper.  The metal tubing cannot be seen because it is hidden by the water that fills the bucket.

The inlet to the coil is the pipe that protrudes from the backside of the bucket.  There must be a boiler of some kind that is connected to that pipe.  The boiler would contain the mash that the alcohol was fermented from.  It was likely they used fruit for the mash like banana'a for example.  Boil the mash and the alcohol is vaporized (along with water vapor).

The outlet from the coil is the pipe that leads from the bucket to the funnel and jug.  The vapor passes through the coil where it is cooled by the water in the bucket to a point where the alcohol and water condense.  The condensed water/alcohol mix is dripping into the clear glass jug.

No telling how good or bad it was to drink.  I didn't try it.      



  

Pissed off Grunts

Steve, Wade, Tony and Pete look pissed off and who can blame them.  It was April, 1970 and we were on FSB Candy pulling guard.  Pulling guard on Candy was the worst job I ever had on a fire base.

We were there about a month before the Cambodian Incursion took place.  The Army was working at softening up the North Vietnamese soldiers who managed large food and weapon caches in Cambodia, just over the border from Vietnam.  Large howitzers were pounding away at them from Candy twenty-four hours a day.

Yes, it was bad for the enemy on the receiving end of those guns but it was also bad for us.  The Army kept Candy lit up at night with white phosphorous parachute flares and the noise from those guns were deafening.  So there was not a lot of sleeping going on while on the fire base.  My eyes would slowly close until the slam of the next gun jarred them back open again.  Also, we were on the trailing end of the dry season.  The red dirt of Vietnam was powdery like talcum.   The combination of sweat on our bodies and that red, powdery dirt swirling in the wind, left us coated in grime by the end of the day.

Spending that week on Candy was the only time I remember when I wished we could get back out into the jungle for a little piece and quiet.        

Filling Sandbags for a Living

It was late July 1970 and I was serving as Supply Sergeant on a temporary basis while recovering from wounds.  We were finishing up the building of a new fire base in the jungle near Cambodia.  One of the last things that had to be done was filling sandbags.

If we had been closer to Bien Hoa where Vietnamese labor was readily available, the Vietnamese would have been doing that job.  But no... we were in in the jungle with no roads, no villages and no South Vietnamese civilians close by.  So we had to fill sandbags ourselves.

No one wanted to fill sandbags.  It was a back breaking, boring job.  Luckily it was temporary.  Once a sandbag was filled, it didn't have to be filled again.  There was only so many sandbags required.  These guys were lucky that they worked for Supply instead of having the job of infantry soldier or grunt in the field.  The guy on the left had the nickname of "Boots".  He was a trained infantry soldier who was able to avoid working as a grunt because the Army didn't make a pair of jungle boots large enough to fit him.  Talk about being lucky.

Sandbags, by the way, were used as protection from bullets and shrapnel.  The sand would catch the metal and not allow it to pass thru.  So if a bullet was heading my way and a sandbag was between me and the bullet, I was safe.  Filling sandbags was not a fun job but it was a necessary one.  

de Havilland Canada DHC-4 Caribou

The de Havilland Canada DHC-4 Caribou was built to serve the Canadian and US Army in the late 50's.  US military called it the C-7 Caribou.  We simply called it a Caribou.  I took this snapshot of the airplane at Bien Hoa AFB.

 Caribou's were used by the Air Force for transport when we needed a ride between FSB Buttons and Bien Hoa AFB.  I rode in one of these planes for the first time when I was taken to Buttons in February 1970 to meet up with my company, Ace High, 2/12th Battalion, First Cav Division.  Thereafter I flew in them when we had to go back to Bien Hoa for some reason.

The Airplane had two Pratt & Whitney engines that each generated 1,450 hp.  A large cargo door dropped down in the rear under the tail section.  It could carry 32 people, two jeeps or up to 4 tons of cargo.  the plane was designed to take off and land on short, dirt airstrips which made it perfect for most applications in the Vietnam War.  The larger C123's and C130's needed more runway.  In later years, Caribou's were used for dropping parachutists.

What I remember about them was the uncomfortable seats and the noise.  The folding seats were made of webbing and faced sideways like in a subway car instead of forward like most other airplanes .  When in flight, the noise from the engines would drown out conversation.  Other than that, they would get you where you needed to go.