The Dump at Firebase Buttons

In May 1970, I was on Buttons to take a flight physical for a door gunner position.  I could not catch a Huey back to Ace High until late in the afternoon.  So with time to kill, I agreed to serve as an armed guard on a truck that carried garbage out to the dump the served Buttons.

The drive was uneventful until we approached the dump and began to slow down.  It was then that Vietnamese kids tried to climb into the back of the truck while it was still moving.  The driver, watching them in his rear view mirror, would speed up then slow down in the same way you would dangle a piece of yarn in front of a kitten.  Before we came to a complete stop, four or five kids were already in the truck picking through the trash.

Look at them.  Many are dressed in old Army shirts that they probably found in the trash.  They skillfully picked through what we dumped there like they had been doing it for most of there lives.  I would guess it was like shopping at the Supermarket for them.  They all had a shopping list in their head of what was good and what was not so good.  I'm sure their families ate what they found and brought home.

In the United States, the homeless do this kind of thing as well.  You hear now and then that someone was caught in a dumpster or you see someone with their head in a trash barrel on the side of a road.  But I don't believe the homeless have to do pick through trash for a meal.  There are enough programs out there where people can always get a meal at a shelter or a soup kitchen.

I made one trip to the dump during my year in Vietnam.  It was one of the saddest things I have ever seen. The kids should have been in school, not picking through the trash at the dump for food.  South Vietnamese politicians let them down.