My First Days in Viet Nam

        3/3 Base Camp           First Night           Patrolling Danang            Leaving Danang           Whooping it up in Okinawa

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    August 1966. We flew from California, to Alaska, to Japan, then to Danang on Northwest Airlines, arriving sometime in the late afternoon, I remember sleeping in a plane hanger with lots of other Marines that first night, the next day we001.jpg (34477 bytes) were loaded onto trucks to be taken out to our units, somewhere along the way out of Danang the women came out of their shacks along the road pulling up their shirts and exposing their bare breast and rubbing them, the guys and I went crazy yelling at them, I said to myself, now this isn't going to be that bad here in Nam, well the village soon disappeared and all I could see was rice paddies for miles and miles, no more loose women.
  
  3rd Battalion 3rd Marines Base Camp South of Danang
    I remember being dropped off sometime in the afternoon, very few Marines around, most were out on patrol,  I was wandering around like a lost dog with my papers in my hand asking anybody if they knew where or who I belonged to, finally I found the tent and put my gear down, when they came back that evening they lookedDanang06.jpg (74155 bytes) like hell, torn clothes, dirty, smelly, just down right nasty looking, they pretty much just ignored me, the new guy, I remember the sergeant saying to them, take a good look around because one of you won't be here tomorrow, if he was trying to scare me he shore did it, they lost someone to a booby trap that day, the same as most other days, booby traps or sniper fire always to be looked out for, it was very hard on your nerves day in day out I was soon to find out, being just a plain old infantry rifleman myself. If some one knows more information about just where on a map this base camp and the area that we patrolled was please e-mail me. 
To see more photos of that area Click Here.
  
   My First Night on Watch
    I was taken out to join a machine gunner on a tower at the end of a bridge leading into a small town, when I climbed up to join him, he was a nice friendly guy, know idea what his name was, but has was very short       ( that means he had very little time left to serve in Nam) and seemed a little hyper, we talked a while, then he saidDanang4.jpg (87122 bytes) that I was to take first watch, he explained that if I had any problems to wake him up, well it got dark as hell and I started to hear things, it sounded like boats rowing in the water below ( no village person dare leave his or her house at night you were free to shoot them if they did) so it wasn't the fishing boats tied up along the river going out, it must be VC coming in by the thousands I figured, the more closely I listened the more I heard, I started to get really scared, they are going to climb up here and kill both of us I thought, more listening, more sweating, I couldn't take it any longer, I reached over to wake him up and see what he thought we should do, Danang05.jpg (73334 bytes) I just touched him and he jumped right up and started firing the machine gun, just blasting away at everything, once he started the other tower and Marines on watch started firing, I said oh shit what have I started, lucky no one got killed, a lot of fishing boats got shot to hell and a lot houses had bullet holes all through them. When the LT came around asking who started shooting first, we lied and said not us, it was someone else, well that's what everyone said, so he was pissed, but nothing he could do about it ( if you ever read this and  think that this guy could be you please e-mail me). This was a shitty little village but I remember kids selling us little bottles of Coke a Cola, not even cold but it tasted real good, I later found out that the VC would grind up glass real fine and put it in the coke bottles for GI's to drink, it would stay in your stomach and cut the hell out of it, putting you out of action, if not killing you.
  
Patrolling Danang
  Danang really sucked big time, walking through the rice paddies, boots sticking to the mud every step, you're just hoping that the VC don't start firing and you have to try running or laying in this shit. Being the new guy who's life didn't mean a damn to the ones who were there longer than you, I was either point man or tail end Charlie in the squad of  7 to 10 Marines. On one patrol being tail end Charlie, I was  to always  be able to see the next squads point man behind me, so no one would get  lost, now we were 1st squad out front, I turn around one time and can't see the point man of 2nd squad, hell we're in the jungle thick as shit, but I figure he will be coming around at any time, but he didn't, there we are separated from whole platoon wandering away from them, did I catch hell that day. Setting out in the rice paddy on ambush at night the mosquitoes would bite the hell out of any exposed skin, and I mean hundreds of  those bastards, trying to be still and not exposing yourself to the VC, letting them bite you up all night, never will I forget that. I did manage to lose one of my grenades on a patrol one day, I had to go tell the LT, he took a shit fit yelling and cursing me up side down, saying that if it was ever Danang022.jpg (218377 bytes) turned in by a villager he would give it back to me to carry, saying that it would most likely be booby trapped to explode if I ever had to use it, thank God no one turned in a lost grenade to him. Sorry to say that I did see a Marine who had tramped on a booby trap and lost his private parts and was still alive, thinking God don't let that happen to me for I had hardly made good use out of mine at age 20.
Leaving Danang
    After about a month in Danang we got orders to go back to Okinawa to regroup with more new men and new supplies, now this is strange, there must of been a hundred Marine duce-n-half trucks to take us to the port to board the ship, and I'm the last one on this truck and the driver comes around back to put up the tail gate and I look an see my old high school buddy, PVT. Jim Diest, the motor pool driver of this truck, whoJim_Diest.jpg (34867 bytes) got drafted into the Marines a few weeks before I joined. Of all the trucks and men, what luck, I got to ride up front and bullshit with him on the way to the ship, ( Jim died a few years back from cancer). I do miss you Jim Buddy. I don't remember the name of the ship that took us to Oki but it was a old WWII troop carrier, the sailors just looked at us boarding and could not believe the ragged shape we were in, they were in clean clothes, sleeping in a clean bed at night with good food to eat and getting the same pay as us, because they were in combat waters, off shore. We were put down in bottom of the ship with little bunks stacked high up with little space between them. We hit a typhoon on the way and the ship was rolling from side to side making this God afoul groaning  noise, of metal being twisted back and forth, guys were throwing up all over the place, some throwing up from the top bunk down on the rest of us. I did get to go top side to see a freighter that was sinking from the typhoon, man that sea was rolling high and rough. I would have had more photos from Danang but some bastard stole my camera on the ship and all my rolls of film. After about a week at sea we made it to Okinawa
  
  Whooping it up in Okinawa
    I think we were there over a month, training everyday, some older guys bitching about that they were just fighting in the real war a few weeks ago and now you're going to tell me how to train to fight by some Officer barme1.jpg (24094 bytes) who never saw combat. Every weekend we got to go to town and party and boy did we do a good job of that. We all spent all of what  little bit of a pay check that we received on booze and women. I remember going into a place for a massage and some huge fat woman walking on my back sticking her toes into me, but they worked every muscle, cracked every bone and when you left there you just floated out the door, no sex just a real massage. We went to a cat house to get laid one night, after way too much to drink, this woman takes me upstairs and does a number on me, she actually through me off the bed by throwing her hips up and down so hard, so I go back the next night for more, I walk in and ask if any of them remembered me from the night before, and this woman who look's to me to be about eighty years old stands up, I say no way, you got to be kidding me, but she claimed it was her, I just couldn't do her again sober. Some guys not giving a damn as to what they were screwing got VD, from those $5.00 whores who were cheap but had VD, which gave us the distinction of having the highest VD rate on the island, and we were all grounded to base because of those jerks, a clean whore was only $10.00.We had this Indian named Leo Whitefoot who had this girlfriend there, one night they get into a fight and he tears down her house, just leveled it to the ground, he got into a lot of trouble over that. I was in a bunker later on in the DMZ with Whitefoot and he showed me a photo of his two squaws back on the reservation, boy were they old, fat and ugly, he claimed he lived with them. 
To see more photos Click Here