More Vietnam Pictures

[NAM VET]

With this being the Veterans Day weekend, and me laid up rehabbing my knee replacement, now two weeks out, and going well, thought I would put up a few pictures of a typical combat operation in IV Corps, deep in the Mekong Delta, during my second six months there in mid-72. One lazy day, we heard shooting coming from across the river, from the direction of a small compound protected by about 30 or so local Vietnamese troops. So we rounded up a rescue team, and hopped into some local sampan boats, and headed that way. It was the usual, typical VC/Main Force operation. Leave a local outpost alone, so the local troops would get lazy and complacent, and then just after lunch, when the Vietnamese troops would cook lunch, and then nap for the afternoon, just walk in the front gate. It would only take a minute or so to run thru the compound, tossing grenades into the bunkers where the troops and their families would be sacked out, grab the commo equipment and weapons, and head back into their territory.
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It didn't take long to get to the compound. Note the smoking and damaged bunkers.




All dead, troops, children, wives, so we set about pulling them out of their burnt and blasted bunkers. [URL=http://s663.photobucket.com/user/h ... .jpg[/img][/url]

In a few minutes, heard the Vietnamese rescue team hollering and jumping down into the burnt bunkers, and I asked my interpreter what was going on, he told me they had just given our supporting 105 artillery the wrong coordinates, and incoming white phosphorus was coming in, so I jumped into a bunker, and then poked my head out see how close "friendly fire" was. As usual, they were off 50 or more yards. We cleaned up and headed back to my own compound.

[T. Highway]

Excellent pictures as always Hal, thanks for post them.

Bert

[ashyers]

Hal,
I wish you were closer. We could trade some labor for having you as a guest speaker. My students and I would love the photos and the stories, and we could trade that for work on your truck!

Andy

[j mccormick]

Thanks again for posting the pictures, I always check for new ones and such nice quality too.

Joe

[NAM VET]

thanks for the kind replies. Since I an somewhat hindered on doing anything in my garage or on my truck, although moving forward well with my recent knee replacement, thought I would post a few more pictures. First is a sad one. This accident happened before I got there, I think it is the wreckage of one of the Sikorsky choppers: i rode in them several times early in my Army Career. This is at a chopper pad at the fishing hamlet were the Song Ong Doc river emptied into the South China Sea. It is also where one of my interpreters, Son, won his Bronze Star. A prior advisory team from my location had visited the hamlet, and were asleep in a bunker at the adjacent local Vietnamese compound, when it was over-run in the night. An enemy tossed a grenade into the bunker, and the interior blast walls kept them from being killed, but they were too stunned to act. Son, meanwhile, having gone into the hamlet to snag some hot local chick, had taken a radio, and called in air support, and saved the compound and the US team. Son was also on the US chopper that picked up Nick Rowe, who had been held five years in the nearby U Minh forest. Who wrote the book "Five Years to Freedom" in 69. I can relate more of that saga later.
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Next is a pic I took from my own compound, when a battalion of Vietnamese Rangers traveled thru our District. Note the swirling metal roof sheets; all it would have taken was for one of them to come down and wrap about a blade and the Chinook would have gone down hard. The Rangers were tuff troops, but caused all sorts of mayhem when they would move thru my District, with indiscriminate killing and havoc, and leaving all sorts of troubles behind them.
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Here is how I got around in my second District, 19 foot Boston Whalers, twin Johnson 40's, although we had two motors because we could never get both to run at the same time. When I went out by myself, I went lightly armed, just a couple of my bodyguard guys, and we went fast, even in these waterlogged hulls. When I went with my counterpart, a Vietnamese LTC, he filled the boat to the gunnels with his gunners, and we barely crawled along, about to swamp at any moment. The trooper in my boat, we had run up to Camau for some reason, was X VC, and one of my trusted bodyguards. Note his 40mm and XM 203 rifle. Behind us is a PBR, a jet boat, heavily armed. One of my college fraternity brothers was awarded the MOH in his nite action in his PBR.

[T. Highway]

Hal,

I see that your X VC bodyguard was packing a Suppressed M16. Great Pictures again, I don't think that I have seen a PBR configured like that one before.

Regards,
Bert

[NAM VET]

Knee is coming along fine. Taking a break from my exercises, and decided to put up another assortment of Vietnam photo's. Here is Khan, one of my two interpreters, they were SGT's in the Vietnamese army, and assigned to me. Khan is sitting at our dining room table, we had two rooms built inside a metal shell. We put up two rooms, behind is our "bedroom". This room has our Kitchen, briefing area, commo equipment, and a wall to hang our pictures and firearms. Here are our M16's and our M79. We had other assorted weapons, pistols, sub machine guns. Khan was a rather emotional guy, high-strung i guess you could say. As fluent in English as I am. One day, we walked down to the river to head out on some sort of operation, but when we got down to the Whaler, found we had forgotten to bring down our gas can. Told Khan to go back to our place and get the gas, and he got all worked up and refused. I told him "to just go get the gas so we can go", and again he argued and complained. After increasingly forceful directions to Kahn, I told him one last time. "I am giving you a direct order to go back and get the gas, and if you don't I will send you back to the Vietnamese and you know what will happen to you."

He ranted again, and I told him to gather his stuff and get out my hootch. A few weeks later I heard he had stepped on a mine, and blew off his legs. Kahn used to tell me that when the war was over, he was going to run a small engine shop, fixing Honda motor-bikes. Some chopper must have given us a couple of bottles of Mateuse wine. I still have the Chicom Type 53 carbine, in 7.62 mm.



One day, we were called to run our Whaler down-river, and pick up a trooper who had had an encounter with a mine. Here he is being loaded from a sampan onto our Whaler, for us to run up to a pick-up point where he could be further evacuated for care. I don't know what happened to him. In the Whaler is SFC Tom Coon, a two tour soldier. We worked well together for my second six months. Tom had "chopper" bike back at home, and several daughters. I wish I knew what happened to SFC Tom Coon. A fine American combat soldier.

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[NAM VET]

since I am up early with coffee and some left over cake my wife made for her girl party last night, thought I would post a picture and another story here. My first six months in IV Corps, ie, the Delta, way south of Saigon, I was a MAT team leader, going out for a week at a time to "advise" the Vietnamese on this or that. Mostly the local troops stayed drunk and paid no attention. For the second six months, usually an Infantry Captain like me would be brought up to one of the big US compounds for some sort of staff job, an AC'd office, good chow, etc. But I was thinking then about using my GI bill for becoming a physician when I got home, partly from an experience with a little Vietnamese girl who was shot in her chest way out in the Plain of Reeds on one of my first MAT missions. I couldn't do anything to help the dying child, except wrap her in my poncho liner, so she would die warm. A moving experience. I learned a lot about how I was going to approach my year there, and my life afterwards.

Well, anyway, I was the southernmost American in the whole Country, way down by the South China Sea, with one SGT on a small defensive Vietnamese compound. When you are an advisor no one cares what you do, or how, or even really even knows your are there. Rare to see any Command visitors, just the weekly supply chopper. Hence, I acquired five different Sub Machine Guns in addition to my own issue .45 and M16. My favorite was a silenced Swedish K, and my .45 "grease gun."

When I got there, as a District Senior Advisor, a nice post for a young Infantry Captain, as it was a Major's post, we built up our living quarters, inside a metal hut. Raised about two feet of the muck and mud below us. The compound was over-run with these huge fat hairless rats, fat from all the rice pots left outside at night. I used to walk the compound at night and punt them into the moat with my jungle boots. They were too fat to move fast. Every now and then, I would hear an unscheduled Chopper coming into our landing pad, and get a message that I was to brief this or that higher up on what was happening in Song Ong Doc hamlet. So I would give the signal to the local boys, who would gather up some rotting rat carcasses, and they would chuck them under my hootch floor, and when the visiting Brass would come in, and sit down while I started my briefing, the stench from the maggot filled rat carcasses just below them was so overwhelming, that in a minute or so, they would stand and say to me "Well Captain, looks like things are under good control here, we will head back." And green and nauseated, they would walk back to their chopper, no doubt wondering how I managed to live with such god-awful stench. Soon as the chopper lifted off, I gave the signal and the lads would go under our hootch and pull the dead rats out, chuck them into the moat, and I would take a nap.

Here is picture of my "hootch", we lived in the right half, the Vietnamese LTC lived in the other half. The raised part at the end was our shower and latrine. We used rain water for our barrels on the roof. Once, I put too many ampules of chlorine in the barrels to be sure I passed a water test, and when Kahn took a shower he came out with burning eyes and totally bleached hair. We had to dump that barrel.

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[m-37Bruce]

Matuse was the go to wine, I might have to look around for it?

[NAM VET]

I would go out with the local troops on their patrols, which tended to be rather ponderous operations, giving the local Chuck plenty of time to scatter, with SFC Tom Coon staying behind on the big radio. The patrols would always stop for some sort of lunch. Sort of like the British stopping to brew up tea in their offensive operations. Remember "A bridge too far."

One day, we came upon a local farmer way out in the hinterland, some guy and his wife just trying to make a living between two warring forces. He politely offered us sustinance for lunch, as I am just as sure he did also for Chuck when they meandered thru. He lived right on a muddy creek, and and rightly knew that the American was a pretty powerful guy, and able to cause him great harm. So he offered me his prize of the day, this solitary great big shrimp. I eagerly looked forward to The Shrimp as he boiled it up with whatever meager other offering he had, and when he placed it on a grimy plate for me to eat, with great anticipation I took a big bite out of proffered Shrimp. If one were to scrape off the green scum from the inside of a long neglected aquarium, I imagine that would be what The Shrimp tasted like. When one is an Advisor, it is bad form, and very rude to gag or puke whatever food is offered. So I just swallowed it, and thanked him profusely in Vietnamese. Some day, I will relate the story of The Crab.

Well, anyway, he just happened to have this tiny black kitten; how a cat came to live in all that swamp and mud and water is beyond me. I offered him a nickel in Dong, the currency, for the cat, and brought him back in an empty ammo pouch, that little black kitten just looking out at all the water we traversed. I had no problems living so far out in the Delta, I never felt it was any hardship, and somehow, our cat must have made some subconscious connection to back in the Land Of The Big PX (The USA). We doted on our cat, and he grew big and shiny.

Our hootch had a shower and wash basin up a few steps from our bedroom, and late one moonlite night, I awoke to hear the metal pans with left over rice tinkling and rattling up there, so went up to see what was going on. There, on the bench, was this big hairless rat; the rats in the compound were as fat as footballs, and hairless, and when I would go around the compound at night, and they trundled in front of me, I would punt them into the moat with my boot.

I grabbed a big meat cleaver off the bench, and went to whacking away at the now fleeing rat, and since he was too fat from his dinner to escape thru the hole in the screen, he ran down the steps into our bedroom, with me in hot pursuit. And that is when our Cat somehow screwed up his courage, and decided to do his part in the War. He jumped on the rat, and the two took to howling and screeching there on the floor in the moonlight, with SFC Coon and my two interpreters coming out from their mosquito netting, trying to figure out what the commotion was all about.

In seconds, our Cat let out this awful scream of agony, and Tom shouted "he's got the Cat by the balls!" So I swung my cleaver at the rat, trying to miss and save our Cat, and in seconds the rat let go, and took off for our front room, with me chasing after him whacking this and that with my cleaver. The rat ran for the corner with our radio's and secure commo equipment, and as the rat ran over the equipment, I slashed this way and that, but the rat made it to a hole and was gone. It all happened in a few seconds, and we went to comfort our stricken cat, and examined his wounds with our flashlights, and then realized that He was a She! We tended Her wounds the best we could, and in the morning, I found I had hacked all our commo wires and handsets to pieces, so I went over to the Vietnamese HQ and radioed that we had survived a nitetime attack, and I needed all new commo wires and handsets on the next chopper supply.

Our Cat healed and never again took on an rat. One day, just before the chopper came to pick me up to come home, I was out on a patrol, and came back to find that Pop, our handyman, had had our Cat for his lunch. Just one of those things in a War, I guess. Here is a picture looking up to our shower and kitchen sink. Kahn is reading something, he later stepped on a mine and blew off his legs.
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[NAM VET]

I am pretty sure this is the local farmer who sold me our Cat.

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[isaac_alaska]

Someone could write a book just based on your posts here and it would be a bestseller. Always enjoy reading them!

[NAM VET]

This is the scene of the bloody conflict between our Cat and the hairless rat. My bunk is to the right, Tom's to the left. Note the Playboy foldouts, but they are on HIS side of our bedroom. We built our home inside the big corrigated metal building. Life for me was pretty peaceful, so we made up a set of weights to keep fit. Looking back the near half century since I was there for my second six months, it all seems so remote and yet somehow so distinct in my memory. I was quite happy there, with no one from higher caring one whit what I did, and only rarely visited me. My Vietnamese got to be pretty good. Here is Son, one of my two interpreters. His family had fled south when the Viet Minh took over North Vietnam. As fluent in English as you and I. He was popular with the local girls. One day the resupply chopper tossed off some steaks, so we fired up our grill, and feasted. Otherwise, all we ate was the local chow. Mostly rice and soy sauce. With a little Nuc Mam for flavor.
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[NAM VET]

just before I rotated home, they sent a Major to replace me. Frankly, since I had run the place with a free hand for six months, earning my second Bronze Star, I just wasn't pleased to have to become a subordinate again. He would not let me water ski on the river when I could get both Johnson's to run, said it hastened wearing them out. The villagers would always come out to see the American out on the river. We had lots of ceremonial dinners, lots of good food and beer. And duck, as ducks grow without any special feeding of them, unlike chickens, which need some sort of food. Once, sucked on some part of stew, and and tried to figure out what part of a duck I was sucking on, and then realized it was the top of a duck's bill. When they chopped up a duck for dinner, everything went into the pot except the feathers, including the webbed feet. Here I am pouring myself another beer, the new Major to the right. Note the small French SMG hanging on the wall just behind me. It was nifty, sort of like a squirt gun, except it was 9mm. The smiling officer at the end of the table was the Vietnamese LTC District Commander, a great guy, took good care of me. Had a beautiful wife and two young girls, who would occasionally visit from Camau. The dour officer to the right of the LTC is Major Be. He had two wives, and always tried to be sure that when one or the other would come down from Camau, their paths would never cross. Except one day when they did, and it was a sight to see out in the compound. He was worthless. The Vietnamese liked Hennessey whiskey. And Maggi Knorr sauce when they could get it. Other than the occasional excitement, it was easy living. My wife had just run off with a lawyer when I deployed to Vietnam, so I had a lot of decisions to make. The beer helped with that.

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[T. Highway]

Excellent pictures and I love the story about the cat and rat.

Bert