Memories of Vietnam

Vietnam

WHILE SORTING THROUGH the accumulated flotsam of a long life, I came across a box of color slides including photos from Vietnam - photos, quite honestly, that I had forgotten. I am going to use these photos in my blog over the next year to help stir up the memories.

Jack at Camp Bearcat, 1967

I sent a few to be digitized but the results were far from satisfying. The service bureau apparently scanned them and there aren't enough pixels to view them at any reasonable size on the computer screen.
I purchased an eighteen inch square piece of rear projection screen material and photographed them with a Nikon digital camera. The results are less than perfect but far better than the alternative.

I wish I had a good camera in Vietnam. The one pictured here in my hand belonged to a friend. I carried a cheap Kodak point 'n shoot camera in an ammo pouch. I wasn't able to attach filters to compensate for the dense humidity that rendered almost all my photos in blue, especially those taken from the air. I have attempted to compensate digitally with mixed results. 
I was sent to Vietnam with orders to join the 185th Military Intelligence Company in Saigon, but that post was taken by another lieutenant who upset the 9th Infantry Division Adjutant General and I was diverted to replace him. I think I replaced him admirably inasmuch as I too upset the AG during my tour of duty.  

9th Infantry Division Headquarters, Camp Bearcat, RVN

The 9th Infantry Division operated in the Mekong Delta region of South Vietnam. Its three brigades and attached regiments were scattered over several base camps that I will visit in these blog postings. I got around a lot. The division headquarters was located at Camp Bearcat to the northeast of Saigon. I estimate that it covered a rectangle of about one mile by two and a half miles. It was very flat with a dirt berm about eight to ten feet high surrounding it. The headquarters building was located midway between the two vehicle gates and faced the berm. It was a prime target for snipers and I distinctly remember taking rounds if I walked outside at night while on duty officer. 

This photo was taken early in my tour of duty. Someone later planted a nice grass lawn in front of it and surrounded it with an ankle-high course of barbed wire to dissuade us from walking across it. Several people tripped over it as the fled the building during a rocket attack one night.

9th Signal Battalion Radio Tower

The radio tower was located about a hundred yards away from the headquarters building. I should have asked one of the Vietnamese day workers. Any one of them probably could have told me the exact distance.
Affectionately known as The Aiming Stake, we were certain that the Vietnamese who frequented our base camp every day were pacing off the distance from the radio tower to every major target and noting its bearing.
Of course it was equipped with flashing red aircraft beacons making it perfect for directing mortar fire at night.

I guess that the tower was about 150 feet high. We learned that even at that height, it was not sufficient to maintain radio communication with patrols in the nearby rubber plantation. The signal corps launched a barrage balloon with radio antennae shortly after a patrol was badly beaten there.

My memoirs of Vietnam will probably amuse some and upset others. I have very strong opinions about our role there and my service during that time, opinions that are not popularly expressed. Feel free to comment. You can't insult me any worse than that which I've already heard.

Ultimately, these memoirs will serve as the foundation of a novel that I hope to write right after two others that are already in progress.