Memoirs Part 9

From Danang we flew on a C-130 to Qui Nhon which was home to a small airfield and an Army base. It is a beautiful town with nice beaches.What surprised me was, we were told to wait for a bus to take us to Phu Cat AB. I felt that we should fly into an airbase, not take a bus. A guy I met on the flight saw a friend of his. His friend was stationed at Phu Cat and was in Qui Nhon to pick up some fresh baked bread. The bread was piled up on the back of a flatbed truck. We were offered a ride to the base instead of waiting for the bus. I rode on the back of the truck.

This was my first experience driving off base in Nam. The smells and sights are embedded in my memory. I can’t explain the smell, but itwas very different. It was mostly countryside and a few small villages. There were no gardens nor grass. The houses were just shacks surrounded by dirt. I remember seeing an old “grandma” watching five or six kids playing in large bucket of water as their ‘swimming pool.’ The kids were naked, and grandma was too, from the waist up. This was definitely another culture shock.

After arriving at my first base, I found out that the people we were replacing wouldn’t leave for another week. The barracks were open bay.This means that there is one long room with rows of bunk beds. We turned our large wooden lockers sideways to make a wall between each two-man living are and hung blankets as walls. This made the dorm semi-private. Since there was no space until some of the guys left, I got a small space at the end of the dorm between a locker and the building wall. Instead of a regular locker I kept my things in a footlocker and slept on a cot. I had to walk sideways to get onto my cot. But, after seeing the shacks that the Vietnamese people lived in, I felt that I had it good.