Vietnam Diary
Chapter Four
Epilog

Vietnam Epilog:

Amazing, as time goes by, your mind seems to remember more about a things that happened 30 years ago. The only disadvantage about it is you recall some things that you rather forget about. As they say, you have to take the good with the bad.

Another thing that I recall while being at Phu Loi, was the outhouses. Just a round hole in a piece of wood, you would sit on it like toy soldiers, a dozen or so. Well, at least you didn't have to flush.

Next to it you had the shower with its non-potable water tanks sitting on top of the metal roof, With its many shower heads raining down on you. You had better not wait too late to take a shower, or it might be a cold one.

There was the time a gook was caught pacing off the hoochs, setting us up for an rocket attack. In my diary I mentioned about the 150 round mortar and rocket attack in early July in 1967. The next day while surveying the damage, I came across pieces left over from one of the rockets( which were 6 feet long). The best piece was the nose cone, which was about 6" big. A lot of the pieces were large. Unfortunately, I no longer have these pieces, because when leaving the country to go home, we had to empty our pockets onto a table, so they could check for contraband. Some greedy officer is probably now in possession of those pieces. I kept thinking all of these years how I should have kept them in my pocket. I guess sometimes it doesn't pay to be honest. By the way, the cone had USSR stamped on it.

Another AOL member (MudMan2 who I believe was located northeast of the airfield) asked me where I was located in Phu Loi. I can't recall directions, but remember being located across the airfield from the PX and massage pallor. Oh yes, how could I also forget the dentist. One time in there while having four teeth filled, I was caught between them while they were having a water fight with the water hoses. I was their shield.

Names aren't coming back to me as fast as other things, but I remember one guy who we had in our hooch, just loved to play with weapons of any kind. He would throw knives at targets, roll M-79 grenades on the hooch floor, and point his weapon at the mama sons. One day while pointing his M-16 at one of them, his luck ran out. There was a round left in the chamber from the practice range. As he pointed his M-15, he said " I'm gone to shoot you" and pulled the trigger at close range and shot her. She didn't die, although he got busted and shipped to another unit.

Photography was a hobby of mine at the time ( we use to develop our black and white film on the base) and I recall taking several close ups of a praying mantas, using extension tubes ( you had to get close with them and the dept of field wasn't much) with two other guys helping me. It took us over an hour to get those pictures. One was a close up of his head, another he was eating some bug, and one holding a fly in his pinchers.

Well, my mind is getting empty, so until next time, bye.

Jim Benner