Veterans

This REMF's first trip to Nam

After I came back from 2 1/2 years in Turkey I was assigned to Ft. Hood. At the time I was a Spec. 5, transitioning into Radio Repair (31E).

Westmoreland and LBJ needed more bodies to fight the Commies in Nam. One of those efforts was reconstituting the Americal Division; I ended up in the 198th Light Infantry Brigade. After six months of training, we were put onto trains(!*&%) and sent to Oakland, CA.

A few more days and we were on a troopship to Nam. We hit 14 foot swells about 400 miles north of Hawaii and I never stopped puking my brains out until we finally landed in Da Nang. After we disembarked we were a) given a box of .223 ammo (a whole fucking box!!) and b) loaded our asses on an LST for the trip to Chu Lai. (The LST ride was worse than the troopship.)

Got down to Chu Lai and we setup camp in an area that had been freshly cleared.

We had a squad tent about 20 meters from the wire.

Shortly after midnight on Jan. 30 we heard incoming 122mm rockets landing in the Division area to our rear. Lock and load. Grab your weapon, a bandoleer or two, your flak vest and steel pot and head out for the wire. (I was wearing flip flops at the time.)

So we're out on the wire looking for Commies and facing the Chu Lai Air Base which was about 3 miles from where we were. I must digress for a moment... Every day the Air Base would get somewhere between 15 ~ 20 flatbed trucks (S&P) loaded with 550-lb and up bombs. Since the convoy got in late that day some wizard decided to park all the S&Ps together in the middle of the Air Base ammo dump.

That Chu Lai ammo dump explosion is the largest blast I have ever seen. The blast looked like to VC had dropped an atom bomb on us. The mushroom cloud kept rising and rising and rising. A few days after that attack I was on a chopper heading south, China Beach was black for miles due to burnt gunpowder. Another interesting thing I saw was an F-4 Phantom (.5 mile away from dump) picked up and thrown thru a hanger.

On my second REMF tour to Nam I was in the invasion of Cambodia (25th ID) for about four weeks. That's another story.