photo #797429

LOOKING BACK ... DREAMING FORWARDThis picture was taken sometime during my FIRST tour of duty in Vietnam ... as a young "First Lieutenant of Infantry", I had the unfortunate luck of being chosen to be an advisor to the Vietnamese Infantry ... the Army sent me to almost a year of schooling to prepare me for this assignment. First I went to the Department of Defense Language Institute at Monterey California ... I love it there. Then on to the Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, NC. But no amount of schooling could prepare me for the reality i encountered when i finally arrived at my duty station. My " home away from home" (while in base camp) was a 30' by 50' massive hole in the ground, with a dirt floor that turned to mud in the rainy season. With sandbags over PSP planking on the roof for protection. In the monsoon season (rainy), the rain would come in like clockwork precisely at five in the afternoon. At night, the rats use to play tag on top of the sand bags you see in this picture. The rats never bothered any of my five man-team, and we didn't bother them. We all had our favorites and even gave them names.in the background, you can see what poverty really looked like in Vietnam. Sitting on the table was our radio where we always got the morning news as reported by Adrein Cronaire, the "Good Morning Vietnam" radio announcer ... he was the most popular man in Vietnam and perhaps the only person who had a real grasp of the situation we were in. I went to Vietnam weighing about 180 pounds ... I can home weighing a mere 130 pounds ... Rice and fish heads do not lead to an increase in weight! ... I never met a Vietnamese man or woman who was overweight .... most looked like me in this picture, almost emancipated ... and extremely in need an American meal.I remember one time, my mother asked me in one of her letters what I missed most about the Vietnamese food, and I said, "Your cornbread". Well packages moved slow into and out of Vietnam. Three months later, I received a package from Mom and it was stale, molted and hard as a brick Mommy's cornbread. She later ask me how I liked the surprised the cornbread she sent ... that was one time in my early years when I stretched the truth; I told her "it was just great, but please don't send anymore"...Look closely at the magazine I was reading. a tax-free catalog of gift items that we could order by mail and it was shipped home ... the economy never left us in Vietnam! This was my usual dress while in 'base camp'.... modified shorts. Even a dumb blond headed kid could get the tan-of-a-lifetime and not have to go to the beach. In addition there was no running water, no electric lights, no bathroom facilities, and no fast-food joints to hang out at. Our showers were in a bamboo enclosure we made and the water came out of a 10 gallon canvas bag ... when the bag ran out of water, your shower was finished ... even if you still had soap on your body ... we learned how to take quick showers real fast. My team never learned how to eat the food. But each succeeding tour as an advisor grew much easier because I learned how to "Play the Game" during my first tour.Life was never easy for a soldier, but "it was what it was" and we grew to accept it. Looking back, soldiering was fun ... but looking forward now ... I do not want anymore of it !!!I have become a "creature of comfort" with memories of how it use to be. I did learn one thing that has stuck with me throughout these years ; .... " You never know just what you can tolerate and learn to live with until you are in any position"....