FSB Washington held many and varied surprises for us. One hot, dry afternoon a Huey helicopter landed, but so many come and go that I paid little attention. Someone yelled something indistinguishable about the contents [...]

When a convoy or single vehicle stopped on any rural road, Vietnamese vendors appeared, no matter how isolated the location, and often had cold soda for sale. How did they do that?  In more isolated [...]

Rice growing in Tay Ninh used dikes to frame the cultivated area of that particular paddy and to hold water inside for the growing season. Land was as flat as Western Kansas wheat fields, so [...]

Deadly diseases were common in Vietnam, and malaria was rampant. Any mosquito could be a carrier, and we had an excess of them. One fine day we were dropped and driven into a swamp for [...]

Indirect artillery fire required three component parts working in concert to deliver rounds where and when they were needed. Accurate fire began with an observer radioing our battery Fire Direction Control (FDC) requesting artillery shells [...]

Vietnamese water, ice made from it and vegetables and fruit washed with it were considered contaminated and should not pass our lips. Twenty-fifth Division Engineers supplied our water, and they said it was safe, but [...]

My first impression of Vietnam was an unusual and pungent smell, along with humidity unlike any in my past life, and I was not even off the plane! The aroma hit me like a knife [...]

Our tank and APC escorted and protected convoy moved briskly west from Tay Ninh toward Cambodia, throwing up a dust cloud as we passed through open rice-paddy country and into an area that had been [...]

FSB Washington was about a 250-foot diameter circle, manned by two Army units. The outer ring was built and occupied by an infantry company, while the rest of the place was designed and [...]

It was winter at my home in Kansas, but here every day the temperature passed 100 degrees and seldom dropped below 80 at night. The rain was gone and clouds to shade the sun for [...]

Despite all the changes and chaos that exist in a movable firebase, almost anywhere my unit landed we had a view of the Black Virgin Mountain, also known as the Black Lady. She [...]

The rural Vietnamese did not sit on the ground as we Americans did. Starting from a standing position, they lowered their butts close to the ground, while keeping their feet flat on the ground and [...]

Tay Ninh’s weather consists of two seasons, wet and dry, but for us the seasons were better named mud and dust. They split the year fairly evenly, and change in seasons was gradual during both [...]

Dear John letters set off wild, erratic and dangerous behaviors and were among the most destructive explosive devices in Vietnam. A Dear John letter is one from a soldier’s soon-to-be ex-wife or girlfriend informing him [...]

When I landed in Vietnam, my tour of 32,572,800 seconds officially began. Most first-timers in Vietnam earned the designation FNG, and most of the men I was traveling and training with were also new arrival [...]

You may be wondering why an entire chapter on trash would be included. And, I will admit that had I not been in the Vietnam War, that would have been my first reaction as well. [...]

Zero. It’s not often in life that having nothing is a desire, much less an outright obsession. But in Vietnam, it was the most sought-after goal of every soldier, the beacon of light at the [...]

It was August 1968, and I had been in Viet Nam less than 20 days with no idea how quickly my life was going to change. I was assigned to A Battery, 7/11 Artillery, which [...]

Everything grows in Tay Ninh. The area is a large greenhouse, with near-perfect growing conditions for most plant types. Inside a firebase, weeds were walked on, driven on, doused with various toxic weed killers, cut [...]

Get your pay; get your shots. The first day of each month an officer was designated Pay Officer and handed a briefcase filled with cash and our pay records. But before you were allowed to [...]

During most of my tour, eight months or 21,168,000 seconds, our staple fare was 1943 packaged C-Rations until they were replaced by the 1968 Series in March of 1969. Thirteen basic meals were the total [...]

How many of those suckers did I fill during my Vietnam vacation? Too damn many to count – literally tens of thousands! But sandbags are a soldier’s friend, and they protected us, so I bear [...]

Within this story lies one of the many ironies of my tour. Our human waste was valuable to the Vietnamese, and we were burning it. Burning our shit actually deprived local farmers of valuable fertilizer, [...]

32,672,800 seconds I joined the Army to become an artillery officer, and I actually did go to Officer Candidate school – for a while. My job specialty training was artillery Fire Direction Control (FDC), so [...]