I also read through some of your Phu Bai observations again and it brought back a number of memories of pulling guard that I thought I would share---- I guess like you, I pulled guard on the perimeter pretty regularly. It seemed to me like at least once a week (or at least for several months it was once a week). I can remember the first couple times getting sent to a bunker that was situated about 20 feet away from pallets of 155mm artilary rounds and thinking ..."Oh Fuck me, this is not good!" Then sitting up on top of the bunker all evening hoping a stray round wouldn't result with me being blown several hundred feet in the air in several small pieces. About a month later, after the NEWBIE-ness wore off, it became clear to us that it was a good idea to plan with some other guys to go to a bunker as far from the ammo as possible. For some reason, I started thinking about some of the regular guys I would pull guard with. The name of Herb Anderson quickly came to my memory. Herb was one of the few black guys who went into the ASA - I think he was a linguist too - but cross trained as a TA guy. Herb was always scared when it came to pulling guard duty, but when he got really scared he would start cracking jokes. I can remember many times at 00-dark thirty when none of us could sleep because it was raining, cold, or otherwise foul out there - and we would sit on the bunker and laugh like hell at Herb's jokes. The North Vietnamese could have driven a bus through our lines and we probably wouldn't have noticed them on those evenings. Come to think of it, Herb wasn't alone in his fears, all the guys I regularly pulled guard duty with were like-minded cowards - we always wanted to got to the safest bunkers in the line and protect our young asses as best as we could. Also, there was a great deal of thought given to who you pulled guard duty with. I think it quickly became apparent to anyone there longer than a week, that your chances of getting killed by some dumb-fuck ASA guy were much higher than getting zapped by Charlie. So it behooved one to go out and spend the night with people you trusted. I also have some unforgettable memories of being unfortunate enough to get attached to a marine unit that covered part of the Phu Bai perimeter and spending several nights pulling guard with a couple of low IQ'd marine support troops. They liked to shoot at anything that moved even if they knew it was a bush. If it was a bush that swayed in the wind, it merited a grenade. It made for very long nights. For some reason, one night on guard duty still sticks out in my memory. I had a few more weeks left on my tour, but somehow got assigned to a bunker (near the ammo) with Gordon Hulme - a classmate of mine from DLI who after almost a full tour at Phu Bai had begun acting very strangely. Gordon hated pulling guard duty and really hated the big rats that ran around the bunker system. Somehow Gordon scrounged up some a couple animal cages and jury-rigged them to act as big rat traps. That evening, somewhere around 2 a.m., he trapped what probably was a five pound rat. The rat was caught alive in the cage, so Gordon woke us and told us that he decided to dispose of him by pouring that nasty anti-bug juice the Army gave us and lighting his ass on fire. He we were, about five guys standing around this chicken wire cage with a rat in it and Gordon tossing a match on the juice soaked rat. About two seconds after the rat started burning, however, he broke out of the flimsy cage and ran under a nearby pallet of C-4 explosives. We all started freaking watching the rat thrash around and starting the wood of the pallets smoldering. We tried tossing canteen fulls of water on the rat but to no avail - he was too deep under the pallet of explosives. This went on for about 20 minutes and we were waiting for the damn pallet to explode anytime. We didn't have the equipment to pull these half ton boxes off the pallet and no one wanted to report what had happened, so we sat there smelling the stinking rat hoping it wouldn't blow. Geez, what would we say to the OD? - Uh, Sir we blew up the ammo dump screwing with a rat... When daylight came, we boogied on out praying that the smoldering wood would go out by itself. I think for the next day or so, we all lived in an alcoholic fear-crazed haze waiting for a big boom. Nice memories of Phu Bai to share , huh?

Back to Nam Page