No Water

One of my earlier stories was about the night a typhoon hit Phan Rang Airbase. If you recall that story, I stayed at the kennels with several other guys in order to take care of the dogs if an emergency arose. The storm did not damage the kennels, but it dumped a lot of rain.

The rain caused the canal to overflow and the water from the canal got into the wells and contaminated our drinking water. When I got back to the barracks, I could not take a shower because the water was shut off to the showers. Water was only used for flushing the toilets. The chow hall used paper plates and plastic eating utensils, only using water to clean the pots and pans that were used for cooking.

We did not know how long the water would be restricted. So, on the 14th day of having no shower, I caught the first bus to the beach instead of going to bed after a long night of sentry duty. I figured it would be better to itch from the salt of the ocean than to suffer one more day without bathing. Everyone on the base must have thought the same thing because the bus was packed. I did not get a seat and, therefore, had to stand for the whole trip. I was so tired after working all night that I fell asleep and woke up as my knees buckled. The bus was so tightly packed that I did not collapse to the floor. I stayed awake after that.

The beach was about a 15-minute ride. It was a beautiful white sand beach. I went for a swim and it felt good to rinse away 2 weeks of crude. I caught the next bus back to the base and I was able to wash the salt off of my body when I got back because the water had been turned on. After a long refreshing shower, I went to bed.

Working Nights

When I became a dog handler, I doomed myself to working nights. If you have to work nights, having a dog for a companion is a good thing. I liked nights with a bright moon because I could see a long distance, but then so could the enemy. I loved dark nights because I could not be seen, but my dog would know if something was out there in the darkness. My dogs made me feel safe at night, well Tusky and Dawn made me feel safe.  With Duke, however, I was more inclined to hide in the bushes and chew my fingernails. The only thing Duke would alert on was my C-rations.

I loved my dogs and I took good care of them. We spent hours together every night; more time than you would spend with a pet every day. We became best buddies and teaching them new tricks was fun and I had plenty of time on my hands to do that. In Vietnam, ticks were a big problem. I would groom my dog every night and pick ticks off of him. I would also check my dog for cuts because untreated cuts could get infected easily and in the tropics flies would also lay their eggs in a cut causing an even bigger problem.

Dinner at night was sometimes a challenge. Some things, like a pecan roll or crackers, do not need to be cooked. Other things, like canned spaghetti or beef with spiced sauce, needed to be cooked. Some of the guys would not cook their dinners because the flame would light them up, making them a target. I figured, if the enemy wanted to enter the base, they would avoid me if they could see me, so I always cooked my C-rations. The movie "Sniper" had not made the movies yet.

In Vietnam, the early shift got off post about 2 hours before the chow hall opened. In order to get three meals a day, one had to stay up for a couple of hours and wait for the chow hall to open. Way back in 1968 and 1969, before dinosaurs roamed the earth, there was no internet, no cable tv, no smartphones and no computers. I suppose I could have read a good book, but that might cause me to fall asleep and miss breakfast. Instead, I learned how to play tennis. We would go out to the tennis courts, turn on the lights and play for a couple of hours. Despite being far from home and in a war zone, I found time to relax and enjoy myself.

New barracks

This is my 26th story. I have been posting one a week for a half a year. Most of my stories have been about my dogs. Some have been about leadership. But this one is about everyday life in the service.

Phan Rang Airbase Republic of Vietnam 1969.

When I arrived at Phan Rang Airbase I bunked in a two story barracks.  It was outdated and new barracks were built for us. The new barracks was one floor and one long building with the showers and latrine in the middle. A Flight had one side and B Flight had the other side. There were no windows in the building, only screened louvers running along both sides of the building just below the soffit of the roof. There was no air conditioning. Vietnam was oppressively hot and humid.

On move-in day, the troops arranged the lockers to form cubicles for four people and then set up the bunk beds. We worked quickly because we had to get settled and get some rest before going to work for the night. The paint was barely dry when the barracks was occupied. Like most construction projects, the building was completed before the landscaping was done.

Dog handlers work nights. That means that the grading of the outside of the building was done during the day while I slept. The earth was a dry red clay. The monsoons were over. I am not a light sleeper and the heavy equipment grading the yard did not wake me up. But when I woke up I knew that the construction company had been grading the yard. The red dust had filtered in through the screened louvers and covered my sheets, pillow and one side of my face. When I lifted my head from the pillow, I left a white silhouette of my face on my pillow. Nothing a change of linens and a good shower could not fix.

I may be able to sleep through a lot of noise, but my olfactory nerves apparently do not rest. Or maybe it was the sound of several people yelling at the mamasans and threatening to kill them that woke me up.  But really, it was probably one of my roommates that woke me up. But, when I did wake up it became apparent what the problem was. The mamasans were cooking their lunches in the entryway between the two halves of the barracks.

I have never tried fermented fish heads. I will never try fermented fish heads. Anything that smells that bad should be thrown out, not eaten.

Each flight had two mamasans that kept the barracks clean and shined our boots. They worked while we slept. As the assistant flight chief, I collected the necessary fee from each handler in the flight and I paid the mamasans who worked on our side. They respected me and when I told them that they could no longer cook their lunches and eat them inside the barracks, they moved outside. The riot was quelled and everyone went back to bed.

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