This is primarily a travel blog in which I write about traveling in our motorhome. Our travels have

Nacogdoches, TX, United States
I began this blog as a vehicle for reporting on a 47-day trip made by my wife and me in our motorhome down to the Yucatan Peninsula and back. I continued writing about our post-Yucatan travels and gradually began including non-travel related topics. I often rant about things that piss me off, such as gun violence, fracking, healthcare, education, and anything else that pushes my button. I have a photography gallery on my Smugmug site (http://rbmartiniv.smugmug.com).

Saturday, July 30, 2016

Uncle Sam Ain't Released Me Yet...Memoirs of a REMF, Chapter 33, Military INJustice







Uncle Sam
Ain’t Released Me Yet

Memoirs of a REMF



Copyright© 2016 by Robert B. Martin, IV
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without express written permission from the copyright owner, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal. I have attempted to recreate events, locales, and conversations from my memories of them.


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Chapter 34
The Medics
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” .......Benjamin Franklin
The battalion aid station was a hooch located in the Headquarters Battery area and was staffed by enlisted medics and a medical officer. There was always at least one medic, sometimes more, on duty. If they weren’t at the battalion aid station, they were probably out at an FSB aid station.
Sick call was held every morning and the medics treated all types of minor injuries and illnesses. Darvon capsules and APC tablets (neither of these pain relievers remain on the market today) were given out by the handfuls. Anything more serious required sending the patient to one of the hospitals in the area, such as the 327th Evacuation Hospital in Phu Bai.
Many of the immunizations I received during training required a “booster” every six months, which meant more shots in Vietnam. The battalion medics monitored the due dates and saw that everyone received their shots. I received my boosters about my fourth month in Vietnam, which meant I would be due for them again before the end of my tour. I have always hated and feared the needle and would do almost anything to escape it. This is where my friendship with the medics was helpful. I was able to talk them out of the second round of boosters and they signed them off on my shot record. It paid to have friends such as medics and cooks.
Another duty of our battalion medics included the distribution of malaria “pills.” We were required to take two different anti-malaria medications. One was dapsone (also used in the treatment of leprosy), which was taken daily for at least six days of each week. The other was called a “C-P pill” (a combination of chloroquine and primaquine) that was taken once a week. Even though the pills were required, malaria was not much of a threat in the Northern Highlands. Because of this, many soldiers did not take their malaria pills. I was mostly compliant. I guess it had to do with being a pharmacist. However, these medications were not without potential adverse effects. In 1969, there were eight deaths from overwhelming sepsis (infection of the blood stream) that were directly attributable to agranulocytosis (a rare disease of the white blood cells) caused by these medications.
The Battalion Medical Officer was CPT José Villalobos, a Mexican national who had been drafted while pursuing his medical training in the U.S., which is how many foreign nationals became eligible for a U.S. medical license. I suppose he could have refused the draft and returned to Mexico, but that would have seriously jeopardized his chance to ever practice medicine in the U.S. He was commissioned as a medical officer in the U.S. Army Medical Corps and sent to Vietnam. To say he did not wish to be in Vietnam would be a huge understatement. The possibility of being wounded or killed in Vietnam seemed to frighten him much more than it did the average soldier. He was the only person I ever saw walking about the battalion area wearing his steel helmet, flak jacket, and .45 caliber side arm. That just wasn’t done and really wasn’t necessary in such a relatively safe area. Plus, steel helmets and flak jackets were heavy and uncomfortable. He even moved his cot out of the officers’ hooch and into one of the bunkers where he slept every night. I felt sorry for the man. He was becoming a nervous wreck.
On or about June 21, 1970, CPT Villalobos was standing in front of my desk in the CP, asking me a question (I don’t remember what it was). As I was looking at him, I saw flames, smoke, dirt, and debris fly into the air from behind a small hill to the ’captain’s rear. He was facing me and did not see what I was seeing. I remember it vividly. It was as if time had slowed down and I was watching a silent movie in slow motion. It seemed to be a long time before the sound reached us, yet it was only a fraction of a second, not enough time to warn the captain of what was coming. When the sound waves did reach the captain’s ears, he immediately fell on his hands and knees and attempted to crawl beneath my desk.
The explosion was terribly loud. The CP shook and debris rained down on the tin roof. I assumed it was an enemy rocket because the explosion was much too large to have been a mortar round. Yet rocket attacks always seemed to include more than one rocket and there had been only one explosion.
Within a few minutes, we learned that it had not been an enemy attack. A 2/502nd (2nd Battalion, 502nd Infantry) ammunition dump had blown up, killing two soldiers. The explosion was thought to have been caused by a “cherry” playing with a trip flare.
After the explosion, CPT Villalobos was a basket case and not long afterward was medically evacuated for psychiatric evaluation and we never saw him again.
Continued in Chapter 35, The Mad Minute

Thursday, July 28, 2016

Uncle Sam Ain't Released Me Yet...Memoirs of a REMF, Chapter 32, Mountain Driving

Uncle Sam
Ain’t Released Me Yet

Memoirs of a REMF



Copyright© 2016 by Robert B. Martin, IV
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without express written permission from the copyright owner, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal. I have attempted to recreate events, locales, and conversations from my memories of them.


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Chapter 32
Mountain Driving
“Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and when returning home, wondering why the hell you went.” ....................John Updike
1SG Driver sometimes had me sign-out a jeep from the motor pool and drive him to various places on the Sunday afternoons he wasn’t spending with his Vietnamese mistress and her kids. This became more common as I gained more time-in-country and rose in rank. One or two Sundays each month I drove the 1SG and a couple of his senior NCO buddies to Danang. Danang was on the coast of the South China Sea, about fifty-five miles southeast of Camp Eagle on QL-1. Danang was the home of a large Air Force base, a deep-water port for the Navy, and home to a large contingent of Marines.
Our destination in Danang was always the Senior NCO club on the airbase. The Air Force club was housed in an air-conditioned brick building and nicely decorated with a large bar. It was difficult to believe that you had not been magically teleported to a club back in the World. The only clue that we were not in the states was probably the presence of Vietnamese waitresses wearing the traditional ao dai.
It was a beautiful drive to Danang. The highway, with its switchbacks and S-curves, wound through the mountains from sea level to the Hai Van pass at an elevation of 3,848 feet. The highway was lined with cliff walls on one side and steep drop offs without guardrails on the other. From the top of the pass you could see Danang and the sparkling waters of the South China Sea and the Gulf of Tonkin. There were miles of beautiful sandy beaches. Like Cam Ranh Bay, Danang would have been a tropical paradise if located anywhere except Vietnam.
Although the view was exceptional, the fourteen-mile stretch of highway through the mountains was known as “Snipers’ Alley.” It wasn’t wise to drive too slow or to stop and enjoy the scenery. The curvy route was driven as fast as safely possible so as not to make an easy target. No stopping was allowed and the highway was patrolled by MPs who cited anyone found stopping their vehicle on the highway without a good reason.
One of the Sundays that I drove 1SG Driver and his buddies to Danang we got a surprise. We had reached the mountains and were sliding the jeep around the switch-backs on the way up to the Hai Van pass when suddenly I had to stand on the brakes. An armed South Vietnamese soldier was standing in the highway with his palm extended outward in the universal signal to stop. A group of armed soldiers stood in the highway behind him. They were laying out dead bodies on the side of the highway. These were VC that had just been killed in a firefight with the ARVN troops. I was really happy that we had not left Camp Eagle any earlier or we might have been in time for the fight. We didn’t stop and gawk. The First Sergeant told me to keep moving so we just slowed down, waved, and drove around them. They stared back but didn’t wave. We were always a bit wary of the ARVN troops.
When we arrived at the Senior NCO Club, we checked our weapons, just like in the “Wild West” saloons, before being seated. This was the only place I was allowed to drink liquor. Back at Camp Eagle it was beer only for my rank. Being a “guest” of the First Sergeant in the Senior NCO Club had its privileges. However, I couldn’t afford to abuse this privilege, as I had to drive back to Camp Eagle along those same mountain roads. We could only stay a few hours because we had to be back inside the wire at Camp Eagle by evening chow. We didn’t run across any more ARVN patrols on the return trip.
On the way back to Camp Eagle was a small house beside the highway; actually it was more of a hut. A “Hut of Ill Repute,” a place that 1SG Driver and the other senior NCO’s liked to visit. Since it was against regulations to stop and park along QL-1, not to mention visiting this place of business, I would stop the jeep quickly in front of the hut and my passengers would jump out and run inside as I drove off down the highway. After about ten miles or so I would turn around and drive back to the hut. If they weren’t standing in the doorway I continued on past for another few miles before turning around again and going back to the hut. I would continue making these laps up and down the highway until one of the sergeants flagged me down. I would slow the jeep to a crawl as they ran from the hut and jumped back into the jeep. Then we would continue on to Camp Eagle. I did not have the opportunity, or the desire, to visit the hut. I didn’t care much for black teeth (chewing “beetle nut” was common among the locals and stained the tooth enamel such a dark red that the teeth appeared to be black) and I certainly didn’t want to spend the rest of my life on that South Pacific island with some incurable venereal disease!
One of the sergeants told me the hut had only two rooms. The “girl” was in the back room and her parents were in the front room. The “customers” paid the parents before going to the back room one at a time. I suppose when you weren’t in the back room you were sitting with the parents in the front room. I thought that was disgusting.


Continued in Chapter 33, Military INJustice

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Uncle Sam Ain't Released Me Yet...Memoirs of a REMF, Chapter 31, A New Battery Commander






Uncle Sam
Ain’t Released Me Yet

Memoirs of a REMF



Copyright© 2016 by Robert B. Martin, IV
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without express written permission from the copyright owner, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal. I have attempted to recreate events, locales, and conversations from my memories of them.


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Chapter 31
A New Battery Commander
“All very successful commanders are prima donnas
and must be so treated.” ...........George S. Patton, Jr.
I had not been in-country very long when CPT Oliver, the BC, rotated out (his six months were up) and a new BC, CPT Charles Rankin, was assigned. CPT Oliver had been quite cheerful and about as friendly toward enlisted personnel as an officer could be. He had a smile and kind word for everyone. CPT Rankin’s demeanor was almost the exact opposite that of CPT Oliver. I can’t recall ever seeing the man smile and he didn’t say much. CPT Rankin was a West Point graduate, straight-laced, and very “STRAC.”
CPT Rankin was from Georgia, as was I. His hometown was Buena Vista, GA, which was only about fifty miles from my hometown of Cuthbert. We played them in football when I was in high school. CPT Rankin didn’t “chat” enough for me to get to know him or form an opinion of him during his assignment as our BC.
A couple of months after CPT Rankin became our BC, I was called into his office and told to be ready to drive him somewhere that evening. It wasn’t unusual for me to drive the BC when his regular driver, Ray Orchelle, was not available.
After supper, I walked over to the motor pool, signed out a jeep and drove over to the officer’s hooch to pick up the captain. He came out to the jeep carrying a gift-wrapped bottle and began giving me driving directions, one turn at a time. It turned out to be on the other side of Camp Eagle, where I was instructed to park across a dirt street from several mobile homes (commonly provided for VIPs and civilian contractors). After ordering me to remain with the jeep and wait, CPT Rankin walked over to one of the mobile homes and knocked on the door. It was opened by a woman whom I later learned was a Donut Dollie. It seemed the BC had a “date” and I would have to sit outside in the jeep and wait until “”it was over. I didn’t ask, and he didn’t tell me how it went.
CPT Rankin also liked to visit the battalion’s firing batteries on the various fire bases. I drove him to several firebases a few times when Ray was not available. I didn’t mind driving up and down QL-1 to Hue, Phu Bai, or Danang but driving out to a firebase usually scared the hell out of me. Most of the FSB’s were in rather desolate locations and it would just be the two of us in a jeep. I carried my M-16 and a shit load of ammunition while the captain only carried his sidearm, an M1911 pistol (semi-automatic, magazine-fed, recoil-operated .45 cal.). I wanted to make sure I possessed as much firepower as possible should I ever be required to defend myself. If I could have mounted a .50 caliber machine gun on the jeep, I would probably have done so. Those drives never seemed to bother Ray. In fact, on his jaunts in the country, he rarely took his M-16 along, just the .45 caliber sidearm that drivers were authorized to carry in addition to the M-16 rifle. Ray was in love with his .45. It was not unusual to see him breaking down and carefully cleaning the pistol as he waited around for the BC to require a ride.
I can only remember the names of two firebases to which I drove CPT Rankin. They were FSB Tomahawk, near the northern end of the Hai Van pass, overlooking the South China Sea, and FSB Arsenal, about five miles southwest of Phu Bai. The view from FSB Tomahawk’s Hai Van pass location was spectacular. I often drove the 1SG along this route on outings to Danang.


Continued in Chapter 32, Mountain Driving