Bob - The Navy Years, Chapter 16

Living in the Lap of Luxury

I posted a picture of my hotel compound earlier.  Now you get a chance to see what is was like inside.

This was a normal dinner.  A can of soup or stew heated up over a Sterno  can. My bunk is right behind me.  Notice the mosquito net.  You needed it, for the mosquitoes were very bad.  We had many lizards on the walls, our friends, who ate the mosquitoes.  The wall beside my bunk was an outside wall.  This caused me a lot of worry. The Viet Cong loved placing bombs against the walls of any U. S. facility. 

These are two of my roommates. They were the two I lived with the longest.  Ray Hendricks, on the left was from Oklahoma and a full blooded Indian, or Native American.  Really nice guy, but when he got drunk he wanted to fight you.  Those Indians and their firewater. I was almost politically correct. The guy on the right is Jim Richardson, from Michigan.  The three of us played many games of pinochle at that table.

We didn't have hot water.  There was a water tank on the roof and the sun heated the water.  So if you were one of the first people in the building to take a shower that evening you had a little warm water.  Usually though, you took cold showers.  The water cut off suddenly all the time.  Because you took a shower in cold water, you jumped in, got wet, soaped up out of the water stream and washed, then jumped back in the water to rinse the soap off.  Once while soaped up, the water shut off.  I ran around from room to room to each shower rinsing with all the water that would drain out of the pipes.  The electricity would should off very often, too.  We finished many a pinochle game by candlelight.

One luxury we did have was maids.  We had Vietnamese women clean our rooms, wash and iron or clothes, make our beds and keep our bed linen changed and clean.  One 'Mama-san' would take care of two rooms, usually 8 guys.  We would pay them in Vietnamese Currency, the equivelent of about $10 a month.  So these ladies would make about $80 a month, pretty good wages for them.  And, they washed clothes the old fashioned way, with scrub brush and wash board.  They would also sew up any tears in clothes they found.  I never knew of anyone who had anything stolen.  These were hard working women who knew what a good deal they had going and could not afford to lose it.  I know it doesn't sound like such a good deal to you, but for them it was a very good deal.

We had a bar. This was at the other end of the compound from my room.  The Navy guys had it almost finished when I moved in.  We stocked it with our ration cards and took our turns tending bar. Simple mixed drinks and cold beer. The bar had some nice lounge chairs and tables. Nice place to relax, play cards, and socialize with the rest of the guys in the compound. Once a week we got a movie.  The bar was also the theatre, but in nice weather the movie was shown outside in our courtyard. When we did that the walls of our compound were lined with neighboring Vietnamese kids. Sometimes the movie was 3 one hour TV shows.  As we didn't get to see any TV, I thought these were the best movies.  I can't remember all the one hour shows we would get, but  some of them were Star Trek, Bonanza, and Mission Impossible.

Sometimes we drank.  The guy eating the mustard and crackers was the guy  I was on the roof with who had the rifle.  Yep, crackers and mustard was another one of our delicious staples.

 All servicemen, after being In-Country for 8 months got a weeks Rest and Relaxation.  You had a choice of where to go, Japan, Thailand, Australia, or Hawaii.  Married guys who were meeting their wives went to Hawaii.  I was able to meet Mary Lynn in Hawaii, I think it was in July.  We got one week together after being apart for almost 10 months. 

As you could imagine, I really missed Mary Lynn while in Vietnam.  Wasn't she cute?  Even if she did forget her hair dryer.  Hawaii was a paradise. It's still the most beautiful place I've ever been.  The weather perfect. 
The week flew by. We spent every minute together. But, all good things must come to an end.



 Soon I was back on a plane headed to Vietnam again. 
Not long after getting back I was transferred back down to Saigon for the remainder of my tour.  I returned to work at the Headquarters building on Tan Son Nhut Air Base.  This time my job was a keypunch operator.  I don't know if they have those anymore.  But it was a machine that punched all the information onto  index cards and then they ran off computer spreadsheets from the information on them.  There were 3 of us doing that job, and only 2 machines.  Keypunch operating was pretty boring so  the three of us rotated on the two machines often.  I have some pictures from that time period, but can't find them.  They were just pictures of us playing volleyball and pitching horseshoes at lunch time. Pictures inside that facility were prohibited.  It was a secure area.  Not much beyond the normal routine the last couple of months.
My tour in Vietnam was almost up.  A normal tour is one year.  Many times people would receive their orders and be able to leave a week or two earlier than a complete year. It was late September and I was due for transfer any day and  anxiously awaiting my orders to get the hell out of there. Not only out of Vietnam, but because I would have less than six months service left I would be getting an early out from the Navy.  Going Home to be with Mary Lynn, never to be separated again!  Just waiting for the word.

To be continued.....................