My personal experience would make a lot of people uncomfortable to hear. Our latrine was an eight foot X six foot wooden box with six holes cut in the top. When you sat down, your *** was touching someone else's. 500 men used it, there was no provision for washing. The shower was so putrid that the showerheads were removed because they would clog from all of the dead skin and soap residue as they pumped up the same white colored water, over and over again. People were getting sick with hepatitis and there were warning signs all over saying "Do not drink, do not brush your teeth". We sometimes went for days with no water. We lived in rat infested tents raised up on wooden floors, the rats were the size of housecats and finally died of bubonic plague in the spring of 66 along with 35K Viets. But that was our base camp, we had it good compared to the Infantry, they slept on the ground and ate out of cans for weeks at a time.
My initial location when I arrived was Camp Alpha in Saigon. It was made for 600 men, there were over 2000 in it when I arrived. You would stand in line for a half hour to use a falling apart paper cup and get a drink of hot clorox water out of a lister bag. It was like a
German
prison camp, packed full of soldiers. A few days before I got there, the VC dropped mortar rounds into that place, it was so packed there was no place to hide. Thank God I got out of there in two days and went North up to II Corps.
The whole experience was a filthy dirty camping trip with guns. And we had it made compared to the Infantry.
Originally Posted by DaveHH
My personal experience would make a lot of people uncomfortable to hear. Our latrine was an eight foot X six foot wooden box with six holes cut in the top. When you sat down, your *** was touching someone else's. 500 men used it, there was no provision for washing. The shower was so putrid that the showerheads were removed because they would clog from all of the dead skin and soap residue as they pumped up the same white colored water, over and over again. People were getting sick with hepatitis and there were warning signs all over saying "Do not drink, do not brush your teeth". We sometimes went for days with no water. We lived in rat infested tents raised up on wooden floors, the rats were the size of housecats and finally died of bubonic plague in the spring of 66 along with 35K Viets. But that was our base camp, we had it good compared to the Infantry, they slept on the ground and ate out of cans for weeks at a time.
Register To Reply
