My Carbine with flip sights.

[lemaymiami]

The first two letters in REMF stood for "rear echelon", etc. Helpful to remember that only one out of seven military over there were combat types - that left an entire world of REMF's (like me) doing their thing... When I was there in 1971 and the war was winding down there were all kinds of serious problems in the rear - terrible amounts of drug use (particularly high grade heroin), killings between soldiers (both racially motivated and otherwise)... and other terrible discipline problems... Might have been safer out in the bush...

When I left, I was actually required to submit a urine sample under the watchful eyes of MP's (we all were, at least those of us departing out of DaNang in August of 1971 - have no idea whether this was country wide or just local...). The idea, back then, was to identify the heroin users so that they could spend some quality time in de-tox before being released "back in the world".

Over the years I've watched a few of the documentaries and histories of that war - and don't believe I've ever seen a single mention of what I've just described... As you can guess it left a bad taste and I doubt I'll ever forget it...