Aside from bomb craters that dotted the countryside almost everywhere, Vietnam was a beautiful place. Our unit, the Americal Division, operated in I Corp which is the northern most section of the country. It consisted of several different kinds of terrain. In addition to the rest of the areas we operated in, we spent a lot of our time working in a collection of mountains called the 'Central Highlands.' One of our LZ's, called LZ Center, was situated on top of one of the highest ones. It was a difficult journey making it to the top and we always dreaded having to go up it. From the bottom to the top it was covered with a thick layer of jungle canopy. It took us a whole day to climb it. Much of the time going up was devoted to chopping trail and pulling ourselves up on whatever tree vines we could grab ahold of. At our LZ, our heads were literally in the clouds. Looking down you could see for miles out into the distance.
Rice paddy terrain was practically everywhere. Walking down out of the mountains when the early morning sun was just beginning to wake everything up was always a pretty picture to see. Layers of rice paddies surrounded the bottom of the mountains. Water from each rice paddy tier spilled into the one below it until it eventually made it to the very bottom of the mountainous foot hills. The water run off created a small stream that wound its way down through the bottom of a very colorful, small basin. Early in the morning, while the sun was glowing on them, it was breath taking to see. It was an ancient land where little boys rode water buffalo's, plowing with a one bottom plow.
We could usually walk on the muddy dikes that separated one rice paddy from the other unless the water was too high. The rice paddy's when full of water, contained leeches about five or six inches long. They wouldn't latch onto you for some reason. It was the ones in the dry creek beds that you had to worry about, where there was no water, just mossy rocks. Going up a creek bed was easier than chopping trail through the jungle. Unfortunately the leaches could feel the vibrations of our boots hitting the rocky ground and scooch very quickly to where we were. You wouldn't know you had one on you until you saw blood running down.
Then there was the beach along the South China Sea. I used to love to sleep next to the water. It was always relaxing to me as long as we weren't getting mortared, or shot at which wasn't very often. Fishing villages usually had thatched roofs positioned close the water. They went on top of their prehistoric fishing boats to protect them from the rain while they fished with nets all night long. Several times a few of us dragged them to our position on the beach to sleep under in case it rained. The sound of the waves was relaxing and helped me sleep. The only down side was that it was extremely difficult digging foxholes in pure sand. It took a lot more digging than usual. The sides of the holes kept caving in as we dug with our entrenching tools.
The beach to the Vietnamese is not like the beach is to Americans. They use it strictly for fishing and for a sand box, or out house, if you will. They don't lay out in the sun on the sand, or surf on the waves. Depending on where the closest village is determines the smell of the beach. In the boonies, farther away from the ocean, the villages didn't have flush toilets like we have. They sometimes just had a slab of cement behind their hooch about ten inches square. This had a two inch pipe in the middle of it, going into the ground. The year it was made was written in the cement by someones finger. Not all hootch's had one of these in the back of them. I never saw a toilet the whole time I was in Vietnam.
We had out-houses at our base camps and these weren't like the ones back home either. They didn't have a hole in the ground, or chemicals to dissolve the contents. They had a barrel that had to be pulled out when it became full. Then, it had to be dragged a few yards which was bad enough, then filled with diesel fuel, and stirred with a big stick. Stirring helped get the diesel fuel mixed in thoroughly in order to help it all eventually get burned up. That means that there had to be some one appointed to do this job, obviously. Fortunately, this is the only bad job I know of that I never had to do. I was usually outside of base camps humpin' the boonies. I can't handle bad smelling things anyway, so it was a good thing.....
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