Having slowly and loudly come to a halt on the runway at Da Nang, the plane’s giant tailgate began to lower.  The noise of the feathering engines and the tailgate lowering was extremely loud.  Attempting to talk was useless.  We had to depend on hand signals.  Once the tailgate was down, the signal came to deplane. As we came off the airplane, we were instantly hit by unbearable heat and blowing sand and dirt that peppered our faces. Within minutes, our clothes were soaked with sweat. It seemed like it took forever to clear the aircraft.  Everything we owned was on our back.  That and the weapons and ammunition made for a heck of a load. We looked and felt like pack mules.  As we cleared the tailgate, we got our first site of the Da Nang airfield.  And what a site it was. All types of aircraft (both military to civilian).  Continental Air Lines from the good ole US of A, cargo planes and jets sitting behind fortified parking stalls. There were men in the all types of uniforms, everything from the uniform of the day, to working uniforms to us in full battle gear.  We didn’t know where we were going; but then, there was nothing new about that.  All we had to do was follow the guy in front of us. What we did know was that we wanted to get away from the propellers and the blowing wind and stinging sand. We could see service men that were obviously going home and could hear them shouting over the roaring engines “see you suckers back in the World”. The airport was incredibly busy. There were vehicles of all types, military and civilian, motor scooters and bicycles, walkers and runners, civilian and military. It was over whelming for us.  We had been away from this kind of activity for some time and were use to things being quiet, unless we were in a shoot out. I yelled to Fred, where are we headed? He yelled back “I’m just following everyone else like you are”. 

 We reached a stopping point and got the command to drop our gear and to smoke them if we had them. This meant another long hot wait in an area that offered no shade. The tarmac or cement was burning hot; we could feel the heat right through the soles of our boots. I sat on my flack jacket to get off the burning ground, and leaned against my 85-pound pack.  Everything I owned was in that pack.  I know I could have tossed a good deal of the stuff but was sure that as soon as I tossed something, I would need it.  Fred took a long drag off his cigarette and said to me” I hope this wait isn’t another three hour job without anything to get us cooled off or bathroom area to use” Why he mentioned the bathroom was beyond me but now that he had, now I had to use one. Hey Solomon, I yelled, where can I use the head around this place? Which was a way of asking, could I go find a place to use a head. He didn’t have any more information then I did about our surroundings, and we both knew it. Solomon yelled back,  “wait till I find out some information on how long they plan to keep us here before anyone wanders off and gets lost. 
After a little bit, Solomon yelled,  “ take a couple of guys and go find a head for the troops to use and make sure that no one gets lost. When you find a spot come back and let us know so I can send people in shifts to the head” What his meant to me was that Fred and I could go off together and hunt down a cold water fountain, or a coke machine or something. We found the latrines; over next to a mound of sand they consisted of a pipe sticking out of the sand that you were to aim your, well you know what was supposed to be aimed at the pipe. We checked the area further for a watering point but could not find any. The water in our canteens was as warm as the outside temperature was at least 110 degrees in the shade. Things were not looking good! . “Hey” yells Fred “there is a bar where you can get beer and stuff”. It had a sign that said says for Air Force Officers Only, I pointed to the sign above the door and asked Fred how can we manage this one. “Give me a canteen and watch” he said. Off Fred went into the bar just like he owned it.  He was gone for what seemed like ten minutes and I had decided that he had been arrested.  About the time I was ready to go save him, he came back and said that  “Hey Bobby, I got to sit down on a real commode, just like back home, and read a magazine in air-conditioned bathroom with mirrors and everything. They have women in mini skirts working in there; pretty Vietnamese girls”. I wanted to stay in there all day but I thought we might be pulling out. He handed me an ice-cold canteen of water that the bartender had filled for him. Ice water! I could not believe it! I had not had cold water since I left the states.  The war these guys were fighting was sure different that the one I was fighting.
     Lets get back to the group or Solomon will kill us. “Don’t worry Fred answered; once I fill him in on the bar and the ice water and bathrooms, he’ll cool right down; you’ll see. He did too as he and Bowman shot out in direction of the bar right after Fred let them feel his ice-cold canteen. Jay was nowhere to be found, I knew Jay and knew that he would re-con the area better then anyone else. He came back just as we were asking ourselves where he could have gotten. He was clean, his hair combed and he had liquor his breath. Belt was with him and Belt was carrying two beers, both ice cold.  Where did you get them we both said in unisons? “Jay found a place where he scrounged them; there is a jeep sitting there for the taking too.  If we knew where to go with it we could have some fun” I told Jay that you always make out like a banshee compared to the rest of us. Jay laughed and asked if we wanted him to get us some beer. Just then the order to saddle up rang out and Solomon and Bowman had not come back yet.
     Big Six-byes were pulling in and it was clear that they would be our next mode of transportation. Fred started to run off to get Solomon when he saw them running with beers in their hands too. He shouted to us that, the Air Force loves Marine Grunts, “we just asked to use the head and he gave us free beers, he was willing to give us all we wanted, as he just wanted to ask asked us about Khe Sanh and hear some war stories. “Heck, for a beer, I’ll talk all night”, Bowman said, and they both laughed loudly.  Life was good!
     The Six-byes lined up in long rows, trying to get organized in spite of  all the other traffic of jeeps, trucks, and a flood of motor bikes with RVN riders with pretty girls riding side saddle on the backs of them as they dangerously moved in and out amongst the worst traffic jams I’d ever witnessed. Our squad all pilled into the same six-bye (our squad and another one in 1st. Platoon). We didn’t have any Platoon Sergeants or Lt’s on our truck to tell us where we were headed so we did what we always did, guess. All the six-byes were covered with this red dry dirt that clung to the wheels and the sides and was imbedded in the interior of the cab. There were tops on the backs of the trucks because if we got ambushed, we would be leaving these trucks in a hurry and did not want anything there to slow us down.
      As we slowly moved through the traffic on the unbelievably crowed streets, we could see people everywhere. Both, in vehicles and on foot, many of them walking with a bamboo type shoulder chattel that went across their shoulder that had heavy 5 gallon water gas cans on one end and stacks of debris or a live chicken in a cage on the other end, it was unbelievable to see a woman in her 70’s carrying such a load.  Some had two bars on each shoulder.  It looked to us like they could move faster with their loads than we did with ours when we were in the bush. These were amazing people with an incredible work ethic that I had never seen in the USA. On the side of the road was a densely crowed village built out of cardboard C-Ration boxes, parts of runway pallets, and tin roofs.  There were open door ways all touching each other except for a maze of tunneled walkways that went deeper into the make shift village. The area had a thousand smells everything from the incense used to burn at their home alters for their dead relatives. To the smell of food being cooked in open pots boiling God knows what they were cooking, we could see green leaves or like shrubs being cut up and thrown into the boiling water for a soup or something. Hordes of kids ran along side the six-byes asking for food and candy and cigarettes. If you tossed them a cigarette, they yelled back at you, “You number One Joe”. “You number one good Marine”. If you tossed them any C-Ration cans they’d say you were number 10 thou, for thousand, being the worst you could be. These kids could swear up a storm in English, so in the three years we’d been here, these people picked up every nasty swear word known and unknown to American kids back home.  It was a strange site to see a kid of 7 or 8 running alongside the truck carrying a baby of 2 or 3 on his hip yelling, swearing and begging all at the same time.  That was definitely not a sight we had ever seen America. As we began picking up speed, we left the hordes of screaming kids behind. 
     With only the noise of the wind and the sounds of the trucks motors and the gears shifting, we could actually talk to each other, well, maybe not talk but a low shout. Anyway, Fred said to me, “You ever see such a place in all your life, how could human beings possibly live in those crowed conditions day in and day out with beggars and whores side by side, both trying to scrounge a living for themselves?” Never I answered, not even on TV, none of these pictures got on the six o’ clock news, just remote fighting around Khe Sanh and villages that we saw up north, nothing remotely resembling this trash pit of a living situation. My dogs had better living conditions. I’d be crazy in a week’s time with that daily maze of traffic and hustling going on. I wondered what it would take to have Americans living like that.  I knew in my heart that we were very, very lucky to not have experienced the type of war these poor people were in at home.
    After a fairly short trip, we rolled into what appeared to be a prison compound of some kind. There were towers, but no one in them, and barbed wire, with gates, which were open, and huts were built off the ground and lined in small rows.  We could see some prehistoric looking mountains not far from us. There were about three or four of them. Very pointed at the tops but small in scale in regards to mountains in the mid western United States. I could see almost around one of them but they were about 800 feet high, but less then a quarter of a mile, an area that they all fit into. They looked like tall rock needles placed in the middle of a large flat area. There was a dump behind the Eastern area of one mountain, and a village was in the middle of the four mountains or over grown pointed rocky hills., depending on what you wanted to call them, It was an eerie site.  These big rock formations pointing to the sky in the middle of chaos. 
 As we moved through this gate area we could see some Army MP’s and some RVN, (Republic of Viet Nam) MP’s. Apparently standing guard of some sort. 
    We were passing through what we later learned was the Marble Mountain Area, we could see blown up Amtrac’s, on our left in front a CAP Units position. There was also a Hugh tower with a small ring of sand bags around this tower. Looking at the area, I thought, I would never want to be caught in a firefight in this place. The landscape was barren and flat there was sand and tree lines and rivers and marshes leading to tree lines in the far distance. It would be impossible to move around without being seen.  No matter how good you were, the enemy would see you coming long before you arrived. We were out in what was normally called, Indian Country, or the Bad Lands, now.
       The road was packed hard mud, the red mud that was on all the trucks so they’d been here before. They told us this rode was heavily booby trapped, so I took off my flack jacket and sat on it for protection. The speed of the six-byes began to fly now, about 50 or 60 miles an hour as we passed more blown up vehicles and armor personnel carriers then I’d ever seen in my life. I guess now we finally were back in the war again.
       After fifteen minutes or so, someone yelled and was pointing to our South East. They’re sat a large complex, surrounded by sand dunes, with towers and bunker emplacements ever few yards, I guess we were finally home again after all. God it didn’t seem like anything I’d pictured as being home again.
 

     Stick around as we get kicked off on getting back into the war again. This would be a war that none of us were anywhere near prepared for or to fight. Follow on with next weeks story, Back In The War Again.

Bobby Hingston and Carl E. King