Man was it hot, dust blowing sand all over my sweaty body.  I had to cover my mouth to keep the brown dust, dirt and sand out of it.  I was soaked through, from head to foot, with perspiration. the muddy sand now all over every inch of skin which was exposed made you feel wretched to say the least. We were headed for Da Nang and were waiting on aircraft to pick us up.
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     It seemed as if we'd never reach Da Nang. We began our trip with a helicopter ride from Con Thien (right at the DMZ) to our Company patrol base in a tree line at Cau Viet. We had called this area home for 2 months. From the tree line, we took Amtrac's to Camp Big John where our gear was stored and then boarded this rather large looking landing craft, but 50 times bigger (I think it was a LCT or Landing Craft Tank). We slowly crawled down the river, exposed to anyone that felt lucky and wanted to shoot a Marine.  Nothing much to do but watch the land go by or sleep, I found a soft area with some protection from snipers and caught up on some much needed sleep.
     We arrived at Dong Ha just as the sun was setting and set up to spend the evening on a large pier.  Much to our surprise and good luck, there was another large tied up by our boat.  The good luck part is that on that boat were cases and cases of beer, soda's and God only knows what other kind of goodies that we had not had access to for months.  As you might guess, we zeroed in on the beer and soda.  We carried away all that we could so that everyone would get something. Just as we sat down to enjoy our first beer (or soda) a Navy Lt. came over to Peter Hoban (Hobe) and accused us of stealing government property. He suggested that we return the stolen property.  But, much to his credit, (and intelligence) upon looking out at our Marines, he noticed that we were dirty & tired.  Most of us had on torn and ripped clothing.  We had obviously been through some tough times and we were all carrying loaded weapons. Once he fully comprehended what sort of group he was dealing with, he began to lower voice and change his tone of speech. Hobe told him that he wasn't the person in charge, why didn't the Navy Lt. just ask the men to put it back. He again looked us over, about 50 Marines, tired, hungry, and thirsty and generally mad at the world. He gave Hobe’s suggestion about ten seconds of serious thought and then motioned to his people to return to the ship and forget what happened. Smart man that Navy Lt.
     

    We settled down for the night. Sitting our gear, flack jackets, cartridge belts, helmets, and anything soft.  Everyone had this incredible ear-to-ear grin on their face. For the first time in a long, long time there would be no standing lines all night at two-hour shifts, no real fear of an attack and nothing to do but drink our borrowed government property. I had two cold cokes; I never developed a taste for beer, especially beer hot beer. 

We go up at O-Dark thirty, and got ready for our first cooked breakfast in months. We were to have cold milk, eggs and ham. Cooked anyway you wanted them. It had been so long since I had had anything cool to drink that after two glasses of milk, I was too full to eat my breakfast.
     
Dong Ha. Was (for the Marines) a rear area?  It had chow halls, nice hooch's, beer halls and neat stuff that we never got to see. All the troops wore bloused trousers, shined boots, haircuts and starched pressed utilities. To say we stood out would be a real understatement.  There we were: filthy & smelly, with blood stained trousers and jackets. Our uniforms were literally rotting off us.  Many of us had not had a change of uniform in two months; but we could have cared less as long as we got a hot breakfast.

     Once we finished breakfast, we headed back to the pier to get our gear, so we could move down to the runway. We waited what seemed like hours in the hot sun with no shade and no place to get relief from the unrelenting heat. Finally, we saw, these C-130 cargo planes coming in that would take us south to Da Nang. The C-130's are the loudest airplanes you will ever hear. None of this nice quiet plane with a movie and air line stewardess to take care of your every need. These were guttered out hollow fuselages, not even a seat to sit down on. There was no sense trying to say anything to anyone because even the person right next to you wouldn't hear anything you had to say above the noise of the rattling cargo plane.
     I curled up in my gear and tried to keep warm, (I think I was either hot or cold with no in between the whole time I was in Vietnam) there was no glass in the windows and the back cargo door was part way down so we had lots of wind.  It was an awful ride.  As we were coming in to Da Nang, the pilot came over the intercom to give us some instructions and then asked the co-pilot if he had ever tried to land one of these things.  The co-pilot said no and the pilot said, “want to try”.  Needless to say, we all perked up. Turned out that the pilot had a very sick since of humor.

Stick with us as one a week will hopefully be brought to you by myself and co-author, Carl E. King without whose help these would be on disk in my files.

Bobby Hingston and Carl E. King.