LRRP Team Leader by John Burford

Author:John Burford [Burford, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-77526-9
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

“Uncle John, did you ever do anything besides go out to the jungle and fight?”

“Jason, we had some recreational time, even in the middle of a war.”

I told you about the teams’ getting to go to the beach outside of Hue and the movies that were set up around Camp Eagle. The army understood that all of the men needed a little time off. Everyone in Vietnam was entitled to one six-day R & R outside Vietnam during his tour. There were R & R centers in every major country around the Pacific basin, but the favorite spots for the single men were Thailand, Hong Kong, and Australia. The married men would try to get to Hawaii, and have their wives meet them there. The army had in-country R & R centers for shorter time spans, and those were used to reward men for doing their job exceptionally well.

Back in the base camps and on the firebases, we did what we could to entertain ourselves. The big USO shows came around as much as possible, but they were still few and far between. We found that sometimes a few quiet hours to read our mail and write letters was the best form of entertainment. I read a lot of books and the newspapers that many of the guys got from home. Some sporting goods were issued to each company supply room. We had a horseshoe pit near the helipad, and many games of football were played on the helipad. We even had an archery set for a while, but after a freak accident, it disappeared. One of the lurps using the set felt a little like William Tell and ended up putting a blunt arrow through Frank Souza’s hand. You never saw so many lurps trying to convince the medics that the NVA were using bows and arrows to conserve ammo.

The main NCO club was behind the company area, and we spent a few hours up there, bending the elbow. In the company area, there was always a game of hearts going on, and there never was a shortage of players. A good card game could eat up some hours. We had our own little club down by the helipad, and we left our rank at the door. The beer was always cold, and we would sit around and drink with the team, or carry a few back to the hooch for the guys playing cards. We spent countless hours just sitting around talking. All of the E-5s lived in the same hooch as their team, and that helped in the bonding process that made the team work well in the field. I don’t remember what we talked about, but we did it for hours on end. If there is anything I miss about the war, it is the closeness we developed. I have never found that with any other person since I came home.

Camp Eagle was a forward combat base, so we didn’t have all of the comforts that many REMFs enjoyed down south.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.