In the Jungle...: Camping With the Enemy by W. James Seymour

Author:W. James Seymour [Seymour, W. James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / Vietnam War
Publisher: Outskirts Press, Inc.
Published: 2014-03-12T00:00:00+00:00

Hypocrisy

Pacification – the process of “winning the hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese populace to ‘our’ anti-Communist way of thinking.

While we were at LZ English I had a ‘girlfriend’ downtown who ran a laundry just outside the main gate, and her sister ran the brothel next door. So guess where all of the LRRPs hung out downtown? There was no theft or missing tiger fatigues, either, which happened a lot at the other local laundries. Our tiger fatigues were important to us and hard to get, since we bought them on the local market back at An Khe. Preferably at the Montagnard village. These were more durable than those offered at Vietnamese stalls. Plus they were ‘black’ camouflaged, and not a dark blue.

The girlfriend’s name was Hai; she had a two-year old son, and was supposedly married to an ARVN captain stationed in Saigon. She was very personable and all of the LRRPs got along well with her.

I was gone for awhile, either on a mission, or R&R, or whatever. When I got back this story was related to me by Sgt. Wyman Smith.

Hai got sick. Really, really sick and the other guys were worried about her. So Smitty and a couple of the others brought her onto LZ English to have a doctor take a look at her.

Trouble was, the MPs would not let her onto the base, even though it was obvious that she was truly sick. The official policy was that all locals had to go to a clinic down in the town of Bong Son proper, several miles away.

This kind of ticked off the LRRPs, who were genuinely concerned for her. They ended up ‘borrowing’ (stealing) a field ambulance and driving her to a New Zealander outpost just a couple of miles up the road in the opposite direction. There the doctor at the clinic gave her an exam, and some antibiotics.

She was all better by the time I got back. And from that point on we all got remarkably good service at both local establishments downtown. As long as we were in tiger fatigues, anyway, to identify us to the locals who worked there!

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