After 46 Years...a Trip Back in Time, Part 12

by Glenn N. Holliman

I continue with photographs of 1969 and 2015, a nostalgic, emotional return to my 1st Infantry base camp in Lai Khe, Vietnam.  My daughter, Grace, and two cousins - Dr. Jim and Karen Holliman, kindly accompanied me.


From Fire Support Base Oran, elements of the First Infantry await their helicopter lift into the boonies, February 1969.

Left, Lai Khe -  damage to our barracks from a V.C. rocket attack.  Below, a Viet Cong wounded POW being carried by medics to surgery.

.

Below, approximately 8 miles from the Chu Chi Tunnels, elements of the 1st Infantry move toward Fire Support Base Lorraine near Ben Cat.   This desolate landscape had been doused with Agent Orange and worked over by massive plows to clear the tree lines.  Nineteen million gallons of herbicides had been sprayed on the Vietnam countryside, defoliating 12 million acres of forests and damaging the soil of millions of acres of farms. (The Tragedy of Vietnam by Patrick J. Hearden)  

 Ironically, I took this picture the same day in July 1969 that Apollo 11 landed on the moon.
The juxtaposition of humankind's progress and degradation disturbs me to this day.

Below, June 1969, I was on guard duty around the perimeter at Lai Khe.  A Vietnamese village bordered the camp on the north.  In the middle of the night, the Viet Cong attacked with rockets.  As they traveled at less than the speed of sound, one could here them coming.  The noise was that of a locomotive drawing nearer and louder.  I slammed myself down next to the concrete culvert pictured below.  The houses, a hundred or so feet away, behind the wire were hit; five Vietnamese nationals died.  

I heard their screams.  I still hear them a half century later.     

Right, March 2015, my daughter stands with me where I point out where I was guarding that night so long ago.   Grace was born five years after that event.  
I am a most fortunate man.

Next post, more memories of an old man returning to the Vietnam-American War....