Compound and mine field at Phuoc Vinh. At Phuoc Vinh we lived in an American compound, not in the village, and worked in a fortified South Vietnamese army compound across the road. There really were mines in the minefield, as a young ARVN lieutenant found out to his detriment. Aside from working shifts in the radio shack I also had to go out and shovel sand for the sandbags sometimes. This provided a bit of much needed exercise, and we were glad to have the sandbag emplacements to hide behind on those few occasions when there was some sort of shooting going on.
The American compound at Phuoc Vinh. Three days later I wrote a letter to my brother which read, in part:. We got out our ammunition, set up the mortar which is sort of a miniature cannon pointed at an angle up into the sky in order to hit targets several hundred or thousand yards away , and waited. Occasionally we could hear a few shots in the distance, from the direction of the air strip and the rubber plantation on the other side of the compound.
From behind us, the ARVN people sent up a couple flares to light up the area and see what was going on; apparently nothing much was, because after 45 minutes or so we got the word to put the mortar away and go to bed. Aside from such alerts, the place is very quiet. I will have time to read, write and study, especially on evening and night shifts. In a letter dated August 4, , I wrote:. The land around Phuoc Vinh is flat, mostly jungle and rubber trees.
This is supposedly the rainy season, but so far there have only been a few brief thundershowers. The Vietnamese say this is one of the driest rainy seasons in years. One of my main worries was lack of exercise:.
The only American enlisted men were the radio operators, like me, and a couple of clerk-typists. As I wrote in one of my letters:. I expected living conditions to be good here, and they are. There is no superfluous military harassment, no standing in lines, no KP, no guard duty, no inspections, no bed-making, no shoe-shining, no formations, no marching; no barracks, we live two to a room.
