Category: Lesson Learned

real dangerous dive:

first division ‘rear’ slop-chute*

went once – scary place!

*(1st Marine Division (-)(Reinf), Rear at Hill 327, DaNang, VietNam 1970, “Sandbaggers Club,” Non-Commissioned Officers’ Club – in Marine parlance, a ‘slop chute.’ Real dangerous place: fraggings, fights, racial tension and the everpresent attitude of REMF resentment of ‘bush troops.’  Safer either to smoke dope or drink purloined or bartered “cumshaw” beer back at Regimental (7th Marines) rear at LZ (Landing Zone) Baldy, and safest still out in “The Bush” where any kind of getting high got you big-time trouble (mostly). Except for “Doc” Smitty, a salty sailor corpsman who carried a canteen of Beam, a 10-pack of pre-rolled joints to hand out to casualties instead of a styrette (auto-loaded syringe) of morphine which in a small-unit action really was counterintuitive: ‘hey, Marine,’ he’d drawl, ‘You gotta watch my back as I work on the other guys!’  His wife, Lt. (forgotten first name) Smith, USN NurseCorps – the reason he got shitcanned to the Marines and sent to Vietnam – was my surgery ward head nurse when I got med-evaced back to ‘The World’ at Jacksonville (Florida) Naval Hospital.  There, I felt safe!)