Submitted by: the ole gunny

In the last Issue of the Flight Line we talked about the Monkeys and the goat that we had at Qui Nhon .  I thought I should tell you that Ho Che and Alice loved chewing gum and all you had to do would be to put a stick up to the side of the cage and they would go nut's.  I guess I should let you know that Ho Che was also a “sex addict”  and Alice wasn't much better.  They were just crazy to watch.

I don't want to go much further without  filling you in on our exploits within the village of Qui Nhon and a certain warehouse where the ARMY stored their damaged pallets of beer.  There were two Army Sgt's. responsible for this, out of the way, little known  facility that I found quite by accident.  Plus, we found an Ice House in the down town area.  This used to be fishing port so they had to have an Ice House somewhere to pack their catch's in and, also for the ships that would stop there..  OK, now, we had Beer and Ice !!  All we need is a bunch of thirsty MARINES and, man did we have that.  I've got to tell you that finding both of these places was a  “God Send”.  I bought beer there for so cheap that it was almost a “Give Away”.

First, I have to explain how this beer got there in the first place. Shiploads of beer and everything else follows the ARMY around like flies follow horses.  If a pallet is broken then the cargo goes off to a different location for disposal, well what better way to dispose of beer than to, “Drink It”.  These two Sgt's had the task of getting rid of the damaged pallets how ever they could.  Isn't that the craziest thing that you ever heard of.  Well, what else can I say but, only in the ARMY.  But, this is only part of that story.  These guy's had only been in Qui Nhon for a very short time but, they already knew where the ice house was and were using that on a daily basis.  I have to stop and think about this for a minute because I wasn't all that hopped up about buying and, using Ice made by the Vietnamese because of not having 100% faith in the fact that they were friendlies, or not.   I could just imagine getting a bunch of ice in my glass, and half of it being acid or, some other odorless and deadly chemical.   That could really ruin your day.  I recall an incident whereas a solder went into town for a shave and the Barber was not a friendly and used acid as a aftershave.  Needless to say, the solder was badly burned and required medical attention for a simple shave.

Anyway, back to the warehouse, one day I was negotiating for an even cheaper price than what I was already paying for beer and the subject of our damn near wore out generator came up and I said words to the effect that I wished we had another one.  Now, understand that we as a Detachment did not have the luxury to have a Gen. In our inventory and that's why the ARMY had provided one for us.  But, the one we had belonged to the unit that was stationed at the Base at Qui Nhon and, not this same unit.  Well, I guess that the ARMY just happened to have this abundance of Trailer mounted Generators that week and they wanted to give one to everybody that raised their hand.  Well, you guessed it, I ended back at our little tent retreat, next to the Flight Line, with a brand new ARMY generator.  It just ran and ran and ran until the new CO, Col. Kew came out one day and looked at it and asked us “Where in the hell did this come from*?  We couldn't lie so we spilled our guts and of course the newly found generator was history. When we took it back to our new found friends they wanted to know what the problem was and, couldn't believe that our Commanding Officer wouldn't allow us to have it. “go figure”.  I thought that we all worked for the same Govt.