Re: question about vietnam
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In reply to:
question about vietnam
brian mitchell 1/13/05
I was there in 1965-66 First at Vung Tau, training Arvn Paratroopers, very little drug use among GIs. Arvns smokedsomething called "tooklau" thru a small water pipe.
Transferred in Jan. 66 to Ist Infantry Divisionat Phouc Vinh, about 35 miles north of Saigon. Didn't see any drug use among the troops.
As far as equipment weight, most of us carried as little weight as we could. Basic load of ammo (500 rounds of .223 caliber), 2-3 canteens of water, toothbrush for our M-16, 2-4 days of rations in a sock, tied to our web gear. A couple of "battle bandages", a poncho liner, once in a great while, a tent half, a bottle of hot sauce to spice up the "C" rations, a "P-38" GI issue can opener, and a plastic bottle of bug repellent that we used to start a cooking fire (if the area was secure enough) never used the bug repellent as intended, because "Charlie" could smell it pretty far away.The whole mess probably weighed no more that 15 pounds. The machine gunner was the only guy loaded down not by choice. The M-60 weighed , if memory serves, about 30 pounds, plus two bandoliers of 7.62 "Nato" rounds, about 500 rounds total (probably another 10 pounds). Oh yeah, andour "steel pot" about 2.5 pounds. We could afford to travel light, due to chopper resupply. So the weight was never a factor in my unit, luckily, most of our officers were WWII and Korean war combat veterans, so they knew "the skinny" about what was needed. Hope this helps