After a week in the holding pen, I was asigned to the 172nd Preventive Medicine Unit in Danang. I
got on a C130 and was there in a few hours. Hell began at Camp Viking.
I have no pictures of Camp Viking, I had no camera. Picture in your mind a camp built by the French in 1950, overrun, and then abandoned.
We were at Camp Viking for a couple of months, and then moved to Camp Baxter.
It's funny how a friendship happens. During A.I.T. at Fort Sam Houston, Wayne and I didn't like each other. We never even talked. He kept his space and I mine. As fate would have it, we both went to Nam and were stationed with the same unit. As time went on, we became the best of friends! He looked after me and I after him. He got an early out and left when I was TDY learning how to be a Military Quarantine Inspector. He wrote me a letter before he left, the words I will never forget. He and I really were the best of friends. I haven't seen or heard from him since. Maybe some of the memories are too painful.
This picture was taken at Camp Baxter but he left when we were at the 95th Evac Hospital.
I remember sitting on the retaining wall one day and looking at the barbed wired fence just 25 yards away and wondering how this fence could keep anyone out. Rumor had it that the camp was going to be over run that night. Sure enough, in the middle of the night the sirens went off. We jumped out of our cots and headed to our assigned bunkers while the camp was under mortar and sniper fire. The attack from the outside was just a diversion while 2 VC broke though the fence and started to set saccule charges around our hootches. Thank God they were seen and caught before the charges went off. A lot of guys would have been hurt or killed. Ever since that night I don't sleep very well.
It got so hot, we were a little nuts, we shaved our heads
Camp Baxter was closing down. Time to move again!
95th Evac Hospital, Our 3rd Home in Danang
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The other guys went home.....
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