Dan Sea's Walk Around the Compound
1969
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This picture shows that ‘first and foremost, every Marine is a
rifleman’. It is a picture of my issued ‘deuce gear’ on Day 1
in-country. The next time I saw my gasp mask and M-16 was Day 398 when I
turned them back in! <g>. -photo from Dan Sea |
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This is the Comm Co latrine...... proving once again that when a Commo Marine is ordered to ‘burn shitters’... they excel! If you were looking at this, and turned around, you’d see the Bn Motor T area. -photo from Dan Sea |
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This is over on the East side of the perimeter. The Motor T area. It was
taken right after a mortar attack in maybe August of 1969.
-photo from Dan Sea
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These pictures are looking directly South---about 3 kilometers
out! The General in the pics is Major Gen Edwin B Wheeler - CG of
1stMarDiv in April 1970. Lt. William C Lamb, CO of Charlie 1/1 is the sort
of skinny fellow in the middle (are you listening, Lee Hodge?), and I’m
the one with glasses. The blond guy is Whitey and the short round Marine is
Cpl Derr of Iowa. General Wheeler soliciting my opinions as to what III MAF strategy should be for the remainder of the war so as to wrap up the conflict with both honor and victory.<g> Note: about 3 days after these pictures were taken, the General’s UH-1E was shot down and the General was hurt REAL bad and MedEvac’ed all the way back to the States. It was H&S Co that had to go out and get him and secure the crash site. -photos from Dan Sea |
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This Southeastern view shows where Comm was supposed to be when in the
‘rear’ areas and on DefCon2 or better. -photo from Dan
Sea
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This pic is over on the SSW edge of the perimeter—from this point on and curving around to the west and northwest is where 1/11 arty had their area. I was never allowed in there for some reason so I have no pics of the West side of the perimeter. -photo from Dan Sea |
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So, in the next pic we will turn inward and continue our tour by dropping in at the Bn theater... to catch a USO show. In this pic, we are in the southern central area of the Bn compound. If you look carefully, you’ll see that each Marine is well-trained in the "Eyes Front!" drill----, regardless of whether they went to MCRD San Diego or Parris Island! <g> In the next pic, we will head north into the S-Areas. -photo from Dan Sea |
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In this pic, we are outside of the S1 hooch ( i THINK), but certainly by
ONE of those S-thingies!! <g> This is captured NVA gear being
inventoried. It was taken on a sweep through the Charlie Ridge area by a
KingFisher mission. -photo from Dan Sea
(Not S-1. I think it's by S-4 and armory - Dan King) |
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This is how the three-legged tower got to LZ412. These three pics were taken
North of DaNang.. - not sure exactly where, but I think it might have been
Con Thien or Dong Ha area. What I DO know is that I got to fly alongside
in a UH-1E as we picked it up. I had wanted to capture the whole sequence
but it was not to be.
By the way, not many know it, but our Bn area was in service during 1944 as a Japanese Naval Aviation base and was a launching point for numerous kamikaze aircraft. Thought you might like to know! :) (I remember hearing this in '69 - Dan King) |
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If you look at these three pictures together, You should have a fairly good
perspective of the area. First and Second picture are Lee Hodge's medevac photos. The CH46 is coming in from the south. The yellow smoke is blowing east toward the mess hall and that trail that Lee speaks of that winds from the LZ, continues east past the Mess Hall, east past the Comm area and winds up at the Motor T area on the east side perimeter. North of that trail is the S-areas, NW of the trail is the Combat Operations Center ( and continuing angling NW of the COC is the S-4 area where the ammo was kept by "L/Cpl Tim Hotek, the rough-and-ready ammo tech". Following that same angle would bring you to the main gate. South of that trail. going SE of the mess hall, is the Bn theater. ESE of there is the Comm Co area. I have no pictures that look directly north, but I do remember pulling guard duty on the northern perimeter and it looked across a road, a wide open area that contained some ‘phu-gas’ barrels, and off in the northern distance was the 51st ARVN compound. The 3-legged tower was in the NW corner of LZ 412, which 1/1 held from August 1968 to March or April 1970. The main gate was at the NE corner of the compound. We then moved NE to Hill10 where we took on a lot of ‘mix-masters’ from the 3rd MarDiv. I left in June 1970, so that’s the last I remember. |
