Our compound was at the bottom of a large hill . At the top of this hill was a Signal Corp Unit . Between us and the top of the hill was nothing but jungle . Our mess hall sat at the bottom of the hill .

This was our Mess Hall looking out of our barracks door

 

  Down the street a little bit was the EM Club ( Enlisted Men’s Club ) Bar in other words where we spent most of our time  off duty drinking our paychecks up there .

 

 

 

This is where we spent our off time "The E M Club"

Our barracks was a two story building that had siding half way up the wall with screen the rest of the way up the wall to keep the bugs out . With an awning over it to keep the rain off .

This was our barracks ( Note the power lines overhead)

Our supply clerk that drove a 5 ton Ford Flat bed truck always came back with a double order of lumber. If he had a requisition for 3 bundles of lumber he would come back with 6 bundles . We had a well supplied lumber yard within a few months . So we remodeled the inside of our barracks . We added rooms inside with two men to a room and made our own individual design on each room .

 

The guy that drove the 5 ton Ford flat bed truck to pick up lumber . This guy got caught selling cement to the Viet Namese civilians one day by the Military Police . The MP’s called our good old First Sergeant up and told him about it . Our First Sergeant ( The one that said he took care of his men’se ) told the MP’s “ he wasn’t selling it to them . They had worked for us and he was delivering it to them for payment because we didn’t have the money to pay them . Send him to company area “ This guy got back to the company area and the First Sergeant called him to his office . The first thing he did was chew him out real good , then he said “ DON’T EVER GET CAUGHT DOING THAT AGAIN “ .  Our First Sergeant saved his hide because he would have went to jail for selling government property.

Later on we built a Senior NCO Barracks for higher ranking Sargents  so to show our appreciation to our First Sargent we used some of the extra lumber to build our First Sargent a Super Special Room . We had tile floor with an inlaid Engineer Castle in the door way with our unit’s number in it and we used 1 by  8 boards on the wall overlapped to make a knotty pine wall for him with light fixtures built into the walls . He was only an E-8 Sargent and their was a Sargent Major E-9 told him “ I am going to take that room when your men are done with it “ . Our First Sargent was polite but said “ No your not .”  And he didn’t

And that is how the rest of the Viet Nam war was fought .

16^th Engineer Detachment

U S Army

Qui Nhon Viet Nam

September 1967- September 1968