Jones,+Ed

I arrived in country September 1966 and after processing through Camp Alpha at Tan Son Nhut and 90th Replacement at Long Binh, I was taken to HHC in Siagon. I spent a couple of days there and remember sleeping in an area next to the Club on the top floor of the Villa. After batallion in processing I was driven by jeep to Bien Hoa and the Sawmill. I was one of the first people to report in as a replacement for the original guys that came over on the boat. After getting checked into the unit, the next day I reported for work with the rest of the crew. Breakfast, lunch and dinner was at the time served at the COLA Mess Association at the 2nd Field Forces (Honour-Smith) officers compound located about 8 blocks down the street from the Sawmill. The Ops area had the II vans on the north side, a row of CONEX containers along the berm where the Photo Lab was later built. In the south the Repro ES-38 shelter was sitting on the ground with a wood shack attached to the entrance side. The wood shack was for storage of chemicals and paper. The portable water tank was towards the gate. The film library was located in the middle of the compound with the doors facing the berms. After the Repro building was built the film library was moved next to the TIIF.

My first Repro supervisor was SSG Eugene Greer and the Repro Officer was 2LT Jim "call me Jim" Monahan. Other guys in the Repro Section were Russ Ensley and Bobby O'Hare. The others I can't recall the names of. I worked the night shift to begin with and that was good because it was cooler at night. The processing equipment put off a lot of heat! Greer's Office was one of the CONEX containers, and I never understood how he could stand to be in there in the afternoon sun. Shifts were 12 hours on and 12 hours off. As the new guy, I'm sure I got stuck on nights because most of the guys liked to go to town at night to the "Hope Bar" or the "Three Sisters Bar". We could go to town on passes at that time as there was no club at the Sawmill. The ES-38 had only been in country less than a year and it was already in bad shape. The walls and floors were corroded from spilled chemicals and in places sand bags were needed to exclude daylight out of the shelter where corrosion had eaten through the floor. One of the two air conditioners crapped out and it got real hot inside while working in the shelter. Eventually the other quit also and I remember printing and then loading paper into the processors by safelight and the closing the processors up and getting the hell out of the shelter while the processing was going on. Lt Monahan put in a request for a building to be built to replace the shelter and eventually it was constructed along the berm by Pacific Architects and Engineers under a probably very lucrative contract. Originally it only had three rooms and a front office was not a part of the original structure. The equipment was stripped out of the ES-38 and the shelter continued to corrode away.

At the Sawmill, I was assigned a maid which as I recall was nicknamed "Jugs", because she had a pair. Shortly after I joined the unit the CO directed that the Repro guys move to the area that was directly above the Orderly Room and a partition was built to make a room on one end. Other partitions were built at the same time to accomodate the E-5's on the other end of the bay. The rifle racks were located in the middle of the bay, but shortly after I joined the unit they were relocated to the supply room that in half of the officers quarters next to the river. Ensley liked the "Righteous Brothers" and would play some of his favorite tunes in the afternoons before we reported for work. I remember a time when one of the II's whose name I forget kept playing "McArthur Park" over and over again and that didn't go over very well with Ensley. He asked nicely a couple of times for the record not to be played anymore, but the third time he picked the record up off the player and sailed it across the bay. Cross words were exchanged, but the record wasn't played anymore, at least when Ensley was around.

Much more to follow!

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