Watching+the+Vietnamese+in+Fascination

By Joe Buesing
 * Watching the Vietnamese in Fascination**

There was an episode at the wharf across the street from the Modern Hotel (Det. B's EM & NCO Quarters) that I witnessed in DaNang in 1969.

As I stood by the small sandbag bunker in the SE corner of the roof of the Hotel one afternoon I observed an ingenious episode of a third world's, non-mechanized solution to a difficult materials handling problem. A medium-sized Vietnamese flatbed truck (about the size of a 2 1/2 ton) was loaded with 55-gallon drums. The job was to unload the drums from the truck to the ground then roll them to the edge of the wharf then slowly down a wide plank and onto a motorized sampan.

Of course, given their relatively high center of gravity it’s not too difficult to push them over onto their sides or to roll them along the ground or down a plank (assuming the incline wasn't too steep - it wasn't). The main problem was getting the damn things off the truck - the bed was five or more feet off the ground; and without the use of a forklift, any mechanical device, or even any men. You see the entire operation was done by three women - none of whom could have weighed more than 85 or 90 lbs. soaking wet.

They accomplished it with the use of only three rubber tires. One was up on the flatbed and two were stacked on top of one another on the ground immediately behind the back edge of the flatbed. One woman on the truck pushed the drum over onto its side onto the single tire on the flatbed - the tire cushioned its fall and prevented damage. She then rolled it to the rear of the truck and rolled it off the back when given the OK by the two women standing alongside the two stacked tires below. This is where ingenuity and skill was more than a match for a forklift or a squad of burly GI's.

As the drum fell and hit the stacked tires it bounced up at least two or three feet. Just at its apex, or perhaps an instant before, the two women, working in unison, somehow pushed the drum in two dimensions simultaneously - one pushed it off to the side the other rotated the top in such a manner that the drum came to rest precisely where they wanted it – upright and about a few inches off to the side of the tires. From there it was a simple matter to get it down onto the boat.

The skill was in knowing how to judge the bounce and when and where to apply the pressure. They did this flawlessly for maybe as many as fifteen or twenty drums with never a miscalculation or mistake.

For all I know this may be a common method employed elsewhere but I had never seen it before or since and to this day remain impressed. Those drums must have weighed a couple hundred lbs. and a slight mistake could have crushed either of the tiny women doing the push and rotation.

They did it with an ease and self-assurance that could make a forklift driver worry about job security.

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