First Day: On the beach, March 28, 1966
It was an amphibious landing with boarding nets, etc.
|
Chu Lai, Vietnam 1965 - 1966 My Splendid Concubine Home Page
|
|
Greetings, Join me on a journey back in time to Chu Lei, Vietnam, 1966. These photos were taken the year I turned twenty-one. Except for the few I appear in, I was the photographer (A few of the pictures were scanned from the 1st Tank Battalion's photo book for 1965-1966--sort of like a high school yearbook.). I carried that camera with me from Okinawa to Vietnam until it was damaged while hitching a ride in a tank. I also carried a forty-five automatic, an M-14, a KA-BAR (U.S.M.C. Fighting Knife), an assortment of grenades and sometimes a claymore or two. Sincerely, Lloyd Lofthouse, author of My Splendid Concubine
A Night at the 'Well of Purity' A short story based on a real event that
took place in Vietnam in 1966.
|
|
|
First Day: On the beach, March 28, 1966 It was an amphibious landing with boarding nets, etc. |
|
The structure under construction to the right was the First Tank Battalion's underground radio and communications bunker. I was part of the team that built it. I doubt if any of it has survived. The wood was not treated for termites. As a matter of fact, that wood had been slated to build a house for the First Marine Division's general. Our colonel sort of borrowed that wood without permission. I was on the detail that did that dirty deed.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Me sitting in front of the battalion radio inside the bunker after it was completed. This radio was linked to all of the battalion's gun companies.
|
|
|
|
This was our house. A wooden floor built on stilts because of the average one-hundred-and-fifty inches of rain that fell on Chu Lei each year. The canvas tent was supported by a wood frame. |
|
Flame tank burning off brush with napalm so the Vietcong won't have a place to hide near our base camp. I drew in the flame. It was invisible in the photo.
|
|
Our first night there, a dozen Vietcong attempted infiltrating our hill. When the call came from the flame tank for permission to fire, I was the radio operator that gave the okay.
|
|
Ready to fire a mission with ninety millimeter ordinance.
|
Stuck in the mud. |
|
Some died on both sides! This one was Vietcong.
|
|
Helping out.
|
The Marines called it Civil Affairs. |
|
IN THE FIELD
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
On one field operation, I carried an Ingram submachine gun—a good thing since we were so far in front of our lines, I lost radio contact. When we drove through one deserted village, a Vietnam flag was flying from the top of a radio antenna sticking out of the top of a tree.
|
|
SOMETIMES WE RELAXED
|
|
|
|
|
On the left, that’s me next to the Playboy centerfolds inside the battalion communication bunker. A major from division headquarters told us to take those Playboy nudes down. While I was taking them off the wall, the commanding officer of the tank battalion, Colonel A. W. Snell, walked into the bunker and asked why. After I told him, he turned to the major and said, "This is my command, and I want those pictures on that wall." He ordered me to put them back. Those centerfolds were still there when I rotated back to the United States. To the right is the USO show I almost missed, but we returned in time from an all night ambush to hear the last few songs.
|
|
My Splendid Concubine Home Page
A Night at the 'Well of Purity' A short story based on a real event that took place in Vietnam in 1966.
|
