Main Base Camps that I operated from including Pleiku , Camp Holloway , Bearcat , Camp Martin Cox , Dong Tam
I started out on Camp Hollway in Pleiku with the 604th Trans. Holloway is listed as the highest elevation field in Vietnam. It had originally been a French base and in order to accomidate the altitude it was built on a hill side. We were at the bottom of the base with the POL dump next to us.
My camera view is not tilted up. I was shooting the shot straight out. The base was actually built at that steep of an angel. The valley in the distance is where the main ammo dump is at. It is also the prime location for 122 MM rockets to be fired from. If you flew to the right you went to An Khe and Mang Yang pass.
That's a 122 rocket hole. If we did not see a curve in the red streak of the rocket launch then it was going to hit us.
Here is the main road into and through down town Pleiku.
The A1 Skyraiders flew out of the main Pleiku AFB. It was located to the left of Holloway about 7 miles in the distance. At the same location was the Evac hospital and an ARVN base Camp. In back of them was engineer hill and MACV radio towers.
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From Holloway and the 604th Trans I was sent to D troop 3/5 Cav. They were at Camp Martin Cox or as we knew it "Bearcat". There were two fields at Bearcat and the smaller one was occupied by D troop alone. This is the D troop field in the foreground and the main field with the POL dump on fire in back of the 9th AV hangers.
We had a GP medium tent on sand bags as our hanger. Most of the time we just worked in the open. These were the mobile equipment boxes we used.
This was a normal night time view at Bearcat. The flares are out at a firefight.
From there we moved to Dong Tam. This was the second hanger we had because the first one collapsed in a Typhon. Across the way is the 9th Division hangers. This location in front of the hanger was referred to as Pad C in all mortar attacks.
Go to my other web pagehttp://www.lighthorse-scavenger.org/120-attack.htmto see the outcome of one nights 120 MM Mortar attack.
Home is where you can stack the most ammo boxes that are now filled with sand to stop mortar and rocket rounds.
Yes it does rain and stay muddy for months at a time.
Like I said it does rain a lot. One day I was walking back up the field and then through the building we lived in. As I came back out the other side of the barracks I noticed the Vietnamese were still messing with the trash. I grabbed our Dough Boys and let them know that it took to long to get the trash. It turned out the several VC were with the trash collectors and they had planted a claymore mine under the trash barrels as a bobby trap.
Here is Dong Tam during the dry season.
Well if you like my photos or want to make some comments then let me
know at cavman@lighthorse-scavenger.org
.