Copyright 2002: Dick Guthrie.
All rights reserved. (copy permission at bottom)
Webmaster's
Introduction Until September
1969 when the 1st Battalion (Mechanized), 50th Infantry shifted south to LZ Betty outside
Phan Thiet in the far south of II Corps, most Ichiban soldiers endured a love-hate
relationship with LZ Uplift. It wasn't brilliant, but it was home. Unlike Camp Radcliff at
An Khe, or LZ English (Bong Son) or even LZ Betty, the Army had never tried to make LZ
Uplift anything more than it was, a temporary combat base in Charlie's back yard. Largely
a tent city, every piece of wood from ammo boxes found a home somewhere. Creature comfort
wasn't high on the agenda... we all had our individual jobs to do. So welcome to LZ
Uplift! |
UPLIFT was not an attractive place when it was dry, but it was a
depressing nightmare after a day or two of monsoon rain had turned it into a quagmire. The
perimeter, roughly a half-mile across, was outlined by an irregular oval of ramshackle
three-man bunkers made of leaking sandbags. Some even had the sandbags on top, while some
had only an attempt at shelter from the rain, which deceived the occupants into thinking,
they were protected from air mortar bursts. These slumping dugouts were separated, one
from the other, by some seventy-five yards of mud, puddles, and litter of every
description.
Beyond the bunkers, the outer rim of our defenses was a tangle of concertina wire that in
places was three rolls high as prescribed, while elsewhere we took what protection we
could get from a single roll stretched so taut and thin that a short man attacking could
vault over it without breaking stride. Surprisingly, the perimeter's oval was bifurcated
by Route #1, which of course had to be left open for civilian traffic during daylight, and
was closed off at dusk with an improvised contraption of wood and barbed wire drug across
the road.
The defense of any segment of the perimeter depended on the initiative of the succeeding
company commanders who had been responsible for occupying that part. Some no doubt had
been there for no more than a few hours. Probably none had defended it for more than a few
days at a time, when their priorities were elsewhere. Soldiers from a unit rotating in
from the paddies needed rest, hot meals, a shower, and a chance to write a letter or two
home. That was what their captain tried to give them. So filling sandbags, clearing fields
of fire and digging good fighting positions had been low on the priority list and it
showed.
Crammed almost randomly inside this littered space were all the support and service
functions needed to keep an Air Cavalry Brigade running. The functional layout seemed no
better planned than the defenses. There were Tactical Operations Centers for the Brigade
and three battalions, along with eight inch and 155 mm Howitzer firing batteries, medical
aid stations, supply dumps of rations and munitions of all sizes, Petroleum, Oil and
Lubrication stockpiles, a mobile laundry, and shower unit, helicopter arming and refueling
pad, maintenance facilities for aircraft, armored vehicles and trucks, mess tents,
Chaplains' offices, a military police unit, and everywhere, a hodge-podge of sleeping
accommodations for individuals, squads and platoons.
Radio and microwave antennae of every size and configuration sprouted randomly. Black
commo wire, WD-1, ran overhead or underground to nearly every structure. And, even though
enemy use of aircraft was virtually unheard of, we had an air defense artillery platoon
boasting twin 40 millimeter cannons, and old WWII quad-50 caliber machine guns.
Some of the structures had originally begun as olive drab tents that later were protected
from incoming fire by waist-high sandbag walls. Some were "hootches" made of
wood salvaged from ammunition boxes, or from forklift pallets and the kits used to make
flooring for General Purpose tents that housed a platoon. Tactical Operation Centers
(T.O.C.'s) were usually heavily fortified as a matter of priority, since they were the
nerve center of the unit they directed. Accordingly, they also sprouted more radio
antennae than other structures, so they could transmit and receive with higher and lower
headquarters.
Scattered almost at random were the latrines found on all U.S. firebases. They almost all
resembled the one- and two-seat privies that had been so common in rural America; ours had
one significant difference: the Vietnam model caught the waste in a receptacle fabricated
from one third of a 55-gallon oil drum. This tub was kept partially filled with diesel
fuel, and each day a couple of disgruntled rear-echelon soldiers had the unhappy but
necessary duty of disposing of the day's deposits. They would pull the drum from under the
privy, drag it a safe distance away, and light the diesel afire. Nobody who spent time in
Vietnam will, I am sure, forget the characteristic stink of the burning contents.
L.Z. UPLIFT was to be our firebase for the entire time I spent with the battalion.
Copyright 2002 Richard Guthrie,
RPGUT3@aol.com
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