The Rainy Season
Just back from Savannah; my daughter's Marathon was cancelled due to a big wet storm. She is quite the runner. My 7 year old grandson participated in a 12 hour wilderness bike trail ride, and now has a cast on his left arm when he went off a small bridge.
In an hour, will drive down to the Columbia VA for an eye exam, and stop by the Ft Jackson PX. When I am there, the newly minted troopers just look so very young to me. And so many are female. I guess we all looked just as young and vulnerable when we were in uniform long ago to the Old Salts.
In my part of Vietnam, way south, there were two seasons, dry and wet. Both were extremes, although the dry season was not nearly as hot as the Saudi Desert in that later war. When I look over my pics and slides of my second six months, in almost all of the "home scenes" I am not wearing any top, no T shirt, and my trouser pants were always unbloused and not tucked into my Jungle Boots, unless I was on an OP, when I would tuck my jungle fatigue pants into my boots. I don't recall being miserable with the humidity, and the mosquitos and other bugs were not the nuisance I would have expected. Used a lot of the issue bug repellant, and took my malaria prophylaxis pills once a week.
As per troopers, when some medicine is forced upon them, the usual resistance is that it will make them sterile. Sort of like the resistance to the Covid shoots mandated now. Even Arron Rodgers claims he did not want to be sterile from the Covid vaccinations. I don't know about women, but for males such resistance always seem to be something about virility or sterility. Like the rumors that "salt peter" was secretly added to army rations.
anyway this is how we collected our drinking and shower water, just catch it off our metal roof, and keep in the 55 gal barrels, which we had painted insides. Put in a vial of hypochlorite per barrel for purification. In the rain, when moving our metal trough to the barrels, we would strip down just our skivvies. In the dry season, we would run up river a bit to a well and bring back big jugs of dark salty tasting water.
But I never got sick from the water or the local foods. Just lucky. when I got back go Bragg after my year, I went to the clinic and had them Rx me a bottle of anti-parasite meds, and I was good to go.
The local hovels along the berm are in the background, one a defense bunker with a 292 antennae sticking skyward. Next to it are the miserable, rat and bug infested dark "homes" for the families of the defenders. Each with a PSP plank over the inner moat, over the stinking, foul, blackish' water, with dead rats and human waste and such bobbing around. From time to time some toddler would fall in, and if at night, were usually found drowned later. The local women rinsed their cooking pots and dishes in the moat slime.
Us two US, we lived like kings in our dry hootch. Maybe that's why I recall being quite comfortable and content with my living arrangements.
Now, off to the VA, I get new glasses about every year.
All the best, and stay safe. And there was never any Salt Peter in the rations, and the Covid shot doesn't cause sterility.
SF VET
Just back from Savannah; my daughter's Marathon was cancelled due to a big wet storm. She is quite the runner. My 7 year old grandson participated in a 12 hour wilderness bike trail ride, and now has a cast on his left arm when he went off a small bridge.
In an hour, will drive down to the Columbia VA for an eye exam, and stop by the Ft Jackson PX. When I am there, the newly minted troopers just look so very young to me. And so many are female. I guess we all looked just as young and vulnerable when we were in uniform long ago to the Old Salts.
In my part of Vietnam, way south, there were two seasons, dry and wet. Both were extremes, although the dry season was not nearly as hot as the Saudi Desert in that later war. When I look over my pics and slides of my second six months, in almost all of the "home scenes" I am not wearing any top, no T shirt, and my trouser pants were always unbloused and not tucked into my Jungle Boots, unless I was on an OP, when I would tuck my jungle fatigue pants into my boots. I don't recall being miserable with the humidity, and the mosquitos and other bugs were not the nuisance I would have expected. Used a lot of the issue bug repellant, and took my malaria prophylaxis pills once a week.
As per troopers, when some medicine is forced upon them, the usual resistance is that it will make them sterile. Sort of like the resistance to the Covid shoots mandated now. Even Arron Rodgers claims he did not want to be sterile from the Covid vaccinations. I don't know about women, but for males such resistance always seem to be something about virility or sterility. Like the rumors that "salt peter" was secretly added to army rations.
anyway this is how we collected our drinking and shower water, just catch it off our metal roof, and keep in the 55 gal barrels, which we had painted insides. Put in a vial of hypochlorite per barrel for purification. In the rain, when moving our metal trough to the barrels, we would strip down just our skivvies. In the dry season, we would run up river a bit to a well and bring back big jugs of dark salty tasting water.
But I never got sick from the water or the local foods. Just lucky. when I got back go Bragg after my year, I went to the clinic and had them Rx me a bottle of anti-parasite meds, and I was good to go.
The local hovels along the berm are in the background, one a defense bunker with a 292 antennae sticking skyward. Next to it are the miserable, rat and bug infested dark "homes" for the families of the defenders. Each with a PSP plank over the inner moat, over the stinking, foul, blackish' water, with dead rats and human waste and such bobbing around. From time to time some toddler would fall in, and if at night, were usually found drowned later. The local women rinsed their cooking pots and dishes in the moat slime.
Us two US, we lived like kings in our dry hootch. Maybe that's why I recall being quite comfortable and content with my living arrangements.
Now, off to the VA, I get new glasses about every year.
All the best, and stay safe. And there was never any Salt Peter in the rations, and the Covid shot doesn't cause sterility.
SF VET
