Most of the things I remember about Nam was things that happened during our missions. I also have tons of stories of things that happened during the time we spent at basecamp. The ladies who visit this site must remember that most of us enlisted guys were fighting two wars. The one against the NVA which was the real war and the one we fought against the army when we weren't fighting the NVA. The army has always had this idea that soldiers should always be busy. Just because you have flow the last thirty days in a row. Ten to twelve hours a day doesn't mean you can have the day off. The army has these little work parties called "Details" that they would send you on just to have you doing something. I cann't remember why so many of us weren't flying that day but anyway they decided that we should clear the tall grass and weeds from out in front of our bunker on the perimeter. Of course this meant we had to climb into the barbed wire and using shovels whack the weeds out and pull them out by hand. Nobody had ever heard of us ever doing anything like this. So the entire mourning we battle the weeds. After lunch one of the guys gets the idea to get gas and put it into these spray cans and we can spray part of the area and set fire to it. The first couple of patches we did everything worked out great. We had a small controlled fire and we were clearing the wire with very little effort. But of course us being nineteen and twenty years ago we couldn't take our time and do small areas at atime. We decided we could do alot bigger area and instead of using the spray cans we would just shoot the gas right out of the fuel truck into the weeds. I don't know if it was the volume of gas we used or the amount of gas that pooled in the different areas of the perimeter but when we threw the trip flare into the wire we had the biggest fire Smokey the Bear had ever seen in Viet Nam. We not only got rid of the weeds but also the barbed wire,the fence posts that held it up and most of the claymore mines that we had forgotten to pick up. By the time the fire department got there the only thing they could save was the bunker. But several of the sandbags had to be replaced on the front side. In our defense I must say that not one weed was in front of our bunker. Of course either was any barbed wire or claymore mines. The following day a group of eng. came in to replace the wire that the fire destroyed. We never had to clear the wire of weeds ever again. I think the one who got in trouble was our platoon sarg.because he was suppose to be in charge and he was at the NCO club. Sgt. Hall was his name. Tall thin lifer E-6. He got transfer right after that. Oh well.