I had not previously planned to upload this picture, but it also shows part of my travels, this time courtesy of Uncle Sam. It shows the tent city on DaNang AB, VietNam. The picture was taken in July 1966 with a Minolta 16 and b&w film, and it was developed locally in 'Klong' Water (ditch water), or so we thought because the quality was so bad. The large puddles in the foreground are from the most recent thunderstorm a few days earlier, and the ground between the puddles is already dusty. When it got to a certain point engine oil was dumped on the dust. This was good for dust control for a few days until the next thunderstorm. In the left distance are the tents we lived in; 12 men per tent, 12 steel lockers and one fan. Wooden walkways between the tents, to stay out of the mud during thunderstorms in summer and during the monsoon. In the center is a guard tower, manned by Marines that protected us. Behind the tower was a double perimeter fence, meant to keep the VC from infiltrating from the rice paddies on the other side. What the fence didn't prevent was the VC lobbying occasional mortars, and, from the west side, out of the mountains, rockets. To achieve any kind of circulation inside the tents, the tent flaps were mostly rolled up. The problem was when we worked on the flightline and a thunderstorm came up it always started with a dust storm, red dust, followed by heavy rain. Both, the dust and the rain, went in one side the tent and out the other. This meant that we usually had to sleep on wet, red, mattresses. DaNang lies on the 16th parallel North and the sun during June/July is just about overhead. Daytime temperature was in the high 90s and morning lows in the upper 70s, and the humidity was high. Flightline temperatures were around 130F, so we were told. In summer 1966 the perimeter road was not paved and there was only one operational run, a second one was being built. When I first got there it was very difficult to fall asleep at night. There was a constant noise from rockets, motars, small arms fire, artillery, and occassionally the guns of a cruiser (no battleships were there yet). This noise was constant, sometimes near, often a distance away and oftern Gooney Birds (C-47) were dropping parachute flares to keep a particular area of activity lit. They dropped pattern after pattern. We got used to that eventually. But it was more difficult in the beginning to get used to the noise by a starting F-4 flying overhead in full afterburner, just before we drifted off. One nigth I heard a peculiar noise that sounded somewhat familiar. It was made by the clatter of tracks of tanks that came around the perimeter and it reminded me of WWII. Eventually we got used to the noise, just as we got used to the rats. Around the outhouse the rats must have been 1.5-ft in length, minus the tail. This picture was taken in July 1966 and later scanned. Thank you for viewing and commenting on my uploads, Sig...