I had friends who ran the control tower of a helicopter landing pad so I got a look from the tower.
Late in my Vietnam tour I finally bought a telephoto lens - this was one of my first pictures with the new camera the lens belonged to. A GI is working on top of a Huey helicopter.
Infantry units would come and go from their battalion's firebases. I don't know what this unit was up to.
Bien Hoa's Sandy Pad had a stream of men and material being loaded and unloaded on the pad. The little trucks in the foreground were called mules.
I sent out with a recon unit again during the dry season in early 1971. These soldiers stand amidst the bamboo.
It's hard to take pictures when soldiers are moving through thick jungle so most of my pictures are after we'd stopped for the day. Although I had now problems in our dry season mission, the soldier in the top center of the picture was not so lucky, dying in a claymore mine ambush two weeks later. This was in early 1971.
Dappled shade is a photographer's enemy and the dry season outing was full of it. A group of grunts of Echo Recon, 1st of the 7th is taking a break.
Two soldiers relax for the evening during my dry season tramp in early 1971.
The military have bands traveling about firebases, in this case a rock band.
A Sikorsky sky crane crash and I was ordered not to take pictures of it, which we all ignored. Amazingly, nobody was killed in this fiasco.
A tree was in the way of a helicopter's landing area so the soldiers used a claymore mine strapped to the tree to bring it down. This was a misuse of this particular munition but the GIs made do with what they had.
A 105 mm howitzer crew is at work on a firebase.
Centers of firebases were surprisingly orderly for such a forbidding mud environment.
Dust was a constant irritant, particularly when helicopters were moving around the firebase.
Artillery work required a good deal of assembly and substantial cleaning up. This is what it looked like before clean up.
Explosions were frequent to get rid of outdated explosives.
Sanitation was a big deal for the military and their was often smoke from excrement being burned. You will not hands sticking out of the outhouse in the left center - the occupant is probably reading my PIO's paper.
Helicopter would work on the outer perimeter of firebases - a Chinook helicopter is working as life goes on inside the base.