(2 of 2)
The main obstacle to even faster work is the same delays in shipping and unloading that have caused a logistics bottleneck for the armed forces. Because there are just not enough ports and docks, long-awaited bulldozers, dump trucks or stone crushers are often delayed. To ease the bottleneck, the combine has set up an advance staging area at Poro Point on Luzon in the Philippines, is building three additional depots in Viet Nam. Except for such basics as rock, sand and gravel, most of the construction material must be shipped from the U.S. Though native lumber is abundantly available, for example, it is no longer used. Reason: heavy Viet Cong taxation on growers and suppliers has driven up the price for 1,000 board feet from $62 to $300 since 1962.
Tax-Free Wages. Surprisingly, the Viet Cong have carried out little sabotage on the projects, partly as a result of the careful security checks made on all Vietnamese laborers. If they pass, the skilled among them can make up to 93 piasters ($1.27) an hour. As for the Americans, they do not seem to be very hard to recruit, are motivated both by patriotism and by tax-free wages that run about 25% higher than in the U.S. When Morrison-Knudsen recently queried its U.S.-based employees about going to Viet Nam, 58 of the 60 men working on a missile site in Grand Forks, N. Dak., volunteered to go. Once in Viet Nam, the men more than earn their money. They must sign up for 18 months, work up to 70 hours a week in 130° heat, have little opportunity for recreation, face such hazards as malaria and 18-ft. pythons.
The amount of needed construction keeps rising faster than the amount that is actually being put in place, but the combine's men feel that there is little in Viet Nam that they cannot do. The cost of construction put in place each month has risen from $8,000,000 to $11 million since August, and by March RMK-BRJ expects to hit a monthly rate of $25 million. "By spring we will have three airfields the size of San Francisco's being built at the same time," says Rear Admiral William M. Heaman, who handles liaison for the Navy. "This whole place is just going to be jumping with construction."