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PXs & Pup Tents. Around South Viet Nam's four present jet fields—Danang, Chu Lai, Bien Hoa and Saigon—are clustered most of the rest of the U.S. presence in Viet Nam. On the "hot pads" at the runway ends of each stand the silver planes, bombs aboard, on phased alert: the first wave is on five-minute call, the next on 15-minute call, then a group on 30-minute call, finally a wave on an hour's notice. On the average, within 17 minutes of a platoon leader's radioed call for help, the jets can be over the target with almost any combination of weapons he might need: .50-cal. machine-gun bullets, cannon shells, Bull-Pup missiles, Zuni rockets, napalm, 260-lb. to 3,000-lb. bombs. At the newest of the fields, Chu Lai, leveled and surfaced with aluminum matting by the Seabees in less than 30 days last spring, the runway is still so short that the jets take off in a double-throated roar of engines and Jet Assisted Takeoff bottles, sometimes returning to land carrier-style with an arresting cable at runway's end.
The marines at Chu Lai are accustomed to the roar over their tents on the steaming dunes. Less easy to take has been the choking dust, now damped down by the first northern monsoons, and the fact that the nearest liberty is the Marine headquarters town of Danang. "That's like being allowed to leave the state prison to go to the county jail," snorts one leatherneck. In Danang and Phu Bai, the rains have turned the infernal red dust into infernal red mud, in which a truck can sink to its door handles. On the perimeters, the marines and infantrymen live like soldiers on perimeters everywhere—primitively, with pup tents, ponchos and C rations. The airmen at Danang boast big airy tents with screened windows and solid floors, a new PX and mess hall. Most of the 173rd Airborne and Big Red One troops at Bien Hoa now have hot meals and floors under their tents.
From Defense to Offense. The U.S. military has been in Viet Nam in an advisory role to government forces ever since the French were swept out in 1954 —a role that grew with the swelling magnitude of the Viet Cong threat until eventually it required 24,000 men. But it was not until last March, when the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade of 3,500 men swarmed ashore at Danang, that the first U.S. combat troops entered the fray. Like the 7,500 men of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, and the 101st Airborne's Danang 1st Brigade that soon followed, the marines' first assignment was defensive: creating a protective enclosure around bustling Danang airbase and harbor. The 173rd was thrown around Bien Hoa airbase, together with the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division—the Big Red One—which arrived in July. The Screaming Eagles of the 101st helped reopen Route 19 from the coast to An Khe, stood watch while the 1st Air Cavalry's advance party hacked out their "golf course."
Standing watch was all that many critics thought U.S. combat troops would —or could—do in Viet Nam. Even as the number of G.I.s swelled, the myth remained that Americans were somehow not up to the wiles of the Viet Cong or the woes of the Asian jungle.