Probably taken in the Cobb Bridge area. No idea who the guy on the rubber raft is. This is about as clear as the water ever got. Didn't matter we drank it anyway.
From September, 1969 through January, 1970 this is where we got to go for five days out of every thirty to unwind. It actually wasn't nearly as nice in real life as this picture makes it appear. There were several large tents (the tents leaked and were heavily patched) and several sandbag bunkers. Off to the right, when I was there, were several pieces of machinery for pushing out the product that they so cleverly named this place after. If you were standing where this picture was taken and turned to the right it would be about two miles to LZ Baldy. If you went to the left for ten miles you would come to LZ Ross. The hills behind the Rock Crusher are the eastern end of the Que Son Mountains. As mountains go they weren't much, the tallest of them is 2,954 feet. But the altitude where the picture was taken was probably less than 50 feet so they really dominated the surrounding country.
Somebody had set up the Vietnamese equilivent of a Lemonade stand about where this picture was taken. You could by beer, dope, and whiskey, oddly enough lemonade was in short supply. The prices were pretty high, $10 for a bottle of whiskey, this at a time when I made $283.50 per month (there was also a whole whopping $17 overseas pay and $60 combat pay. Course it was all tax free.). The kid running this stand had a very good grasp on the theory of monoply barganing power. I suspect that if he is still in Viet Nam he is chaffing under the restaints of a command economy.
At the 2000 reunion I was telling somebody about being there and going down to get a bottle of whiskey for Christmas. I said, "Me and Robin Hood....." I realized the instant that I said that, that Robin Hood was at the reunion. When I said his nick-name he came back to me as clear as could be. His real name was Ed Lindsey, from Peoria, Illinois. We spent a lot of the evening talking after that, it was a real rush
From left to right we have Unknown, Tony Hatfield, and Brad Fountain. Don't know where this was taken.
Brad Fountain was wounded April 5, 1969 and Hatfield on April 13, 1969.
In early March, 1969 Ray Rankin got separated from his squad when he went out on his first ambush. The next morning he walked back in alone. Hatfield saw him coming down the road alone and walked out to meet him.
January 15, 2001. Just talked to Tony Hatfield. He lives in Hamilton, OH and works for the US Post Office.
