Early Camp Evans, Vietnam

Company A

227th Assault Helicopter Battalion

1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile)

Early Camp Evans, Vietnam

by Bob Mauney, A Company, 3rd Shore Party Battalion, 3rd Marine Division.

The following are events as best as I can remember them of the early days of Camp Evans, Vietnam and how I, among other Marines, came to be there. I am attempting to be as accurate as I can. After all, it has been 41 years.
On December 24, 1966 we mounted trucks and headed north on Highway 1 from our base east of Hue city in support of units of the 4th and 26th Marine Regiments. We crossed the Bo and the O Lau Rivers on pontoon bridges as the main bridges had been blown up. We finally settled in on the north side of the O Lau river and west of Highway 1.
The weather was cold and wet and the ground was so saturated that tanks would sink down and 'bottom out' requiring tank retrievers to pull them out of the mud.
Most of us had only our ponchos for shelter. Some had brought shelter halves but were trying to travel as light as we could. Three of us made a 'hooch' by combining our ponchos and shelter halves. We rotated sleeping in the middle so, at least, every third night one of us was a little warmer than the other two.
We handled re-supply from that temporary fire base until January 1, 1967 when we mounted trucks and moved back south across the O Lau River to another fire base also located west of Highway 1. We knew this base camp only as fire base Chinook (after the name of Operation Chinook) or Co Bi Thanh Tan (after the area we were in). This base camp was later to be named Camp Evans.
As we entered that base the truck directly behind the one in which I was riding hit an anti-tank mine and was destroyed. Fortunately, there were no KIA's as a result. This happened just east of the Aid-Station and corpsmen were able to get to the wounded Marines within seconds.
To the best of my recollection, as you entered Camp Evans the Aid-Station was on the south side of the roadway along with tanks and artillery units. Some tanks were pulled up on dirt mounds so they could get more elevation for firing into the valley to the west. On the north side were infantry and mortar units. The mortars were down in a small valley below the LZ if my memory serves me correctly. It gave us a weird feeling at night when the mortars were sending out harassment fire. We could hear each round leave the tube, travel over our heads and hear it 'whistling' as it came down and then exploded just outside the perimeter.
There was also an Ontos
unit but I cannot recall their exact location. 3rd Shore Party area along with the ammo dump and other supply areas was near the west end of the camp with the LZ located on a knoll nearby just north of us. The LZ was small and I don't think it was large enough for more than 1 helicopter (2 at the most) to land at any one time. There was no need for a control tower, only a radio bunker next to the LZ for communication between Shore Party personnel and the helicopter pilots. There were no permanent aircraft based there with helicopters only flying in and out during daylight hours for re-supply missions and med-evacs. Although, on one occasion we had an emergency med-evac at night. We took four empty ammo cans, filled them with diesel fuel, and set them at four corners of a square to mark a landing zone the incoming helicopter. As the chopper got overhead, with its lights off of course, four of us lit the diesel fuel torches and quickly moved back into the darkness. The chopper landed, was loaded, and took off within seconds.
Living conditions were better at Camp Evans than at our first temporary base. We had squad tents, complete with wooden pallet floors. These tents were in bulldozed out holes so as to keep us below ground level. Everything wasn't bad though. We had two guards awake at night. One post was around the com-bunker and the LZ, and the other was posted around the supply dump. The two guard posts happened to meet at the C-Ration storage area. It goes without saying that quite a few C-Ration cases went out with a can of pound cake or fruit missing.
Re-supply was horrible during that time with all the heavy monsoon rains. "Otters",
(small wide tracked light vehicles made for the Arctic), were brought in. The wide tracks and light weight which allowed them to traveling in deep snow also made them adaptable for travel in the muddy terrain during the heavy monsoons.
I was at Camp Evans again for a brief time sometime during April or May of 1967 and most of the tents had been relocated out of the holes and a POW compound had been set up.
I hope that this account sheds some light on the history of Camp Evans in the early days of it's existence.
I would like to hear from anyone who served with me or was in 3rd Shore Party at Hue, Dong Ha, or Camp Evans.

Once a Marine
Always a Marine