Michael Kelley - Where We Were in Vietnam: A Comprehensive Guide to the Firebases, Military Installations and Naval Vessels of the Vietnam War, 1945-1975

IN VIETNAM

A Comprehensive Guide to the Firebases, Military Installations and Naval Vessels of the Vietnam War

Michael P. Kelley

Where We Were in Vietnam

Copyright 2002 by Michael P. Kelley
Published by Hellgate Press

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or information storage and retrieval systems without prior written permission of the publishers.

Hellgate Press
An Imprint of PSI Research
P.O. Box 3727
Central Point, OR 97502

info@psi-research.com

Interior design: Michael P. Kelley and Harley B. Patrick
Cover design: Erin Kelley/Zinc Designs and Mark Hannah
Editing: Harley B. Patrick

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kelley, Michael, 1946

Where We Were : a comprehensive guide to the firebases and military installations of the Vietnam War / Michael Kelley

p.cm.

ISBN 1-55571-625-3 (paper)

1. Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975Dictionaries. 2. Military bases, AmericanVietnamDictionaries. 3. Military bases, AmericanVietnamMaps. 4. VietnamGazetteers. I. Title.

DS557.7 .K45 2002

959.704303dc21 2001051682

Printed and bound in the United States of America
First Edition 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Disclaimer

While a very substantial effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the data presented in this manuscript, its complete accuracy simply cannot be guaranteed. Transposition and transcription errors were, and will forever remain, common among official military reports and as long as there are historians available to compound the problem with their own inadvertent contributions.

Readers will likely encounter numerous errors and omissions throughout the text and no one should rely on any of the material presented here as completely factual without independent verification. Nonetheless, the author does believe that the greater part of the information presented here remains both substantially correct and reliable.

Unfortunately, transposition errors introduced during the translation of grid coordinate data into relative location narrative seem to have occurred with inordinate regularity. To resolve the issue where a stated, relative location appears to conflict with a known or presumed location, the reader should give the greatest weight to the grid coordinate and plot it on an appropriate map.

Reporting Errors and Omissions

The author encourages and welcomes readers to report errors or omissions. He also welcomes additional grid coordinate, factual or anecdotal information of any sort related to any facility of the Vietnam War. It is his ultimate goal to make WHERE WE WERE the most comprehensive and most accurate reference of its kind. Readers may contact the author via an e-mail address provided at www.wherewewere.com.

More Praise for Michael Kelleys Where We Were in Vietnam

More than a prodigious feat of research, Mike Kelleys labor of love will be an invaluable resourcefor scholars, for historians, and for the rest of us who want to know more about Where We Were.

Bernard Edelman

Editor of Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam and Centenarians: The Story of the 20th Century by the Americans Who Lived It

In the metaphorical sense, Americans may still be unsure where we were in Vietnam. In the geographical sense, though, Mike Kelleys remarkable work will help veterans and any others who want to know exactly where U.S. forces were situated in that beautiful and troubled land. Kelleys astonishing and prodigious research literally puts Americas Vietnam experience on the map.

Arnold R. Isaacs

Author of Vietnam Shadows: The War, Its Ghosts, and Its Legacy

I am in awe of what Michael Kelley has produced in this amazing book. His massive and inclusive compilation of firebases and other military installations will instantly become a classic reference work of the Vietnam War.

Marc Leepson, Arts Editor, The VVA Veteran

Author of Saving Monticello

The attention to detail in this volume is astonishing. If you were going to invest in just one reference book on the Vietnam War, this would be the one.

Eric James Schroeder

Lecturer in American Studies at UC Davis Author of Vietnam, Weve All Been There: Interviews with American Writers

Michael M-60 Kelley served as a rifleman and machine gunner with D Company, 1st/502d Infantry, 101st Airborne Division from Nov69 until badly wounded Sep70. Drafted immediately upon graduation from Sacramento State College (BA, Art), he has since established himself as one of the better-known artists whose focus has been the Vietnam experience. His works hang in numerous museums and private collections in the U.S. and around the world. Over the past decade, drawing has taken a back seat to writing, and his articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Sun Times, and Vietnam Magazine, among others. His military awards include the Combat Infantryman Badge, Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Air Medal, and ARCOM.

The pageant has passed. The day is over. But we linger, loath to think we shall see them no more togetherthese men, these horses, these colors afield

- Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, 1865

And there were now the French forts, some downright ridiculous in their exact imitation of the North African Beau Geste type (you would almost expect Gary Cooper and Marlene Dietrich to stand atop one of the crenelated towers in tender embrace), others of the squattish, ugly looking, deeply-dug-in modern bunker type. As I was to learn later, the fortifications of Indochina had had their architectural periods just like any other works of man., based upon the local terrain, the availability of materials, the enemys combat potential, and the state of the art of military engineering.

- Bernard Fall, 1953, Street Without Joy

There were installations as big as cities with 30,000 citizens, once we dropped in to feed supply to one man. God knows what kind of Lord Jim phoenix numbers he was doing there, all he said to me was, You didnt see a thing, right Chief? You werent even here. There were posh fat air-conditioned camps like comfortable middle-class scenes with the violence tacit, far away; camps named for commanders wives, LZ Thelma, LZ Betty Lou; number-named hilltops in trouble where I didnt want to stay; trail, paddy, swamp, deep hairy bush, scrub, swale, village, even city, where the ground couldnt drink up what the action spilled, it made you careful where you walked.

- Michael Herr, 1968, Dispatches

Where We Were in Vietnam

This book is dedicated to the following: Cathryn, my very dear wife of more than twenty-two years, who stood by me (weathering the storm, actually) through thick and thin, enduring my intemperance and selfishness over the first twelve years of our marriage only to effectively lose me again to the pages of this book for five or six more. Why she saw fit to hang on Ill never comprehend, but Im extremely pleased and honored that she did.