the glass

The cargo door of the Carabou opened and you stepped down onto the airfield.

Heat pounded up at you off the tarmac. The Caribou with it's cheerful "Welcome aboard a Wallaby Flight" logo painted on the bulkhead behind the pilot hardly paused long enough to unload you. Then it was off, taxing towards the end of the runway, cargo bay door still lifting slowly into place as the Caribou climbed into the sky.

Charlie ramp was a tin shed on the edge of the runway at the American airbase in Vung Tau. As tin sheds go it was monumentally unspectacular. There was an antique coke machine outside the door. As redolent of American empire as the Union Jack had been of another empire a hundred years earlier.

You were carrying a "D' bag. A big shapeless, green canvas bag that held your kit. You were met at Charlie Ramp by the unit driver in a jeep. There were only two of you for 110 sig squadron. The rest of the people on the flight had got off at Nui Dat for other units that, like us, rotated staff on an ad hoc basis.

The jeep dropped us outside the orderly room of 110 Sig Squadron where you were assigned a Troop, a bunk and processed into the squadron.

The next stop was the "Q" store. The "Q" store was at the far end of the camp. A fact celebrated in the sign over the door. "Far Q". In side you were issued with the usual gear, of course. But most significantly a gun, two magazines, and bullets.

Then you were shown to your billet. A long low wooden hut surrounded by sandbags. Metal lockers broke the interiors up into smaller cubicles. Essentially you got a bed, a locker and the right to stick up pictures.

This was going to be your home for the next twelve months.

There were no windows in the lines. Just holes in the walls with shutters. During the day the shutters are open. At night you close them. There is no glass. Glass traps in the heat. Not the sort of thing you want to do in the tropics. Driving around Vung Tau you find there is no glass in the houses. No glass in the shop fronts. Shutters, yes. Grills and wrought iron lattice work yes. Glass, no. At home we live in a sea of glass. Here there is none. You're in a foreign country. You expected things to be different. But no glass? It makes the architecture alien, unsettling in unexpected ways.

But I did see one sheet of glass in Vietnam.

About 6 months into my tour we were given the job of moving the radio transmitters from Nui Dat to Vung Tau. Perhaps I'd better explain.

110 Signal Squadron provided communications for the different units that made up 1ALSG (1st Australian Logistics Support Group) in Vung Tau. It also provided communications between 1ALSG and Australian forces elsewhere in Vietnam. Nui Dat, Siagon, The Horseshoe and Camran Bay.

We also provided communications links back to Australia. Hence the radio transmitters.

The receivers were sited at Vung Tau. The transmitters were sited at Nui Dat.

This was great for giving some seperation between the transmit and receive stations, but by 1970 when I was there the writing was on the wall. It was only a matter of time till the West pulled out of the country. And in the interest of securing the communications link as long as possible someone took the decision to relocate the shortwave radio transmitters from Nui Dat to Vung Tau.

So 3 or 4 of us hopped in a truck and went up to Nui Dat to recover the transmitters.

If Vung Tau was alien. Nui Dat was another planet. At Nui Dat you lived in tents pitched in among the rubber trees. The footpaths were duck boards. Everything was outdoors and temporary and made 1ALSG look palatial.

Except the transmitter building. There were no windows, of course. But inside was an office. And the office had a window onto the equipment room. And the window had glass.

Sure there was some glass in Vietnam. cars and trucks had glass windscreens. Glass dials on the speedo and fuel gauge. Even the little 500cc Lambretta motor scooters that served as taxi's around Siagon and Vung Tau had glass windscreens. But they were for protection only. Windows in houses were glassless.

And there in the equipment room at Nui Dat there was this single sheet of glass. As out of place as you can get. I just stopped and stared at it and just for a moment there I felt quite odd.

It's strange how something like that can affect you. Just seeing that sheet of glass made me quite homesick.

copyright © 31-5-2002 Fred Willett