The Book:
SEABEE71
IN CHU LAI
A 350 page memoir of a Navy Journalist's 14 months with the Seabees.
Photographs and text copyright © 1967 and 2019 by David H. Lyman
Seabee71.com
Seabee71 heavy trucks squeeze through narrow Vietnamese hamlets on their way to Quang Ngai, a 30 mile, five hour trip through unsecure territory.
The Quang Ngai Express
Seabee71's weekly truck convoy through VC territory
A contact sheet strip from one of my convoy trips south with the convoy to re-supply our detachment in Quang Ngai.
Except from a chapter in Seabee71 in Chu Lai.
The weekly convoy to Quang Ngai is not a pleasant ride, but it did get me and a bunch of volunteers out of camp for a day, out into the Vietnamese countryside, where we got see the people we were supposed to be protecting. There will be a dozen trucks, including a wrecker, in case of a flat, or break-down. Two of the six-bys will be filled with a security team of desk jockeys who've volunteered for the day, incase we are attacked.
Each week, Seventy-One makes this 30-mile trip to resupply one of our detachments building an army base for the South Vietnamese.
I made photographs as we drove along Route One, a dirt highway that stretches from the DMZ all the way to Saigon. The road gets “swept” each morning by Army or Marine EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) Teams for mines the Viet Cong placed during the night.
We lumbered down the road in a cloud of dust, through hamlets and villages, the kids running along side, shouting “Seabee Number Won.”
Click on one of the small thumb nail photo below to open this gallery.
Out into the country side, we sped up, only slightly. Rice paddies spread out on both sides, farmers plowing
the wet soil with a pair of oxen, two Vietnamese were hoisting water from the irrigation ditches into the paddies, the way their ancestors had done for hundreds of years.
The convoy took a detour around the recently demolished bridge, or crater where a road mine has been detonated in place. Later in the day, a team of Vietnamese will repair the crater, but the bridge will need a team of Seabees or Marine Engineers.
As we near Quang Ngai, the roadside becomes crowded with buildings. There are schools, with hundreds of kids in formation, in outdoor classrooms. Traffic on the highway increases. Small trucks, vintage French Citroens, Deux Chevrons, Vespas, no-brand motor bikes, and foot-powered bikes crowd the road, along with pedestrians, by the score. Shops, stores, restaurants, repair shops crowded in, our fleet of huge trucks slowed to a crawl, negotiating through the streets of Quang Ngai.