"I started my tour as a rear gunner on the V100's doing convoy escort out of Long Binh, but within a couple of months I was reassigned to the newly formed detachment at Lai Khe. SSG Robert Schuyler was our NCOIC and as I recall, later, 1LT Charles Smith came on board.

        When we first arrived at Lai Khe, the only shower we had was a fuel hose attached to a water tank. We would spray each other off while standing in our shower shoes (flip flops) wearing a towel.

        If you were not one of the first to get a shower, even though the tank was still half full, water would not come out (gravity fed no forced pressure).

        Rick Parker, Dennis Raban and I scrounged enough building material to build a first class shower with cement floor, enclosed sides, a tin roof, and shower heads for six guys to shower at the same time.

        The engineer unit that we pulled security for painted our water tank black (to induce solar heating) lifted it onto another near-by building and dug a trench which we filled with perforated 55 gallon drums thereby creating an effective drain and leach field. We signed the cement.

     1LT Gertz and a number of troops came to Lai Khe when the 1st Infantry Division began to stand-down.

   By this time I was a driver on one of the two APC's. We had three man crews (permanently assigned) and our fourth crewman was often a "guest gunner." I later became a gunner and then a TC (track commander).

     We had mixed duties for the APC's and crews. We were used as a reaction force when needed, highway security (mostly for the engineer units) as necessary, but eventually we evolved into providing security and transportation for the Chon Thanh National Police Field Forces (NPFF). Our MACV contact was 1LT John J. Parrinello, Phoenix Program Coordinator in Chon Thanh District. We routinely set up ambushes, booby traps and recon missions through the NPFF. We blew up bunker installations, found and confiscated supplies, hidden bicycles, etc. Our efforts were successful enough that towards the end of our operations, one day 1LT Parrinello informed us that the local VC had learned the names of the six American MP's working with the NPFF and had placed a bounty on each of us.

     The men that staffed this unit besides me were SGT John Clark, SP/4 Dale Blanchard, SP/4 Duane Canipe, SP/4 Dennis R. Raban and SP/4 Richard L. Parker. Except for myself, it seems that some of these names may have been rotated out from time to time and I am not clear on specific times and the names of other MPs.

     As an example, at some point late in 1970, Raban and Parker transferred up to the Tay Ninh Detachment."  SGT Steven D. Patrick, C Company, 720th MP Battalion, 3 December 1969 to 8 February 1971.