Cold and humidity

[39mto39g]

When seeping on the ground in VN You soon find out that there are alot of cridders in VN and they like your body heat.
We were issued this $2.00 walmart (it seemed)air matterss. it was kinda nice sleeping on something other than that hard ground/
Something the Army didn't figure out before they sent us these air mattresses. is that they get holes in them. And bugs like to get inbetwee the folds on the air matress, namely scorpions. This is not a real big deal cause scorpions can't really hurt you. So me being the resupply person for our platoon, I found myself ordering repair kits for the air matress. I personally found that a piece of canvas the size of the mattress would just about eliminate the need for a repair kit . Buuuut You had to carry the canvas. I also found that a piese of plastic would also do the trick and weighed a bunch less.
Food for thought, when sleeping on the ground a air mattress is good. A piece plastic under air mattress protects against sharp objects. although the plastic will not stop a bullit.
Ron

[82Rigger]

I remember as a kid here in Florida you could buy little repair kits for inflatable water toys...rafts, beach balls, etc.

Couple of one-inch square plastic patches and a small tube of "rubber glue". It smelled like airplane glue to me.

If the repair was just a small pinhole, it worked okay. But if it was much bigger...forget it.

[DMZ-LT]

In a hole or on a track. No air mattress

[Chas H]

On a cool damp night the muzzle blast from a 175 will destroy, among other things, an air mattress inflated to a comfortable pressure.

[exlrrp]

NEVEr saw anyone in the 101st with an air mattress and certaily not in the lrrps, except in the rear.
TOo much hassle. I just used to lay down with my rifle and cover myself with the poncho liner. Never had trouble getting to sleep, cept for rainy nights (bookoo)staying awake was the hard part. I used to stand or kneel all the time on guard, the only way I could stay awake.
I slept every night in the field right on the hard cold ground--this was hundreds of nights.
I can still fall asleep almost anywhere if I''m tired enough. One way to tell if a VN MOVIe is realistic is if they show people sleepiing during the day, trying to catch up. Hamburger Hilll showed this

[Gimpy]

we couldn't dig no holes in the Delta..............damn things fill up water soon as you got about 12 inches down. Didn't see many air mattresses either.

Good old poncho was a God send to keep us off the wet ground and somewhat warm at night also.

[splummer]

I don't remember ever seeing an air mattress in I-Corp. We had beds with thin mattresses in our base camp, but slept on the ground or inside the trucks when we were over night on convoys.This post reminds me of one night on a reactionary force at an amo dump near Phu Bi. It was a cold rain that lasted all night. We didn't have or didn't bring pounchos and got soaked with the rain water. We were freezing and shaking all night. [almost like hypothememal] I never thought you could get that cold in Vietnam and I still feel it when I think about it.

[Bill Farnie]

Some guys did carry and use air matresses but I didn't. A poncho and poncho liner did just fine. One thing about being wet and cold ... just wrap a poncho liner around you and you will be warm and cozy in no time.

spummer .... my platoon was given an operation to cut LZ's on the mountains in the A Shau Valley and a typhoon was off the coast near Hue and you wouldn't think that it would effect the weather all the way to Laos but it got so cold that we had field jackets brought out on our resupply ..... and we wore them until the storm passed.

[splummer]

I wonder if this was the same typhoon later in 1968. It poured buckets and wind for days. Deep mud so our trucks couldn't go out. They gave us all rubber pants and jackets. It was good for me because I got to stay in the hootch and rested, but I know it must been misserable for the guys in the field and perimeter bunkers. [we seldom went inside the bunkers because of rats.]

[exlrrp]

These are the greatest things since sliced bread as far as I'm concerned. I have one now, I've worn out 5 or 6 since VN (They get stolen too, my son got one of mine)
I GOt the first one after the war at The Crater Rock festival in Hawaii, it was just blowing in the wind right by me. I BOUGht the rest since then at surplus stores, last time about $50
I still use it for car camping in the summer, still can just throw it on the ground, curl up in it and sleep, just like back in the day.
They gave us cuntsacks in our base camp at ENAri (PLeiku) but I never slept in them, did not like them. I LIKE the abilty to come up shooting, roll out of "bed" firing and thats what the poncholiner does.
Anybody else got one?