________________________________________________________________________Richard S. Kem
Cantonment of Headquarters and B and C Companies of the
201st Engineer Battalion, Army of the Republic of Vietnam.
Captain Kem lived in a mud hut with a thatched roof with
Battalion Commander, Captain Tri.
Typically after that it was siesta time for the Vietnamese. I didn't want a siesta so I'd try to
read a pocket book or do something, but usually there was nothing to do because they all
stopped. So, after a couple of hours of siesta, Captain Tri, the battalion commander, would
get up. He really was a pretty nice guy, but perennially he'd have a headache after a midday
nap. It's pretty warm there--we're talking 90, 95 degrees with fairly high humidity during
the hot season. He'd really take a long time recovering from that nap, and he'd decide
probably the best thing to do would be to go down to bathe or take a swim, so we'd go down
to the river, the Song Ba, which ran through An Khe, and we'd jump in there with the liver
flukes and all and have our afternoon bath. Meanwhile, on down the stream 100, 150 meters
would be the women of the town beating their laundry out on the rocks at the side of the
stream.
Then in the evening we'd have either a meal in our mud hut or we'd run back down to the
little restaurant downtown. We had no lights, so come nightfall we went to bed. Then we
would hear the rats running in the thatched roof or running on the false ceiling under the
thatched roof throughout the evening.
That was a time where you made your own work. As you started out you found that you
couldn't dictate to them. So, you started then figuring out the way that you could recommend
and suggest things and then make it their idea so that they would want to accomplish it.
You'd try to work a productivity kind of thing, "Well, now, guys, I guess, you know, by the
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