For the life of me I don't remember the tower, but everything else looks as remembered. The building on the far left was our 4-holer, conviently located next to the main road for easy viewing of passerbys as you took care of business. Under the tower was the CP. The two brown hootches on the right were first and third platoons hootches. Some time after this picture was taken we built a large bunker on the slope in front of the CP.
I had a cousin in the Air Force in Da Nang and he came out to visit me one day. I went over to the truck that brought him out and greeted him. As we were walking back to the hootch we went by an ammo bunker and he was astounded by live ammo just lying around. Turns out they weren't even allowed to have weapons!!! He keep looking at the bunker and finally said, "You mean just anybody can take what they want?" I told him to take a few frags if he wanted them. He was absolutly astounded. Our lack of electricity also bothered him, "How do you keep your beer cold?" he wanted to know. There were only a handful of cots in the hootch and he asked why so few, he was really suprised when I told him we never slept in here, we were on the line. I tried to get him to stay a couple more days and go on a patrol with us but, after seeing how we lived in what passed for our rear, he declined.
BLT 2/7 had taken so many casualities on recent operations that they were sent to the Philipine Islands to pick up replacements and train them.