We had two seasons; monsoon (May - December), and dry (January - April), both were miserable! French Fort was a muddy mess during rainy season. Here you can see the gun pad had been removed to be replaced, then the rain came.
Photo by Richard Andrews. This gun had fired a mission, and is buried to the deck in mud! It will take all day to dig
it out.
The mountain had her own cape during rainy season. You could never see the summit when it rained.
Photo by Richard Andrews. This is a unit of 175s in the
field during monsoon.
Here we see the Nui Ba Den (Black Virgin Mountain) wearing her monsoon season cape of clouds.
Notice it is stuck in the mud. In these conditions it takes about three rounds to bury the spade deeply. The gun must be re-layed (realigned on azmuth) frequently in rainy conditions because it moves after each round is fired, pushing the mud up and the spade deeper into the earth.
The gun pad would turn to mud during the rainy (monsoon) season. We had two seasons; monsoon (May to December) and dry (January to April). After a fire mission the gun would be buried clear up to the deck. We would fire a six round mission and then spend all day digging out of the mud!
Richard Andrews knee-deep in Nam Monsoon!
That's the yard in front of the latrine. Water everywhere.
This was taken looking out the door of the living quarters, our "hooch". This photo isn't blurred, it's just raining so hard it looks foggy.
Another shot from the door of the hooch. There was only a couple of days when we did not work, this rainy day was one.
