With a rumble and a cloud of dust the first Chinook settles down, picks up the men, hovers to let a red hat hook up the howitzer, then takes off. The men lean against the vibrating sides and shut their eyes, enjoying their only moment of relaxation for the day.

Within 15 minutes of landing, the howitzers are emplaced and ready to fire. Strong arms have manhandled the bulky guns into position and driven the baseplate stakes into the red clay with 20 pound sledgehammers. As the gunners unpack their ammunition, the fire direction center is setting up nearby, looking strangely out of place with its charts, maps, generators and radios lying in the middle of the open field. Soon a bulldozer will begin gouging out a bunker for them.

Sandbags and ammo boxes become the basic building materials as hootches, ammunition pits and parapet walls rise out of nothing. Everyone in the battery, including the officers, NCOs, cooks and gunners, hurries to fill enough sandbags to get some overhead cover before night falls.

Their work has left them physically exhausted. They set aside some time now to sit around in the sunset coolness, read letters and talk about home, families, getting "short," and their girlfriends and wives, as the section chief tosses a few grains of excess powder on the fire perking the coffee. Two of the six gun crews will be up all night. The others will be on call.

In the Fire Direction Center (FDC), half the crew will wake the other half when their 12 hour shift begins, with the men listening for the magic words "fire mission" on their radio. The battery commander is catching a few precious minutes of sleep somewhere, leaving instructions that he should be awakened whenever a mission comes in.

"We're supposed to pull 12 hour shifts," explains PFC Bill Walter, an FDC computer, "but we're up almost all the time." All night long the muzzles flash and waves of sound blast across the firebase, echoing back from the woodline. You get used to the noise. You have to if you want to sleep.

In the morning, the same work day starts again. Endless sandbags must be filled, PSP and culvert have to be carried from the helicopter pad and everyone is pitching in again, even those on the "hot guns" that were firing much of the night.

Then the words "fire mission" squawk over the radio. The sandbags are forgotten and the FDC rushes into action. Two men man the charts, hurriedly putting a pin in the coordinates of the fire mission and finding the range and direction to the target. One computer works up the firing data as another feeds the data into the portable FADAC (Field Artillery Digital Automatic Computer). Lights on the tough little FADAC flash and the final data appears within seconds.

An RTO barks out the command "battery adjust" and everybody in the battery runs toward their howitzers. Two of the gunners furiously crank the gun into position--the proper elevation and deflection--while another copies the vital data through his phone and two more ready the projectiles and fuses.

BOOM. Less than two minutes from the initial radio call shells are on their way to support the company in contact several kilometers away. A sheet of hot steel is laid between the embattled infantrymen and the NVA.

During dry season the firebase often seems like a  miniature dustbowl, but during the monsoon it becomes a quagmire of red or grey muck that permanently stains the Redlegs' boots, clothes and possessions, makes the dirt for filling sandbags heavy with water, and makes humping ammo a game of slipping and sliding.

Gunbunnies quickly learn that deep, deep bunkers are not nearly as effective at stopping water as they are at stopping shrapnel. Stories are told of Redlegs who woke up to find themselves and their airmattresses floating on three feet of monsoon tears.

The only advantage to the monsoon downpours is that the frequently watershort artillerymen can stand in the deluge and shower. Of course, if the rain stops too soon, a Redleg may find himself completely lathered with no way to rinse off.