This is a photo taken in Aug. 1966 of nearly all of a group called “The Dirty Dozen”, five months after our deployment from our home base in Davisville, RI. These Seabees were mostly part of H Company, MCB-7 in PhuBai, Vietnam, just 60 miles south of the DMZ.
Photo: (Notice how “fat” we were)
Left to right,
Back row
1. D. Halsey EAS-3
2. P. Killeen EAS-3
3. J. Reyes CN
4. A. Wilm CN
5. K. Johnston SN
Front Row
1. R. Cochran EAD-3
2. R. Weidlich SWE-3
3. L. Szugda EAD-3
4. A. Gorman SA
We had a little swagger for good reason. The VC sappers had attacked our camp roughly every other night for four months and never once penetrated our lines. We pissed them off so much that Hanoi Hanna announced on the radio that a regiment of NVA troops was going to annihilate MCB-7 on a certain night in Sept. of 1966. We had the attitude of “ Bring Them On”. Well, that night came and went.
We never were attacked again. Our battalion motto was
“We fear no evil; we are the meanest muthers in the valley”.
