QUANG TRI COMBAT BASE, South VIETNAM, JULY 28 - "We planted $17 worth of flowers out there and what have we got-one damn zinnia!"
Lt. James R. Wooten of Athens, Ga., grumbled as he looked out his screened window at the one sad flower.
That sort of thing seems to happen all the time at this dust-blown base 13 miles south of the demilitarized zone, headquarters of the First Brigade of the Fifth Infantry Division (Mechanized).
The good movies never seem to get this far north. In fact, since the projector broke down several days ago the people at this headquarters have not even been able to see bad movies.
There is an above-ground, rubberized swimming pool near the service club, but when the dust is blowing, as it usually is at this time of year, taking a dip is like jumping into a mud puddle.
The PX is so small, the troops say, that it is sold out of everything half an hour after it opens.
The mail truck is known as the Dear John Express.
There is so little to do that for the members of one office, excitement for three days was trying to figure out why a soldier who occasionally walked by wore an eight-inch bowie knife on his belt. He came into the office today and spoiled the fun by telling them that he was a communications man and spliced a lot of wire.

A major complaint of the troops Is that no one seems to have heard of them. A soldier walked into the brigade information office and inquired: "So you guys are in the public-information business? So tell me why nobody knows we're here? Or knows that the Fifth Mech exists?"
An information officer replied: "We've thought of that and decided to launch a campaign to write every man, woman and child back in the world to say we're here. I'm starting by writing my wife."
Even President Nixon is viewed skeptically up here. In his news conference on May 8 he was asked what he would do if the North Vietnamese attacked across the DMZ. He responded by saying that if the enemy attacked, "Our Marine Corps people who are there" would use effective force against North Vietnam."
The key word was "Marines"; they left last November.
Capt. Randolph C. Harrison, the Information Officer, got so many irate phone calls that he decided to write the President and ask for a retraction. "With all do respect, sir," his letter said, "there are no marines north of Da Nang. We here on the "Z" are most certainly not marines. We are the Red Devils of the Fifth Infantry Division.
He said he got back a "gushing" letter from someone "who claimed to work at the While House" named Noble Mellenkamp, actually a Presidential Staff Assistant.
"Anyone with a name like that has got to be highly suspect," one of his men said.

A few miles up the road, at Dong Ha, things are not any better. The base was once the headquarters of the Third Marine Division. The soldiers there keep hearing things about "those supposedly heroic Marines."
The Marine commandant, Gen. Leonard F. Chapman Jr., told people on a recent visit to Viet Nam that the marines were "keeping their powder dry" in the event of attack across the border, but no amount of dry powder will blast a shell up here from Da Nang, where the nearest Marine guns are.
"You know how heroic they are," a Fifth Mech. soldier said. "Well, I'll tell you about one of their exploits. It seems that the marines one time ordered 250 barrels of 'Arctic Asphalt' and nobody knew what to do with it. The temperature this time of year averages more than 90 degrees. So it sat at Dong Ha for a year or two and a few weeks ago a North Vietnamese sapper, who had obviously spent several days looking for the most lucrative target, blew it up."
The explosion set the asphalt on fire, the soldier continued, and the blaze was so big the smoke could be seen from Hue.
"They didn't even send the fire trucks," another soldier said. "They just let it burn away in final tribute to the marines up here."

Until last fall Dong Ha was the home of a huge junk pile of rusting building materials, radar equipment and other gear that marines would point to and say, "See that-that's the McNamara line."
The line was supposed to be an intricate electronic barrier along the DMZ to stop infiltration. Senator William Proxmire, Democrat of Wisconsin, said recently that the military had wasted $2 billion on it.
Informed sources now say that "scroungers" ran off with what ever they could find of value in the junk pile: some suggested that the scroungers were North Vietnamese.
A lieutenant colonel said; "I guess they were going to set up all kinds of fancy gadgets that would zap 'em sterile or something."

At Quang Tri there are not even any good stories like the asphalt and the McNamara Line floating around. Things are that dull.
"We got 16 girls here over at the 18th Surgical hospital- all nurses," Lt Wooten said, "But a chopper pilot married one, and the rest - well..."
And then there are Red Cross women, "Two doughnut dollies come up from Da Nang on Wednesdays," another soldier said with a pout. "Yeah, kind of a handshake tour," Lieutenant Woolen said.
Another complaint is the food.
"All the steaks seem to get stolen by the time they get to Phu Bai," a soldier said, referring to a base north of Da Nang. Today's lunch was liver, limp potato salad and ancient canned corn.
About the only thing of note in the mess hall Is that Raquel Welch's name is listed on the officers' roster.

Web Master's note: Mother don't let your son grow up to be a REMF.