Cooper shares his tour with us here.

I left home, 3-3-1966 on my way to Qui Nhon. I was in Oakland, Ca. for a week before I took off across the pond.

I landed in Saigon @ 0500 hrs 03-11-1966.

I remember when Beck, Combs, and I got to Qui Nhon and they took us the the QNASC and no one wanted to claim us. They didn't know where to put us. We told them that if no one wanted us that we would just go back home but they said that wasn't going to happen. After a day or two someone said I think that we must be part of a new outfit they were starting for a motor pool. We were always kind of outcasts there.

When I first got to the TMP, We almost didn't have a maintenance shop. Most of the work was done outside. One of the truck drivers came back to the motor pool from hauling bombs from the ship docks and told the Motor Sgt., that they were unloading roofing tin from a ship and loading it on 2 1/2 ton trucks. I don't remember the Sgt's name, but he grabbed a can of OD paint and painted over the co. ID # on a 2 1/2 ton truck from the TMP and took a marker and wrote SP4 Workmore on his jungle shirt and took the 2 ½ ton to the docks and got in line with the other trucks that were hauling the tin to An Khe and waited his turn to load. When he was loaded and got the paperwork to leave, the load master ask him where his truck ID # were and he told him that the old man got all over him because the numbers were in such bad shape and he wanted them repainted, so He said I painted over it and couldn't get the # painted on the bumper until the paint had dried and I had to come here first and get this load. The Load Master said OK, but don't come back without your # on your bumper. He just signed the papers SP4 Workmore and left with a load of tin to make the roof for the new maintenance shop. 

TMP Maintenance Shop

I think the cement for the concrete floor was acquired the same way. And as Paul Harvey used to say "Now you know the rest of the story" One day a guy from the TMP came in with a 3/4 ton with a big portable air compressor hooked on behind it. Sgt. said where did that come from and the driver said, I found it. Sgt. said what are we going to do with that, we don't need an air compressor and the driver said I know that Sgt. but we can trade it to some outfit that does need it for something we do need and can't get. There was a lot of stealing that went on from outfit to outfit. It still was with the US Army but not with the outfit that it was intended for.

Our barracks that we built at Headquarters Compound in town.

July 16, 1966 at 12:30am or 0030 hrs. One of our guys had to take a truck on a boat and go out to a ship to get some cargo and they had ICE CREAM on the ship and he brought back a gallon or so to the tent we were in and woke us up and we all grab a spoon and ate ice cream .  I don't remember for sure who the driver was. I think this was the first ice cream we had over there.   

Around Christmas in 1966, I had to run a bus route at the same time Bob Hope was there. When I went thru the airport, I stopped the bus and got on top of it and watched for a little while.

We moved out of the barracks that we built at Support Command Headquarters, on Jan. 30th, 67 out to the foot of the mountain I spent half of the day before moving from the barracks out to the mountain by the pipeline. So that would have made it Jan. 29th. 67. 

We lived in Squad tents across the creek from the rest of the 593^rd. they lived in Hootches they had pre-fabed back in the states, so all they had to do when they got to VN was set them up, much nicer than our tents.

I left there in Mar. 67. I sure thought I lived out there longer than that, but I do remember the last few months over there going so slow. 

Just before I left, goofin around with Sieck our tents in the background.

Kenneth V. Beck passed away around 2008 from cancer from agent orange.