We remember things, like C Rations. Mess halls. Warm beer. Jungle boots. Flak jackets. Agent Orange. Dear John letters, and of course, Hooch Maids.           CLICK ANY IMAGE TO ENLARGE
During the tour of duty in Vietnam, Marines often came in contact with Vietnamese women. The majority of such women were either peasants, or menial employees like "hooch maids". (Among these would be enemy agents.) The very nature of the Vietnamese language limited communication to perhaps a dozen words of pidgin. There was also an enormous cultural gap. The average Vietnamese lived at an appalling level of Third World poverty that disgusted materially-oriented young Americans. For security reasons, Vietnamese civilian areas were generally off-limits to US troops. While some soldiers met and even married Vietnamese, the military went far out of its way to discourage such relationships. (More Vietnamese animals were taken back to America by GIs as pets than were Vietnamese brides.)

Even though most Marines never had the experience to employ a Hooch Maid, others did. We lived in tents at base camp, and some had Hooch Maids who did the laundry. Others kept certain areas of the base camp quarters as clean. They cut hair and did other chores, like trash runs. The females known as hooch maids were employed in some mess halls and cleaned the officer's billets. Some of them were real friendly.

Sometimes there were rumors that sappers had worked their way into camp, and that some of them were "trusted" employees such as hooch maids, or the "shit burners" who had the unenviable task of emptying the latrines and disposing of their contents. Who could you trust?

The Trash Run
One of the reality checks found in Viet Nam was the run to the trash dump. Nowhere in America, including the worst of poverty level areas, have you ever heard of people storming the garbage truck to unload it. 

Hooch maid experience? Trash run tale?
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