Those are military acronyms that stand for: Department of the Army Special Photographic Office, and Southeast Asia Pictorial Center. Both of those organizations were responsible for all military photographic resources not directly assigned at a Division, or Brigade level.
The reason for stating that, is that the photos I've attached this time around were shot by DASPO photographers. At the time I was in country, the DASPO photo teams would be sent to Vietnam on TDY (Temporary Duty) status for 2 or three months at a time, then return. We ran across their teams and worked with them from time to time when I was there.
I think after I left, those organizations as well as the 221st Signal Co. (Pictorial) took over all of our photo operations and detachments. They did the same type of job we did, but from what I've heard and read they were much better organized and controlled than those early days.
Having covered the preliminaries, on the the pictures at hand. All of these are shots of various activities in rear areas. As derogatory as the term REMF was (and still is), they performed a variety of necessary tasks required to keep grunts in the field. They worked very long, hard hours in some of the most primitive environments one can imagine.
Take our photo lab at base as an example. For those of you who are familiar with processing color and b/w film, you are well aware of the necessity of time/temperature control. Then there is the issue of clean filtered water for mixing chemistry and washing prints and film. At our labs, we used water than can only be described as being WET! It was minimally filtered and that in itself was an impossible task most of the time. It was definately
unsuitable for drinking purposes and we didn't even use it to brush our teeth if we could help it.
Working in temperatures that can best be described as
brain frying heat, it was next to impossible to even
regulate the heat, let alone
control it.
Maintenance and repairs were often made with field expdient measures, and sometimes without the appropriate tools. I have for example seen helicopter maintenance guys repair bullet holes in the fuselage with
duct tape! That my friends, is what it was like in the rear. Granted, they had beds, showers (in some cases), and hot meals, but it was always hard work.
Even the guys on our Photo Teams had to pull their share of KP, Guard Duty, Filling Sandbags, Burning Shit, and building/improving defensive positions on our perimeter.
In closing, I'd like to post this link:
The Vietnam Center and Archive, Texas Tech University
this site, is the
Texas Tech Center for Vietnam Studies. They are the official repository for lots and lots of materials including photos of the Vietnam War. It's well worth visiting and I'm pretty sure that all the photos there are
Public Domain.
Originally posted by Texas Transplant 
.
Post #1 by hillerby
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