Here I am, all dressed up and no where to go! Tiger's Lair, 1969. The best part about being a sniper was that no one really messed with us, that is, our people. We did our job, gave them a good body count (which meant we lied a lot!) and made the troops out in the field feel safe when we arrived. Actually we were scared as hell but hid our emotions pretty good!

I just arrived at my new location, 3/47th, Tiger's Lair. Beautiful. Fresh out of sniper school and a three day pass at Vung Tau. We had National Match XM-21 M-14's, National Match ammo, 3X9 Redfield scopes, Starlight scopes and a bag full of bravado.....

Here I am paying attention while at sniper school. The tape hanging on my hat is used to cover up the bullet holes on the target paper. The cigarette butt in my ear made great ear plugs! I was here for about 3-4 weeks practicing shooting every day, all day long. we had some great instructors from AMTU.

This is home-sweet-home. We built our entire "village" out of 105 and 155 ammo boxes filled with dirt. Remember the "jungle booties" I have on my feet. They were pretty nice for lounging around!!

Check out this monster, It's my XM-21 M-14 w/silencer, Heavy as hell and good only up to about 300 yards, at best. No noise, though. Charlie had no friggin idea!

Main gate to Tiger's Lair. That's the chopper pad behind the "gate" and the 4 "deuce" mortar platoon to the right of it..

This contraption on the right side of the canal was our "shitter". The shit hit the canal, and about a million catfish were there to grab lunch. Beat burning the stuff. Once a month the local's put on a "fish drive" and caught half the fish for their dinner. Yummy!

This old coot was known as "Hardcore". I think at this time he was busted down to a PFC. He was an E-7, but liked his booze too much. This guy always had a cold beer on hand.

These were my sandbag kids. They helped us do everything. Pretty good kids. I hope they're still alive and well!

Some more poor little kids. They were everywhere.