A couple folks have asked for more info on the pic of me and my 60 atop the new bunker, so here goes . . .
I think a close approximation of the date of the pics is a couple days after Thanksgiving of 1968. Where the pics were taken was in the middle of a bamboo thicket. We walked in from the general area of our encounter with the tiger and blew a pad for equipment and supplies to be landed in preparation of building a forward artillery fire support base. Eventually, a battery of 105 Howitzers would be setup here and an Infantry Rifle Company would be assigned to guard the base on a rotation as a stand down from regular patrolling duties and living in the bush. Here is the first pic I have of the area as we went to work on it.

The Engineer Batallion sent a small Cat with Dozer to help with clearing bamboo and an IHC backloader to help us dig holes for our soon to be bunkers. As it turned out, the man that was supposed to skin the Cat got horribly sick and couldn't run it. A rifleman from the first platoon that was one of our regular point men had come from a farm in Indiana and he informed our Captain that he could run a Cat, so the pic shows Alan VanDan now living in Valparaiso, IN busy flattening the bamboo patch. The Sky Crane was capable of landing the backloader in one piece, so it was set in our small pad and set about clearing a bit more room for landing the Cat. The cat with attached dozer was more than the Sikorsky could lift, so it was landed in two lifts. The first consisted of the tracks and dozer, the second was the rest of the tractor. The engineers, with the help of the backloader, attached the dozer and tracks before it could go to work clearing. Once the dozer went to work, the plan was to get the backloader to digging bunker holes. In the meantime, the rookie supposed to be running it had managed to flatten one of the front tires and he was ready to call it quits. A farm kid from Montana talked him into supporting the front of the machine with loader bucket, skidding it on the ground to move, and steering with his wheel brakes. He tried it, and it worked pretty darned good, so saved us a whole lot of digging.
Meantime, lots and lots of supplies were landed in the ever increasing cleared area. Concertina wire rolls, steel posts, PSP planks, sandbags & more sandbags, cases of C-rations, water, hot meals, Howitzers & ammo for them, barbed wire and about everything else, save for a concert grand piano ;-), I think. I did manage to get a pic of the Sky Crane departing with a stripped dozer tractor after the Engineers had pretty much finished their work.


As you can see, things are starting to get a bit more developed. Lots of boxes of C-rations stacked up in this pic. Must be getting close to chow time as it looks like a container of hot chow at the lower left.
Here is the pic of a completed bunker that was posted before.

I think the majority of the boxes over my right shoulder are C-Rations. The plastic bladder type jug is water. The tent like structure is the typical grunt Hooch where we slept to stay dry in a rainstorm or a bit cooler in the sun. Since we carried everything needed while on patrol, weight was a major consideration and no tent halves were carried. Our hooches were just two ponchos snapped together and supported with freshly cut bamboo or tree branches. Three to four troopers would fit in a hooch, so when the weather was particularly nasty, we had four ponchos to build a hooch. Two for the roof, and one for the windward side of the shelter. The extra would often be used to cover gear that was left outside. Most everyone carried an air-mattress, so we didn't worry too much about the floor of the hooch. One other feature of the newly built bunkers was their gun ports. When you were in the bunker, there was no way to see what was directly in front. The gunports were built at a 45° angle to the front of the bunker. When under attack, one bunkers fire covered the front of the adjacent two bunkers if their fire was directed straight out the gun port. Bunkers on the adjacent sides covered my bunker. Since it's natural for an assaulting force to fire at what's straight ahead, the guys in the bunker didn't need to worry as much about getting shot through the gun port.
So then, when we had pretty much buttoned up building the LZ, I ventured outside the new wire and got a couple more pics. Here's the concertina wire and a view of our new work.

And me posing with a 40 mm grenade launcher. I never used one much but they had their place. I kinda preferred my 60.