I was talking to a fellow Nam vet the other day and he said “Beaucoup” meaning a lot or many. I hadn’t heard that term for a long time, but it’s a French word we used widely in Nam. It got me to thinking about the other slang we used. How about a few terms that I pulled out of my foggy memory:
- Cherry or FNG—your replacement, or worse, a replacement for one of your experienced troopers.
- Chieu Hoi Pass—a safe pass leaflet for VC or NVA surrendering (only saw it used once).
- Smoke—any color of smoke grenade or artillery round used to mark an LZ or location
- Di Di Mau—Move quickly or more typically “Lets get the Hell out of here”.
- Dinky Dau—crazy i.e. Is the Col. dinky dau sending us on this mission.
- White Mice—Vietnamese traffic cops (they dressed in totally white uniforms to direct traffic—being in an armored cavalry unit we didn’t pay much attention to their signals but they were very spiffy).
- Zippo—flame thrower mounted on APC
- In Country—Anywhere in Vietnam
- The World—Anywhere other than Vietnam, preferably America.
- P38—C Ration can opener worn on your dog tag chain.
- Mad Minute—Concentrated fire of all weapons at a predetermined time, generally around 0230 when you were nodding off on radio watch.
- “No Sweat”—GI’s response to every order received meaning “can do or easily done” whether it was true or not.
- Prick 25—PRC-25 radio
- PSP—Perforated Steel Plate—used for temporary runways but made for great bunker roofs after a couple of layers of sandbags were stacked on top. Also, used to provide some extra protection against RPG’s when hung from the side of vehicles or A Cavs.
- S&D—Search and Destroy—became politically incorrect so we were told not to use the term.
And of course our favorite,
- Freedom Bird—any aircraft leaving Vietnam heading home.
Those are the socially correct ones I can recall. If you have some you used let me know.