THE ‘FAT CITY’ DJ’S
By VL Stevenson
The large tent on the right was the radio section’s supply tent. Barely visible behind the tent on the far right is a 175MM gun barrel. | Camp Carroll, South Vietnam, October 1967 | Photo by VL Stevenson
Camp JJ Carroll sat atop a plateau just a few miles south of Highway 9, the east-west winding road that originated in Dong Ha, Vietnam to the border of Laos. Carroll was significant because of its commanding view of the DMZ (demilitarized zone) as well as a battery of 175MM cannons. From Carroll, these cannons could reach across the DMZ into North Vietnam and did so regularly. They could launch a 150-pound high explosive projectile more than 20 miles.
After spending four months fighting the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) in the jungles of the DMZ, 2nd Battalion 9th Marines, my battalion, moved to Camp Carroll in early October of 1967 and found a bit of reprieve. Carroll had plenty of sand-bagged bunkers and general-purpose tents with plywood floors. Water was easily accessed as well as two hot meals a day. Many thanks to the cooks who used magic to make something out of nothing! There were enclosed outdoor latrines, or heads as Marines called them—among other names, and “piss tubes” strategically placed around camp. Crude but effective 55-gallon drum showers were available if you put in the effort to fill them by hand. Hence, with all these amenities, the name “Fat City” was born.
While in Vietnam, the main radio we carried was the PRC25. One day, my buddy Bob and I came up with an idea to help our brother radio operators in the field on operations. We decided to start a radio station using our PRC25 radios. We had a cassette tape recorder with lots of popular songs. and played these songs through our radios. We told all the other radio operators in the field to set their radios to the “Charlie Brown” frequency, an unused frequency at the top of the radio band. Of course, this would only be to serve the operators who were not on radio duty.
The Fat City DJs. (L) VL Stevenson and (R) RE Gault enjoying some downtime from the command bunker radio watch. | Camp Carroll, South Vietnam, October 1967. | Photo by VL Stevenson
The radio operators in the field would call in on “Charlie Brown” with song requests and we would oblige. I was on the technical side and Bob was the DJ. Bob had a real knack for DJing—the gift of gab and a radio voice. It was as if our brothers in the field were listening to their radio back home. Difficult to imagine for many how gratifying it was to be laying in your foxhole, cold, wet, muddy, fearful…and listening to Orbison’s “Pretty Woman.”
What we were doing was against military regulations, and if caught, we would have been in serious trouble. However, we took the risk anyway because we knew how much our brothers enjoyed it. Soon, we became known as the “Fat City DJs” by our radio operators with notoriety spreading to some neighboring battalions.
The command bunker was about 30 yards from our tent and was the nerve center. It contained all the radio and telegraph communications for the entire battalion. It was a hole in the ground with a sandbagged roof. All the radio antennas were on top of the sandbags, some extending 20-30 feet in the air. There were about 20 radio operators in our battalion radio section. We manned the radios 24/7 in the command bunker and there was battalion brass always accompanying us.
Once, we had a close encounter with the brass. One evening, Bob and I were broadcasting our radio station, having lots of fun taking requests and playing all the favorites. Suddenly, one of our buddies stormed into our tent straight from radio watch shouting, “STOP! STOP! the signal is bleeding over into the battalion net and music is playing in the bunker!” That meant the brass could hear it too. Terrified, we immediately signed off and shut down. Our buddy returned to the command bunker and later told us the subject never came up among the brass. They either did not hear the music or brushed it off as a deceptive enemy trick to interfere with radio traffic. It was not uncommon for radio frequencies to interfere with nearby frequencies.
On the other hand, it was never common to hear the top 40 playing on our battalion radio net!
Our only intent was to bring a familiar feeling of home to all our brothers in the field—I think we succeeded. Regrettably, the incident with the frequency interference ended our days as the “Fat City DJs!” We may have had a venturous endeavor, but we were not foolish enough to test our fate. I had sixty days left before I would leave Vietnam forever and the last thing I wanted was an extended stay in the brig!
VL Stevenson – Corporal, USMC
Vietnam 1966 – 1968