Did REMFs Really Live Like Kings in Vietnam? 15 Truths the Grunts Never Heard

📚 The Field Library: 4 books from our films, made for veterans and their families → https://thepngfiles.gumroad.com A Friday fish fry at a VFW post in Paducah, Kentucky. An old paratrooper slaps his buddy on the back: "Somebody get the REMF a beer." Everybody laughs except the man he's talking about. Did the rear really have swimming pools and steak? Did the Air Force live in hotels? Were the clubs crooked? Did the REMFs ever get shot at? In this countdown, a veteran who saw both worlds (173rd Airborne rifleman in Binh Dinh, then clerk and relief driver at Qui Nhon, 1969–70) and the historical record answer 15 questions about the rear in Vietnam: where the word REMF came from, Long Binh's 12 swimming pools and the $65 combat pay, Air Force barracks and Navy carrier fires, the tooth-to-tail ratio, the Senate's club and slot-machine hearings, the "money king" and the general, Da Nang's "Rocket City," the clerks who picked up rifles at Tet 1968, Long Binh Jail, Cam Ranh Bay's hospital attack, Highway 19's "Ambush Alley" and the gun trucks, the company clerk's typewriter, Larry Dahl and the gun truck Brutus, the Qui Nhon hotel in 1965, and the hardest job in the rear: the mortuary. Were you in the field or in the rear? What did they call you? And what's the best thing a REMF ever did for you? Tell us below. Chapters 0:00 The fish fry: "Get the REMF a beer." 2:13 #15 Where the word came from 4:34 #14 The swimming pools 7:29 #13 The Air Force and the Navy 10:17 #12 Ten men behind every rifleman 13:08 #11 The club money 16:10 #10 The money king and the general 18:58 #9 Rocket City 21:16 #8 The night the clerks picked up rifles 23:40 For veterans: Agent Orange, the Crisis Line + the best thing a REMF did for you 24:52 #7 The jail at Long Binh 27:09 #6 The safest place in Vietnam 29:23 #5 Ambush Alley 31:52 #4 The typewriter 34:19 #3 Brutus 36:20 #2 The hotel at Qui Nhon 38:24 #1 The hardest job in the rear 40:59 Back to the fish fry 42:25 Field or rear: what did they call you? For veterans: the VA presumes Agent Orange exposure for anyone who served on the ground in Vietnam, in the field or in the rear. Under the PACT Act (2022), hypertension and MGUS were added to the presumptive list. https://www.va.gov/disability/eligibi... (Not affiliated with the VA.) Veterans Crisis Line: dial 988, then press 1. About the veteran's voice: Del's memories are a composite drawn from many published veterans' accounts. The facts, names and figures in the narration come from the sources below. Scandal items follow the Senate subcommittee's findings, guilty pleas and court verdicts; William Crum was never convicted and denied the charges. Sources Meredith H. Lair, "Armed With Abundance: Consumerism and Soldiering in the Vietnam War" (UNC Press, 2011); "Easy Living in a Hard War," HistoryNet (2012) ADS-L (American Dialect Society), 2020: "Rimfs," The Boston Globe (1970); Tom Dalzell, "Vietnam War Slang" John J. McGrath, "The Other End of the Spear: The Tooth-to-Tail Ratio" (Combat Studies Institute, 2007); Charles B. MacDonald (1979); William C. Westmoreland, "A Soldier Reports" (1976) U.S. Senate, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, "Fraud and Corruption in Management of Military Club Systems" (hearings 1969–71; report Nov. 1971) Time, "The Military Mafia" (17 Oct. 1969) and "The Money King of Viet Nam" (8 Mar. 1971); The New York Times (1973) Wire reports, Feb. 1971: Army to remove 1,700+ slot machines from Vietnam clubs Defense Casualty Analysis System; Naval History and Heritage Command (USS Oriskany 1966, USS Forrestal 1967) Da Nang Air Base histories (366th Tactical Fighter Wing, VSPA); 184th Ordnance Battalion, Operational Report–Lessons Learned (1969) Tet 1968 at Tan Son Nhut and Long Binh: U.S. Air Force and Army official histories; 720th MP Battalion Reunion Association Long Binh Jail: NPR/KUOW (2018); Guenter Lewy, "America in Vietnam" (1978) Cam Ranh Bay: 6th Convalescent Center attack (Aug. 1969); ammunition storage attack (Aug. 1971), VSPA veteran accounts John M. Horvath, "Two Million Miles of Bad Road," Vietnam magazine (2016); HistoryNet, "Hard Ride, Hard War" David A. Willson, "REMF Diary" (1988); VVA Veteran (2015) Larry G. Dahl, Medal of Honor citation; HistoryLink.org Essay 11039 Qui Nhon hotel bombing, 10 Feb. 1965: Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund; VHPA Matthew M. Burke, Stars and Stripes (4 Nov. 2014); Veterans Breakfast Club: Graves Registration veterans; Jack Woodard (2025) Footage: U.S. National Archives, U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy and Department of Defense films (public domain). Some scenes are AI-generated illustrations.