Southeast Asia Huts

Southeast Asia Huts

Sgt. Grit

Did you know the hooch’s we had in Viet Nam have a name? Recently while wandering around on the net, I discovered they are called “SEA huts”, which stands for “Southeast Asia huts”. They are also referred to as “hard backs”. I’m enclosing two pictures. One is of

a professionally built SEA hut, the other was taken on Monkey Mountain and was my hooch while in Bravo Battery 1st LAAM Bn, ’65-’66. When I first arrived on the mountain, they were true “hard backs”. They were just a 2×4 frame with a GP tent thrown over them and they leaked everywhere the canvas touched the lumber. Our chief cook, Sgt Wainscott, was the Battery “liberator of all goods not deemed important enough to post a guard” and in December of ’66 some “homeless” corrugated followed him back to the Battery. We cut the tops off the tents and gave the corrugated a new home. Somewhere around the end of monsoon season, a good sized stack of 1″x6″ lumber mysteriously showed up in the Battery compound. Since the Marine Corps wasn’t an organization to allow anyone or anything to just lie around, like most good suburbanites, we sided our homes.

If you Google SEA hut, you’ll find this description:

“When the 16- by 32-foot wood-frame tent is modified with a metal roof, extended rafters, and screened-in areas, it is called a Southeast Asia (SEA) hut. An example of the completed product is shown in figure 9-21. The SEA hut was originally developed in Vietnam for use in tropical areas by U.S. troops for berthing; but, it can readily be adapted for any use in any situation. It is also known as a strongback because of the roof and sidewall materials.”

The Few. The Proud.
Jerry D.