Reply #5: Yo, DemoTex...

[Jackpine Radical]

I saw the 1st Cav ammo dump go after a 122 strike in 1968. This was just before 2nd Brigade went into Khe Sanh, so there was a lot of extra stuff on hand. 4 underground tanks full of gasoline or something went up in succession. When the first one went you could see a gigantic mushroom cloud, and the concussion was terrific. I literally thought a nuke had gone off. I had been sitting on a bunker a couple miles away watching the fireworks (artillery rounds, flares, tracers, etc.) blowing when the first big boom came. I rolled backwards off the bunker. In the seconds afterwards, I was thinking "Oh, shit, I've been cooked. I wonder how long it will take for my face to fall off." There were 2 guys actually in the dump when it blew. They dove into a bunker. They survived with no harm I heard about, although for the next several days they went around saying "Eh?" a lot when you tried to talk to them.