Dad's second tour in Nam

 At this point he's make rank so he's not shoving supplies out of a tent, but it's still pretty austere.  After all, Marines.  And Nam.  But there's perks to his job, as he's now in charge of the supply chain for his entire regiment, and one of those perks is that he's in charge of the food for the annual meetings of diplomats that were held on a monthly basis in Thailand.  Remember, the Marines guard our embassies, and the diplomatic meetings were a function of said embassies, do Dad gets to order the food for the once-a-month party.

Said food being steak and lobster, because..  well...  diplomats.  And bullshit.  In Thailand.

But here's the thing:  The meetings were SCHEDULED for every month, but that doesn't mean that they actually happened every month.  And Dad, being a good supply officer, knew that you just couldn't have last month's steak and lobster just sitting there in the freezer.  That wouldn't do for the high and might diplomats, not at all.  So dad orders new steak and lobster, then takes the old steak and lobster, and goes searching for people who care enough about their status that they'll trade away a lot of nice stuff to get the food.  After all, he can't just bring the food back to Nam with him.

Enter the Air Force.  Not only did the Air Force desperately want the steak and lobster, but they were willing to bring in cases of Jack Daniels from the states to trade.  Yes, there was a lot of steak and lobster for these meetings, and the Air Force couldn't understand why some jarhead had what should rightly be their supper, but fine, here's some whiskey and yes we'll get more and fly it here.

Dad also got a nice case of the AF survival knives at one point.  All of it easily transportable.

So now dad has quite a bit of Jack Daniels.  Is he going to give it to his own men?  Dad knows Marines.  Dad knows what Marines and whiskey will accomplish in country, and Dad wisely says "Nope, not today" and trucks the whiskey over to the people who think they can drink.  

Enter the Navy.  Specifically the SeeBees.  Why the SeeBees?  Because they build shit.  And they have the materials to build said shit, and they have a mighty thirst that can only be quenched by Old Number 7.  And when Dad describes what he'll accept in trade for the cases of whiskey (and the knives.  The Navy guys loved the AF survival knives for some reason), the SeeBees look around, scratch their hands, and say "So you want this when?  Done."

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was how my father's regiment had the only enclosed, hardened gym in country.  His Marines could work out in mosquito-free comfort, safe from pretty much anything but a direct artillery strike.  And they were a bit too far back for a round to drop on their heads at that point.

Later on I would take some of these lessons my father imparted to me and use them to great effect during my own career.  I still have some gear that was never on the books stashed away, that was traded for other stuff that fell off the books or "expired".  And whenever I could, I made sure that my guys had EVERYTHING they needed.