Early in the Vietnam war there was no such thing as a MARS operator MOS (Military Occupation Specialty) in the Marine Corps. Operators came from infantry, recon, tanks, artillery, motor transport, engineers, helicopters, air wing and just about every other job in the Marine Corps. A few even came from communications. The one thing they had in common was ham radio. Some had been members of their high school amateur radio clubs just a few short months before and few had the money to invest in a real store-bought radio. Many had built their own or converted old WWII military surplus radios. But the Marine Corps handed them fifty to a hundred thousand dollars worth of state-of-the-art ham radio equipment and said, "Go play".
 

The original N0EFA on the hill in Da Nang, a young ham radio operator's dream. Collins KWM-2A transceiver, complete Collins 'S' Line, i.e., 32S-3 Transmitter, 75S-3A Receiver, phone patch consoles and a Henry 2K-2 linear amplifier.	John Haw runs phone patches at N0EFL ('The Lizard') at Red Beach in Da Nang.

Alpha was born at 3rd Marine Division Headquarters in Da Nang. 3rd Mar Div FWD (Forward) HQ was created in Phu Bai and N0EFJuliet was activated there. In early 1967, 3rd Mar Div moved it's HQ north to Phu Bai and Alpha was moved north with 3rd Mar Div FWD to Dong Ha, within range of the big NVA guns in North Vietnam, and the station down in Da Nang got a new call sign.

But by early 1968, the old Alpha in Dong Ha was badly damaged (more holes than walls and roof) and wounded operators and destroyed equipment were taking their toll on the phone patch count. Harry Boggs convinced the Seabees (using phone calls home and other bribes) to build a new station on the other side of the combat base. So Alpha moved north again. The new station was a beauty:
 

Jim Elshoff stands guard over the new Alpha, and more importantly, over the new sign.   The operators filled about a zillion sandbags.	Bill Biggs and Harry Boggs filling the shower at Alpha. The operators built a shower out of an aircraft fuel tank and had one of the few showers in Dong Ha.
Every Marine is a rifleman first. Or a bellhop. I forget. The basic attire for a MARS operator in the field was two Samsonite suitcases (custom made to hold a Collins KWM-2A and it's power supply), an antenna and vertical mast and an M-16. I heard a few chuckles when I got off the chopper looking like this.	But the chuckles stopped when N0EFA/1 was up and running patches with the KWM-2A. Nerds win again! On the portable system, a patch console wasn't used and the Marines used the microphone and listened to the speaker. Here is the system in Con Thien and there obviously wasn't much privacy.

"Our Turn in the Barrel!" Alpha at it's northern most point, as far north as it could go and still be in South Vietnam. Although full authorization was never granted for 'cross-patching', Harry Boggs considered it critical to run calls for the grunts in the field who deserved it the most. A portable station was assembled and taken to Con Thien, affectionately known as "The Meat Grinder", a few hundred meters south of the DMZ. Calls were run from Con Thien on the 'in country net' frequency and cross patched to the United States through N0EFA in Dong Ha. Barry ran over 500 patches from Con Thien in about two weeks, Christmas of '67.