Category Archives: Infantry OCS

Friendly atmosphere

Posted on November 3, 2007 | Comments Off on Friendly atmosphere

On my second visit to Austin’s VA Health Clinic I was impressed by everything: the friendly people, the clean facilities, the new equipment. Got a flu shot from a tech with a no-pain technique. The doc I was assigned to wanted to run me through the normal blood work, but I pointed out I was scheduled for the full deal, including EKG and X-Rays, Dec. 11 in Temple for the Agent Orange Registry. Did he want to duplicate it? Fine with me. He didn’t. I especially liked the ambience that everyone’s on the same page. I saw why my late father-in-law, a Navy retiree, preferred VA hospitals to private ones. PTSD questions in the med exam surprised me. I think they’re more for new veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq than Vietnam after so many years. Nevertheless. Nightmares? Check. Fear of loud noises? Nope. Avoid situations reminding of combat? Nope. Feelings of detachment from others? That one surprised me. I thought it over and said I would have to answer yes. Wondering now what the Temple exam will uncover in December.

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Posted in Afghanistan, Infantry OCS, Iraq, Troops, Viet Nam

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Those San Diego fires

Posted on October 22, 2007 | Comments Off on Those San Diego fires

Getting a little worried here about an OC-504 buddy who lives in Poway, in north San Diego county, which started evacuating residents this morning as the wildfires worsened, whipped by 100 mph winds. Put out a message for him on the group email list, but haven’t heard back yet. He recently retired and has been fixing up his house for sale before moving to South Dakota.

UPDATE: Classmates say our buddy, retired San Diego assistant district attorney Bob Phillips, and his wife are out of town this week. Hope they don’t have to come home to destruction and loss. 

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Posted in Infantry OCS

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First encounter with VA

Posted on October 2, 2007 | Comments Off on First encounter with VA

Actually, it was my second encounter. The first was in 1971, when I used the G.I. Bill to go to graduate school. But that was just by mail. This was the local health clinic, where this morning I began the process of getting on the Agent Orange Registry. I though it was to be a health checkup. Instead, it was a signup, getting a picture i.d. done and being assigned to a doctor. The first checkup with him will be at the end of October.

The clinic was packed. They handle military retirees these days as well as veterans with little or no private health insurance. The Military Order of the Purple Heart was serving coffee. The security guard asked me if I was carrying a weapon or a knife. I said no. There was a long table of service caps and unit pins for sale, mostly Vietnam units, in case you shed your military identity years ago and now you want it back. The clinic is in the highest-crime part of town–where the land is cheapest, I suppose–so it’s surrounded by a high fence topped with concertina razor-wire. That’s a reminder of how military service is degraded in this country: Once the pols, the news media and Hollywood finish beating you up, you get shabby health care. It’s a wonder anyone serves. Better would be the system that Navy veteran Robert Heinlein wrote about in "Starship Troopers," where only veterans were allowed to vote or hold public office. That would really shake up this society.

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Posted in Infantry OCS, Troops, Viet Nam

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Prostate cancer

Posted on September 18, 2007 | Comments Off on Prostate cancer

The Veterans Administration recently notified me that I have a medical exam in December for the Agent Orange Registry, at their clinic up the road in Temple. Anyone who served in Vietnam during the American war is eligible for the exam. I applied for VA health care a few months ago, though I have private insurance, because I wanted to cover all the bases, plus get the AO exam, just in case. In case of what? Well, prostate cancer for one. It is one of the most common cancers in men, generally, but is considered service-connected in Vietnam veterans because we have a higher-incidence of it than the general male population. The connection is attributed to exposure to the dioxin in the defoliant Agent Orange. A few days after my VA notice, a classmate from OC 504-68 announced on the email list that he’d been diagnosed with it. Then the surprise "I have it, too" emails started coming in. So I’m getting a private physical, a.s.a.p., just in case. Nothing like hearing about the plight of men your age, in your own peer group, to focus on your own health.

UPDATE: I passed. The private doc said my physical inspection and PSA blood test showed prostate cancer was "not an issue," for this year, anyhow.

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Posted in Infantry OCS, Science/Engineering, Viet Nam

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Commenter missed

Posted on August 27, 2007 | Comments Off on Commenter missed

As inconvenient as it apparently has been for some of my rare but appreciated readers who have not noticeably returned, the TypeKey comment security system has done wonders for my productivity. I no longer have to waste time deleting scores of comment spam which were steadily rising into the hundreds every day. I gave up on trackbacks last year for the same reason, though I wasn’t getting any trackbacks, anyhow. But Tom is one rare reader whose vanished comments I especially miss. A fellow OC-504er, who spent his time in Vietnam with the 1st Cav and now commands his local VFW, he was clever enough to track down my sister-in-law’s funeral Aug. 6 in Indiana and surprise us by showing up, an hour or so away from his own Ohio River town. Hope you can eventually figure out how to make the registery work, Tom. I’d like to have you back.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Infantry OCS, Obituaries, Viet Nam

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Reunion 2007

Posted on July 2, 2007 | Comments Off on Reunion 2007

OC504-68.jpg

 The posts on the email group are starting to dribble in from this year’s third reunion in Washington, D.C. Most people left the hotel this morning to fly home, some as far as the West Coast. So the posts won’t pick up until this afternoon or even after sundown. "Was interesting," one earlybird and first-timer writes, "to dust off the memory banks and actually recognize faces from 39 years ago. Probably talked more to non-third platoon members yesterday then in all of OCS." Reunions in ’03 and ’05 were like that, too. Sorry I missed this one. Have to stay healthy and make the one in ’09.

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Posted in Infantry OCS, Viet Nam

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Reunion “chairs”

Posted on June 18, 2007 | Comments Off on Reunion “chairs”

I’m not going to make my OCS class reunion this year. It’s in Washington, D.C., which will benefit all the guys who live in the vicinity, but is just too far for me to go for a weekend. I made the first one, in ’03 at Fort Benning, and the ’05 one in San Antonio, and with luck I’ll still be around for the ’09 one, hopefully somewhere closer. D.C. has turned out to be so expensive the class has had to ask for contributions above the fees paid by attendees, to help pay for everything. So they came up with a creative idea: offered to name chairs in the hospitality suite for a price. Started off with $100 each for Infantry and Special Forces, then offered the others at $50. I sent a check for an Armor chair, my combat arms branch, although I was infantry in Vietnam. Others have since come in for the wives, the Purple Heart, the Combat Infantryman’s Badge, Signal Corps, Military Intelligence, and the 25th Infantry Division. It’s working.

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Posted in Infantry OCS

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