Tag Archives: Vietnam war

Viet Nam, 1969

Posted on June 1, 2010 | Comments Off on Viet Nam, 1969

Dick+Stanley+in+VietnamThis was somewhere in the foothills of the Annamese Cordillera southwest of Da Nang, late August or September. When I was using lace-up zippers in my boots but before, it seems to be, I started adding my dog tags to them for surer body identification. Note the bipod on the M-14 at left.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Scribbles, Viet Nam

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Adios, UH-1

Posted on October 22, 2009 | Comments Off on Adios, UH-1

This seems to be it, as far as the American military is concerned, for the UH-1 Huey, the workhorse troop- and casualty-mover of the Vietnam war. Course the feeling of the nose-down takeoff, the wind roaring through the open side doors, and the distinctive sound of the rotor blades from the ground as one passes over will live on in memory, until the last veteran passes on. Few of them ever even knew it was, officially, called the Iroquois.

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Posted in Obituaries, Troops, Viet Nam

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Combat in Afghanistan

Posted on July 29, 2009 | Comments Off on Combat in Afghanistan

"The Taliban are very brave, but they are ignorant brutal men who murder locals who do not support them, and brave doesn’t stop bullets." —Michael Yon

Sounds like the Viet Cong. Hope they don’t have the Cong’s tenacity. So far they seem not to have. But this "good war," as the Dems used to call it, to distinguish it from their "bad war" in Iraq, has a long way to go. Yon’s piece shows why. Amazes me, though, that the Brit troops have women medics and rifles. These women aren’t inadvertently in combat. They are in it on purpose. Revolutionary.

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Posted in Afghanistan, The War, Troops, Viet Nam

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Our War Dead

Posted on May 25, 2009 | Comments Off on Our War Dead
These are the men of 60th Company, Infantry Officer’s Candidate School, at Fort Benning, Georgia, a class dubbed 504-68, who were killed in Vietnam. We hundred and ten graduates (all but one of whom also served in Vietnam) remember them on Memorial Day: 
 
One graduate:   1LT Jacob Lee Kinser
 
Two tactical officers: CPT Reese Michael Patrick
                             1LT Daniel Lynn Neiswender
 
Four drop-outs: CPL Sherry Joe Hadley    
                       SP4 Reese Currenti Elia, Jr.
                       CPL Robert Chase
                       SP4 Jeffrey Sanders Tigner

Not that we don’t remember and appreciate the dead of both older and more recent American wars and campaigns. We just tend to think of our own first.

Soldier, rest, thy warfare o’er, 
Dream of fighting fields no more.
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,   
Morn of toil, nor night of waking.

                       –Sir Walter Scott

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Posted in Viet Nam

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Why Mac missed Woodstock

Posted on June 13, 2008 | Comments Off on Why Mac missed Woodstock

McCainWithSquadron.jpg

"Visiting in Inez, Kentucky, Senator [and presumptive Republican nominee for president] John McCain [lower right] was asked…why he missed the Woodstock ‘musical and pharmacalogical’ event in 1969.  The Senator, in his sometimes humorous and understated way, said, ‘I was tied up at the time.’"

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Posted in Troops, Viet Nam

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John Arthur Deering, R.I.P.

Posted on October 11, 2007 | Comments Off on John Arthur Deering, R.I.P.

Chuck Adams, an OC-504 buddy of mine who served as an AFVN station manager on Monkey Mountain near Da Nang, tells me Deering died unexpectedly Monday at his home in Millersville, TN. He was 64. A retired  Marine NCO, Deering was awarded the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and Purple Heart for service with AFVN. He spent five years as a POW after capture during the TET Offensive of 1968 while running an AFVN radio and television station in Hue. He was tortured and held in solitary for two of those years. Rest in peace, John.

MORE: The rest of the story, about AFVN’s POWs. 

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Posted in Viet Nam

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Soldier heroes, afterall.

Posted on February 28, 2007 | Comments Off on Soldier heroes, afterall.

Neal Sheehan’s "Bright Shining Lie" began by asserting that the Vietnam war was "a war without heroes." He meant the soldiers. His journalists were the heroes. Yet there were many soldier heroes and one has been finally recognized.

"President Bush [has] awarded a Medal of Honor — the nation’s highest military medal — to 74-year-old Bruce Crandall."

Some Vietnam veterans like Sheehan’s book, feel it justified and have recommended it to non-veteran friends as the definitive truth. I’m not among them. A longer look at Crandall, a heroic Huey pilot in the American war in Viet Nam. Milton Olive, who was from my father’s Mississippi hometown, also was a hero.

UPDATE  Why most newspapers ran Crandall’s story as a round-up item. Risky times we live in.

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Posted in Viet Nam

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