Bitnam Nicknames

[Dragon Lady]

I plan on it Tuff Guy. ;-)
I actually miss having the little uns around.

[Andy]

In basic and AIT I was Alphabet, gee wonder why? On the other side of the pond it turned into Andy.
After I got dinged the second time and asked to get back to the field ASAP. (The 25th Med Evac Hospital in Cu Chi was getting rocketed every night in Feb. of ?68.) As a result the guys started calling me The House Cat. A term usually reserved for folks who spent their tour in the rear.

Lucky was the one nickname that was really earned. Twice he walked point, missed a trip wire and the slack man found it. I?m still in touch with Wild Willy who was a driver and named his first vehicle Wild Willy?s War Wagon.

Stay healthy,
Andy

[Jake]

Nicknames...depends on who it was and when! At Cam Rahn I was called 4x4, and at Tuy Hoa I was called Ba-May Lam (Waterbuffalo). In Turkey, I was called "Wall" or Buyuk Omar (Big Omar). In Germany I was called Rat-spit, because my OIC, a big Texan, thought I was "meaner than rat spit."

But I tell ya, I'm a teddy bear!!!!

Jake

[MontanaKid]

Nothing too fancy in the way of nicknames for me. I was called "doc," as were all medics. If there was need to differentuate me from other docs, it was "Doc Johnson," or "little doc" Since I was 5-7, 120 pounds as compared to out 6-4, 200 pound senior medic, called "Big Doc" Among those of us in the medical platoon, who either manned the forward aid station on LZ Professional or the TRAINS aid station in Chu Lai after we had served 6-9 months in the field with a line company, the only one called "doc," was the battalion surgeon, the MD and platoon leader. Though "doc" was in command, all the administrative work was handled by our Medical Service Corps Officer, a lieutenant. This allowed "doc" to be "doc."
L.T. of course was a common nick name for infantry platoon leaders, the first platoon leader I worked under was called "O-2" or even O'Toole" a play on his pay grade. More guys were called by their last names, as opposed to nicknames. But a near white-haired blond guy was called "snowflake." A guy named gonzales was called "speedy" An Arizona Navaho was called "chief." An F.O. recon sergeant from Florida liked to be called "gator." A tall thin, but baby faced RTO was called "baby-san." etc.
One nick'name some of us used for our Americal Division was "Metrical," after a popular diet shake of the day. There was a lot of irreverence to things military. I don't know if that was because the Americal was heavily manned by draftees or not.

[DMZ-LT]

No disrespect here Doc but we called the Americal " the baby killers " I'd still shoot Calley.

[MORTARDUDE]

They called me "Duckman"..I was way too skinny and had a long neck...

We had big A and little A from the 82nd Airborne. Allman was from Ga, and a super nice guy. Don't remember where Ackerman was from, but I can still remember him singing "Raindrops keep Falling On My Head" just before he went on R & R to Hawaii to meet his wife. He also managed to catch his nipple on the breach of his M-16 while cleaning it. I have a picture of him with a band-aid on it.

We also had "Old Man"..Victor Vecera of Laredo Texas, drafted when he was 24 years old. There was "Doc", "Tennessee" ( a some time sniper who lived near me in Memphis). Also "Stretch", my good friend Gary Ogden in Wyoming, who is 6' 3"..."Abner" Ray Yokum of Ohio...."Jake" Jacobs, our Platoon Sgt. "Suicide" Timmons, our idiot CO who had two shiny captain's bars on a Marine Corps hat he wore in the field ( the sun reflected off of it for miles when riding on an APC )...I have this picture in my head of him laughing hysterically while blowing a poor old brown cow away with a .45 in some ville we were in..he loved to kill animals..he was relieved in Cambodia....it is in Keith Nolan's book ( "Into Cambodia" )....My friend Rouse was called "Mouse"...

Dodd was called "Darvon"......I have no idea where he got so many of them....will post more later..

Larry

[formergrunt70]

Mmmmm! I was also Americal! Interesting to see that nickname again. Vet board?

[MontanaKid]

All of us Americal vets had to put up with the "baby killer" tag. Cally is no favorite of any of ours, either. There was no policy in the Americal that was any different than any other division that I'm aware of. The wrong things conspired to come together that day. My Lai was no more typical of the Americal than any other unit in Vietnam.

[Bill Farnie]

MontanaKid & gatewoodsret,

I agree. The Americal was no different then other divisions.
My Lai happened at the hands of a few.

Let me tell a story and I'll try to keep it short.
During Tet 1969 my company was sent back to Camp Evans to help beef up the security of the base just in case. Any First Teamer's and 101st guys who were at Evans know the village of Phong Dien was pretty much right outside the gate. We had to provide a squad for an ambush and four men for an LP.
The men of the LP were walking a rice paddy dike of the village and were ambushed killing three of them. We were pissed and wanted revenge. My company and Bravo company cordoned off the village and a no lights after dark curfew was imposed. My platoon had a Starlight Scope and when dawn came both company's moved out tightening the cordon as we approached the village. Someone noticed the Starlight Scope was missing and a couple of guys went back to were we had setup the night before but it wasn't anywhere to be found.
We started to search the hooch's of the vill and as I came up on this one hooch a young boy ran out with something wrapped in a newspaper under his arm. The frame of mind I was in told me it was the scope.
I yelled Dung Lai! Dung Lai! but he kept on running. I drew a bead on him with my M-16 and at the last second took my aim off of him and fired a burst in front of him and he stopped. When I reached him I saw that he had a fish wrapped up in the newspaper and he was afraid that we were going to take it from his family and that's the reason for him taking off. If I hadn't fired in front of him and did bring him down would I be considered a baby/child killer?

Maybe this should have been the story for the luckiest moment in Nam thread. I don't know if I could have lived with myself if I had killed that boy.

[MontanaKid]

I've got to say one more thing on the Americal. We have a web site for our battalion, 1/46. It is www.1stof46.com.
I maintain the memorial site there. I have the names of more than 250 men who died with the 1/46. That represents about half of our strength at any given time during the war.
These guys are who I think of when I think of Americal. They weren't baby killers. They were just ordinary guys who would do anything for each other and gave all they had.
I am still humbled that they gave up their lives over there and I am privileged to be still walking around in this 53-year-old carcass over here.