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Courage is fear holding on a minute longer. -- General George Patton Jr |
 War Stories: VietnamWar Stories published under this topic are as follows:
I saw her for the first time in 1969. Apparently my Vietnamese was not as good as I thought and the ride I had caught on a Vietnamese UH1D went to Tay Ninh instead of Tan Uyen where I was supposed to go. We had been in the air from Dinh Quan for about 30 minutes when I first saw her head rising out of the mist above the emerald green jungle.
Note: by Don Shacklette 9301 Reads
As soon as the Freedom Bird began to lose altitude the noise level on the craft began to rise. Idle conversation tended to either stop completely or to take on a more intense quality. From one end of the plane to the other the word spread with the speed of magic. We're coming into McChord.
Note: By Jim Calbreath 7104 Reads
On arrival in Vietnam in 1966, the 5th Battalion Royal Australian Regiment, (5RAR) found the enemy moving freely throughout Phuoc Tuy Province during the night. The Viet-Cong and NVA were not used to being attacked during the dark hours, as the Americans' basically fought during daylight hours.
Note: by Bob Cavill, 5th Battalion RAR, SVN 1966 - 67 11874 Reads
20 Oct 68 Dear everybody, Well it's another rainy day in Vietnam. When they say its been known to rain 40 days and nights you can believe it. Today I had to fill sandbags and build a bunker where a mortar round came in last night. No big worry. It was at least 300 yards away. That's for really! 7057 Reads
I was lucky enough to be stationed at a field hospital in Qui Nhon for a couple of months. QN was known by many to be an unofficial in-country R&R center. The town was pretty large, had quite a few GI's, and set right on the beach. Inland was a rather large mountain range that was the home of one of the many ROK divisions that were in-country at that time. In other words, a pretty nice place to be.
Note: By Jim Calbreath 6966 Reads
In the summer of 1970 I was flying near Football Island and observed an Army CH47 helicopter rolling barrels of what appeared to be fuel off the ramp and then igniting them. It looked like they were trying to burn the grass in the area. On return I thought about what I had seen and came up with the idea of doing something similar.
Note: by Charlie Block 7205 Reads
It was January of '68, shortly after I'd turned 19. I'd been in the war for 10 months by then, my first 6 months as a dogface with the 101st Airborne. By the time they'd picked me to volunteer for the LRRP's, I was a newly made squad leader, an acting jack sgt., waiting for my permanent stripes.
Note: from: EVERYMAN STROLLS THROUGH HELL, Chapter 6, by: James Worth. 25504 Reads
The weather was such that we could see from one end of Vietnam to the other, but the cloud bottoms were about the level of a PRC 25 antenna. It was almost like you could see somebody coming, but all you could see was his body because his head would be in the fog. Not a day to do much troop lifting or resupply flying.
Note: by Harvey Britt, HMM-263, 1963, HMM-262, 1968-69. 9749 Reads
Det 6 was staging out of Song Ong Doc. It was going to be a dark night with no moon, so as we watched the sun slip below the horizon, we knew we would be flying that night. Sure enough, the scramble alarm went off around midnight. The AMY, a series of support barges for PBR's, was the command post for our area of operations. The AMY activated the alarm.
Note: by Jim Plona 7761 Reads
Believe it or not, it was a very cold night on the outskirts of Phan Rang Air Base that Christmas night in 1967. Most of us had been scurrying earlier, prior to Guardmount, to find a jacket or a extra shirt---actually, anything to keep warm. I mean, 68°F was COLD, and we weren't used to it.
Note: by Carl Tripp, 35th SPS, Phan Rang, Vietnam - 1967. 7851 Reads
I was flying a UH-1 D for the 187th Assault Helicopter Company, the Blackhawks out of Tay Ninh, Vietnam in 1967. Sleep never comes easy in Vietnam, the artillery shoots H&I (harassment and interdiction) fire all night, every time one of the 8 inch guns went off, a small amount of the dust, collected from the dry season would fall off the tent roof and drift to the floor. It was the monsoon season and the cool rain had put me right to sleep.
Note: by Wayne R. "Crash" Coe, Hotel-3 Blackhawk 54, 187th Assault Helicopter Company, 67-8. 8982 Reads
Over the years I have put most of the bad memories of Nam to the back of my mind and tried to forget them. Occasionally, one will come back. Any other time I would start out by saying Once Upon a Time or No Shit Man as I would make up a bullshit war story. But, this time I am going to start out by saying, to the best of my recollection the following did happen.
Note: by Larry Weisbarth, A 1/502nd Airborne Infantry, 67-68 8575 Reads
A couple of hours before sunset, any commander worth his salt got very serious about first, selecting and second, preparing a place for his outfit to spend the night. Nobody from higher headquarters was going to do this for you; battalion staffs and commanders were in fire bases, protected by other companies out of prepared bunkers, complete with wire, mines, defensive artillery fires already plotted, ready access to armed helicopters should the need arise, and so on.
Note: by Richard Guthrie, 1st Battalion (Mechanized), 50th Infantry 10471 Reads
1967, LZ English, near Bong Son, about fifty meters inside the perimeter. I woke up often at night over there, even after I learned to sleep through outgoing H&I fire. So I had searched for a watch with a generously luminous dial which would let me check the time in the dark. Why is it that when we wake up at night the first thing we want to know is, what time is it? Note: by Ted Gittinger 15265 Reads
The next days are spent digging bunkers, filling sand bags and increasing the strength of our perimeter. We string endless lines of concertino wire, drive posts and set out trip flares, claymores and boo gas.( Buried 55 gallon drums that are a mixture of petroleum jelly and gasoline.) Instant crispy critter.
7461 Reads
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This Day in History
1916:
The Russians force the Turkish 3rd Army back to Erzurum.
1942: General MacArthur repels the Japanese in Bataan. 1943: The deportation of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to the concentration camp at Treblinka is resumed-but not without much bloodshed and resistance along the way. 1945: The German Army launches its second attempt to relieve the besieged city of Budapest from the advancing Red Army. 1950: Peoples Republic of China formally recognizes the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam and agrees to furnish it military assistance. 1951: China rejected the U.N. cease-fire proposal as the Eighth Army re-entered Wonju without opposition. 1953: U.S. Navy carrier aircraft hit targets at Wonsan, Songjin, Hungnam and Changyon on the North Korea's east coast while surface elements fired on Sinchon and Kosong targets. 1953: The U.S. Coast Guards were dispatched from Sangley Point to save the crew of a Navy Lockheed P2V reconnaissance plane. They landed in 12-foot seas, risking their own crew to save their Navy counterparts. The Coast Guard fished 11 survivors from the wrecked plane. Tragically the Coast Guards port engine failed during take off, slamming the plane back into the cold waters of the South China Sea. Seven of the rescued Navy fliers survived this second crash; however, most of the Coast Guard crew was lost. 1962: The United States begins spraying foliage with herbicides in South Vietnam, in order to reveal the whereabouts of Vietcong guerrillas. 1985: For the first time since joining the World Court in 1946, the United States walks out of a case. The case that caused the dramatic walkout concerned U.S. paramilitary activities against the Nicaraguan government. |
