All About Pocket Knives

Quick Steel wrote: I hope the situation has improved, but during those VN days I had the impression that the Marines did not get the kind of logistical support we Army pukes did. If I need to be corrected on that view, feel free Jerry.

As I stated before, I was not a combat Marine so I have no frame of reference and besides we landed in country on 31Aug65 and I caught my freedom bird on 22Aug66 so pretty early on. We were in Indian country but there were no Indians. Spent the first two months at Da Nang on the Northwest side of the air strip by the old French fort across the road from Check Point Charlie. 5Nov65 some of us were transferred to Bravo Battery 1st LAAM Bn on Monkey Mountain. Stayed up there until I rotated. We had it good up there.

Thanks Chris. Your comments are very generous.

Another riveting story Garry, well told!

When you describe the whop, whop, whop of the approaching Huey's I could feel each whop deep in my chest even just reading about the sound.
Along with that iconic whop comes the memory of something else, the smell of burning diesel and the burning outhouses.

You have a way of telling the story that brings your reader into the story right next to you.

Thank you Dale. I am always hoping people will not be put off by my eccentric grammar e.g. ignoring many commas, use of sentence fragments, beginning sentences with conjunctions etc. I recall protesting to my English teacher, "But Hemingway began sentences with and or but." He replied, "Yes, but Hemingway has a publishing contract." Which is now kind of funny.

I have to say, I wish you had those stories published and available to purchase. I am also a Veteran, Not VN, I was a little too young for that. I did serve 22 years in the Air Force and spent 7 months in the desert for Desert Shield and Desert Storm...not actual face to face combat for me, however, we did receive incoming Scud Missles every day.

I think your style of writing are fantastic and I appreciate you sharing your experiences with us. I love reading about the Viet Nam War, more so the untold stories by folks who actually lived the experience.

Thank you again for sharing and also for your Service!

Respectfully,

Tom

Thank you Chase and thank you for your service. Can't imagine being under a scud attack. I believe the worst casualites we took in your day were from a scud that found a mess hall.

There was a Guard Unit from Pittsburgh, near where I currently live, that lost several folks and had a lot of severe injuries from a Scud Missle. The Patriot battery took out the Scud, however, the actual warhead fell to the ground and hit a building that they were staged in. We responded to assist with evacuations and the survivors were treated at our Air Transportable Hospital before being evac'd out of country....That was a sad day.

We also had a scud hit that the warhead was exploded by the Patriot Missles but the body of the Scud hit very near our Alert Aircraft area and did some damage to the Tent facilities, luckily no injuries from that one.

Finally I had some personnel with me out on the highway leading into the Airfield putting blockades in place and we had 7 Missles launched within minutes at our location. We had no where to go other than underneath the Flatbed trailers we used to haul the barriers to the site. Pretty hairy since we had no idea where the scuds could or would hit and we were out in the open.

I thanked the folks manning the Patriot Missle Batteries regularly in my travels while there and I always think about them even now...They saved our bacon and resources many times over!

Tom

"Thank you" to each and every one of you who served. May God bless you.

Very good story and very well told.

Ray