Keeping the faith

Larry, my best friend from high school, for some reason is working Up North for a while. Sunday he sent an email, which had a picture of a flag and Army things. He wrote:

I am driving around in Millbury, Oh this week watching Fiber being blown in and I see this very neat Memorial in a yard right across the Street from the Millbury Veterans Memorial City Park which has a Nice Granite Monument with the names of all the Local Residents killed in VN.

So I thought the Memorial in the Yard was very unique and interesting, so I stopped and knocked on the Door of the House.

Out comes a old, fat, and grouchy Man wearing a "Viet Nam Veteran and Proud of It" Cap. (Hasn't stayed YOUNG like you and I!).

So I introduced myself and Said "Me Too" and pointed to his cap. Then I told him I would like to get a picture of his Memorial.

He said that was fine and as we looked it over he began to tell me his and the memorial's story.

The Memorial has Wooden Rifles carved very accurately depicting the Rifles used in each War Depicted. (WWI, WWII, Korea, Viet Nam, and Iraq/Afghanistan). On top of each Rifle which is stuck in the ground upside down is an authentic Army Helmet for the Period.

All the Rifles and Helmets represent the Wars that the 1st Inf Division has fought in.

The Memorial is surrounded by 93 Sand Bags. Each Sand Bag represents a member of his unit who was killed in VN.

Here is how the conversation gets really interesting. I asked him when he was there. He said '65 and 66. Went in late '65 came home late '66. I told him I went in late '66 and came home in late '67.

I ask him what unit he was in and he said 1st Inf Div. I told him I was in the 9th and ask him if he was at Ft Riley when the 1st Deployed. He said yes, that he trained there with the 1st most of '65 and left with them in '66. I told him I did the same thing in '66 & '67 with the 9th.

He asked me where my Barracks was and I told him Camp Forsythe. He said his was too. He said his barracks was just across the Bridge coming down Washington Street in Junction City. I told him mine was too.

He ask me if I was close to where they kept that "Damn" Calvary Horse. I said Yes, I was near there and went to see Chief, the last living Calvary Horse, a lot. He said all he remembered was the Drunk Sergeant that took care of him. I said I remembered him too, but liked the Horse anyway.

He ask me where my Base Camp was in VN and I said Bearcat. He said, he had helped set up Defenses around Bearcat just before he came home.

So I said small world isn't it, shook his hand again and took my Pictures.

Thought you would enjoy that,

Larry

1st Infantry Division loses its cajones

“The Army Times reports that special operations icon, retired Lieutenant General William Boykin was disinvited from a breakfast at Fort Riley, Kansas during the 1st Infantry Division’s ‘Victory Week’ celebration because perpetual whiner, Mikey Weinstein doesn’t like the general. It seems that Boykin is a Bible-thumping Christian, which should earn him protection from the actions of the mis-named Military Religious Freedom Foundation, Weinstein’s group of hand-wringing Godless heathens.”

http://thisainthell.us/blog/?p=66122

The division will reschedule the breakfast, but the general will not be invited.

“However, citing Fort Riley's ‘diverse community,’ (MSG Mike) Lavigne said 1st ID ‘will pursue the invitation of a different speaker for the prayer breakfast once it is rescheduled.’"

…

“Weinstein's group, which claims more than 41,500 clients, recently succeeded in efforts to remove Bibles from several ‘missing man table’ displays, designed to honor prisoners of war and troops missing in action, that are located on military and Veterans Affairs Department property. Boykin, in a piece at the FRC Action website, called one VA official's decision to remove the Bible ‘disgraceful’ and showed ‘a poor knowledge of the Constitution.’"

http://www.armytimes.com/story/military/2016/06/01/fort-riley-prayer-breakfast-called-off-controversial-retired-3-star-had-been-set-speak-jerry-boykin-mikey-weinstein/85254680/

(This Ain’t Hell has Weinstein’s press release proclaiming yet another victory. My breakfast is where it should be, and I see no reason to make it disgorge.)

1st ID commander ‘eager to begin integrating women’ into combat roles

Of course he is. Good grief. He’s a two-star general. Does anybody think a general will go against the accepted future of the Army? Well, maybe when we have a different president and the 07s grow some.

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/03/10/big-red-one-commander-welcomes-women-in-combat-roles.html?ESRC=army-a_160316.nl

A war story

One of those stories that happens in war, and a “how to” at the end.

The first battle at Loc Ninh, Oct.-Nov. 1967

More thoughts from John McCoy -

"The famous snake capture! That is a story all by itself. It was a LARGE Python. I mean a really huge Python. It took about 8 or more men to pick it up. It was at least 12 feet long, maybe a lot longer. I have never seen a longer or bigger Python before or since. We were out on patrol, headed back in to the NDP at the south end of the Loc Ninh airstrip, when Lt. Fortenberry walked up, holding the front of the snake, followed by several men from his platoon trying to hold the rest of this enormous constrictor. He informed me that we had all just walked over the snake. That didn't make me feel too comfortable. The snake apparently had eaten recently, as it had a bulge about the size of a small pig about three or four feet back from its head. We all speculated on what it had eaten. Lt. Fortenberry managed to find a large cardboard box, about the size of a refrigerator, and put the snake in that. They named the snake 'Lurch.'

"Either that night, or the next night, we came under attack again. I remember Fred Hill and I were heading for our bunker when the first mortar rounds started dropping in on the runway. Fred looked over at the box that had held Lurch, and realized the box had been tipped over somehow and Lurch was loose. When Fred brought this to my attention, I hesitated to jump in the bunker, as I figured Lurch just might be in there. The mortar rounds were moving down the runway, falling closer to our bunkers, so I opted to take my chances with the snake and jumped in the bunker. I may have let Fred go first. Lurch wasn't there, and we never saw him again. I hope he crawled out to the rubber trees and scared a few VC to death.

"One thing I remember about Loc Ninh - we were trying something new so the jet pilots and gunship pilots could identify the perimeter of the NDP at night: we had been told to take an empty C-ration can and fill it 3/4 full of sand, then saturate it with either diesel fuel or gasoline. When darkness came and the attack started, we were to reach as far out of the firing port of our bunker as we could and place the can there, then light the fuel. The pilots could see the burning fuel in the cans from the air, but it was not visible to the VC on the ground. This trick seemed to work very well. Those pilots never fired inside our NDP, but sure hugged up close on the outside of the NDP a few times. I am convinced that those pilots saved our lives."

http://freepages.military.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~realmccoy/locninh.html

What country you guys from? Oh. That one.

http://www.pbase.com/d_berry/image/92343413

(I wasn’t anywhere close to Loc Ninh in Oct-Nov 1967, but had been at Lai Khe (28 Inf base camp) a few months before. It’s a funny thing – You can be in an area and a month-long fight happens, but you don’t know anything about it. People back home probably knew more about Loc Ninh from TV and newspaper news than we did, some 100 kilometers away.)