Someone asked me about my 'college' so here it is..

[greybeard]

Rather than typing it all again, Ill just copy it from another post from one of the other boards I frequent..
(I don't have a lot of my own pictures left, as I got the box out a few years ago and told the kids to divide them up as they wanted to..most of these are off my old squadron's websites)

4 yrs.
1969-1973
Boot camp in San Diego, then infantry training regiment at Camp Pendleton,, then a few months of aviation school in Millington Tenn, then a few months OJT actually learning hands on aviation ground support at H&MS 14 sqdron Mag 14 @ Cherry Pt N. Carolina, (a fixed wing Group, with A-4s, Phantoms and A6s, then off to HMH-463, Mag 16 Marble Mtn Vietnam for a year, which was a helicopter group and CH-53D squadron, then back to Millington Tenn for instructor duty for the rest of my USMC time.
What did I see?
Nothing much.

What did I do?
What my country asked me to

I have a lot of things hanging on my wall, some papers, lots of pictures, some pieces of metal with colorful cloth but of all the things I earned in life, good or bad..other than my family, these are what mean the most.


The little open window with the M-60 sticking out was pretty much my home almost every day for a year.
I was a door gunner. I had a 'day job', which I did mostly at night, taking care of some support equipment, but flew guns most days. Some nights too or maybe do illumination flare drops.





I went to places like this.
Hills surounding Khe Sahn when it was reopened tosupport Lam Son 719.

and saw things like this
LZ Hope Laos.not aptly named.

Inserted and resupplied little out of the way retreats like this, an arty fire base somwhere near Kilo Pad inside the Laotian border.

One of ours in the distance about to make the turn into Kilo pad to pick up troops to go to LZ Sophie

and I learned which of these was most apt to get you killed and which were just 'not so apt' to get you killed. Only took a couple of days of trips in and out to figure out there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between them. They'd all eat your lunch.

For the helos, it was a meat grinder.

And, I got to work, fly, and fight alongside the finest men I've ever met in my life and none of us gave one flyin uknow what the politics of the day were or ever looked for any excuse not to be there.

 

[greybeard]

Part of my "day job" when not flying was moving helicopters around, in and out of the big cement revetments they went in at night to protect from rocket/mortars. (You can see them on the left in this picture. USN Seabees built them and they were called Wonder Arches and as of early 2000s, they were the only remnants left of that sprawling USMC base. There's a Hyatt Regency luxury resort today where the runway, hooch area and helo parking area used to be)
We did it with a Ford tractor. Notice the tread on the tires are reversed from how a farm tractor normally is done..better traction on asphalt..we never took it off the hard surface and into the sand that surrounded the base. Yes..me. My father was quite proud of this picture, as it was he who first taught me to drive a tractor, and he was a big Ford fan anyway. I have a only slightly newer version of this tractor today and use it almost every day.

The little vehicle you see in this picture is another piece of the equipment I took care of. An NC-5 mobile generator that supplied electrical power to the helos when testing and the engines weren't running.


It was "cumshawed" (basically ..stolen) from a Navy carrier that brought the helos in from Hawaii. Some hard charging squadron member just drove it into the cargo bay of a 53, closed the ramp, and into Vietnam it flew. (no, wasn't me..happened before I got there) I hated the thing...to get the cycles up high enough, you had to hold the throttle of that old continental gasoline engine close to WOT and I was always afraid the engine would fly apart. It was a screamer for sure. It was quite old when we got it.
I'll try to dig out & scan a few more later but be warned, the quality after 50 yrs is very poor.

 

[RollingAcres]

Thank you for sharing GB.

 

[B&B Happy goats]

Thank you greybeard, ...it sure was a horrible political time then, ...
and even though i hated war....i hated they way you were all treated... as the fortunate ones retured home and were forever changed. You and others went and put yourselfs on the line for our country and set the politics aside, ...and when you returned , you were treated like trash by the Americans you were fighting for.
I want to thank you for your service to our country and apologize for the ignorance, and disrepect you were shown when you made it home. I am still proud to be a American and have my freedom...thanks to our men and women who served our counrty.

 

[Senile_Texas_Aggie]

Mr. @greybeard, sir,

Thank you so much for posting this. It was brave and patriotic of you to serve and due the calling of your country. As Billy Ray Cyrus put it in a song, "All gave some, some gave all".

Senile Texas Aggie

 

[SonRise Acres]

As WWII vets were cheered and kissed and celebrated when they came marching home, so should you guys. I am sorry you were treated so badly for doing a job most Americans don’t want but one we all want someone to do. I come from a very military family (ancestors to my Dad and siblings, to currently my cousin). I appreciate and am grateful for every second you spent doing what you did for the nation and the world.

 

[greybeard]

I can't really say I was ever treated badly right afterwards or since, except a little off-in-the-distance heckling when I came back into the states thru Travis Air Base Calif. Stayed at Travis just long enough to grab my seabag and get a cab to the airport.
I may type some thoughts on my part of the southeast Asia experience later this evening but will say when Saigon fell in '75, I watched it unfold on TV in a USN bowling alley and stood there and wept like a baby. I wasn't the only one.

 

[Mike CHS]

Those pictures came out surprisingly well for being that old.

 

[greybeard]

Those pictures came out surprisingly well for being that old.

Only 4 are mine. One of the helos, & the 3 of me. Rest are off my squadron's website or another Vietnam era website. I haven't got the top of my scanner cleaned off yet so I can scan any more onto my laptop--it's become a catch-all for anything on my desk..

 

[greybeard]

A few..
When my mother passed away in mid 90s, I found she had kept every letter and card I ever mailed home from my overseas tours. I read thru them a couple years later and realized I wasn't always discreet about things I relayed home. I suspect I gave them plenty of cause for worry & I guess I didn't write nearly enough, but did when I could and felt like it.

("Know Your Enemy..The Viet Cong" it says. I didn't learn much from that, but I imagine my mother didn't like what it said.)

Our base (Marble Mountain Marine Air Facility) was on a coastal plain just South of Danang, 15-20 miles, but like lots of Asia's coastline, there were sudden upthrusts of rock. Near us, there were 2 ancient ones called the Marble Mountains. One had caves in it, and a public Buddhist temple outside and another one for Buddhist priests inside the big grotto. The US had taken over the place for security, and there was a small detachment on top, with a really powerful searchlight that reached a very long ways out onto the surrounding plain. This was backed up with nothing less than a 106mm recoiless rifle. Being recoiless, it didn't make much noise, but when it barked, things somewhere out on that plain turned out badly. 2 views off one of the 2 mountains.




Some of the guys I worked and flew with. Our luxury accommodations can be seen behind us.
(no, not air conditioned..when you first arrived, the 1st thing you did was search out someone that was leaving and buy their fan from them. Sometimes, it took weeks to find one.Mine was ancient, and a death trap with no guard on it at all)

I can't read what the red signs on our control tower said, but a note on the back of the picture says on says "Fresno Calif" 10,837 miles". It was a pretty common thing to see.......anything to keep some sembelence of 'home'

A CH-46 from the squadron right beside our CH-53 squadron. Their call sign was Purple Fox. Good bunch of guys and they did most of the inserts and extractions and they had the primary medivac birds.



We did all 3 sometimes, but most of our work was resupply of ammo, moving 105 and 155mm howitzers and their ammo, as well as anything else heavy that had to be inserted or extracted. We could carry 14,000 lbs externally on sling or 10,000lbs internally. We could 'officially' carry 34 troops, but I've seen lots more than that crowded in.