![]() |
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
Quote:
|
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
Quote:
Are folks watching Ken Burns' Vietnam? He's been obsessed with this the last five years. Totally obsessed. |
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
Burns is extraordinary. Last night was hard for me. Although I didn't get to Vietnam until 1970, I served in the First Cavalry, indeed in the1/7 Cavalry that was depicted last night. The Colonels I served under, Tony Labrozzi and Earl Spry, held the same position as Hal Moore, who was made famous by Joey Galloway in We Were Soldiers Once, and Young.
Labrozzi was a "true believer." He lived to kill Communists. He was a "mustang"...an enlisted man, made sergeant, and then got a field commission in Korea. He carried an open bolt Grease Gun, and got right in the thick of things when he could. My platoon, a Recon unit, reported directly to him, and I got to know him well. His successor, Spry, was very different. A student of war, who studied the Vietnamese tactics. My platoon has periodic reunions. I have virtually nothing in common with most of them, but I am closer to those men than family. The majority of them are flyover country Trump supporters. I'm also in the local First Cav alumni association, people who were mostly officers. (I was a "shake and bake" instant sergeant, given three stripes at NCO school at Fort Benning as a consolation prize for being able to read.) I have less in common with them; most were careerists. I am depicted in a recently self-published book, available occasionally on Amazon, War Stories, by Conrad Leighton, a First Cav draftee journalist, who often traveled with our platoon. Along the way, I spent some time in Bien Hoa in the rear area, where I picked up a unique military occupational specialty. Go here: http://www.vintagezodiacs.com/watchstories.php The first picture, at the First Cavalry Sniper School, is a shot of my wrist watch on the wrist of the left handed sniper in training, Ferrets. (Because of the mounting, I had to learn to shoot a Starlight Scope right handed for night work.) The spotter behind me is Bill Bearden, deceased, one of the President's Hundred, a combat sniper on a par with anyone who ever picked up a rifle in anger. Hell of a way to spend ten months. But when I landed back in law school, I met a classmate in my new second year class. We're still married. |
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
Quote:
My brother-in-law, who is a college classmate of Ken's, is currently in Vietnam, north of Nha Trang, where his business has a subsidiary, and will be there for the next year; my sister is about to join him and we're debating spending Christmas there with the family this year. It would be fascinating to get the take on it from people there. He's brought a copy with him. |
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
Quote:
ETA: Because I realized it's ambiguous, that was said in awe and wonderment, not any sort of judgment. |
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
My father was in medical school, and signed up to go to rural India with the Peace Corps, which would get him a deferment to avoid military service. My mother was going to go with, and was pregnant with me. Shortly before he graduated, they changed the rules and his Peace Corps assignment no longer got him the deferment. So he was out of school, with no job and a pregnant wife, and no one would hire him because he was going to be called up. He got in touch with his Congressman's office, and found a way to be called up immediately and stationed near family, stateside. I was born there, several weeks premature, in a military hospital which gave me much better care than I would have gotten in rural India. And my father spent the whole war in the US -- he never did his nine months in Vietnam, because the unusual way in which he had been called up led to some mishandling of his records which wasn't picked up until it was too late to send him.
|
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
Quote:
His best friend was killed there. |
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
Quote:
Those were tough years in so many ways. But the timing was such, with my father too early and me too late, and women not being drafted, that we missed the worst of it. |
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
If the Republicans are going to do this, I look forward to (among other things) a Democratic Congress that stops funding for roads in Republican congressional districts.
|
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
Quote:
|
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
Quote:
TM |
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
Quote:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/...or_uid=5039459 He met my mom while he was in the Army. She was a biochemist at NIH (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/...or_uid=4913918 his list is longer, but her's has a Nature citation). He served on the Medical Committee for Human Rights. He manned the first aid station in the Mall at the protests immediately following the Kent State Massacre, and they both protested the war throughout. I'm really curious what his FBI file looks like. |
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
Quote:
|
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
Quote:
|
Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
Quote:
|
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 07:55 PM. |
Powered by: vBulletin, Copyright ©2000 - 2008, Jelsoft Enterprises Limited.
Hosted By: URLJet.com