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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: unclewest who wrote (248514)	11/14/2007 5:21:32 PM
From: Ruffian	Respond to of 281500

touching............

To: unclewest who wrote (248514)	11/14/2007 8:35:15 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Uncle, no rice paddies for me. It was triple canopy jungle along the Cambodian border North and East of Tay Ninh for about 6 months and then up into the Central Highlands in the Bu Gia Map area in and through the Cambodian border. The Central highlands jungle was spectacular. We auto ambushed a big (BIG) tiger there and I was so meat hungry that I cut a piece off and tried to cook it up and eat it. A lot of chewing left you with a mouth full gristle cause that cat was all muscle. I hated to see that cat dead but it had been making a living off what that war left and it was too close to the action. 7 days in King's cross seeing round eyes wasn't enough. I met a real American couple there. A businessman and his wife in their 30s. Later in the evening at a little place with lots of dancing and music and drinks he tried to press a roll of bills into my pocket. I told him thanks but just seeing him and his wife and getting a taste of the "world" was more than I ever could have asked for. I body surfed Cam Ranh Bay when I was recovering from malaria. I caught the bug even though I took all the pills and when I got there they asked me my rank and I decided to be a sergeant. They put me in charge of a few details and advanced me a couple of weeks sergeant's pay. I got in a two-day poker game and won all the money in the game as well as a couple of radios and a camera. We didn't have any place to spend it anyway. I never got north and I never went south except for Cam Ranh Bay. The jungle I worked beyond the Black Virgin Mountain is now, I believe from Google Earth, under water. Good. That bloody, leach infested, bug ridden jungle should have been drowned. We got into a swamp one time and spent the day from knee to chest deep in water with bugs so thick that you couldn't breath without breathing them in and out. The swarms were so heavy that you couldn't see through them and they flowed back and forth like flocks of birds. There weren't any NVA in there either. g. When I flew out of Ton Son Nut on the way to Sidney, I stopped in an NCO club and had a few drinks with the Air Force guys. One of them told me how the guys in the jungle "draftees" would be up the creek if not for the career guys out there with them. I told him there were NO career guys out there in the jungle where I was and there weren't. That was 69-70 and the regular army guys had figured out that it wasn't a good place to be. With the exception of one em and a couple of officers we were all two year guys. We did have an E-9 Sergeant Major who was the Battalion Sergeant Major and who actually came out sometimes. He was a straight shooter and he felt like he ought to be out there with the men. He got zipped and that was a damn shame. In spite of what some people are saying today about yesterday's draftee army, however, we were very, very good. I think that was a war made for the American psych. The qualities of independent thinking and individual reactions were critical in that place where so many battles were simply close-in shootouts. Lots of memories kicking around today. You take care of yourself Uncle. I'm circled up with no one to bother me but you're still playing in the street. I'm glad you made it home. Ed