Duty,
Honor,
Country
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Active Duty Information & Assistance Other Good Sites: |
For well over 200 years men and women have put down the tools of
peace and prosperity and have taken up arms in defense of this great country.
We honor and say a prayer for the souls of those men and women, who made the
supreme sacrifice, while remembering all those still serving, disabled and
retired. The purpose here is to pay tribute to our buddies, who never made
it home, and to provide a single source of inspiration and assistance to all. Especially note worthy are the Government Links: |
Some
Gave All POW/MIA Gallery
Paying Tribute
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Military
History
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Memorial
Sites
Allied Memorials |
One Soldier's VN Essay
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The first thing that hit me, as I stepped off the plane I had
been on for almost 24 hours, was the heat. I had not taken more than a few
steps, when the next shock hit me, it was the stench
of what I came to know as death. I wasn't sure at first, if the stench came
from the city around the air base, or if it came from the military morgue,
which was just off the runway, not far from where the plane had parked. But,
it was only a few days before I discovered it was both. As I stood taking in
the sights, sounds and odors around me, I couldn't help but wonder how many
of the young men on that plane would go home through that dreadful looking
tin building. The one thing I knew for sure was it would be too damn many. We were all taken to a tent city that was about 100 yards
away or so, where we spent the night, before "in processing" the
next morning. No one slept much that first night. It was god-awful hot
and sweaty, and the mosquitoes were almost as big as small birds. Once in a
while we could hear small arms fire and motors in the far distance. I spent a
couple of hours talking to a young Sergeant, who was convinced he would not
make it out alive. Several months later I learned
that he had indeed been right. But, his was only one fear among millions,
perhaps billions. Finally morning came and it got hotter. During "in processing" we all discovered that the
assignments we had were void. We were all re-assigned where there were
shortages and that was all the advisory slots and combat arms units. We were
all headed for the 1965 VC Bush. Soon after I finished my box of "C" rations for
lunch my name was called, and I grabbed my duffel bag and walked out of the
tent to find an unshaven Buck Sergeant waiting beside a mud, caked jeep. He
told me that we'd be at base camp before we knew it and that began the ride
of my life. There were bicycles, what the Buck Sergeant called "cycleos" and little people everywhere. When we finally got to the base camp there was turmoil
galore. The night before a couple of "night-crawlers" had gotten in
under the wire and set off a satchel charge and some grenades. This was my
introduction to the kind of destruction two of these little people could
cause, before they were stopped. It turned out that one of them was the son
of a near by village Chief. Little did I know that my next 12 months, for the most
part, were to be filled with unbelievable heat and humidity, uncontrolled
sweating and something we called "jungle rot" that infected the
most tinder areas of the human body. But, the days patrolling waterways of
South Vietnam were mostly peaceful, with the most beautiful sunsets on the
planet, punctuated only by moments deafening noise, indescribable chaos and
absolute terror that seemed to last an eternity. That was over 35 years ago and what remains, most vivid in
my mind, are the faces of all the young men, who will remain forever young in
the memories of all those, who knew them. "
It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of
the press.
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And, that’s all I have
to say about that!
Jane Fonda
providing aid and comfort to the enemy North Vietnamese.
Raymond
(Ray) L. Sanders, SFC
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