WELCOME TO MY VIETNAM CONNECTIONS PAGE
The photo above is on a run south above highway 15.
If you ever wonder what it sounded like in Vietnam then here is two
sound files. They are both from an October 1967 Mortar attack on the 155th
Assault Helicopter company stationed at Ban Me Thout. The first is the
Mortar attack with the 82 MM rounds landing within
20 feet of the talking men. They are fireing the M-60 machine gun. The second
is the Charlie Model Gunship response with them
fireing rockets and the mini-guns. The helicopters carry two mini-guns , each
capable of fireing 6,000 rounds a minute. They were geared down to 3,200 rounds
a minute. They are both .wav files and on a 56 K modem the first will take
about 2 minutes and the second about 5 minutes to download. I figure if you
don't want to hear them then you can just keep reading
The links below will take you in several directions.
I started out as a helecopter engine mechanic assigned to the 604th
Trans , a direct support unit, in Pleiku. However I spent the majority of my
time there , because odd as it may appear they already had to many engine
mechanics in the unit, as a door gunner flying with the other units of the 52nd
Combat Aviation Battalion that operated from Camp Holloway. I was with them
from early April of 68 to the end of June 68. The majority of my tour in
Vietnam was with Delta Troop 3/5 Cav from July of 68 through a tour extension
to the end of May 69. The 3/5 Cav was an Armoured Cav regiment which meant we
had 3 companies of tanks and APCs and D troop was the flying eyes of the
regiment. Most true Air Cav units of the Vietnam era were setup in the reverse
because they had 3 companies of Air assets and only one of Armour. By the time
I got to Delta Troop the rest of the 3/5 Cav had been moved north to the DMZ.
It was supposed to be temporary move but ended up being permanent. Delta troop
stayed in the lower III Corp and all of IV corp area. Here is the
lineage and award history of the 3/5 Cav regiment.
Here is an article from the 9th Division
magazine called the Octofoil about Delta Troop. It is slow loading up but
an interesting read. It is a picture at 70 DPI of the pages but they do load up
slowly. They messed up a paragraph in the section about the Dough Boys.
This link will take you to photos that were taken by me while I was in
Vietnam. They cover both the Central Highlands and my move down into the Mekong
Delta. Be advised that there are 21 photos so it will take awhile to load them
up.
If you have a PC that has a low resolution or want to just see the
thumbnail photo's it will load faster and you can
click on the image to get the larger version.
If you have a fast modem and a high resolution PC then click on
full size photo's.
I have since added in more
photo pages but I have not done the photos in a small format so these pages may
take awhile to load but they are worthwhile.
The next set is a view of the main bases I was
on. These include Pleiku , Camp Holloway , Bearcat , Camp Martin Cox , Long
Than North , Dong Tam.
The next set is some of the different
views of both Chinooks , Cobra gunships , Slicks , Smoke ships ,and mortar
attack damage.
The next set was taken on Memorial Day
2001 at the Vietnam memorial.
Here is art done by the Combat Artists of
the 25th Infantry Division. Much of this work was done during the first "legal"
Cambodian invasion.
This link will take you to a statistics page
which has a report done by the Department of Defense. It shows what the true
numbers and proportions were , of those that went to Vietnam. It also has jumps
to several other locations that are of a statistical and historical nature. The
page also has several stories that are inter-woven into the fabric of the
Vietnam war
On Memorial Day May 2000 I was standing near the Vietnam Memorial
talking with several other Vietnam Veterans. Many of us tend to get cynical
about the perceived attitude towards Vietnam Veterans. Well this day I was
pleasantly surprised when several school age Children came up to us to thank us
for being Vietnam Veterans. They gave us a card and a letter as a thanks. The letter and card are on this page.
This link will take you to my Vietnam related
links on the World Wide Web.
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