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 First set is The end result of a 120 MM mortar attack at Dong Tam.


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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