Continuing….
Some of my compatriots…
Lt. Burl (?) Weller as he is departing for home. Good guy
Tom decided to get a sun tan and we decorated him up…some party the night before. He & I became bridge partners, me teaching him to play. The nightly stakes were “who bought the beer”. After we hit our stride, we never lost…ever. The last night we played, just before I left to go home, we were plastered and way behind. I put him into a “minor slam” without looking at my cards and he won. He turned around and, again without looking at his cards, put me into a “grand slam”. I won the hand and we won that last game. He lived in Detroit as I recall…great buddy.
As a reward for my Soldier of the Month award, I was given a 3-day pass to visit a buddy (Ronnie Henderson) that I went to Finance School with who was in Qui Nyon. It was also an in-country R&R site as it was on the coast…
At the beach…
Ronnie Henderson & I
The local scene…
In December I went with the newly arrived Major E. J. Nugent on an inspection trip to the petroleum depot at Tay Ninh which is just a spitting distance from the Cambodian border. It proved to be one of the more memorable trips we made together. Got to know and respect him well. His complaint about me was that I could not drive as I had never learned…which was true. So he had to drive and I rode shotgun, which I liked a lot as I got to see a lot more and took a bunch more pictures as a result.
Leaving and getting there…along with evidence that our Air Force and their B-52’s had been on the scene.
Cobra Gunship
Local scenery…the first time that artillery fired I nearly jumped out of my skin. It was a regular drumbeat of firing that one gets used to after some time.
The trip back was exceptional. We left Tay Nanh and after a short ride at high altitude, the pilot asked if we would like a “low altitude” trip. We agreed immediately. That meant that he dropped the chopper down to some 20-30 yards above ground level and he “contour flew” for miles. We would come over a rise and animals and locals would scatter. I was sitting in the right door behind the pilot, strapped in with my feet dangling out. He flew at over 120 knots.
Finally we were over Saigon and back to Earth…
Christmas brought the Bob Hope show and a seat in the far back…not just the far back – the exact last row of seats. We did not know about the show until about 10:00 AM and it started at noon.
Guard duty was still a recurring good time…Crawford & I making like we were real cool troops…
An Awards ceremony…forgot the occasion, I think it was a change in command. Most likely just a reason to get away from the office boredom.
Some of the local “birds” we saw routinely…
Here I am burning classified documents…
More trips into Saigon on an inspection: