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There may be day by day information of threats to our nation and its Structure. The phrase “patriot” is bantered about and often in a damaging gentle. This day by day barrage on the nightly information and cable TV makes me replicate on true patriots that I served with in Vietnam from 10/1967 to 10/1968. It additionally brings to thoughts one very memorable Fourth of July that I spent with a few of these patriots. It was July 4, 1968 in Tam Kỳ, Vietnam.
Fifty-four years in the past, on the age of 21, I discovered myself, a Buck Sgt., E-5, assigned to a 155-millimeter Howitzer Battalion, perched atop a ridge someplace within the foothills west of the Vietnamese city of Tam Kỳ on LZ (Touchdown Zone) O’Conner.
My MOS (army occupational specialty) was artillery surveyor. My job at the moment was to get coordinates and a real line of course, a bearing, established for firing battery earlier than the weapons arrived by way of a flying crane. This was not a simple job: not solely did we’ve got to determine our actual location by way of a “solar shot”, we additionally wanted cooperation from the climate, the items on the LZ and, after all, the Viet Cong, to get the job finished. We obtained the shot finished! We waited for our work to be verified by way of one of many weapons firing primarily based on our knowledge and an aerial observer verifying the air burst precisely the place he wished to see one — on time and heading in the right direction. The spherical registered, we had been free to go.
It’s a humorous factor in regards to the Military, they’d go head over heals to ensure you obtained to the struggle however by no means cared a lot about how you bought again. Being a “Division Artillery Unit”, we had been despatched nearly in every single place they wanted our companies. That day, choppers had been coming and going all break day the LZ so we began to search for a trip again to Chu Lai, our Battalion HQ. This was customary working process — SOP — for us after these surveys. We knew full nicely, after seven months “in nation” that this newly minted LZ was going to get hit round 2 a.m. This was nearly a given with new LZs at the moment within the battle.
We snatched a trip with the mail chopper, a Huey Slick. Virtually instantly, I seen that this chopper was a little bit off. The door gunners regarded a little bit tough — t-shirts, shortened fatigue pants, and even the pilots regarded a little bit free. However in Nam, a trip was a trip.
We climbed aboard — tripods, theodolite, information, satchel, weapons, ammo, and many others.
The chopper took off as regular however not lengthy into the flight the pilot dropped to treetop degree “nap of the earth” I consider they name it. This was not SOP. We at all times flew at 3,200 ft and stayed over the LZ till reaching altitude in an effort to keep away from floor fireplace. However these guys had been doing one thing totally different. About this time, I seen the door gunner closest to me pop a crimson smoke grenade and drop it into the basket apart his M60 — there was no bent hyperlink ammo within the basket — thank God. Then he popped a white smoke grenade, then a blue smoke grenade. The opposite door gunner was doing the identical.
We had been now flying at harmful treetop degree, streaming crimson, white and blue smoke down the fuselage. That’s after I realized they had been celebrating the Fourth of July — in nation — chopper fashion.
I consider these guys each Fourth of July. Absolutely another unit or different choppers noticed us popping out of the foothills streaming crimson, white and blue smoke. They could figured we had been crashing or loopy or each.
I’m 75 and nonetheless alive. The daddy of 5 and the grandfather of six. Like veterans of each battle I’ve reminiscences that solely those that served can share. I achieve this with pleasure in all of our true patriots and particularly that chopper crew from 54 years in the past.
Southampton resident Robert J Moffatt served within the third Battalion, sixteenth Artillery, twenty third Infantry Division of the US Military in Vietnam.
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