Thank you. Loved reading every word of it. You did good, Chainmail.
This is a little bit off topic but you should know the answer.
I have an old friend I have known since 1970. He is a nice guy and extremely intelligent but he has told me a story several times since then and I suspect he is embroidering on the truth.
He was in the Navy and said he was at Da Nang around 1968 or so. He has said he underwent so many rocket attacks that he was suffering from shell shock/stress after he got out of the Navy.
Could his story be true?
Very moving recall of your time defending our Way of Life. A suggestion is that you recount in detail all this in writing for benefit of your heirs.
They need to know.
Semper Fi
Thank you for sharing your experience in Vietnam with us. I’ll look for last week’s 1st part.
I was in a ward at Yokosuka for a week in Oct. 1969, the effects of a traffic accident. I remember there were about 40 in the ward, mostly Marines with injuries bad enough to get them out of Nam but not bad enough to send them stateside. The nurses were professional and caring; I don't remember the elevators being small, but I lived in Japan so I was probably used to them.
The hospital has been completely rebuilt since then, and moved away from the hilltop near the main gate; I saw it in 2005, very different. Thank you for bringing back the memory, and telling us yours as well.
I will read every word, and find part 1. Maybe post a link to it on the thread?
Thanks for posting, you have a gift.
Very good and very informative.
Thank you for your service.
What a great read! Thanks for sharing, you write very well.
Great read, thank you
Where is the first part? Can not find it.
Your picture...looked like just a kid. Interesting reading, thanks for sharing.
Where is the first part? Can not find it.
Your picture...looked like just a kid. Interesting reading, thanks for sharing.
I was sitting outside a doctors wooden shack, sick and delirious, waiting to be seen by the Dr. at the army hospital outside Saigon, choppers came in and stretchers going by, men without limbs or otherwise shot up. I’m too emotional to write any more, reading the follow up what I wondered what happened to those men.
A great story.
I understand the nurse saying ‘you’re so tall!’ I lived in an apartment complex where a lot of guys coming back from Iraq were living on military set-aside while being treated at Walter Reed.
One of them was a beautiful young man whom I’d only seen sitting down or in a wheelchair - he had lost a leg. One day months after I’d met him, I was waiting for the elevator and when it opened, this gorgeous blonde vision, well over six feet tall, in a beautiful summer business suit, stepped out. I’d had no idea how tall he was, before I saw him with his prosthesis. He looked like an angel, suddenly standing there in the elevator door; it was kind of surreal.
I was always impressed with the equanimity and good grace that he showed throughout what had been a terrible ordeal.
You’re a very talented writer, and manage a lot of humor in the telling of a difficult experience. I laughed out loud at the vision of ‘ghost ships prowling the sea’ :-)
Thank you for your service.
Thank you for posting. I didn’t see the first part....I’ll look for it. This was much like several chapters in a favorite book.
I hope your years of recovery were successful.
Thanks for writing this. My uncle was injured on Iwo Jima and it gives me a feel for what he went through.
I have some of his stuff including a catalog of wheel chairs he had to pick from, can’t imagine having to do that at his young age. He was in the wheel chair until he died in 1967. Prior to that he was in a gurney and they had to cut his tendons to sit in a wheel chair. He played wheel chair basketball and hunted and fished till the end. He had a gun shop in the basement of his house, big stump for target, but lots of holes in the concrete block behind it. He was an inspiration to all us nephews.
Thanks Chainmail...
YOUR Service and Your story.
I did not catch part one
How about a link or at least
The Title.
Thanks Again.
Confession is good for the soul. I almost decked a few of the objectors while walking through airports in my dress whites. I figured it wasn’t worth it. At my age and disposition now, I am nor sure I would have the same restraint.