Those Twilight Zone moments

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Those Twilight Zone moments

Post by Niner » Wed Dec 07, 2011 11:28 am

Got this email related to my other site. One guy I know is serious about getting reunions going for guys who served with the 6/31st Infantry in Vietman. It's the same outfit I and Vern served in for a while. I'll leave out or change complete names and emails to protect privacy.
Rick...I will pass this to Niner Alpha and see if he can post it on his site. With Mary D ill, Robert's site is the only one of the three 31st related sites still active and being updated. Not sure if you have visited his site...but...if you have not....below is the link. It's a great site.....6/31st Wall, active message board...skype session every thursday........and super picture albums. I returned to Viet Nam last year and spent 2 weeks visiting our old haunts...lots of pictures, and Robert has even set up an album which contains all of these pictures.

http://6thofthe31st.com

Take Care
Jerry


On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 11:44 PM, Rick wrote:

Rcvd the Email, thank you. My info from a couple years ago is still current. (Rick) - B Co. 3d Plt "69
PS: I would like to share a story from this past summer, but didn't know how to post it.

In Sept. this year, I went to Bonneville (Utah) Speed Week with a couple friends from town in SW Utah. My first trip there. On the 1st day we set up a pop-up awning along the spectator line of the longest speed course. Thousands of people line the course with RVs, pick-ups, & pop-up awnings stretching @ 4 miles. My buddies took off on their pit bikes & I stayed under the shade to film the cars speeding by. Half a dozen guys were under the awning next to mine, drinking beer, and swapping VN war stories. One guy was particularly vocal & was taking some grief from his buddies. He mentioned the mud a couple times & some of the other things he said struck a chord. I finally shouted over to him, "You don't know nothin' about MUD!" He kept on with his story-telling until I shouted, "Hey, who were you with?" He replies, "9th Division." I ask, "What battalion?" He says, "6th Bn 31st Infantry". "Yeah?.... What Company?" He says, "Bravo Company." Astounded, I ask, "What PLATOON???" "2nd Platoon." I go, "I was 3d Platoon !" We gape at each other until I shout, "Sick of the Dirty Worst !" and we jump up & throw our arms around each other. His name is D..... C..... and we find out we were there at the same time. Though we didn't know each other, we remembered some of the same incidents, & hated the same Captain. We would have been in the same barracks when both platoons were in Dong Tam. We spent that day & the next reminiscing. So what are the chances 2 guys, from a group of about 130 out of 550,000 other guys, sit down 10' away from each other in a line of people 4 miles long - 42 years later?
Rick, RTO, 3d Plt B Co '69
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Re: Those Twilight Zone moments

Post by Niner Delta » Wed Dec 07, 2011 9:25 pm

My guess is the chances of that happening are between slim and none. (and Slim went home)
That's always amazing when things like that happen, I have run into guys that were in Dong Tam, but none from the 6/31st.

Closest thing to that was............ I was in Dong Tam 3 years after high school graduation, and ran into 2 guys that I graduated with, didn't even know either one was in Army.
I was really surprised, considering there was only 34 guys in my high school class.

Vern.
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Peace is that brief, quiet moment in history.......... when everybody stands around reloading.
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Re: Those Twilight Zone moments

Post by Niner » Wed Dec 07, 2011 9:36 pm

Vern, the nearest I ever came to meeting somebody from home turf while in the Army was when I was home from Nam and at Ft. Sill. I was in the same battalion you were in and we were doing OCS student support. One day we were doing some range thing and a regular cadre Lieutenant was checking some gun settings and somebody told him we were from the same town. Turned out we both went to the same high school . He was in my middle brothers class. But.....he was just another guy to me. Not like it was old home week.


The only guy in Nam I met from my part of the country was from a rural area just down the road from where my wife lived before we were married. He was in the same company I was attached to. He was a big black guy that humped the 60. Have no idea what happened to him after Vietnam.
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Re: Those Twilight Zone moments

Post by BobB1 » Thu Dec 08, 2011 10:23 pm

When we were working in III Corp, they would bring us out of the field once every three or four weeks for a few days of R&R pulling security for a forward artillery base. The field for them, R&R for us. I ran into guy with the arty battery that I know from school. He had been a year behind me in school and we had double dated when he took my sister to their junior prom. I had a driver's license that was good at night. Anyway, we ran into each other there. I have tried to find him a couple of times since, but no luck. I was wounded in a mortar attack there, and I remember one of the guys in his battery took a picture of me. Morbid curiosity, I guess, but I always wanted to see what I looked like, all bloody.
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Re: Those Twilight Zone moments

Post by Niner » Thu Dec 08, 2011 10:42 pm

He took a picture of you? I'd imagine if you could have gotten up you would have broken his camera into a thousand pieces and took a swing at him too.
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Re: Those Twilight Zone moments

Post by BobB1 » Fri Dec 09, 2011 8:51 am

No, it didn't bother me . By the time he took the picture, I knew I was ok, just some shrapnel in my head. They were walking me to a mule to take me to the Special Forces/CIDG camp across the little stream from us. I thought I would at least get to catch a movie and cold soda back at base camp, but the SF medic dug out the biggest piece (a couple of pencil lead size pieces festered out over the next couple of years) gave me a massive dose of penicillin, and we moved back out to the 'boonies' the next day.
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Re: Those Twilight Zone moments

Post by Niner » Fri Dec 09, 2011 9:21 am

Did they put you in for a Purple Heart?

There was an incident I remember from my short time with the 101st. We were on the top of some hill at one of the firebases...Brick, Bastogne, Birmingham...one of them. A Chinook came in with a load of arty ammo in a sling under it. It must have been a heavy load and the bird was having some difficulty setting it down where it was being directed when, all of a sudden, the prop wash got this shitter rocking back and forth. Then, in a blink of an eye the outhouse was blown over the side of the hill. Seems there was a guy inside at the time that got knocked around enough to need some medical attention after he was extracted from the rubble. Now.......I wonder if they gave him a purple heart for that injury? And if they did, I wonder what he really told his family when he got home about how he earned it.
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Re: Those Twilight Zone moments

Post by BobB1 » Fri Dec 09, 2011 8:12 pm

I got a purple heart for that one. I turned one down earlier in the A Shau Valley, though. I got a cut from a machete during a rocket attack. They offered me one, but I turned it down. I was still mad because two days earlier I got shot by one of our own helicopters. They said no purple heart because it was "friendly" fire. I told them it didn't seem very friendly to me!
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Re: Those Twilight Zone moments

Post by Niner » Fri Dec 09, 2011 10:12 pm

I knew a guy who got out of going into Cambodia during Nixon's incursion. The day before we choppered into Cambodia , we were on the Cambodian border coming out of the Plain De Jars at the Eagles Beak and we found some bunkers. A guy yelled "fire in the hole" and tossed in a frag. Another guy....instead of getting the hell out of the way, just turned his back and bent over. He got a small sliver of metal in his butt from the explosion. The CO decided to dust him off so it wouldn't get infected. Now that was "friendly fire". Doubt if he got a purple heart...but it sure gave him a chance to skip out on some excitement he probably was glad to have missed.
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Re: Those Twilight Zone moments

Post by Niner Delta » Sat Dec 10, 2011 12:00 am

Guess that would give "fire in the hole" a new meaning. :loco: :loco:
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