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Writings / Stories From Members
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Military Reunions
Unknown
Author |
LEGENDARY LODI JONES #1
Jim Campbell |
LZ Kent Island
by Chuck Hawkins |
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ELECTRIC CRAPPER
REVISITED
By Craig
Van Hout |
THE TROUBLING LIE THAT WON’T GO AWAY
by Chuck Hawkins |
THE MAN WHO DIED FOR AMERICANS AND HIS COUNTRY
Memorial Day, 2004
by Chuck Hawkins |
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Baseball and The Vietnam War
Major Mark (Zippo) Smith |
Viet Nam—Going Back Forty
Years Later
Bob Worrall |
VFW Magazine
Article
by Chuck Hawkins
Rendezvous at
Ripcord
.pdf
document
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A Hill to Remember
Erick W. Miller |
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Military Reunions
The enclosed article sounds very much like our reunions.
This
article was sent to me by one of our members but we do not know
the author.
Being a Combat Photographer meant I traveled around the war,
working with different units at different times. Some of
the men still remember me, the crazy guy with cameras crawling
around during a hot firefight. So over the years, I
have been invited to attend several veterans' reunions. Since I
hold the grunts, those dirty, tired, war-weary young men of so
long ago, in highest esteem, I am deeply honored to be accepted
as a guest among them.
You might wonder who comes to these affairs, what they do, what
they talk about. You see stockbrokers, company presidents,
former police chiefs, restaurant owners, teachers, and others
who used their GI Bill benefits to continue their educations.
You see factory workers, carpenters, farmers, mechanics, etc,
who didn't continue in school but were labor's backbone, men
with wives of 35 years, men on their third divorce, men in good
health, men crippled by age and the lasting effects of major
wounds. But each carries some level of mental/emotional baggage.
Some have high VA disability ratings, others won't go to the VA
at all.
When they get together the atmosphere of comradeship rolls in
like a warm mist. They smile, shake hands firmly and long, slap
backs hard, often embrace. They sit and talk about kids,
grandkids, retirement, ailments, vacations. And
about who has passed on since last time, and who couldn't make
it this year. Eventually they talk about the young
Vietnamese girl who warned them of the ambush waiting for them,
or the time a different ambush took out their best friend, or
when the big helicopter's rotor blast knocked over the nearby
outhouse and they barely escaped the cloud of unimaginable filth
that it blew over the area. Sometimes talk will turn
to those they remember the clearest, and miss the most, followed
by a little silence. But there is also happy reminiscing
of the joys of canned peaches over C-ration pound cake, of
showers and clean socks after weeks in the field, of the R&R
tour they took.
Sometimes politics will come up. They are mostly
conservative, and very disappointed and upset that what they see
as the lessons of Viet Nam were not learned by our elected
leaders, who have led us into another terribly messy conflict in
Iraq. They all agree that those fighting today
deserve the best equipment, the best leadership, and not to be
hampered by the incredible burden of political considerations
that restrict so much of their actions and put their every
decision under microscopes far from the awful reality of war.
They have little good to say about the media, either from their
own war or the war today. A few say we should get out and
let things go to hell, most think it has to be fought to a
victory or their grandchildren will be fighting jihadists
decades from now.
One young woman told me that she loved to come to reunions,
because it was the only time she ever saw her father so much at
ease, the only time most of the lines on his face would
disappear as he laughed and smiled with his friends.
I explained that for most combat veterans, they are never really
the same again. There is a major part of their lives they cannot
really express or share properly, even with their families.
There is a loneliness in their lives they can only escape when
they are with others who share their war experience.
That is the one time they can really relax, fearing no judgment,
no misunderstanding from others, and feeling the comfort of
being among brothers. That's why some come thousands of
miles to be there, why those of lesser wealth will still save up
all year for the trip, and all consider it time and money very
well spent.
There are always some ceremonies, pledging allegiance to the
flag, singing songs such as National Anthem or the Marine Hymn.
Old spines stand straight, old voices may be hoarse and off-key,
but they are not faint. They know the price of service to their
nation, they remember the sacrifices of their absent friends,
and they experience liberty in a way most people cannot. I
wish more of us could feel those feelings, and have the clarity
of understanding of what we have and what it cost.
Memorial Day would mean so much more if everyone could
understand what lives in the hearts of our combat veterans.
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TRAVELS
WITH
THE LEGENDARY LODI JONES AND
HIS MOST
UNFORGETTABLE CHARACTERS # 1
By Jim Campbell
A couple of months ago my dear friend Frankie Marshall asked me if I
would from time to time write a column for the Ripcord Report. Many
years ago when just a young undergraduate student at LSU I had
considered a journalism career, but as most of you remember back in the
mid-sixties, the country was involved in the space race with the
Russians so I was forced to put my journalism career on hold as I chose
for the betterment of mankind to enter the special honors program in
nuclear physics and quantitative mathematics being offered at LSU to
gifted students. Frankie=s
request has once again generated my interest in journalism, and besides
that, one does not reject the request of a great man. It is my intention
with this column to on occasion follow the advice given me by that true
patriot and well known muckraker Bill Williams whose motto is
I
Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story.@
I am
quite sure that there are those who will not find my ramblings to be
particularly memorable or worthwhile. Perhaps some will find them to be
offensive. I am a man who has received a whole lot of criticism in his
life from others, all of which criticism has been appropriately noted
and then ignored. Therefore, if you are unhappy with my ramblings in
this column, please forward your objections on to the editor and he can
replace me with someone more talented and less offensive, and I will go
gently into the night, comfortable in the knowledge that my career as a
journalist would have failed.
When I was about 12 years of age, an old wise man once advised me while
sitting on the front porch of his house in rural East Texas that if you
choose a lifetime of drinking whiskey you are likely to make a fool out
of yourself on a regular basis and the best thing you can do when
drinking heavily is to operate under an alias. It was advice that I
chose to follow knowing that the consumption of whiskey and other
spirits was a vice that would follow me the rest of my life. Over the
years I operated under several aliases, one of which was the name
ALodi
Jones@.
This was an alias given to me by friends during my single years after
Vietnam while running women in Texas dance halls. After several years of
covering a lot of wood in Texas dance halls with a multitude of female
companions, the alias changed to
AThe
Legendary Lodi Jones@.
Although I later married a wonderful woman who took my boots, cowboy
hat, and spurs from me and made me settle down to a lackluster life with
no time for visits to Texas dance halls, on those rare occasions when I
consume a little too much alcohol, or on those frequent occasions when I
am hanging out with
Aknown
fools@,
I always go back to operating under the alias
AThe
Legendary Lodi Jones@.
Since this column will probably appear foolish at times, I have chosen
to adopt as my pen name my old alias
AThe
Legendary Lodi Jones@,
as my reputation under this alias could not be more besmirched than it
already has been.
The
Legendary Lodi has traveled all over the globe during his life and has
been blessed with meeting many unforgettable characters. One need only
travel about 90 miles east from Shreveport to Northeast Louisiana and
you will find one of the most rural areas in the country that is
inhabited by true country folk. This is a part of the world where a
woman is measured by her love of God and family and her ability to fry
chicken and make biscuits from scratch, and a man is measured by his
integrity and truthfulness, his love of God and family, and by his
hunting dogs. If you travel through this land of milk and honey and stop
to ask anyone
AWhose
the best man in these parts?@,
you will universally receive one answer. That answer will inevitably be
the name of one of my most unforgettable characters, Layne Hammons.
Now most of you know Layne from attending Ripcord reunions. He is the
man who will invariably have a Camel cigarette in one hand and a Miller
Lite in the other. Those of us in Charlie Company know Layne as the iron
man who humped an M-60 machine gun in Sgt. Moyer=s
squad in the second platoon.
Stories about Layne are legendary and I feel obliged to recall a few.
Layne is a man of few words, but when he speaks his words are profound
and filled with great wisdom. A two pack a day Camel man since he was 12
years old, Layne is best remembered for his sage like advice on health
care given late one evening a couple of years ago around the fire at
deer camp when he stated
AL.
T., it=s
the filters that are killing everybody.@
A couple of years ago Layne, myself, and three other Ripcord veterans
were sitting around my back yard doing the best we could to take out a
100 lbs of hot crayfish and see how much beer we could consume with
them. After about 6 or 7 hours of eating and drinking, things began to
get a little
Amuddled@
for the group and one of the guys says to the rest of the group
AWhat
did y=all
do your last night in the States before leaving for Vietnam?@
The bullshit began as we heard about how Ralph Motta had gotten drunk
and partied all night with several women and how Chuck Shannon sadly was
forced to end a long time relationship with a male friend. Then it came
time for Layne to answer the question. He calmly took a pull on his
Camel and says
AIt
was getting close to dark and I told Daddy that I wanted to hear the
dogs howl one more time. Right at dark we turned the beagles out and it
wasn=t
long before they jumped a deer and the chase was on with the dogs
howling. We chased them all night. It was music to my ears.@
Chuck Shannon then asked Layne
AWhat
did your wife think about you running all over the woods your last night
before leaving?@
Layne responded
AI
don=t
know, I didn=t
see her til I come in to leave the next morning as it took all night to
catch the dogs.@
A little later in the evening after more crayfish and beer were consumed
things became even more
Amuddled@
and the talk turned to women. Someone foolishly asked the group
AWhat
did y=all
do on your honeymoon night? I am not at liberty to divulge the responses
of the rest of the group, but when it came time for Layne to answer he
says ASandra
and I got married in the early evening and after all the hoopla was over
at the church, we went home, changed clothes, and went up the road about
3 miles to Lake D=Arbonne
to run trot lines all night. We caught a mess of white perch and catfish
and cooked um up for breakfast.@
My friends this is true greatness in a man.
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LZ Kent Island
by Chuck Hawkins On April 10, 1970, FSB Ripcord was finally
seized by ground assault by Charlie Company (2/506). Those first few
days were not easy ones. —Chuck Hawkins
Dirt, dust, windswept mountain top.
Hueys come and go. Chinooks drop heavy loads of ammo, wire, blivets of
water, fuel oil for the generators.
We labor under the sun, and wind, stringing barbed wire and concertina,
and digging holes in the ground. Holes for our protection.
Something nags at us. Something inhuman floats above our labors and tugs
at our souls. This is not a normal place to be.
Denny Heinz digs, and digs, lifting dirt from a place he will call home
for the time we are here. Shovel full after shovel full.
He does not know, cannot know that where he digs has been dug before.
Metal strikes metal, but he feels it not, and he lifts another shovel
full of earth.
The grenade explodes.
Lifted to face level, it blasts Denny Heinz with the force of demons.
How could he know it had been there since the last occupants buried it?
Doc Shepherd is there immediately, so is Foret, the sergeant, I am close
behind. Heinz is shattered, dying.
Gasping, doc gives CPR. A medevac is called … anxious moments. The
clatter of rotors slaps the air. Heinz will be saved.
I remember this as clearly as if it were
yesterday. The medevac hovered over out position; we loaded Heinz on the
chopper, fixed to a stretcher. The transfer from one medic to another
took place. The medevac huey lifted off, and Doc began to cry, "Give him
CPR, give him breath!" But it didn't happen. The chopper medic was too
new, a cherry, and was shocked by the sight of his first casualty.
Doc was inconsolable, and for good reason. In a
few minutes we knew. Heinz had died in route to the aid station in the
rear.
There's a Wall now, in D.C. A place we go to remember heroes like Denny,
a place we go to remember all those who died, serving their country in a
dirty little war.
The Wall, too, is not a normal place to be. But it is there … for our
protection.
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ELECTRIC CRAPPER
REVISITED
By Craig
Van Hout
Many of you may have heard Phil Tolson, B 2/506, tell the story of the
electric crapper at past reunions. I witnessed to the first
execution of that diabolical device and would like to pass on my version
of the escapade.
We were on Firebase Rakkasan and, obviously, Tolson had too much time on
his hands. There was a crapper approximately 100 feet from our
position. For some reason Phil took a special interest in the
crapper. Granted, it was of far better design than the crappers we
had on Ripcord. The crappers on Ripcord were your basic box with a
hole cut out on top so you could leave your deposit in a 50 gallon drum
that had been cut in half. You would just sit on top and go about
your business and the whole world could check your progress if they
wished. There was an opening in the back of the crapper so the
drum could be extracted whenever necessary so the deposits could be
burned. Now this crapper on Rakkasan was a deluxe model compared
to those on Ripcord. This one had walls on three sides and even
had a roof to keep the sun or rain off your head while conducting your
transaction. It was situated so while seated you had a lovely
panoramic view of the mountains. I always wondered about that.
The crapper was constructed so nobody on the firebase could see if
anybody was using the facility but an NVA sniper had a clear shot at you
while you were exposed and in a vulnerable situation. I figured it
was probably designed by an officer who was probably a graduate of an
ROTC program at a state supported institution of higher learning.
Bravo Company was pulling perimeter guard duty on Rakkasan at the time,
probably in the September/October 1970 timeframe. The company had
already been deployed to Rakkasan when I arrived at the firebase.
I was assigned to a position that included Tolson and 2 others guys, who
I can’t remember. The perimeter positions on Rakkasan were really
quite nice in comparison to the other firebases I had visited, Ripcord
and O’Reilly. The sleeping positions were prefabricated units made
from railroad ties. Rakkasan was designed to be a permanent
firebase, so the Army went the extra mile to go first class with the
accommodations. Now, the same cannot be said for the enlisted
man’s VIP quarters that you slept in if you were passing through.
I had the opportunity to stay in the VIP quarters one evening on another
visit to Rakkasan. Basically, the enlisted men’s VIP quarters
consisted of two of those steel culverts placed end to end that you had
to weasel your way into and out of. Sort of like sleeping in the
tube of an MRI machine. I always wondered what mental midget came
up with that design. Again, I figured it had to be some officer
who was the graduate of an ROTC program at some state supported
institution of higher learning. There were three or four of these
contraptions available for us low ranking enlisted men to occupy.
And they were strategically placed under the barrels of the 8 inch
artillery pieces that were on Rakkasan. Again, a true genius had
to put them there. If you have never heard an 8 inch artillery
piece fire, imagine a case of dynamite exploding in your living room.
That’s about the equivalent of the noise level of an 8 incher. To
make your stay a memorable one, some Second Lieutenant, probably a magna
cum laude graduate of an ROTC program at a state supported institution
of higher learning, would decide to fire off a half dozen rounds from
the eight incher at 0300 hours. The first blast from the 8 incher
would get you airborne, until you smacked up against the steel culvert
and headed back down to the dirt. Each blast from the 8 incher
would provide enough momentum for you to bounce back and forth between
the steel canopy and the ground six times. Multiply that by a fire
mission of 5 or 6 rounds. I felt like a clapper in a cheap bell by
the time the ordeal was over. Then later on in the morning some
NCO would think you were a smart ass because every answer to his
question was “Huh?”.
But I digress, back to the electric crapper. As I said earlier, by
the time I had reported to Rakkasan, Tolson had taken a real liking to
that crapper. I don’t know what his affinity to the crapper was
but he was like a proud papa when it came to the use of that crapper.
He established himself as the keeper of the crapper. It was his
self appointed duty to insure that nobody but the Bravo Company grunts
were grunting in the crapper. Sort of like the restricted
membership in a Credit Union. And if somebody other than grunts
utilized the crapper Tolson would confront the offender and threaten
them with bodily harm if they ever used the crapper again. That
alone was humorous because back then Tolson was about as big as a
noodle. The violators usually came from the artillery battery
above us. One repeat offender was an NCO, probably an E6 or E7,
who was a cook for the artillery battery.
Finally,
Tolson had enough. His devious and perverted mind went to work and
he came up with a solution. A little electric shock treatment to
the offender would do the trick. There was a toilet seat that was
nailed to the top of the crapper. (I told you this was a first
class facility.) Tolson took the wire from the field phone in our
position and wrapped one wire around each nail. He meticulously
covered the wire with dirt as it led back to our hole. The wait
began. Finally, the first offender arrived on the scene. It
was the cook! The cook was an older, career Army man. He was
a tad overweight. You could tell he was prepared for an extended
stay at the crapper, he had a copy of Stars & Stripes with him.
The cook dropped his trousers and backed into the crapper to commence
his business. (For the record, let me say that I told Tolson not
to do it. Not to a senior member of the cook cadre! Not to a
career Army man! Hopefully that covers me in the event of any
litigation that may evolve from this story.) Tolson got that gleam
in his eye, that devilish smile creased his lips. He attached the
wires to the field phone and waited until the porcine cook was settled
in. Then he gave that field phone 5 or 6 spins of the dial.
Ladies and gentlemen, we had lift off! That cook launched out of
the crapper, trousers down around his ankles and Stars & Stripes flying
in all directions. He proceeded to do a poor imitation of an
Arapahoe rain dance for a minute or two. When the tingling ceased
the cook pulled up his trousers and headed back to the electric crapper.
He had bad intentions. He found the wires and started to rip them
out of the crapper. Tolson’s eyes bugged out. This wasn’t
part of his plan. I don’t know which was funnier, watching the
cook uproot the wire leading back to our position or Tolson unhooking
the wires and trying to bury them outside our hole. The cook
finally made his way to our position and had a few words with Tolson
about his creative genius. Tolson made some lame excuse like
Captain Peters told him to do it. The cook headed back to his mess
hall rubbing his posterior every few steps. Needless to say I
never used that crapper as long as Tolson was on the firebase, even
though he promised he would never jolt a grunt. That’s the true
story of the first run of the Electric Crapper, as I remember it.
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THE TROUBLING LIE THAT WON’T GO AWAY
by Chuck Hawkins Current protestations over the recent U.S. war
against Saddam Hussein in Iraq notwithstanding, America does not lightly
or easily go to war. “America can become martial,” explains historian
Robert Leckie in The Wars of America, but “she has never been
militarist.”
Indeed, the pacifist nature of Americans has been
a factor in every war the country has fought.
Yet when America gets its blood up its soldiers
become some of the most lethal warriors in history. Firepower and
individual initiative are two of the hallmarks of battlefield success.
A post-World War II survey of German officers
showed that they feared fighting Americans more than any other foe.
During the war in the Pacific Army physician Captain James E. T. Hopkins
attempted to assess the cause of death of Japanese soldiers, but he had
to give up this gruesome study because so many different projectiles had
riddled the bodies he examined that it was impossible to determine
cause.
Firepower kills, and American fighting men know
it. They have no use for, and maintain a disdain of, biological weapons.
Imagine then the surprise I and others felt at the
assertion by a Chinese PLA general and head of an academic department at
the prestigious Academy of Military Science that U.S. forces had used
biological weapons against North Korean soldiers and civilians during
the Korean War.
The remark came during a semi-annual working
meeting of The Military Conflict Institute in Alexandria, Virginia in
2000. The PLA general raised the subject as matter-of-factly as a dairy
farmer would state that milk comes from cows. Clearly he believed what
he was saying was true.
A colleague who had served in World War II and
worked at the Army’s biological and chemical warfare facility at Dugway
Proving Grounds during the Korean War attempted to set the record
straight from his personal knowledge. But this did little to persuade
the general.
Recent revelations by Kathryn Weathersby and
Milton Leitenberg, working for the Cold War International History
Project are perhaps more persuasive. Their analysis covers excerpts from
a collection of Soviet documents in the holdings of the Archive of the
President, Russian Federation published in January 1998 by the Japanese
newspaper Sankei Shimbun.
In 1951 and 1952 the Soviet Union, People’s
Republic of China and North Korea claimed that the United States had
used a wide range of biological warfare agents. Although there was no
basis in fact for the allegations, there was a case for believing them
to be true, at least initially.
After World War II the United States investigated
Japanese use of and research on biological weapons in China. To gain
cooperation of senior Japanese officers the U.S. granted them amnesty
from prosecution for war crimes, and then denied that it had done so.
This set the stage for the Soviet Union to warn China and North Korea
that the U.S. might use biological, chemical and nuclear weapons during
the Korean War.
Chinese and North Korean field commanders,
sensitized to this possibility erroneously reported use of biological
agents when soldiers came down with diseases that were common in
Northeast Asia after World War II—cholera and plague were two such
infectious diseases blamed on the Americans. Then, after laboratory
tests concluded that biological weapons were not responsible, Stalin
decided that Moscow, Beijing and Pyongyang should continue the deceit as
propaganda.
After Stalin’s death on March 5, 1953, the
post-Stalin leadership in Moscow terminated the propaganda campaign on
the grounds that the bogus effort, based on manufactured evidence, was
damaging Soviet prestige. Beijing and Pyongyang were forced to follow
suit.
Fifty-one years afterward neither Moscow, nor
Beijing nor Pyongyang has offered the United States an apology. Although
it might be expecting too much for North Korea to do so, Russia and
China might find it useful in light of current cooperation to rid
Pyongyang of its nuclear weapons ambition.
More detailed information is available at the Cold
War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson International Center
for Scholars, http://wwics.si.edu.
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THE MAN WHO DIED FOR
AMERICANS AND HIS COUNTRY
Memorial Day, 2004
by Chuck Hawkins Cold
War Files In Moscow Reveal the Truth: The U.S. Did Not Use Biological
Weapons In the Korean War
Attached is an article I had published in
Lianhe Zaobao in April, a Singapore-based newspaper.
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