Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire 41 years ago

Thanks a ton to every man and woman here who has ever served our great country, particularly those who were never properly welcomed home. One of my greatest regrets is that I never served. I can remember watching a parade with my dad when I was pretty young and I noticed him with his hand over his heart and tears in his eyes as the flag went by. Many years later I figured what it was about. I hope your all as proud of your service as he was.

Pete

The circle is closed...

That sir is an awesome story with a fantastic ending!

Thank you for sharing that story sir and thank you and flyboy for your service to this great country.

As the circle has been closed for Woody and me, never forget that there were 28 other men there too and one, PSG Escobar was a GENUINE Hero as he fought it out muzzle to muzzle with 3 NVA so we could retrieve our dead. where ever my Brothers are now, whatever they are doing, I will forever be one of you and all of you have a secure place in my memory and heart. Woody saved us all, not just me. I am merely a poor representative of the Men of Charlie Co. 3/506,101st Airborne Division. Remember them.

I wasn't going to post becasue I don't know what to say.... We'll leave it at that.

Flyboy Flem..Thanks again for bringing this thread back up. I have been reading the " Circle is Closed " thread with a great deal of interest, but had a hard time keeping up with who was on the ground and who flying cover overhead. Now I can put it all together and see the players.

There are many great threads and many great people onboard here at 24HCF....however.....the "41 Years Ago" and "Circle" thread have to rate as the very best on the Fire. Thanks, to all the Vets. You guys are first rate.

Thanks for this post to Big Jim, and God Bless all of You Bro.

Gunner

AS promised (threatened?) here is the part one of TWO bestest threads and events in my life and memory!

The Best Thread Ever

Jim, Woody, god bless ya.

Amen and Amen, many Thanks for the revisit Jim and Woody.

Gunner

To pick up where we left off a few pics from my perspective to show location and terrain of operations..

Our mission briefs were based on the latest intel as we were usually a two ship compliment and our assigned patrol grids of bad guy activity were primarily incorrect as the night we got in the chit with Jim and the boys.

This is a typical grid map used for nav purposes.. My base at PhuCat we were NW of Qui Nhon and almost due E of Pleiku.







This is a photo of one of our AC's defending the PhuCat bomb dump perimeter taken by AF Security Police..50/50 chance it could have been us.



C119 Shadows TDY'd in on occasion for help with night interdiction missions.



One of our hot patrol areas South along the coast a few clicks West and South of Qui Nhon harbor.Sappers had soft targets to occupy their time and a big POL storage/pipeline facility to harass.We burned lots of gas flying orbits over these hills just to let Charlie know we were watching.



These pics are Hill 474 where ET and I crossed paths with the An Lao valley in the background.A nasty place in late Jan 1970.

[img]http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/zz14/Arch48/IMG_2317_zps6a1e3cff.jpg[/img]


[img]http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/zz14/Arch48/Image0171_zps2dea741e.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i809.photobucket.com/albums/zz14/Arch48/Image0176_zps8eed1474.jpg[/img]

Now Jim can pick it up here as he will brief on how my gunship arrived to lend a helping hand.

Picture number 2 of 474 was taken by one of the guys in my company. We were on that finger for 3 days. Looking at the center ridge and where our battle actually took place is in that picture. The Chithook flying away had just made a fougasse drop on the ridge,which is why all you see is boulders and smoke. 15 drums of fougasse and an igniter would be dropped on the target to burn off the jungle and make crispy critters. If you look close, you will see why we were surrounded. That place was honeycombed with caves. between the 2 ridges is the wide draw/valley/gulch I referred to in the beginning. In the background the knife edge ridge in the distance across the paddies had a 2 gun artillery emplacement just for us. Woodys guns raked that draw between the ridges where the NVA was maneuvering on our flank. Exciting nite to say the least.

Very cool. You can't put a value on things like this.

Awesome, and well desrved.

Wow.

There are a few people out there that I owe a lot more than a beer, but I don't know if I would want to meet them. It could be embarrassing on my part if it got emotional, and reading this makes me guess that it would.

while i havent met Woody, Jim is a hell of a guy to sit and BS with.....not sure how i missed this thread in the past but just read through it all....

Amen.

Amen.

ET,

Phenomenal story and thank you for sharing that window of time into your life. I read the story and just passed my iPad over to my wife to read. There was no way I could recite it to her.

I will remember you and this story every time I see our American Flag. My hats off to you sir, those who stood bedside you, and those who flew the top cover.