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An AO in and around DaNang.

But later on it was a commonly used term to describe any area that was fought over.
And over.......and over.......and over.

DMZ meant DeMiliterized Zone...........but commonly known as Dead Man Zone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bach_Ma_National_Park

I may have been a tad naive at the time, and I only have what that one young man told me to go on. Could be a manipulation, but he certainly wasn't a leftie or a member of the anti-war movement. We did some hunting and fishing together, he was just an average prairie-grown kid like me, only a lot more homesick.

I only mentioned his story as a personal illustration of the sort of draft board activity that could lead to the loss of large numbers of boys from a particular high school such as Thomas Edison in Philly.

A fine example of a younger American Warrior......tip of the hat to ya,sir!

And,Doc,like i said at the beginning and the end of my post......not to discredit you.

It's just that for so many decades the other side hated us......targeted us......demeaned us.......used us.

I actually had a young mother in the old San Francisco International airport pull her young daughter away from me as i was waiting for a flight out. I was wearing my dress blues. In a not low-enough whisper,she said "Come,dear,he's from Vietnam."

I often wonder if that little girl....now grown....remembers that. People around us heard her mom and no one said a word to her or me. After a couple of minutes i gathered my stuff and found a piller to lean on.
At least that pole was lending some support.

Yeah, an AO out of An Hoa. Terrible place. Lot of Marines died there.

In some places,dinner will crawl up to you...

The night job...

The day job...

then you can be a lucky SOB and go home...

of the 33,000 plus 18 year olds killed over there, I wonder how many were draftees and how many were volunteers...

my best friend growing up was killed over there at 18....

i might be wrong in my remembrance, but i think one had to be 19 to be drafted? i was 21 when the lottery caught up with me.

I believe that is correct, 19,because there were a lot of 18 year olds still in high school and I was one of them.I still have my draft card somewhere....I've heard over the years the Marines were tougher on draftees...
Always got the old school DI's

yes. always heard the stories about the Marines showing up at an assignment station. all the inductees were told to line up and count off. every 10th, 20th, 30th man, was told to step forward. they were informed that they were now US Marines because there was a levy to fill.

a lot of Army folks volunteered for three years rather than risk being drafted into the Corps for two. i took my chances because i didn't really care what Branch was going to take me.

From Doc Rocket's posting on page 3... Quote:
His draft board was one of those determined to out-do the rest of the country by sending every able-bodied 18 to 20 year old boy overseas. They said to my friend, "no way, you're going to Viet Nam".

I had the same thing said to me..as I have joked about it, I was drafted 7 times and beat it 6...

I was virtually in the very last draft call in October 1972... there were 200 of us... even tho my draft board was at home in Virginia, I was going to college in Massachusetts....

Student Deferments were canned in July 1972...as far as I know, I may be the only person to fall into this.. as there were no draft calls after July 72 except for last 200 of us in October...

We had orders for 16 weeks of Basic and AIT at Ft Dix NJ, as I remember and then also had orders to Vietnam in our same induction packet received in the mail..

a couple of guys didn't show up, but at the same time after we were processed, they were shutting down the Induction Station at Chelsea Naval Yard in Boston...it was in an old warehouse kind of area..

sitting outside was Buses to take us to Ft Dix, and moving vans parked next to them...

as we processed thru an area, while we were leaving that area, the movers were coming in the other door and started packing up stuff...no one there had any time or care to listen to some sob story from any draftee.. as soon as we were processed, the military personnel there were reporting to a new duty station..

I grew up as a military dependent, and lived at Ft Bragg ( Pope AFB) from 1966 to 1968.. believe me, at the time someone stationed there fell into one of two categories... one their way to Vietnam or just returning from Vietnam...

My step dad served a total of 49 months in Vietnam... flying mainly C 130s, Black Bird Stuff....He was part of the team that worked with testing what became the HC 130's that would pick up a downed pilot from the jungle floor in a hostile area..
the ones with that big scissor looking retrieval system on the nose...he was assigned to the Tactical Airlift Center at Pope while stateside during that time, and going TDY to Vietnam all the time...

My mom when we were at Ft Bragg was secretary for the the Commanding Officer of the Green Berets... General Stillwell was her first boss before he was killed shortly there after in 66..
JF Kennedy Center for Special Warfare it was called..

I had a lot of friends growing up, whose dads were going to Vietnam and not coming home...my best friend growing up was killed over there, after his dad had been killed earlier over there..family friends from when we were stationed in England, were being killed over there...

So I was around it about as much as you could be and not being there..

My step dad thought the war was senseless, for exactly the reasons Rocky stated.. they had their hands tied and then told to go win a war...He told me that if I could get out of going over there, short of becoming a draft dodger to do it...

Out of those 200 guys in that draft call, I was the only one that didn't get out and get on those buses at the end of the day...I had dropped out of college, given away all of my possessions, to include my car, the clothes that weren't given away, I had taken to Good Will.. I owned virtually nothing...except the clothes on my back...and the shoes on my feet...

I left shell shocked is only how I could describe it..

I watched the other guys get on the Buses, the moving vans being loaded still as I walked back to the subway station...

What is an AO??? My friend was a young Marine who made it out of there alive but messed up for a while (still?) in his head. He is a great guy and has spent a life making a difference and helping people. he never spoke much of it, but I remember he referenced serving in a "meat grinder" called the Arizona Territory. he said it was brutal and a lot of men died there. I am glad he did not.

Part 2...

as a kid growing up around Vietnam going on, to this day, I have to admit, no phrase lights my fuse, or turns me into a junkyard dog, more than the Term "Baby Killer"...

I saw so many long haired hippies making trips to the airports just to harass and spit on returning Vietnam Vets...shouting accusations at these guys, even the ones ( or especially the ones) returning home in a wheel chair, or on crutches..

I've seen hippies screaming at guys in wheel chairs " I hope you never walk again Baby Killer!"... or " you got what you deserved hahahaha!"

I was able to keep a lid on my anger most of the time.. I am not naturally a violent person, but several times on my college campus, I beat the living [bleep] out of a few guys for that type of crap...it was a small college and the only reason I didn't get expelled was that the President of the College and the Dean of Men, were both Veterans.. one of WW 2 and the other of Korea..I was high profile on campus, being involved in Student Government and the Dorm Council..plus the campus President was a fellow Virginian.. who privately thanked me for beating the crap out of the perps that were harassing returning Vietnam Vets enrolling as students..

By my heart has forever bled for the guys who had to go over there and fight, and then come home to the crap they got from Hippies at the airports and bus stations... who went down there just to harass these guys.... I've also seen some of these returning vets just lose it, and even sucker punch women in the face.. and just walk off...

I remember in the summer of 69, in Georgetown in DC, me and my buddies were in a White Castle around lunch time.. we were waiting in line along with some weird black guy.. while there, 4 Marines came in and got in line to order... this black guy immediately started giving them crap " Baby Killers, etc"... they finally told him to STFU or they'd make he do so.. he left...

we got our order and walked half a block up the street... we didn't see the black guy re enter the W/C..we heard 4 shots rings out... and he comes rocketing out the door...gun in hand.. we rushed back... the 4 Marines lay there dead.. the first shot from behind, the other 3 were evidently hit while charging him...

WW 2 produced what was called our greatest generation....

I believe they were parents of the worst generation this country ever produced.. the GDF hippies...

to this day, when I see a guy my age with a ponytail, my first gut reaction is to beat the crap out of him...but I managed to keep a lid on it..

I have emotional scars as stupid as it sounds, from growing up around Vietnam and especially the reaction to hippies, for what they did to the returning Veterans....

My uncles who fought in the Pacific in WW 2, hated ANYTHING Japanese until the day they died...

my hatred is anything I see that can remind me of a hippie..due to there reactions stateside...

I see long hair on a guy who was a vet over there... I have a totally different attitude...he earned the right to dress or do almost anything he wants to do in my book..

In my life time I have had many friends, who have died because of Vietnam... and their names will never be on "The Wall".. their experiences in Vietnam, killed them one piece at a time, never able to mentally or emotionally overcome what was taken from them by the time spent there..... be it alcohol, drugs, depression, inability to cope.. you name it..

God Bless Don Hansen, I knew in Minneapolis.. same age as I was.. died about 1983.. shot himself in the head...

put in front of a judge at 17, was told he could spend a year in jail or join the Army.. he chose the army...16 weeks later he finds himself flying into Cam Rahn Bay ( IIRC).. gets off the plane about 48 to 72 hours from graduating AIT...

Some guy comes up to them in line and points to three of them, and tells them to follow him.. they are put on a chopper and flown to a firebase on the DMV...

he gets there, was sent to a Fire Tower, and put on an M 60 as the sun went down... a 19 year old is up in the tower, who had been "in Country' for a while...as soon as it is dark, he asked Don "wanna get high?"... and like any 17 year old, says Sure...

about 1 am a flair goes up from the jungle... Don jumped and the other guy laughed and said don't worry... its a patrol coming in....

So Don watches the flair drop out of the sky slowly... as it gets down toward the ground, he ask the other guy, 'who are these guys?'... there were ladders stretched across barbed wire, with guys in black Pajamas on them.. there were 3 guys climbing the ladder to their tower, each with AKs strung over their back and knives in Clenched in their teeth...

the other guy went from stoned to sober in 2 seconds flat.. kicked the ladder dropped a grenade down the hatch and kicked the hatch closed.. and yelled at Don.. "get on the 60!"

Don said he sobered up also when the guy yelled they are VC...

the other guy fired a flair in the air and they opened up..

the patrol coming in realized what was happening, and set up an ambush for the VC trying to escape...

as Don would wrap up that story, he'd tell ya, " I was credited for 60 plus kills that night by my commanding officer... and I climbed into a bottle of booze after that, and have been there ever since..."

So just one night after being out with the rest of the guys, he left in good spirits, went home and put a bullet between his eyes..

How many stats like Don Hansen, we'll never know...

God be with each of them...and bless them...

and curse Lyndon Johnson et al., who would not allow those men to do the job that needed done...

My sister's husband had a low number and was sure to get picked. He graduated H.S. and came home one day to tell his mother he joined the ARMY. She was upset and asked why...he said his number would be called and he wanted some say in it...helicopters in Viet Nam was what they gave him...don't sound like much say to me!


******Correction....his draft # was 11. He got drafted 1 week out of high school June 1969. 92 AHC.

I went to one of the "best" high schools in Texas in a college town. Hardly anyone went active duty, most kept out one way or the other: college deferment, National Guard, medical, etc. Beleive it or not most Helicopter troops volunteered especially the air crews. Other than loosing a good friend the worst of it to me was the silent "don't tell us about it; we don't care" message I got almost daily. Two exceptions were a couple of old WWI vets and one of the "popular girls" from high school who's husband went over in 1968 just as I got home.
She and I hardly had spoken in high school but the talk we had about her husband and what the town was like during the war is one of my most touching memories of the time and place.

AO...area of operations..(known areas of enemy encampments)

I'm very sorry about your friend, Seafire. I went through 25 years of what I now know (in hindsight) was PTSD. It took me 250,000+ words in my books to dispel those demons, but I think I did.

The guys returning home today get cheers and tears. They deserve it. As you pointed out, we got insults, spit, piss, and feces thrown at us. On the plane they kept telling us that it might happen, and if it did to not react in any way - and especially not to touch any of them because they'd file assault charges against us. Being hit with feces apparently didn't count as assault on us.

Here's an amazing anecdote:

I was at the SHOT show a couple years ago and was chatting to the folks in one booth when I noticed one of the company reps was Vietnamese. His nametag said Nguyen Truong. I said to him, that's a very odd coincidence, because I flew with a guy with that same name. I explained that he had been my right-seater/translator on many missions, and that he had been a defector from the NVA, a Captain, in fact.

The man before me said, very quietly: "My father was a Captain in the NVA, and he disappeared one day. We never heard from him again. I'm named for him."

Honest to God.

just goes to show, we're all interconnected, as much as i attempt to resist the reality.

Just thought some of you may be interested in this aircrew recovery after all these years.Six AC-47 crewman were finally brought home to rest.

June,1966... an Ac-47 Gunship was lost on a routine night recon mission over Laos.

In May-June of 1995... a joint team of US and Lao specialists were taken to the crash site and began recovery operations of personal effects,aircraft wreckage and crew related materials.

Nov 5,2004... the "Spooky" crew where united once again and buried in a single casket at Arlington..Rest in eternal peace brothers.

Link if interested:
http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/aircrew-06031966.htm