I was out having breakfast with a friend a while back. He is a very kind and unassuming fellow. Soft spoken and all. A house painter now.
The subject came around to somebody who was in the news. That news person had received a Silver Star award for some action.

My friend said simply, "I have one of those".
Uhh, okay. What was that award for. "My friend who was carrying the radio was pinned down and shot and I went out to pull him back. There wasn't anything heroic about it. I was just trying to help my friend."

(He also has a Purple Heart and I don't know what else).

There are a lot of amazing histories out there.

Yes, there are.

Yep. Next time you see your friend, tell him "thanks" from a LOT of us.

Will do.

We very much appreciate his service and heroism.

"...wasn't anything heroic about it." Yeah, the VC were probably just shooting blanks or .270's or something harmless like that.

A friend of mine earned Silver Star also, for a situation just like that. A guy got shot and Jim crawled out and pulled him back under fire. He never did tell me about it. His father brought it up over lunch one day. His dad said "Don't ever tell Jim I told you. He gets really pissed-off if I say anything."

Truth be told lots of people in wars do lots of incredibly heroic things and are never recognized for it.

My "brother" was a Marine grunt around An Hoa in 1969 and some of the experiences he had are pretty hair raising. Near misses, hand to hand combat, assaulting entrenched positions single handed, continuing to fight even after being wounded (bullet in the arm), etc. And this was just for a run of the mill grunt, no special super secret ops guy.

Not denigrating the things that decorated veterans got decorated for, except for a few political posers every one of them deserved the recognition. But as far as I'm concerned any man wearing a CIB and particularly a Purple Heart deserves as much respect as we can give.

Must be talking about "Lurch" Kerry and his self-inflicted purple heart scratches which he turned into a ticket home where he continued to back-stab our troops !
"Reporting for duty" my asse !

God Bless our Vietnam Veterans and the guys who served in MACVSOG

One T. Lee's posts had a great line about Vietnam Vets.

"Every day Soldiers in Vietnam earned medals for valor. Some of them were actually awarded with one."

So many of them went and did their job and came home...with no fanfare....and to people spitting on them....right at the airports...

I really think my junkyard dog attitude toward anything that represents being "a hippie" is motivated the most by what those AHoles did to our troops coming home and getting off the planes at airports all over the country...

I want to use this opportunity to bring up one of our own...

Ken Maples.. Bulletbutt...

I had communicated with Ken like I do a lot of forum members...told me if I was ever up in Washington to look him up...

well I go up I 5 to Seattle on business quite often, so I stopped and called him once, and told him I'd be passing back thru his home town on the way home.. so we set up a time to meet at a restaurant right off of I 5 in Kelso WA...

We had lunch together.. and must have talked for 3 hours or more...when it was time to hit the road, Ken quickly grabbed the check and wouldn't hear of me paying for my tab... regardless of how I tried...

Then a couple of months later I was passing thru again so I called and we had lunch once again...

Ken was a Vietnam Vet, 5 years older than me...he was facing the draft so he went down and enlisted...got himself into communications.. he had seen combat and did his job under fire, but came home in one piece, no wounds and no medals...he mustered out and got on with his life...

he used his military training and got a job with the County there in Washington and worked there 30 plus years before retiring...

His wife was retiring from her state job also....

The first visit we talked about our military time and experiences....

The second one, he told me about his and his wife's retirement plans....

they had bought a piece of property over on the east side of the Cascades.... they were building a Veterans Home, to house about 10 vets.. guys from the Vietnam Days and in need...they weren't going into this venture for money, they were going into it to assist fellow veterans whose life after returning home hadn't been as fortunate as Ken's had been...

I was really impressed, both with the plan and how humble of a man Ken was...I even threw in some support for some of the peripheral needs, such as an Emergency Call system for his facility....

Just before I was going to call Ken and let him know I was going to be passing thru Kelso again on the way to or from Seattle, Varmint Guy posted that Ken had passed away...

evidently had a heart attack, when his wife was out shopping, so he had no one there to call the ambulance.....

Ground had been broken on his new endeavor to serve his fellow veterans over near Yakima....his home in Kelso was on the market... a heart attack cut that all short...

Ken was only 63 years old....

Ken was an example.. many of these guys as young kids, went off to serve and became unsung heroes... and then just as unceremoniously, they came home and lived another life as an unsung hero....

We only met twice face to face Ken, but I think of you frequently.. always with sadness but a lot of respect and appreciation....

The campfire is blessed with a lot of Vietnam Vets, who did their job and came home yet are still heroes every day of their lives...Ken, my honored friend Miles, Woody, Jim Martin...guys, the good Lord and the campfire have given me the pleasure and honor of getting to meet... yet guys that drip with humility....

a salute of deep felt appreciation for each one of you gentlemen.....

and lets no forget those that came afterward, that have served in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Gulf....such as "Crash", eh76's son who has served 8 tours in the Middle East...
in the Marines and then in the Wyoming NG....

a Salute of respect and prayers for High Brass.. another soldier and campfire member now gone....

I'm humbled knowing any ONE of these fine people...

A link to an interesting story about Viet Nam:

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news...cities-commemorate-vietnam-war/74762410/

The story is pretty personal for the man in the story.

another brother gone.nam 67-68 1st cav jerryb.

Had been part of early withdrawal of troops from Vietnam in late 1969 and was sent to Schofield Barracks on Oahu Hawaii. Great place to finish out my last 3 months in the army.

Anyway, my first Sunday stationed there, I went to eat lunch in our 100th Bn's messhall. We couldn't wear fatigues, had to wear dress greens or katchi uniform and we had to sign in at a table occupied by a buck sergeant to enter. First time I'd ever had to do these things.

I noticed the buck sergeant, who was also new to the unit from Vietnam. had not one purple heart, but three purple heart ribbons, with clusters on two of them.

As I leaned over to sign-in, I commented to the sergeant, you must have been, always walking point and one clumsy, but lucky guy. Sergeant was miffed at my comment, asking me why I'd said that. Your Purple Hearts with clusters, I replied. He ordered me to go inside, which I did.

Next day, I'm crossing the open area of our Battalion Quad and the buck sergeant sees me and begans walking towards me. Oh, oh, I tell myself, looks like I'm in for round two of my comment.

He will tell me I was right about always walking point, being clumsy and one lucky S.O.B. We became friends.

What's really sad is that our generation of combat veterans (RVN) are dying quicker/sooner than any other group previous including WW2 & Korea - VA has the statistics and keeps crunching the numbers monthly but no one can find definitive reasons as to why we're subject to a shorter lifespan.

Interesting commentary. Maybe Agent Orange may play a small part in perceived early outs. The VA is doing a better job now.

Back in high school-first years of college, people were overly concerned about the draft-for obvious reasons. I had a Marine friend and we were interested in the same blonde gal.
Before we killed each other, a West Point Captain beat both of us out.

My friend said that I was running out of time-so I signed up for ROTC and later volunteered for Vietnam while assigned to the 10th Special Forces Group at Ft. Devens., MA.
Ended up at Khe Sanh with MACVSOG. It's always amazed me that the NVA used the same firing data and cave hideouts for the 122 mm howitzers used on the Marines in 67 that they used on us in 1971. We should have gotten them before since they were just inside the Laotian border in the limestone karches.

The real heroes are those who did'nt make it back. My Dad was a bombardier on B-24s in WWII-8th AAF. 30 missions over Nazi Germany. He lost a lot of friends and saw their planes go down. No patience with these flag burners. People are in Arlington National who died carrying that flag or under it.

5th-7th-10th Special Forces (ABN) MACVSOG (71-72)
De Oppresso Liber



"Only the dead have seen the end of war"- PLATO