Previously Held MOS 1729-Combat Engineer Reconnaissance Sergeant
1542-Infantry Unit Commander
1745-Infantry First Sergeant
1745-Light Weapons Platoon Sergeant
1745-Rifle Platoon or Squad Leader
1514-Radar Chief Of Section
What started with a TWS invitation from Sergeant Don Shook has now turned in to a very time consuming project. At the present time I have 504 photos with many hours of narratives.
I've tried to keep the facts and stories about each picture as factual as possible. To keep continuity in the narratives, I've added pictures that are not mine from yearbooks that I own and from long Google sessions. To verify things that I do remember happening, I also have added quoted sentences and paragraphs that are not mine. In all cases I've added copyright credits to pictures and text that I've used.
All of the photos without � credits are my own. All the Photoshop titles and composite slides are my own.
Since many of the things I write about go back as far as sixty years, some quotes that I attribute to persons may, of course, not be verbatim. I've tried to make them at least, "words to that effect".
I am not doing this for self aggrandizement, it is in response to "What did you do in the War, Daddy?" I've found TWS to be a good medium for creating memoir type slide presentations.
In some cases, my recollections may be a little fuzzy. If anyone who looks through my profile and finds wrong timelines or gross inaccuracies, please email and so that I can make corrections. TWS has made editing very easy.
There will also be spelling, grammar and punctation errors. After hours of typing, I get lazy and quote marks, commas, grammar and spelling errors get dropped into the narratives. Sorry. Thanks TWS for building in a spelling checker and bless Google for their endless source of knowledge.
After many hours of work on my 1968 tour in Vietnam, I've just finished the Jump School assignment and am working my way down each subsequent assignment. Many of which have titles that don't mean anything, pictures out of order and bits and gibberish pieces of narrative in them. Bear with me, I'm working on them.
Note: In many cases, I refer to soldiers only as "men". I don't mean to denigrate the women who serve. It is just that men served in the combat arms units in the Army and women served in the Women's Army Corps (WAC). "It was the women's branch of the US Army. It was created as an auxiliary unit, the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps in 1942, and converted to full status as the WAC in 1943. It was disbanded in 1978" Quote � Wikipedia
I retired in 1973 and never had the pleasure of serving with women soldiers.
Vietnam War/Counteroffensive Phase V Campaign (1968)
From Month/Year
July / 1968
To Month/Year
November / 1968
Description This campaign was from 1 July to 1 November 1968. During this period a country-wide effort was begun to restore government control of territory lost to the enemy since the Tet offensive. The enemy attempted another such offensive on 17-18 August but his efforts were comparatively feeble and were quickly overwhelmed by Allied forces.
In the fall of 1968 the South Vietnamese government, with major U.S. support, launched an accelerated pacification campaign. All friendly forces were coordinated and brought to bear on the enemy in every tactical area of operation. In these intensified operations, friendly units first secured a target area, then Vietnamese government units, regional forces/popular forces, police and civil authorities screened the inhabitants, seeking members of the Viet Cong infrastructure. This technique was so successful against the political apparatus that it became the basis for subsequent friendly operations. Government influence expanded into areas of the countryside previously dominated by the Viet Cong to such an extent that two years later at least some measure of government control was evident in all but a few remote regions.
