How did you come by your username?

[chknltl]

134. Tall handsome boy, Russ

I am 58 now, a Viet Nam era vet who never made it to Nam although I enlisted for and was guaranteed to go to a unit over there. I joined Jan. '73 and by they time I met up with my unit, (1st/1st Armored Cav. ,1st AD.) it had just pulled out and relocated to Shwabach Germany.
I was a turret mechanic who fixed Sherridan tank turrets.

When I arrived, I was one of three newbies in our company who had never served in a warzone. Most everyone there had seen combat, idiot that I was I looked up to them for it. I quickly found out talking about Nam was taboo and these guys were damned relieved to have made it out in one piece .

They treated me as family and I looked up to our Capt. as a surrogate father. Although he could not have been more than 35 he had a wisdom and demeanor of Colonel Potter of the tv show MASH.

He was eventually replaced with a hardass whom I had no respect for, one I was told would not have lasted a month over in Nam, but that is a different story.

Something that always stuck with me regarding that first company was the feeling that these guys wanted to forget Nam. At first I wanted to know but after being told a few times to be glad I missed out, I gave up asking. I found out though that those tanks I worked on, cool as they were, sucked in the jungles of Nam.

I look at your photos, and I see the officers that I came to respect over in Germany. Yes of course, I was an enlisted man, hell a pfc back then but officers were just other versions of us and like us they had their jobs. We saluted them and we respected them but like everyone else around me, they survived Nam.

I can not even begin to imagine what you boys went through over in Nam. Then you came back....to a nation that was divided between folks who would not understand how we could have lost what should have been an easy war and those who thought of you as baby killers.

More up close and personal I imagine you came back to families who did not know how to talk to you about what you survived all the while you did not want to talk about it PERIOD!

We now know more about PTSD. I have it for non-military related reasons. With hindsight, every single member of that company I met up with over in Germany likely had PTSD from their tours over in Nam, including our Captain. With hindsight I am damned glad I never served in that war zone.

Russ looked like a tall handsome confident Officer. I am sure he and Mark would have done well had they made it back. I am sorry for your loss, sorry for our loss, sorry that our fucked up country got involved in something we should never have been involved in. Furthermore I am sorry if I dredged up any bad memories. Got me a new found respect for pinboy3niner that's for dang sure.