biography
Started as Army PFC. Graduated from Office Candidate School Artillery class 10-70. My best friend was B Williams from Princeton. We were an odd set of friends as he was from the Ivy League and I was from a farm in Nebraska.
After an orientation to the jungle for 2 weeks in Panama, it was off to Vietnam. First location was a forward fire base near Chu Lia in I Corps.
There I served as artillery forward observer out with the infantry units. Best moment in the field was disobeying an order by the infantry captain to drop high explosivie rounds on the deck with out a marking round as a test of his location. We disobeyed and had the artilley guns send a marking round first. The marking round went off right over the captain and 20 to 30 invantry. The captain cancelled the high explosive but never appoligized for almost killing a bunch of his troups with friendly fire.
After forward observer duty I replaced a artillery fire direction officer at Trabong forward fire base (8 inch and 175 guns) . The prior fire direction officer had been killed by friendly fire during an attemt by enemy to over run the fire base.
After fire direction duty I was assigned as an artillery air observer for American Divison headquarters. I flew in little observations planes and then assigned to 7 Troup, 8th Air Cavalry to call in artillery for their hunter killer team on the road to Khe Sanh.
On 23rd of January 1971 I helped retieve a pilot & door gunner from there little bird that had been shot down. I often wondered if they made it thru the rest of their tour in Vietnam.
