Our friend and brother George Drago sent this link to me for
Memorial Day weekend. This is a
wonderful poem by A. Lawrence Vaincourt, read by Tony Lo Bianco.
Friday, May 26, 2017
May We Never Forget
On this Memorial Day weekend of 2017, please join me in remembering our friends who made the supreme sacrifice while serving our country in Vietnam too many years ago. Be sure to turn your volume up and then click the title link below to see a tribute to them. (Note that it may take a few seconds to load on your machine)
Wednesday, May 17, 2017
My First Flight in Vietnam
Ed Gulesserian, a Mohawk driver who was up in I Corps in the latter part of the war, sent me a note about his first flight in Vietnam. It wan't in an OV-1 though, but rather a CH-47...
April 25, 2017
I'm helping organize a reunion in Nashville for my Vietnam
Chinook unit. My focus is to get the pilots to come. After 49
years, it's time.
Got a letter today from CW4 Vern Mattie, the pilot that took me
on my first flight in VN. Back then he was a very senior warrant
officer near the end of his second tour. The unit pilots spoke of his
skill and composure with reverence. New pilots called him "God"
(not to his face). It's a cliché, but I'm sure he had forgotten much more
about flying than I knew at that point. I thought I had done well in
flight school but I quickly learned I was a long, long way from being
combat ready.
It was the second day of the Tet 68 attacks and my third day
in VN. That first flight was one of most dramatic days in my life;
seven hours of intense flying; in and out of a dozen Landing
Zones carved out in the mountains and plateaus in the Central Highlands
(west of Kontum and Dak To), near Laos and Cambodia.
Tracers in the air from both US and NVA. Much of the fire came from
areas near the LZ perimeters, and it was hard for us to tell who was
who.
There was no time for an orientation flight. Pilots were
needed for missions. Vern Mattie and I were paired that first day and we
were flying missions minutes after we first lifted off. I watched him do
"magic" with the aircraft time after time. The first time he
gave me the controls was several hours later to finish an approach into
an LZ. I remember the tracers arcing through the sky around
us. Over the radios, I could hear that others in our unit were in similar
situations. Vern Mattie never got anxious of ruffled! At times it
seemed surreal.
As the day progressed, I guess he thought I was at least
marginally adequate as a pilot so on the last mission of the day he gave me the
controls for the entire approach into an LZ. (Anyone who remembers
the ridges around the Ben Het Special Forces camp just east of Laos
knows exactly where we were.)
The standard procedures for an approach were the same all
day. As we turned toward the LZ for the approach and raced
toward it, the entire perimeter opened up with suppressive fire to cover our
approach, hover time (seconds), and hasty departure. (Five seconds in a
hot LZ is an eternity; longer can become fatal - particularly since
at that moment you're the most visible and high value target in the
area.)
This time the suppressive fire coming from
the LZ perimeter was everywhere with some of the tracers arcing right
past us. My first thought was that it was poorly coordinated friendly
fire. Vern Mattie grabbed the controls, threw us into a steep turn, and
sternly told me "Son, those are the NVA and they are trying to kill
us!” (How did the NVA not run out of ammunition?)
So I guess that first day I was both clumsy and naive. And
it no longer seemed just "surreal". Everyone who has been shot
at with lethal intent remembers it with total clarity, and it was no different
for me. Your life views change instantaneously and profoundly. Thus
began my steep, steep learning curve. My standard from that day was to
somehow learn to fly missions as well as the consummate professional beside
me. I've never forgotten that lesson.
Lots of other stories (362 days to go at that point) but the
letter today [from Vern] made that particular day seem very recent.
Tuesday, May 16, 2017
Kilroy Was Here? Indeed He Was!
Our friend Ed Balanger sent this wonderful history to me a few days ago, and he said I could share it with you all! Enjoy!
So who was Kilroy?
'Kilroy' was a 46-year old shipyard worker during the war who worked as a checker at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy.
His job was to go around and check on the number of rivets completed. Riveters were on piecework and got paid by the rivet. He would count a block of rivets and put a check mark in semi-waxed lumber chalk, so the rivets wouldn't be counted twice. When Kilroy went off duty, the riveters would erase the mark.
Later on, an off-shift inspector would come through and count the rivets a second time, resulting in double pay for the riveters.
One day Kilroy's boss called him into his office. The foreman was upset about all the wages being paid to riveters, and asked him to investigate. It was then he realized what had been going on. The tight spaces he had to crawl in to check the rivets didn't lend themselves to lugging around a paint can and brush, so Kilroy decided to stick with the waxy chalk. He continued to put his check mark on each job he inspected, but added 'KILROY WAS HERE' in king-sized letters next to the check, and eventually added the sketch of the chap with the long nose peering over the fence and that became part of > the Kilroy message.
Once he did that, the riveters stopped trying to wipe away his marks. Ordinarily the rivets and chalk marks would have been covered up with paint. With the war on, however, ships were leaving the Quincy Yard so fast that there wasn't time to paint them. As a result, Kilroy's inspection "trademark" was seen by thousands of servicemen who boarded the troopships the yard produced.
Share This Bit Of Historic Humor With All Your Friends! :) Great true story for me....
He is engraved in stone in the National War
Memorial in Washington, DC - back in a small alcove where very few people have
seen it. For the WWII generation, this will bring back memories. For you
younger folks, it's a bit of trivia that is a part of our American history.
Anyone born in 1913 to about 1950, is familiar with Kilroy. No one knew why he
was so well known- but everybody seemed to get into it.
So who was Kilroy?
In 1946 the American Transit Association, through
its radio program, "Speak to America ," sponsored a nationwide contest
to find the real Kilroy, offering a prize of a real trolley car to the person
who could prove himself to be the genuine article. Almost 40 men stepped
forward to make that claim, but only James Kilroy from Halifax , Massachusetts
, had evidence of his identity.
'Kilroy' was a 46-year old shipyard worker during the war who worked as a checker at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy.
His job was to go around and check on the number of rivets completed. Riveters were on piecework and got paid by the rivet. He would count a block of rivets and put a check mark in semi-waxed lumber chalk, so the rivets wouldn't be counted twice. When Kilroy went off duty, the riveters would erase the mark.
Later on, an off-shift inspector would come through and count the rivets a second time, resulting in double pay for the riveters.
One day Kilroy's boss called him into his office. The foreman was upset about all the wages being paid to riveters, and asked him to investigate. It was then he realized what had been going on. The tight spaces he had to crawl in to check the rivets didn't lend themselves to lugging around a paint can and brush, so Kilroy decided to stick with the waxy chalk. He continued to put his check mark on each job he inspected, but added 'KILROY WAS HERE' in king-sized letters next to the check, and eventually added the sketch of the chap with the long nose peering over the fence and that became part of > the Kilroy message.
Once he did that, the riveters stopped trying to wipe away his marks. Ordinarily the rivets and chalk marks would have been covered up with paint. With the war on, however, ships were leaving the Quincy Yard so fast that there wasn't time to paint them. As a result, Kilroy's inspection "trademark" was seen by thousands of servicemen who boarded the troopships the yard produced.
His message apparently rang a bell with the
servicemen, because they picked it up and spread it all over Europe and
the South Pacific.
Before war's end, "Kilroy" had been here, there, and everywhere on the long hauls to Berlin and Tokyo. To the troops outbound in those ships, however, he was a complete mystery; all they knew for sure was that someone named Kilroy had "been there first." As a joke, U.S. servicemen began placing the graffiti wherever they landed, claiming it was already there when they arrived.
Kilroy became the U.S. super-GI who had always "already been" wherever GIs went. It became a challenge to place the logo in the most unlikely places imaginable (it is said to be atop Mt. Everest , the Statue of Liberty , the underside of the
Arc de Triumphed, and even scrawled in the dust on the moon.
As the war went on, the legend grew. Underwater demolition teams routinely sneaked ashore on Japanese-held islands in the Pacific to map the terrain for coming invasions by U.S. troops (and thus, presumably, were the first GI's there). On one occasion, however, they reported seeing enemy troops painting over the Kilroy logo!
In 1945, an outhouse was built for the exclusive use of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill at the Potsdam conference. Its' first
occupant was Stalin, who emerged and asked his aide (in Russian), "Who is Kilroy?"
To help prove his authenticity in 1946, James Kilroy brought along officials from the shipyard and some of the riveters.
He won the trolley car, which he gave to his nine children as a Christmas gift and set it up as a playhouse in the Kilroy yard in Halifax , Massachusetts .
And The Tradition Continues...
EVEN Outside Osama Bin Laden's House!!!
the South Pacific.
Before war's end, "Kilroy" had been here, there, and everywhere on the long hauls to Berlin and Tokyo. To the troops outbound in those ships, however, he was a complete mystery; all they knew for sure was that someone named Kilroy had "been there first." As a joke, U.S. servicemen began placing the graffiti wherever they landed, claiming it was already there when they arrived.
Kilroy became the U.S. super-GI who had always "already been" wherever GIs went. It became a challenge to place the logo in the most unlikely places imaginable (it is said to be atop Mt. Everest , the Statue of Liberty , the underside of the
Arc de Triumphed, and even scrawled in the dust on the moon.
As the war went on, the legend grew. Underwater demolition teams routinely sneaked ashore on Japanese-held islands in the Pacific to map the terrain for coming invasions by U.S. troops (and thus, presumably, were the first GI's there). On one occasion, however, they reported seeing enemy troops painting over the Kilroy logo!
In 1945, an outhouse was built for the exclusive use of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill at the Potsdam conference. Its' first
occupant was Stalin, who emerged and asked his aide (in Russian), "Who is Kilroy?"
To help prove his authenticity in 1946, James Kilroy brought along officials from the shipyard and some of the riveters.
He won the trolley car, which he gave to his nine children as a Christmas gift and set it up as a playhouse in the Kilroy yard in Halifax , Massachusetts .
And The Tradition Continues...
EVEN Outside Osama Bin Laden's House!!!
Share This Bit Of Historic Humor With All Your Friends! :) Great true story for me....
Engraved on the WWII Memorial in Washington DC
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