[MontanaKid]

I was in the Americal, but because of the bad publicity of My Lai, would wear my 196th Brigade patch instead. Fellow GI's didn't help, they would call the Americal patch the "baby killer" patch. One action by some of the members of one platoon and the whole division is tarnished. We were good. We had a tough AO. We weren't an elite Division, most of our grunts were draftees. But we did OK and suffered the fourth highest fatalities of any Army division.

Some of that patch thing is the usual unit rivalry. Like calling 101 the "puking buzzard," or the 9th the "Flower Power" or the 25th the "electric strawberry" or the 1st cav, "the horse is the horse never rode, the stripe is the river never crossed and the yellow is the reason why."

But I proudly identify with the Americal today. "Under the Southern Cross." Though our colors and a museum are at Fort Devons, the Americal has never served in the states or outside of the Pacific. It was formed in 1942 on the island of New Calidonia and fought in most of the campaigns of the war with Japan. They were slated to hit the beach at Kyushu in September of 1945 before we dropped the bomb. The division was activated in Vietnam in 1967 and covered Quang Ngai and Quang Tin Provinces until it rolled up its colors in the fall of 1971.