Your luckiest moment

[usmcsgt65]

Working off Hill 55, DaNang, toward the end of the monsoon season. Company was moving into a blocking position for the next day sweep. I was the very last man to anchor the position. We watched a family finish their meal, put out the fire, and go to bed. Less than 30 minutes later, two VC open up on us. The Marine next to me used an M-1 Carbine. The VC turned their fire on us. I fell behind a bamboo growth. As watched the AK-47 rounds chew up the bamboo at the level my head was a second before.

[phuloi]

Just about dusk one night,a sniper had a bead on me hauling ass down hiway 13 on a front-end loader.All in a split second I thought 'This is bad ju ju',saw a muzzle flash,dynamited the brakes,and returned fire.When I got out of Indian Country,I found a bullet hole through my shirt..not a scratch.

[39mto39g]

Some good stories hear. Im going to have to save this somewhere.
Each one a different experiance but with the same outcome, amazing. Hand gernade in the chest, Trip wire, walk through that valley again, Hill 55 (been there, LZ baldy), Surrounded by bullits, Hole in a shirt (what were you doing on the road with a endloader?) and walking around a corner and come face to face with Chuck.
We are truly living history.

Ron

[revwardoc]

OK, I'm taking a poll. I'd like all of you to pick out 6 numbers between 1 and 50 and send them to me....then I'm going to play all the lottery games I can! I swear to God you guys could fall into a barrel of shit and find gold. Don't forget those number, now!

[1CAVCCO15MED]

I was standing in the doorway of our casualty treatment bunker when a 122 rocket broke the speed limit and buried itself in the ground before exploding ten feet from me. I was knocked down and recieved a small scratch on my arm and a ruptured eardrum. The picture shows why I wasn't killed.

[1CAVCCO15MED]

Here is the treatment bunker. Garcia is standing over the crater from the rocket. I was in that doorway.

[splummer]

We had just walked out to the perimeter for the night. I'm standing on top of the bunker and look back to see this pot head, short timer setting up the m-60 in a Vietnamise grave right behind me. What are you doing? He says that he's too short to be any where near the bunker because if charlie attackes he always blows the bunker first. Well, have you at least got the saftey on? He says yes and pulls the trigger to show me. Two or three rounds go off and nearly put a new part in my hair. [I'm still mad at that guy.]

[MORTARDUDE]

I firmly believe in prayer. My mother is a prayer-warrior. My sister says she was so disturbed by my tour in Vietnam, that she prayed and cried at night, sometimes 8 hours at a time. She burned all my letters when I got home. Besides the trip wire story, I had these things happen also. As I have said, I spent about a week at FSB Crook with a leg unit, the 3/22, and then a mystery transfer to a mech unit ( 2/22(M) ), came along. I have since learned that the platoon I transferred out of took casualties on their next operation. On my first day in combat with the mech unit ( 31 Dec 69 ), I watched the Arty FO RTO get his foot blown off, and because I was the FNG, got his bloody radio. For the next hour I was literally in the Twilight Zone. In Cambodia, we were in a night laager with Co. A 2/22(M). We were supposed to be first out of the laager in the morning. Not one, but two of our tracks would not start, so Co. A went first and got ambushed. There were three tracks blown to shit. The same guy that prevented me from hitting the trip wire, also almost killed me twice. The first time when he double clutched 2 mortar rounds and sent one just over my head, and later when he decided to pick up the little steel balls in unexploded butterfly bombs and throw them in bomb craters full of water, and lastly me trying to throw a rusty machete in rock hard clay and it bouncing up and cutting my hand, and could easily have gone thru my face. I still have a nice scar. The radiator on the APC blew and I got my leg burned...and then there was the drunk in Sydney who pulled a knife on me at the Whiskey A Go GO and the taxi that almost ran over me the same night...Thanks MOM ! I would have been on The Wall if not for you !!

Welcome Home !!

Larry

P.S. : and Joe C. wherever you are, I hope you still have a few of your nine lives left....

[39mto39g]

Whiskey A Go GO . Kings cross. I spent 5 nights there. One day recovering and one day sight seeing with a girl in a Mustang.
Mustang had the steering whell on the wrong side. She asked if I wanted to drive. Not if you want to live. Did you spend $10.00 the first night in one of those allys in Kings cross.

Ron

[frisco-kid]

With 23mos. in country and coming home with hardly a scratch to mention, I know I was a REAL LUCKY s.o.b.. I'm sure, like has been said already, many times that I was unaware of. But, there were a few that I was aware of.

Somewhere in the mountains around Kontum, we set up for the night on a mountainside. It had been raining on us all day, and that night was cold as hell. Three of us are laying down, huddled together for warmth. About 0300 all Hell breaks loose and Charlie's inside our perimeter. At the first shots, I roll over on my stomach with my weapon. The guy on my left sits up and is immediately shot in the throat. He's dead before his head touches the ground. The guy on my right had stood up and was shot in both legs. He bled to death. By daybreak we have 7 dead and 18 wounded. I'm neither.

Somewhere in the mountains above Tuy Hoa, we haven't seen hide nor hair of Chuck for days. The patrol stops for a break, and myself and 2 other guys are told to gather up canteens and go to a waterfall about a quarter mile away to fill them. We sling our weapons over our shoulders, grab the canteens and head out. We're walking like we're in a park, talking and laughing. As we come around a turn in the trail, here's 3 VC smokin'and jokin', ditty boppin' down the trail towards us. They have their weapons slung on their shoulders, also. We're about 50ft. from each other, and all 6 of us just freeze, staring at each other for, what seems like, a full minute. We finally all get our wits about us at the same time, and we're scrambling for our weapons. We get off the first shots and kill 1 of them. The other 2 return fire and run, with the 3 of us on their asses. They head up a hillside, with us still behind them. They jump into some foxholes and start shooting down on us. Oh, shit! One of the guys that I'm with is shot in the foot and goes, ass over tea kettle, rolling down the hill. By now, somemore of our guys are showing up and we eventually flank them and kill them. Would have been a whole different story if they had been walking with their weapons at the ready.

Just west of Camp Gia Le the 82nd Abn. doesn't have a base camp built yet. Just a few bunkers. We start getting mortared one afternoon, and I'm running my ass off for one of them. Before I make it, a mortar explodes and I'm hit in the chest so hard it knocks the breath out of me. I barely make it to the bunker, and I'm afraid to look. I had been hit so hard with mud and dirt clods, I had deep-purple bruises on my chest. Not one piece of steel touched me.

In the Central Highlands, headed for Ban Me Thuot, I'm in the last gun jeep of the fuel tanker convoy. We have fallen behind with the wrecker, which had stopped to assist a breakdown. The rest of the convoy is about a mile ahead of us. As we're trying to catch up, we take some small arms fire from a tree line on one side of the road. I jump up to return fire with the M-60. The drivers of the wrecker and jeep kick it in the ass, and we clear the ambush. When we're finally able to stop, I see that the spare tire on the rear of the jeep has been hit with 2 rounds. I had been leaning up against it just seconds prior to the ambush.

New Year's Eve, 1968. I'm walking down the stairway off of a commercial jet. It's raining in Biblical proportions. I don't care. My foot touches down on American soil for the first time in 11mos.. The very next day I'm promoted to civilian. Now THAT was a Lucky Day. HAPPY NEW YEAR!