Veterans On the Board
Whassup Brother?
Those pictures are the first Sateen Utilities I've seen in a long time!
Nice to have you with us!!
Appreciate the welcome aboard, Master Sergeant! Was glad to finally get an issue of sateens. You should have seen me in boot camp. Stood out like a sore thumb. They didn't have utiilties and boots in my size at MCRD (needed size 15 quadruple wide). So after the jokes about how I needed casters on my knuckles and they'd have to kill a couple cows to get me some boots, they sent me to an old warehouse on base near the rail line and found me some old herringbone utilities that had been returned from Hawaii after sateens came out. The boots only had smooth leather at the toes and heels. Everything in the middle was rough leather. So one of our DIs showed me how to break a Coke bottle and scrape the leather smooth so it could be spit shined.
What's up? Well, I reckon you'll think I'm bug sh*t nuts...... But I have this thing I do at this time each year. Don't sleep. Sit up guarding the house until daybreak with enough firepower within reach to make a good accounting of myself if things go South.
Was up on the hill at Con Thien along the DMZ in the early morning hours of 8 May, '67 when two battalions of NVA tried to overrun our position. Damned near bought the farm. Was medevac'd off the hill after daybreak. Ended up on hospital ship and eventually Stateside. My buddy Robert and a lot of other good men didn't make it. We had maybe 245 men up on the hill altogether if you count the 11th Engineers to our rear and a handful of Army Spec Forces and the 15 Nung they were riding herd on at our right flank where the NVA blew the perimeter wire. We took 154 casualties that day...... 44 KIA and 110 WIA.
Its just a thing I do (sitting up until daybreak on this day each year). Yes, I know its been 51 years. But to me, its as if it were only the other day.
Best regards and Semper Fi,
Harry
Delta 1/4
