A Room With a View
The author of this article, Duke Barrett, is a friend of Pdoggbiker, the owner of the Cherries Writer blog. Very much worth your time to read it. Pdoggbiker was kind enough to consent to my reposting it here.
From the article at Cherries Writer….
Room With a View
“At approximately 3 PM on yet another hot and humid September day, we, the 2nd squad of Delta Co.’s recon platoon of the 1st airborne brigade/8th Cavalry/1st Air Cavalry Division, left the relative security of our firebase and headed down a steep, heavily forested hillside to set up an ambush. The mission…… I mean there had to be a purpose, right? To kill bad guys I guess. As an army Specialist Fourth Class I wasn’t privy to much inside information. The one thing I did know, it was dead on monsoon season and we’d be sleeping out in the rain again.”
You can read the rest of the article here:
https://cherrieswriter.com/2018/09/04/room-with-a-view-guest-post/
If you go to Pdoggbiker’s blog, he’ll appreciate it a lot.
Category: Disposable Warriors, Historical
God loves the Grunts. That’s why he waters them every time they are in the field.
I know what that kind of rain is like.
If you’re down in the cornfields, waiting in a corn crib to get out of the rain, the rain pouring on the roof sounds like the Niagara falls. It is absolutely deafening.
If you get caught out in it, you are soaked to the skin in a bout 45 seconds.
45 seconds? That long? Must have been a light rain.
Not when it was coming in sheets. It was like watching wheat bend in the wind.
Yeah, war sucks.
This kinda story is one reason why I volunteered for the Artillery. Thanks for that link Ex-PH2. Got lost over there for a little while, just poking around. I think some of the posers may have been visiting, some of the stories were almost verbatim to what I had overheard some of those guys spouting. I am still being dragged, kicking & screaming into the 21th century.
They may visit there or other sites that in-country vets put up, but where they miss is the real details. Or they may have a complete set of ‘Tour of Duty’ or ‘China Beach’ and get some of their info from that. Hard to tell at times.
But they do make mistakes that someone who was there wouldn’t make. They get dates wrong, don’t know the layout of the land, don’t know that it snows in the highlands, get ranks wrong – stuff like that.
It will all iron itself out one day.
Yes’um. I usually just kinda listen for a while, let them get wound up or deep into it before popping some foo gas pointy questions. It usually ends quickly with them muttering the old “can’t talk about it”, or hey man we gotta go meet who ever & them. Fun times, gotta have some entertainment in my old age.
Thanks, Ex. It puts one there, right up to the “tasty c-rats and lukewarm water.”
My pleasure, Ed.
Also, if I can ever find anything by or about the River Rats/Brown Water Navy or the Tunnel Rats, I will post it.
I met a guy who had been a tunnel rat. I’m 5’2″. He was an inch shorter than I was, and he said, yes, he was scared shitless all the time.
Brown Water Navy? Post up Kerry’s tales of his abbreviated yet heroic tour in Viet Nam.
You’d have to post under “Fiction” though.
*grin*
The writing absolutely sucks but it’s his story. He can ruin it however he wishes.