1/35 M114A1 155mm Howitzer in Viet Nam, 9-15-13, Details

[Leon]

Nice to see you back Mike and good to see your making a little progress on this .I'm still in till the finally.

[redleg12]

Luigi - Thanks for the peek.

Mack - The good part is you are here now. As for being a light weight, we are all always learning something!

Dicky - Thanks for the welcome back. Hoping to get back into the forum. Looking forward to the base and creating the firebase section with the ammunition bunker.

Leon - Thanks, I hope to be moving through to the endpoint now.

Rounds Complete!!

[deafpanzer]

Great having you back Mike!

[iking.]

nice build comrade! you doing it with a base/vignette? cheers!

iking

[redleg12]

Andy - Thanks, it is always good to be back with friends.

King - I always put a base under my models. Since I build many howitzers, I usually set up the firing position. In this case most of the M114 in VN were on firebases so the more permanent look with an ammo bunker and the 6400 mil (360 degree) spade trench. Thanks for stopping in and for the comments. Look forward to seeing you again.

Rounds Complete!!

[dupes]

Ooooh, arty! Should be cool.

[sturmbird]

just watched a video of a CA flying over an LZ with typical parapits from out our way a few minutes ago. Theirs were simple full sandbag construction like we used on Gator. If you do that type I figure your good for a minimum of 500 sand bags! This leads me into something I kinda discovered by accident. Air hardening art clay! You can buy it at Hobby Lobby, and a tub will do a lot of sand bags (probably a thousand). It's even the right color! But remember they also shipped sandbags in an olive and a purple color as well as generic grey.

For those that don't know. The center of the parapit must be about one foot higher than the area where the spades contact the wood logs. Otherwise you stand a good chance of the gun jumping out of the pit under heavy recoil (learned the hard way). The area the gun sets on will be fairly flat and level with the earth. Some units went so far as to lay wooden planks under the gun in that area (we didn't as we moved too often). 105's can get by shooting with the spades in hard clay, but a 155 must have somekind of a backup behind the spades (we used 12"x12" oak logs sunk into the ground). But have also used 12"x16" ones (better). Then there will almost always be some smaller wood blocks to go between the spades and the logs to prevent the gun from shifting much during the first two or three rounds. Alot of times when a small group (two or three guns) were sent on an op they only dug in the howitzers to soot in a 45 degree arc, and other times they would all be facing different directions (bad idea). 105's did this a lot, but dosn't do so well in bigger guns.

think my first 155 is going to be a Korean War unit that was manned by an all Black battalion. Reason being is that I have a Korean War 155 right down the road from me, and everytime see the photos I want to do that one.
gary

[bbd468]

Nice Work so far Mike, Looking forward to see that bad boy sittin on the base in fireing position.

[Leon]

Agree with Gary mike

[redleg12]

Marc - Thanks for the peek. Give my best to Mia & congrats

Gary - You and I are on the same wave length. I am going to have wood under the center area. Scale size bottoms from the 155 projo pallets, made from....wood...balsa wood. I also plan to have the wood blocks behind the spades again made from...wood. As for the sand bags, that is exactly what I use. I love the air dry clay. I form the bag and then rub some water on the top and press on some fiberglass cloth. Let it dry for a minute or two and then remove the cloth. It leaves the fine cloth imprint on the clay which gives the bag some texture.

I will be using 105mm ammo crates for the posts for the ammo bin. Ammo boxes and 55 gallon drums for the back. I will start casting up some of those parts soon. I only intend to have two sections, one with powder cans the other with HE projos and a few WP, almost all fused.

More ideas to come as I keep going thru pictures.

BBD - Thanks for the peek and glad to have you along for the fire mission

Leon - Gary is good to agree with!! He lived the firebase with this pig. As I work on this build I constantly think of him. Thanks for stopping by and for the comments.

Rounds Complete!!

[sturmbird]

I slept with that pig for a week shy of 15 months. Went thru three howitzers, and I hate to think about how many garden spots I visited along the way. We lost the middle gun to a direct hit from a 122 rocket (cluster of five of them), and ended up with a crew of three very young men. The first gun I simply rotated off of to the middle gun. Rumor has it that the last gun was spiked (have not confirmed it)around March first 69. Be sad as that tube was nearly new when we got it. There was fourth gun in between the one that was CBL'd and the almost new one. But we didn't have it for 48 hours, and it was junk from the start. We lost five good kids that night, when we lost Badnews One. When we finally got a shootable pig, we couldn't shoot it in fire missions because we didn't have a crew. The First Sargent and a couple guys he snatched would come over and help us shoot short missions, and often drink a couple beers with us when it was all said and done. In about two weeks we had a crew of five that were capable of manning the gun, and we shot that way for about another six weeks. Then we got three guys as replacements. Two were useless and the other turned out well. Then two of the guys rotated home. I was begining to have short timer's parties on a regular basis about that time

I've seen fire bases that had 155's on them in all sorts of shapes. Jump Battery's often didn't build walled parapits, but did dig in the area for the spades to dig in, and usually backed that up with oak logs. It was not uncommon to see a howitzer in a jump battery to be stripped of it's shields and just about anything else that wasn't used to shoot it. But if you planned on being there for three weeks or longer you built walls for your own saftey. I've seen walls built with nothing but sandbags (usually clay filled), and 105 ammo boxes and sandbags. Even white bag powder canisters and sandbags were not uncommon (powder canisters would be filled with sand at another location if you were on a mountain top). The guy who took care of the projos and powder usually dictated what the ammo bunkers would look like. I liked mine to be tall enough that I wouldn't bust my head at two in the morning. The top of it had a bottom layer of canvas (usually the tarp off a five ton truck) with about to five layers of clay filled sandbags. Often we would put a layer of corregated sheet metal ontop of all that (spaced about six inches above the last layerof sandbags) if we could get our hads on it. This would cause a PD fuse on a mortar round to go off as it went into the metal. Beats laying a new layer of sandbags! But even in my unit, every bunker was built differently.

Most folks never knew it, but they never used radios on the guns! Everything was via buried land line. No radio jamming for us! The further west you went the worse the jamming was. Plus we didn't need to be on the fire push anyway. We used nothing but generic milspec field telephones

Back in the base camps we often had five ton trucks and a couple duce and a halfs, but on a mountain top we had nothing with wheels except howitzers. No room for them anyway. Ammo resupply would be dumped on the ground right next to the pig via CH46, and often we simply shot off that pile of projos and powder canisters. In the base camp we had an ammo crew for resupply, but they never stepped foot inside a bunker (I wouldn't have it!) When I restocked what we shot, I was the one that said where it went, and the section chief kept his distance (he was a dud anyway). WP and illumination rounds were shipped by themselves, because they actually were kinda fragile. These were often brought out slung under a slick. (rarely got more than three dozen rounds at a time). Fuses were also shipped out seperatly in case the chopper went down (happens more often than you think)

You never got to pick whatkind of weather you had to shoot in! I've shot in hard rain and very dry full moon nights. At two in the morning you get the call for a battery arrest, and half the crew will be in their underware (I've shot naked except for a helmet and boots in the rain). Only the guys back on Highway One got to pick what they wore when they shot. Usually we just had pants and maybe a tee shirt. My Mother used to send over black ones, and I split the two packages with the rest of the guys. NO flak jackets while shooting the howitzer! When it got cooler we would usually wear a jungle fatigue top over the tee shirts unless everything we had was wet (often). When you were on the H&I gun you got to pick what you wore. But that was usually a pair of pants and the tee shits. When you were the H&I gun, things were kinda layed back, and there wasn't much of a reason to get in a big hurry as they'd just make you shoot all the targets all over again. Most guys that do arty dios have the crews way overdressed!

At my last base camp, we often shot rounds in the 2000 to 4000 yard range. I liked doing that as I could see the rounds hit, but thinking about it, that was also kinda scarey. We had zero infantry close by, and that was case more often than not! I've shot from 300 yards (maybe less) to the max range, and you simply don't get to pick your targets. I came to realize that WP with a second and a half on the fuse was not good for my health! (done that one more often than I care to think about)

But it wasn't all a hard core game of combat. A select few of us would often tie on a good drunk, and really cause the Chief of Smoke a lot of grief! We even had the First Shirt down there with us on more than a few occassions! The Doughnut Dollies actually came out once or twice, and then refused to come out again (I won't tell you why). No press corp out our way, but we did have a photogragher show up once for about forty minutes. Then we got mortared, and never saw him again! Chaplin came out two or three times in the nine months we used that place to operate out of. But it was our home, and we just got used to it. Just made the best of it. Some places we went were much worse, and some were like a vacation spot.Just one big adventure!
gary

[redleg12]

Gary - Always love hearing the stories. Totally agree with over dressed crew. No matter what the war, you never had any equipment on except a brain bucket. Now...Killer Junior with WP...never thought of that but that requires a crew with big primers!!

The one thing I have found sifting through a bunch of pictures there are no two positions the same. There are no two ammunition bunkers the same.

As always my brother, thanks for opening up with your memories.

Rounds Complete!!

[sturmbird]

Jun 13, 2013 18:50:32 GMT -5 redleg12 said:

Gary - Always love hearing the stories. Totally agree with over dressed crew. No matter what the war, you never had any equipment on except a brain bucket. Now...Killer Junior with WP...never thought of that but that requires a crew with big primers!!

The one thing I have found sifting through a bunch of pictures there are no two positions the same. There are no two ammunition bunkers the same.

As always my brother, thanks for opening up with your memories.

Rounds Complete!!

they confiscated most of my good photos at Ft. Lewis (why?). But just use your imagination for the bunkers, and you'll do well. Do keep in mind that it's a tradition in arty units to use a name that starts with the company letter (I was in Bravo, so we always named our guns with a letter B). Otherwise just about anything goes. When we lost "Bad News" to a badly warped carriage, we thought about naming the new piece Bad News II. But our heart was not in it anymore. Used the name "Beach Wood four five six" after the song for a couple weeks. Then Randy and I got drunk one night, and decided it was time to remodle. The new kid that turned out well (from El Paso by the way)had very good artistic talent, and we had him draw a picture of Yosemte Sam on the shield right in front of the gunner. I then painted it with all sorts of paint I scrounged up here and there. Named the gun "Big Boy Pete". The Chief of Smoke hated it, but Top loved it! We Win!!! A couple days later the Colonel drops in and wants to know why all the guns are not painted up like that? We had a sign painted up, and mounted over the projo bunker that also caught a lot of attention. It said " there's four things you don't do:
1. Step on Superman's cape
2. draw swords with zorro
3. P#@s in the wind
4. F%^& with the first section!"

Our bunkers (ammo) were built like post & beam style. The powder canister racks were actually made from the old shipping crates they came in. Samething for the projo pallots. Fuses were always kept in a seperate place (we used a sheet metal culvert with a couple layers of sand bags ontop). Looking back that was a complete waste of energy, as we always had a minimum of 200 rounds fused up with PD fuses in the bunker alone. Contact lots were never fused, as we usually used the 565 timed fuse with them. WP and ILL. rounds were stored seperatly for saftey reasons alone. There would also be several pallots with projos spaced at 90 degree intervals around the parapit. These pallots would have about fifty to sixty rounds a piece. Cofram (firecracker) was also housed seperatly due to the fact that the round looked identical to an HE round in the dark (remember serious combat starts at midnight).

We always placed green bag powder canisters painted red at layed out intervals (think we had six or eight) to help in shifting the gun. Some guns painted them white and others yellow, but just about everybody did this. Nothing super accurate about them, but it made life easier. I even saw them painted up like a barber pole and also a candy stick. Once again use your imagination, but don't use exotic colors as most everything was light blue, red, or yellow and of course white.

In late 1967 and very early 1968 the rounds were shipped differently than we would normally think of. Pallots were the same, but we were still shooting projo lots made in the mid 1940's!!! Course after Tet we kinda ended that issue after shooting out the ammo dump in five major locations. The older lots didn't come with the nylon wiper ring near the driving band. Plus they were not shipped with the sheet metal guard around the driving band. Keep that in mind when looking at a particular era. When shooting H&I's, there would be those sheet metal rings laying all over the place to trip on! You'd think some resin caster would be making a zillion of them!
gary

[sturmbird]

I'm wanting to do a Korean war gun emplacement similar to one I have a photo of. Lots and lots of black dirt involved in that one. I'll probably do three Vietnam era guns as well. Probably will do Bad News Three on LZ Gator during Tet in 68. It's an interesting piece, and the crew still holds the U.S. military "hip shoot" record to this very day at three minutes and forty nine seconds. Then I might just tackle "Big Boy Pete" out at Thien Phouc. I also have a couple photos somewhwre of a 155 from a jump battery that is stripped, and has just been dropped into a parapit.
gary

[Deleted]

I have just read back through this entire thread,and I can only say again,what has been said before on this Forum......There is NO SUBSTITUTE for life experience of the various equipments being portrayed in these here threads.
My Hat is well and truly doffed,to all you guys who served in serious combat zones!!!! (Heck,I did one 4 month tour in Northern Ireland )

[redleg12]

Mick - I will be casting up a bunch of rounds....and powder for this one. Thanks for the peek and following along

Chris - Thanks for stopping in. Gary definitely humped a ton of rounds in the jungle. This is a build that reminds me of Gary at every turn.

Gary - Keep it coming...I love it!

Rounds Complete!!

[redleg12]

Back again. Finished up the trails by adding the brake lines, scratch PE holders for staffs and the tow pintle and trail lock assembly. The trails were then assembled to the lower carriage assembly and the spades added to the trails. At this point I primed the lower assembly with Vallejo OD primer.



The upper carriage halves and the barrel assembly were put together. After sealing the seam on the two halves of the upper carriage, this upper section was primed with Vallejo OD primer.



Parts that will need metallic finishes were primed in Tamiya Flat Black. These parts include the internals of the breech, equilibrator piston and stay rods, and the barrel. After drying they were all painted with Alclad Dark Aluminum except the barrel which I painted with Alclad Pale Burnt Metal. Here is the barrel and breech screw.



I also continued work on the base, sealing the Styrofoam with Celuclay tinted with a cheap Dark Sienna acrylic. Inside the spade trench the walls were covered with a strip cut from and old file cover and glued on. Then the edges were sealed with Celuclay. Once all the Celuclay dried, I primed the base with a thin coat of PolyScale US Earth. That is drying as I write so will have a picture next update.

That’s it for now
As always if you have any comments, please feel free to drop in.

Rounds Complete!!

[wbill76]

Hope you had a great Father's Day at the bench Mike! Looks like some nice progress, paint work is smooth and easy as always. Got to love the look on that barrel.

[Leon]

Great update Mike.Nice work on the carriage and that barrel looks sweet.

[redleg12]

Bill - thanks and yes. The key to the barrel is not the metallic finish but the oily/ grease residue look. That is coming soon. But overall the pic had the distinctive metal barrel!!

Leon - Thanks for stopping by and for the comments.

Rounds Complete!!

[TRM]

Very nice clean paint work there Mike!!

[sturmbird]

Jun 17, 2013 5:52:50 GMT -5 redleg12 said:

Bill - thanks and yes. The key to the barrel is not the metallic finish but the oily/ grease residue look. That is coming soon. But overall the pic had the distinctive metal barrel!!

Leon - Thanks for stopping by and for the comments.

Rounds Complete!!

The barrel O.D. is actually a very smooth hard chromed ground finish. Made to fit very tightly inside a bearing. But left alone, it will soon rust. The powder used is somewhat nasty, but is not black powder like some folks think it is. It's actually something like nitro cellulous, or nitro cotten. It will leave a black residue out on the barrel that sorta looks like soot, but not a heavy coating. We always kept a tub of grease to coat the barrel with. Most of the time it was a green color, but have used a brown and a red before. After a couple zone sweeps there is little if any grease left on the barrel, as it is wiped away and also melts off the barrel. Normally the entire barrel is owned by the AG, but that don't mean that your sorry butt won't get to clean the breech or coat it with grease. As a rule the AG will clean the breech and the firing lock (this is very important! and I'll touch back on this little gem later). Might add here that there are two basicly the same breeches used on the 155 howitzer. They are identical, except one is hard chromed. The only visual difference is the color of the bare threads and mushrum head. The early one (prior to Jan. 1968)was just bare steel and was a little darker in color. The later one was a much lighter silver color. The inside of the breech is surgically clean! Cleaned every morning, and sometimes had to be cleaned twice a day. Contrary to popular belief, the only time we ran a bore brush thru the barrel was with a brand new one! The rifeling just dosn't get dirty on a 155.

Firing locks! Most of us here have no idea what it is, and where it's at. It's a small contraption the goes into the breech from the outside. This has the lanyard connected to it. If you pose the pig in a traveling mode, leave the firing lock off the gun!! Make a rag up to stff in the hole. This is done for security reasons alone. You can't shoot the gun without it. The firing lock is a personal possession of the AG, and many of them won't even let you touch it! Even if I cleaned the breech for Randy, he'd clean up the firing lock himself. I have cleaned it several times, but as best I can remember I'm the only guy that ever did, other than Randy. When the guns were slung under a CH46 and on the way, The firing lock would ride in a seperate chopper, and he'd have it in his right pants pocket with about thirty primers in the next pocket down. The lanyard on a pig is most adapted to fit the end user's wants and cares. Randy and I prefered a short one of about 18" to 24" max (yes I did AG, but hated the position). There is a small wooden knob on the end that looks like an acorn. Everybody learned to clean the breech and firing lock, wether they held that position or not. Just a part of cross training. When Randy got shot up I ended up being the AG for about three agonizing weeks.

I saw 155 howitzer barrels so hot during Tet in 68 that they actually glowed in the dark! Probably dangerous to shoot as well, but we didn't know. The first night of Tet we shot every round on the LZ, and were down to about 25 rounds a tube after emptying the ammo dump. There hundreds and hundreds of empty powder canisters everywhere, but the ones in the bunkers were left alone, but still empty. Samething can be said about nose plugs and fuse cans. Just looked like a trash dump! The three guns north of us were under a probe that had lasted several hours, and we shot up the area to their south all night long (they had NVA inside the wire on more than one occassion). They had a 105 unit covering their westside and the north side. The one other gun was shooting one fire mission right after another to the south, and actually did run out of ammo. While this was happening Chu Lai was burning. I mean really burning! They hit the POL, Napalm dump, and the iron bomb dump, and stuff was going off for the next 48 hours. I was on an LP that night, and had a grandstand seat. About seven in the morning we saw more gunships than I ever knew existed rolling up and down Highway one. We must have gotten eight ammo shipments alone that day! By noon we were shooting again. Just before last light we did another ammo resupply to get us thru the night (lots of WP and ilumination rounds this time). The poor ammo section worked their buns off 24/7, and also came around picking up the trash in the morning. During that time period we were cleaning the breech twice a day in record time.
gary

[Deleted]

Gary....with all the memories you're putting into this thread,have you thought of writing a book about your tour/tours?..There must be really good memories of pals etc,as well as the more harrowing stuff!!

[sturmbird]

Jun 17, 2013 14:25:54 GMT -5 @chrisb said:

Gary....with all the memories you're putting into this thread,have you thought of writing a book about your tour/tours?..There must be really good memories of pals etc,as well as the more harrowing stuff!!

the guys want me to from my company. reason why is that I'm the guy I bridges the gap from the old guys (who they never knew) and the new guys and the really new guys. Most of my tour just zipped by like it was maybe three months long. Plus there are a hand full of important things to add in a book, that would probably get the knock on the front door. Believe it or not, a lot stuff in Vietnam is still classified to this very day. Now to write about people with their names changed is another story (some would want to shoot me otherwise). Still if I wrote a book, it'd be in a light hearted mode without much blood and guts. I'm done with that part of my life, and even what I tell you guys here is the lighter stuff most of the time. Some of it would be fairly scarey to me anyway. Sometime I'll tell you guys about the bathtub incident (right out of MASH!), or the series of rat incidents that almost brought the war to a halt! And maybe even the giant flash bulb incident (I think I once told Redleg about that one). But nobody was getting shot up and killed over them.

Kieth Nolan has written several books about my AO already, and they still give me a good laugh to this very day. His book Search & Destroy is a good poster child for being out of touch! Even so far as to calling out the wrong units, and putting them in places they never went to. That book should have been about B Troop, and not Alpha. Sappers In The Wire is crap on a good day! But it's very close to home like Search & Destroy. His stuff about the Hiep Duc Ridge is pretty good, but also kinda white washed (my base camp was at the base of the south end of that ridge). Sappers in the Wire is one ridge line due south of A102 (Thien Phouc). The arty unit was Charlie Battery from my old batallion. He basicly calls them out as pot heads and drunks. What an insult to what was known as one of the crack arty units in the whole country. And even then he gets the chain of events completely wrong from my sources who were there! Nolan always relied on third and fourth hand stats that often are altered to make themselves out as God. Nolan's best book was Hundred Miles Of Bad Road, and I doubt Birdwell would let him pull off any crap. I got to see the new Ripcord book last Friday night for a sneek preview. This book ought to make some folks roll over in their graves! Should have been written a long time ago! But as bad as this is, my favorite blunder is the General who wrote a book. In one chapter he calls out a major battle close to home, but locates it on the map about 25 klicks to the east! As I said we live in a time of miss information! Thank God we have Robin Olds and Broughton along with Ray Stubbs to get it right.

Good day in the Que Son Valley tonight
gary

[redleg12]

TRM - Thanks for the peek and for the comments, trust me we will get dirty soon!

Chris - Thanks for stopping by

Dicky - Thanks on the model side. My brother Gary is making this blog an excellent history and artillery lesson.

Gary - Thanks my friend...remember the good and remembering our brothers

Rounds Complete!!

[Tobi]

Gary, information and desinformation always have been the worst weapons, from the very beginning of mankind. And whoever controls them is the true master.

Your memories are great reading stuff, thanks for sharing. Through them this thread is like a superior version of history channel!
 
I have always been both fascinated and shocked at the same time by this war (I was born '77).
A little bit like watching a shark. No one can imagine or will ever understand if he hasn't been there...

Greetings,
Tobi

[redleg12]

Tobi - Yep, I totally understand what you are saying. Each generation has this feelings with history. I have the similar experience when listening to stories from WWII. Thanks for the comments, I know Gary appreciates them.

Rounds Complete!!

[sturmbird]

any of you guys wanting to do an early 155 howitzer, let me know as I have a Korean War vintage pig parked just up the road from me. They have a few differences in the carriage. I also have access to an M1918 howitzer if somebody would just do a kit. (they used them as late as 1942 in the Philippenes.
gary

[sturmbird]

Jun 18, 2013 1:38:49 GMT -5 Tobi said:

Gary, information and desinformation always have been the worst weapons, from the very beginning of mankind. And whoever controls them is the true master.

Your memories are great reading stuff, thanks for sharing. Through them this thread is like a superior version of history channel!
 
I have always been both fascinated and shocked at the same time by this war (I was born '77).
A little bit like watching a shark. No one can imagine or will ever understand if he hasn't been there...

Greetings,
Tobi

I covered a lot of square miles in my tour, and met a lot of people. Most I can't possibly remember their names. Some I remember quite well, but their names are prohibited. Was deeply involved in two Tet offensives (well a good part of the second to be fair). I did the "post 68 Tet" push deep into the west that few had ever stepped foot into. That was my first push into the Que Son Valley. Prior to that I did the double strike down south into the areas around Quang Nghai, and south to a little north of Duc Pho. That was the first place I shot WP with a second and a half on the fuse, if it matters much. Didn't like it down there much, but won't say why on this thread. Furthest north I went was in the Da Nang area, but did do a couple strikes further north by air (failures!) I never went into the Ashau Valley, but did a CA to a hill top that was untenable and unuasable as well just to the south (in support of the 101st). I still remember looking into that place like it was yesterday (probably three klicks south), and bailing out of there under fire. Tough place! I did a whole series of hill tops along the Lao border, and none were friendly. (that's also where I saw tigers & elephants) From there we setup shop at A102, and just getting there became a major undertaking (they made us go by road which was beyond stupid). Then we simply operated out of A102 in three gun elements (always leaving three behind). January 69 was my last op with the 101st, and that ended up be nothing. We were them subleted to the 196th Infantry to aid their assualt on the northern area of the Hiep Duc and Hau Duc area. Those guys were tough as nails! And trust me that AO was a tough as it got! That OP lasted 29 days, and almost half of us had walking pneumonia. Was glad to get back home and get warm again. Then it was the 69 Tet Offensive. That one was very tough. We (A102) were surrounded by three full strength NVA Divisions. We had NVA inside the wire every night, and had virtually zero infantry support (they couldn't get to us). That one went on till week two of June! I got out of there at the end of week Two. That was another time I shot WP with a second on the time suse and the lowest charge available (they wouldn't give us beehive rounds).

Several years back I had a guy rag me about my comments, and I took it personally. Maybe I should have laughed him off! But my last post on that thread was an offer to compair resumes line for line. I'm not ashamed of my resume, but also don't like what they did to me. Made me grow up way too fast, and left a lot of bad thoughts. I never held the fact that they sent me into the dragon's lair much. It was just part of life. But I look back, and the issues like the beehive rounds would maybe have made things a whole lot better. Or maybe the grand idea of sending an indipendedent arty battery into some place on the Lao border without a platoon of infantry was just plain stupid. Had we been attached to the 196th or 101st, trust me we'd never been alone. Ten year or so ago, I found out that the bug spray they sprayed over us was Agent Orange! I'd have never known if it were not for some guys out of Alpha Troop 1st/1st Cav. I'll never forgive them for that! Now back the the first cuple sentences. I never claimed to be an expert, and never claim to have done it all. But trust me, I've done more than my share. Much of it I'd forgotten till my old First Sargent and a couple others pointed this out to me. I just like to remember the light hearted stuff, and bury the cold stuff even deeper

I might add here that I was not ever trained to be on a 155 howitzer even though I did hold the MOS. I was trained to shoot 175 guns and 8" howitzers (M107 and M110's). Knew little about them and most all my training was from battle hardened folks. My orders were for a unit up near Camp Carrol, and they simply tossed them in a garbage can in Chu Lai. Major waste of money!

gary

[Deleted]

Gary,whilst some of the fellas here may be familiar with the terminology you're using,some of the non Military guys may not,as Acronyms are prone to changes over time.Any chance you could throw up a short Glossary of some of your abbreviations,Acronyms etc..?,for future members references?