Old pictures of F.O. from 37 years ago

[Forward Observer]

These are all very nice, and like Grgoshi said, have a historical feel about them. BTW, how long were you there?

I was there for a year (December of 68 to December of 69)

I went through ROTC in college, which kept me out of the draft until I got my degree. I got my gold bars on the same day I graduated. I had thoughts of making a career of the service, so I had already volunteered for Vietnam prior to getting my commission.

It wasn't that I wanted to go, but it was about a 95% probability I would been sent anyway, so I thought it would look better on my career record. My first choice as a career branch was Armor, but I ended up getting my second choice of Artillery.

I went to Ft. Sill, Oklahoma artillery school for 4 months, home for a month leave, and then off to Nam. Just about all 2nd Louies got assigned to an artillery battery, but almost all would in turn have to spend the first portion of their tour in the field attached to various infantry units as forward observers.

Once in country, I was assigned to the artillery group of 1st field forces division along with 9 other fresh new artillery lieutenants. I was very lucky because I was one of only 3 of the 10 that survived long enough to make it back to an in-battery position. I think 2 of the other 7 only got wounded and went home early. They might have been the luckiest of us all.

My particular unit was a heavy artillery battery ( two self propelled 8 inch howitzers and two 175MM guns) I don't think the artillery even uses field guns this big any more. I have a bunch of photos of this period in my tour packed away somewhere, but I will have to dig though a bunch of old boxes to find them.

I stayed in the field as an F.O. for almost 8 months. The last 4 months were in various position in the battery--fire direction officer, asst XO, XO, and finally battery commander. I made all those positions through attrition and not due to my skill. Normally a battery commander was a captain, but the three officers above me unluckily got wounded by mortar rounds from the nightly attacks.

For almost a month I was the only commissioned officer in the battery and I had to use non-coms for all the other positions. They finally got some new officers in, and I got relieved just in time to take R & R only three weeks before I was to go home. I got to visit Sydney, Australia for a week--great country and wonderful people.

I went back to the states with about 6 months left of my 2 year active commitment. Unfortunately, I thought state side duty sucked and since Vietnam was such an unpopular war, servicemen were pretty much looked down upon by many civilians. Consequently, there was almost no social life for a single man in the service, and I decided not to re-up when my two years were done.

The whole thing seems a bit like a dream to me now, but being a more mature 24 year old college grad at the time, I think I able to handle the whole thing a lot better than most of the 18 or 19 year old kids that went straight from high school and their parents home to a really confusing and nasty little war.

Sometimes I regret my decision not to stay in the service. I could have traveled the world and been retired in 1990 at 20 years or in 2000 at 30 years. I would only have been only 55 years of age---but then I could be dead too, so one never knows.

Cheers