ROTC terror exercise waged in the hills of Santa Clarita

Acacophony of gun­shots echoed through the hills of Santa Clarita as soldiers battled it out — armed with paintball guns.

But it wasn’t just a game.

“On campus, we run through the drills that they’re doing right now on the field. But here, we add the paintball guns to it and we find that it adds an extra element of realism to it all,” said Major Vic Stephenson, who oversees the ROTC programs at Cal State Long Beach and UC Irvine. Continue reading →

Funny True Story from Vietnam SOG teams

I was reading a book on SOG teams in Vietnam and came across a real jewel of a funny story. It stood out for me because there really are only a few of these light hearted moments in a sea of sorrow for the men of SOG, whose casualty rates were exceedingly high.

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The story begins upon insertion into Cambodia to seek out and pinpoint a major supply base known (which means “thought”) to be in the area. The one-zero (team leader) inserts and leads men in a five day search of the area but finds absolutely nothing. Extremely frustrated at the waste of time they come across a single hooch with a brand new bicycle next to it. Now in Vietnam, the bicycle was and still is as common as the car in modern day US but to find a brand new one with a nice red paintjob was rare indeed! Continue reading →

The first picture and the last picture are taken at the beach in Santa Barbara right next to the Pier. There is a veterans group that started putting a cross and candle for every death in Iraq and Afghanistan. The amazing thing is that they only do it on the weekends.

They put up this graveyard and take it down every weekend. Guys sleep in the sand next to it and keep watch over it at night so nobody messes with it. Every cross has the name, rank and D.O.B. and D.O.D. on it.  Very moving, very powerful. So many young volunteers. So many 30 to 40 year olds as well.

Amazing!

A big Hoo-Rah and thanks to Bill French for sending this information.

The Ho Chi Minh Trail is arguably one of the greatest feats of military engineering in history, a Goliath of ingenuity and bloody determination. At its peak this 20,000km transport network spread like a spider’s web through Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, an indestructible labyrinth through which the North Vietnamese fed the war in the South.

Without the trail, there could have been no war, a fact the Americans knew only too well. In a sustained eight-year campaign to destroy it they flew 580,000 bombing missions, dropped more than two million tons of ordnance on neutral Laos, denuded the jungle with chemicals, and seeded clouds to induce rain and floods. At one point Nixon even mooted the notion of deploying nuclear weapons. Continue reading →

US Infantrymen (grunts) carried either a rifle (M-16), or a machine gun (M-60, belt fed), or an M-79 grenade launcher. If the grunt was a radio operator (RTO-Radio Telephone Operator) he also carried a radio ON HIS BACK.

Medics, (whom may or may not have been authorized to carry arms, usually carried an M-16 or a .45 pistol).

Straight leg infantry (grunts) were issued back packs (RUCK sacks) with round edged aluminum frames. Airmobile and Airborne grunts could be issued those packs too. Mechanized Infantrymen were not issued RUCK sacks or bayonets, if they were; they were turned in later in the war.

All straight leg grunts carried an average of about 6 (1 qt) green plastic canteens attached to their rucks and at least 1 metal canteen cup which was used for either heating food or water. Straight leggers also carried 3 to 6 or more hand grenades and a maybe a bayonet. Plus 100 or 200 rounds of machinegun ammo, and two to four bandoliers of M-16 ammo (seven M-16 magazine pockets to the bandolier, each magazine normally loaded with only 18 rounds of 5.56mm; capacity was 20 rounds, but to preserve the magazine’s spring it was compressed with only18 rounds). All of these items were carried in the extreme humidity, thru knee deep mud, and up jungle strewn hill tops. Continue reading →

Once A Soldier, Always A Soldier

Old soldiers never die, they just fade away – General Douglas MacArthur