[AT] Thank You Vets

charlie hill charliehill at embarqmail.com
Thu Nov 12 03:35:02 PST 2015


Hi Don,  I live about 35 miles from Lejeune and have worked aboard that
base many times over the years.    I'm not surprised at the living 
conditions.
There wasn't much in this part of the world when I was born in 1950 and
most of what was here was built up during the war.

I had a couple of friends aboard the Enterprise off Vietnam.  One of them 
died
of cancer a few months ago.  He was on her when the N. Koreans captured
our spy ship in the late 60's and took a high speed ride up the coast as we
repositioned assets for that episode.   My thanks go out to your dad and you
and all of our vets for your service.  I was in the draft line but they 
didn't want me.

Charlie

-----Original Message----- 
From: Don
Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2015 9:56 PM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] Thank You Vets

My father joined the Marines in 1938.  He was in the maneuvers in Camp
Lejeune where they used trucks with stove pipes to pretend to be tanks
and bombed with sacks of flower.  My mother said that they lived in a
converted chicken coop.

He was in Perl on December 7 building barracks and was in several
Pacific island invasions including Guam where he was wounded.  He was
one of those who went into caves and in one a suicide with a hand
grenade blew him back out.  He always said he was "Shot in the ass on
Asan Point", one of the invasion beaches.  They sent him home and he
spent the remainder of the war as a drill Sargent at Pendelton.  I
always kidded my mother that I knew what they were doing to celebrate
the end of the war, I was born in March of 1946.

I have looked in one of those caves on Asan Point, glad it was not me
there.  But someone had to do it.  I have also looked up that draw on
Omaha Beach on a nice June day and wandered through the cemetery at the top.

My little taste of war was working on helicopters while ridding a big
boat with an airport on its roof off Viet Nam.

-- 
Don Bowen       --AD0NB--

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