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If I'm making a mess, I apologise....but it would take somebody a hell of a lot smarter than I am to figure out how to do this right. I'm trying to respond to a message I got from Roger Dearth, Gene Pianka, Howard Armour and/or all members of 1st MIB(ARS)......Here goes:

=To Roger Dearth, Gene Pianka(?), and ALL=

[|send BillTower a message] Member since Feb 9, 2008 6:18 pm 4 page edits, 7 message posts [|view member profile] || [|BillTower]=[|BillTower]= [|send BillTower a message] Member since Feb 9, 2008 6:18 pm 4 page edits, 7 message posts [|view member profile] I'm as clueless as anybody about how this 'wiki' thing works. One of these days I might have to set aside some time to sit down and actually read all the directions.
 * [[image:http://s.wikispaces.com/i/user_none_lg.jpg width="48" height="48" caption="BillTower" link="http://www.wikispaces.com/user/view/BillTower"]] =[|BillTower]=

Meanwhile, I'm trying to respond to an e-mail I received from Roger (by way of Gene?). It was about 8,000 words, but great fun to read. It brought back a lot of memories even though I wasn't assigned to B Detachment.

First off, I have no idea why the e-mail you tried to send me came back with a reply from someone named 'Sarah', Roger. Just one more cyber-mystery, I guess.

As for your memories about Danang being a kind of holding tank for some of the guys who were sent up to Phu Bai, that's exactly what happened to me and, I think, Frank Hodge. We managed to stretch the day or two we expected to stay in Danang into at least a week or two after we heard all the horror stories about Phu Bai.

They finally flew (or dragged) us up to Phu Bai in that 'Beaver Bomber' they used as a kind of taxi for film and assorted strays like us. When we arrived (during the first week in June) it was still the 45th; and it remained the 45th for quite a while (several months at least) after that. I think most of us still called it the 45th even after the big decision-makers changed the designation. I never got used to calling it "E Detachment"....I still haven't.

Most of the 45th guys I recognized in the photo were already in Phu Bai when Hodge and I got there. Some of them took great pleasure in telling us FNGs how short they were. I remember (I think) getting drunk as a skunk on some bourbon that Gibson or somebody else in the 'Soul Shack' offered me while we were all supposed to be sandbagging the hootches. I'm told I was pretty amusing.

I have fond--albeit sketchy--memories of all the guys in the Soul Shack. There were Gibson, Gary Steeple, 'Rap' Brown, Moore, Willis, and (I think) Robert Presley...and at least one other white guy, from California, we called Woody. After about a week there I became convinced that Lou Rawls and Della Reese were also in residence.

I remember one of the first things I asked was how you could tell the difference between in-coming and out-going artillery. It seemed to me it would be a good idea to know the difference, since there was a constant barrage of artillery fire from a battery that sounded like it was right next door. You could hear the artillery rounds going right over the roof of our hootch. I never did get a straight answer from my hootch-mates, which made for considerable--even constant--stress.

One other abiding memory of my time in Phu Bai was the fact that the sky was almost never dark. The nights were always lit up by flares.

No, Roger, the conditions in Phu Bai were nowhere near the same as in Danang....as you later discovered. It was dust for half a year, then mud for the other half.

We always looked forward to our trips to Danang, which seemed few and far between. The 'Modern Hotel' was no Hilton, but it was a nice change from conditions in Phu Bai's "Camp Hochmuth" where we were surrounded by marines who got a kick out of setting off tear gas grenades near the area around our shower point.

Funny you should mention your run-in with Sgt. Carrington over the cap incident. I'm pretty sure he was the 1st Sgt. in Phu Bai when I arrived. By that time he had apparently developed a "cap fetish"; because I remember him reading me the riot act one time when, for some reason, I was riding in the back of a deuce-and-a-half without my cap on. He could get REAL ugly when he wanted to...and I've always had problems with authority figures.

I spent most of my time in-country doing perimeter guard duty, filling sandbags (or actually just watching the Vietnamese kids fill them) and sharing the typing duties with Will Krach(sp?). Like most of you guys, 12-on 12-off, 7 days a week. I turned out to be fairly useless as an II; and I think they considered me expendable.

Does anybody else remember Dennis Duffy in Repro? He was another guy they pretty much gave up on. Dennis REALLY enjoyed 'smoking'; so he was always pretty 'mellow'. His habit didn't escape the attention of the NCOs and officers; but nobody ever called him on it. They knew, instinctively I guess, that there was nothing to be done about him.

He was looking forward, even more than the rest of us, to getting back to San Francisco. As I recall, he had some kind of a plan to pick up a hollow Buddha doll while on R&R and using it to smuggle out a whole lot of "romilar"(?) he was going to pack into it for his flight back to The World. Nobody ever heard how he made out, as far as I know.

Well, my fingers (and my head) are getting tired out. I don't know how Roger can write as much as he does. I WOULD like to hear from Gene the whole story on Lang Vei being over-run. That must have been scarier than anything I experienced in Phu Bai. I guess Phu Bai really WAS "ALL RIGHT" after all.

Before closing, I talked to Gary Steeple a couple days ago. He sounded good--and as funny as ever--in spite of the recent stroke he suffered and a more recent fall that resulted in a broken hip. He's getting around with a cane (a lesson he learned AFTER falling and breaking his hip). He has all of his faculties (or as many as any of us); although one hand apparently hasn't recovered completely...he needed to put the phone down in order to write. He sounded very enthusiastic about this reunion shin-dig, and I know he's looking forward to seeing all of his old buddies.

I think I must have gotten his phone # from Don; but for any of you guys whose mail got sent to "Sarah", he's in Baltimore at (443) 278-9705.

Now, I'm going to cross my fingers while I hit "Post".

....and if you get this by mistake Sarah....please forward it.

Bill Tower

"The honor of Thermopylae was not the winning or the losing: It was being there." -- Anonymous Posted 4 minutes ago ||

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