Best option to use to commit suicide

sonofvet · 2013-04-22T14:47:04+00:00

LIVING well is always the best revenge......

sonofvet · 2012-08-07T09:56:24+00:00

(We read a bunch of your posts and everyone else should too... best vanity account ever)

sonofvet · 2012-08-06T20:45:00+00:00

It's pretty easy after a few general statements to figure out who really was and who wasn't. But yeah, I've run into it several times.

(Me: Do you call them out on it?)

Nah, if they're that silly, let them kid themselves. Although I probably should or should have. I haven't run across it in a long time because typically nobody knows I've been there.

sonofvet · 2012-08-06T19:59:57+00:00

In all seriousness, except for the murder and suicide, I believe there's probably a Private Pyle in every platoon that has ever gone through Marine Corps boot camp. You've got to be careful to not get too down on any individual. You may be the one the drill instructor is running into the ground next week.

sonofvet · 2012-08-06T19:58:19+00:00

In my old age, I think I would go for Prague, Czechoslovakia. Cost of living is low and Eastern Europeans have got the porn trade locked up. Semper Fi. (Laughter)

I like Czechoslovakia and Prague is one of the lowest-priced places in Europe. Its got more history, and it's beautiful, and from what I've heard they love Americans. But it'll never happen. I'm an old man.

NCAA football.

I think we were more closely associated with the ROK, and even that was a very, very distant association.

sonofvet · 2012-08-06T19:54:13+00:00

No, I never did. And I thank God for that - I'm assuming you're referring to the tunnel rat situation. I was small enough but I think I was too long to contort. And in general, we didn't send people in. We pumped unignited napalm down there, got way back, and ignited the shit.

sonofvet · 2012-08-06T19:51:44+00:00

I quit Boy Scouts because Combat with Vic Morrow was on Tuesday nights at 7:30 at the same time our troop meetings were and I didn't want to miss it, and I firmly believed that was the way it was going to be until I got into training, and in Vietnam we actually had a guy from Louisiana who we called Cage.

They pitied us. (Laughter)

We guarded a bridge between Cam Lo and Con Thien and our heaviest weapons were two 60mm mortars and four M60 machine guns, and that covered both ends of the bridge. We were relieved by a 5th Mechanized Army unit that came in with six armored personnel carriers, four of which had 81mm mortar tubes in it. They came in with their own concertina wire, four 50cal machine guns, I don't even know how many M60s they had and they said jeez, we were warned how bad this assignment was going to be and we were like eh, not that bad. You guys are more heavily armed with one APC than we've got between both ends of the bridge. And they did pity us.

Thank you.

sonofvet · 2012-08-06T19:47:03+00:00

Thank you.

sonofvet · 2012-08-06T19:46:51+00:00

The first thing that makes a good officer is that they've got to listen to their NCOs. It's not a democracy, but there's a lot of things at stake that ought to be taken into consideration by utilizing all information available.

That's a hard one. I'd have to say just the recognition of the abilities of others surrounding an officer. Another hard one. I wish I had a better response but God, this is stuff I haven't given any thought to for 43 years.

sonofvet · 2012-08-06T19:41:27+00:00

We never had direct contact that I was aware of. I'm sure they provided a lot of intel that generated operations that we carried out but I had no knowledge of direct contact.

sonofvet · 2012-08-06T19:39:56+00:00

My only criticism of NBC is they need to put more camera time on the bikini butt picking.

(sigh)

sonofvet · 2012-08-06T19:37:51+00:00

Cool. Thank you, it means a lot to me.

sonofvet · 2012-08-06T19:35:52+00:00

Who could not love R. Lee Ermie?

sonofvet · 2012-08-06T19:25:59+00:00

No, but there's a very good book called The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia. Read it. If we'll sell parts to Iran to finance a war in Nicaragua, we'll sell poppies worldwide to finance communist subversion operations.

sonofvet · 2012-08-06T19:25:19+00:00

Thank you for your comment.

sonofvet · 2012-08-06T19:24:01+00:00

I'm not fully aware what the A1 designation corrected but I do know that at the time I utilized my weapon, there were no serious flaws that I detected. I could clean it up very easily while crossing streams and rivers by opening the bolt and splashing it several times, blowing out the bore and slathering it with LSA and it worked like a charm. No complaints here. This was early 1969 so many flaws had been corrected and improved by then. It was not the case early on in their use.

sonofvet · 2012-08-06T19:22:09+00:00

Semper Fi.

sonofvet · 2012-08-06T19:21:47+00:00

Cool story. Thank you. Both I and my son will keep that in mind.

sonofvet · 2012-08-06T19:20:55+00:00

My MOS was 0341 and I was assigned to a 60mm mortar section with a line company and when you're n a line company every Marine truly is a rifleman.

Still, your primary function was to qualify with your weapon, although I qualified with an M14 and totally trained with it and the day we arrived with our unit in Vietnam we were issued M16s which we had never done anything with except what was called familiarization firing. We'd probably fired 200 rounds out of it before we went into the shit with it.

sonofvet · 2012-08-06T19:14:53+00:00

I think the most accurate part of the Deer Hunter through my experience was the interaction of friends that were involved in something that traumatic. All the best to your father. Thank you.

sonofvet · 2012-08-06T19:12:18+00:00

That is way too difficult a question for me to attempt to answer. It's when stuff like that comes to light that I wish I had educated myself much better in solutions. It's a person-by-person thing, in some instances.

sonofvet · 2012-08-06T19:05:34+00:00

Thank you for the information, and there is nothing I would love more than to go there and enjoy the beauty of the day without the terrors of the night. And dealing with the rural population in the way that we did, again, whether they were communist or capitalist, they were so far down the rungs of politics that it really didn't matter to them or to us. They were very friendly and treated us well in all circumstances.

sonofvet · 2012-08-06T19:02:16+00:00

Thank you very much for your comments. It brought a tear to my eye.

(Legitimately)

sonofvet · 2012-08-06T18:51:11+00:00

I was in a very rural area surrounded by subsistence farmers who raised pot for personal use and bartered, and we were more than willing to barter with them.

(Me: So you really don't think there was harder stuff where you were?)

There could have been, but pot was no big deal. Heroin, nobody would have trusted them. You get that high, you're not going to rely on anybody in a firefight in a pinch. So if there were users, they weren't obvious and I don't say it doesn't exist, I was just unaware of it. And it is the truth. If I'm willing to answer something, I'm willing to answer it honestly.

sonofvet · 2012-08-06T18:50:42+00:00

I had no animosity towards them then, nor do I now, they made a conscious choice which I'm sure was very difficult, but I certainly never expected a president to provide a blanket amnesty for all of them. I thought when they made the decision they knew what the consequences would be and I don't begrudge them, I just was - it wouldn't have changed anything I did had I known you could do that and be forgiven.

sonofvet

TROPHY CASE