In reply to:
Looking at Jack's picture just makes me wonder how surreal that whole experience must have been. Did it always feel like a (bad) dream?
Interesting! "Surreal," and "dream" are two terms that I would say applied. Though I got into a few scrapes, and at times the dream was "bad," I, basically, had it pretty soft. The ones who deserve the credit, and our admiration, are the ones (perhaps F107 or cgolf is one of them) who were ground pounders and lived like that photo 24/7)
Keep in mind that the photo was taken the morning after my worst night in Nam. Six hours after that photo was taken, I was sound asleep in my bed in my air conditioned hotel room (with refrigerator, and bath) in Saigon, which I shared with two other guys. Most of the time I looked like this:
I was on an Army Department of Defense Motion Picture News Team. We were required to shoot 5 stories per month, and send the raw footage to the DOD, who would edit it into a short new story, and release it to the networks, and other news operations (made the CBS evening news with Walter Cronkite once).
What we would do is spend 3 weeks lolling in air conditioned comfort in Saigon, then hit the boonies shooting all 5 of our stories in one week. When in Saigon, with rare exceptions, it was pretty normal. One of those exceptions was standing on the balcony outside my hotel room (The Plaza Hotel) watching rockets coming in and hit the hotel a half block away. Now that I think about it, that same hotel once had a motorcycle bomb blow off the front of the building. I'm glad I lived in the Plaza, thank you.
When we were in the boonies, it could be quite a different story. When we went into Cambodia, the convoy that went in a half hour before mine was attacked, and the one that came a half hour after was attacked. Whew! One of the fellows on the other Army DOD Mopic team was killed when a 51 caliber machine gun round went through the floor of the helicopter in which his team was riding.
Yes I think "surreal," is a good description.
