You seen the enemy you shots him and vice versa. Does this mean addressing to a crowd? If the enemy was near, we never saw any. As I made my way to the river, I saw a VC guerrilla jump into the water on the other side. At age 55, World War 2 Veterans One out of every 10 Americans who served in Vietnam was a casualty. 1 Gun used to kill Americans? The first man to die in Vietnam was James Davis, in 1961. 1 Gun became my very best friend. The one number that is really important is 56,220 and we all know what that number represents. A soldier or Marine in Vietnam had a 98% chance of survival if he was evacuated within the first hour of being injured the best odds in the history of American warfare up to that time. No. It weighed 24 pounds, was 43.5 inches long and had bipod legs that folded down to stabilize the weapon when firing from a prone position. I was an Artillery Forward Observer 13F20 E-5 at that time. I will always think/say, we had absolutely no reason for being in that place. Videos, Film, Music, and Movies about VN War, Author interview War & Life: Discussions with a Veteran, A Chat Between Three Veterans [live video with author], Lest We Forget Meet the Authors & Book Signing April 4th: Cherries and Donut Dolly, Interview with author John Podlaski in Examiner Magazine, American Heroes Radio interviews author of Cherries A Vietnam War Novel, Cherries Author Interviewed on British Website, U.K. Blogspot posts interviews author, John Podlaski, More Book Reviews and author interviews about Cherries, Les Scates, U.S. Army (Ret.) Name the major nerves that serve the following body areas? Id had a premonition, and asked the LT to let me trade off to become the AG. I was a REMF but Ive heard of 05Cs that were stuck out in the boonies on a firebase. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. The incredibly important role in the U.S. Army is responsible for defending the country through real-life combat. Yes, I made E4 at graduation, that was considered a NCO then. The NVA had wedged a blocking force between our company and Company A, preventing us from advancing any farther. One was holding a carbine. One of them gazed in our direction, lowered his AK 47 assault rifle and fired six shots. The average infantryman in Vietnam saw about 240 days of combat in one year thanks to the mobility of the helicopter. General Vo Nguyen Giap, the designer of the Tet Offensive, is considered by some as ranking with Wellington, Grant, Lee and MacArthur as a great commander. Spent my year in a Recon platoon 2/35th 4th ID. hb```8fB cBLd2>Tb jz1@E; aK6Tmc.Nn"&gn7hj'wm,h d6p4u0`&88:,TMV& y@ b=e>a&^ >{2b`ZHE3psn QZ I was over there twice serving as a Hospital Corpsman with a marine unit. Please do not send samples. Half of the company hopped off the Huey on one side of the river, and the rest exited on the other side. The key may be the word initial since we became more savvy with successive combats and had improved survivability. No. It was just part of the job. I was a point man, M60 Gunner and squad leader. We had one RTO killed because he was too close to a 2ND Lt, same thing happened to another RTO. 91% of Vietnam Veterans say they are glad they served. Company B had seven dead, Grandstaff announced, and I was to take No. In the hands of a well-trained machine gunner, the M60 was a devastating weaponso feared by our opponents that they usually aimed their first shots at the machine gunners, who were often in positions exposed to enemy fire. July 68 to July 69. Your Dad and I had the same job. I, in turn, would take an M16 rifle, which felt like a feather in comparison. According to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (VVMF) there are now officially 58, 318 names on the wall. 1 Gun kept a lot of enemy heads down. We (Americans) had nothing to do with controlling VNAF, according to Lieutenant General (Ret) James F. Hollingsworth, the Commanding General of TRAC at that time. I saw killed and wounded everywhere in our combat operations. Fighters and planes dont make up the Army, thats the Air Force. Five men killed in Vietnam were only 16 years old. During this Census count, the number of Americans falsely claiming to have served in-country is: 13,853,027. So do us all a favor and please learn to be tolerant, intelligent, and active. maybe your question i vauge. As mentioned, who kept track of that in the first place? DeLong was later killed attempting to escape from a North Vietnamese prisoner of war camp in Cambodia. My assistant gunner and my ammo bearer also carried 300 rounds each. If my memory is correct, only the 1st Cab flew wiith doorgunners. Before I became a team leader on ambush and recon I was in command of the scout jeep for the 25th ID resupply convoy from January 1968 to June 15, 1968 and I found the resupply convoys a lot more dangerous because the enemy always knew where it would be and when. V. Victor Renza was sent home after he was wounded on May 18, 1967. endstream endobj startxref 1 Gun more than I did. The average age of the men killed: 23.1 years. A much better approach would be/have been: of all the combat-casualties, what was their 79% had a high school education or better. We ambushed and got ambushed, firebase got attacked who carried what or did what had no bearing. We were probably not too far away on that day. hbbd```b`` ,&Iw sA '#o Of the . David H. McNerney, who assumed command of the company when all of its officers were killed or wounded, was presented with the Medal of Honor in a White House ceremony in September 1968. Amen I was a machine gunner for 7 months 503rd infantry 173rd airborne and you hit the nail right on the head. They were not randomly selected but simply the best at doing it. You just do the best job you can and if you got hit, so be it! E)V_5lu[vC3+"vg2L& First thing we did was, Set up a complete circular perimeter. The body felt as though it weighed considerably more than it looked. It doesnt make any sense statistically/mathematically it is impossible. I never understood why they didnt put M60s on Medevacs (once the VC shot them down) but then, we now know they never intended to win that war in the first place. I was never formally trained as an RTO. The next morning, the blasting could still be, heard. The Indonesians threw the Soviets out in 1966 because of Americas commitment in Vietnam. The other group of aeromedical evacuation were divisional, i.e. _____ 1. They were a great bunch. 1 Gun and I survived our first firefight. They used the callsign MEDIVAC and were armed. No. The trailer for that video can be seen by googling the title, and it might still be sold on Amazon. There were two different groups that flew aeromedical evacuations. Welcome Home Roger. Our 5th night there, the AMMO area started burning / blowing up. What were the life expectancies of soldiers during the Vietnam War? An Hinglish word (Hindi/English). They were great patriots fighting for their families and their homeland. Soon I could take the gun apart and put it back together in the dark. My bud, Price took over as RTO. I was in the AF a Reo in a F4-C. Who had time to worry about the life We were all in our Bunkers, and at the ready with our weapons. Suddenly, I heard my name shouted from the Company B command group. Your email address will not be published. Sgt. I was told to help carry one of the bodies. So I guess I defied the odds. For his actions, he was awarded the Congressional Medal if Honor. If there was anything to this life expectancy of a few minutes then myself and many of my friends that are still alive today would be a long time dead. To an, open area. Got hit inside 15 minutes, first ambush we walked up too. then youd carry an extra 200 rounds of M60 ammo for the machine gunner , plus drag grenades , one smoke grenade plus etc. Over 600 Navy FMF Hospital Corpsmen were killed in Vietnam. Then one hot, sunny day, while walking across rice paddies, we suddenly received small-arms fire from Viet Cong in some distant hills. The fact that PDoggbiker cant find any decent calculation/explanation, tells us a lot. In January 1967, the 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry, was airlifted to Pleiku province in the Central Highlands. Quickly learned to control rate of fire. These records were transferred into the custody of the National Archives and Records Administration in 2008. None of the enlisted grades have an average age of less than 20. Thanks for the perceived loss and the countless assassinations and torture visited upon Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians goes mainly to the American media and their undying support-by-misrepresentation of the anti-War movement in the United States. The one that should be there is the combat medic. I watched in horror as four NVA soldiers ambled through the branches of a downed tree that partially concealed us. A dense mass of elephant grass hung over the riverbank, and he ducked under it. In Vietnam, 1 in 400 of the wounded died of their . document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Address: 9241 13th Ave SW Umm..maybe its because we also learn from experience. The average age of the 58,148 US Servicemembers killed in Vietnam was 23.11 years (CACF) Going backwards (Apr. They also had a 12 gauge, and a M 79 grenade launcher and M 16. Some 23% of Vietnam vets had fathers with professional, managerial The machine gun was also mounted in the UH-1 Huey helicopter and other Army aircraft. What is the life expectancy of Vietnam veterans? No combat assignments for another year of service in Vietnam or get out in about a month. For example, life expectancy of Veterans at age 25 population, thus 3.6 and 0.5 life-years smaller income differentials for male and female Veterans, respectively, shown in Tables 17 and 18. 0 Out of the 3,000,000 men and women in our armed forces and reserves, we have lost 4,500 in this 9 year war. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. It was more or less next man up . I loved it. I am proud to have fought alongside of them. Work Plz. We were told in training that the life expectancy of a machine gunner was about seven seconds from the moment the first round was fired. We were discussing the different units and dangers of each. Proudly holding my M60 over my head, I screamed at the top of my lungs, No. The man with the carbine immediately dropped it, and the two VC surrendered. Never knew they had life expectancy stats. It began just as, it was getting dark. It had a crew of 4 (forward gunner, the coxswain (steering and driving) and the two aft gunners. During that same Census count, the number of Americans falsely claiming to have served was: 9,492,958. An interesting comment I had. A documentary about our company and our 1st Sgt was made. I told by RTO that i could carry my own radio, When he agreed he was humping ammo. https://www.historynet.com/no-1-gun-an-m60-machine-gunner-in-vietnam-tells-his-story/, Jerrie Mock: Record-Breaking American Female Pilot, When 21 Sikh Soldiers Fought the Odds Against 10,000 Pashtun Warriors, Few Red Tails Remain: Tuskegee Airman Dies at 96. The Kb of pyridine, C5H5N, is 1.5 x 10-9. Arthur Parker and Spc. Thank You Roger!!! I was a 2LT on Hamburger Hill and had 4 RTOs over a 7 day period (excluding the times I ended up carrying my own radio). What was the average life expectancy of a soldier in Vietnam? Thats 390 per day. I never saw any correlation as to what MOS a soldier was and their survival rate. I had scary thoughts about myself humping the bush as a RTO, I was a real puny guy back then. LUCK pure LUCK. My good friend who was a RTO was killed. Black fatalities amounted to 12 percent of all Americans killed in Southeast Asia, a figure proportional to the number of blacks in the U.S. population at the time and slightly lower than the proportion of blacks in the Army at the close of the war.. May was eventually able to hand off 2nd Platoons No. Our home base was Quang Tri fire Base, But I spent about 6 months out at Mai Loc with the rig. Change). I think what is missing is the fact that the life expectancy of those firing at us was much shorter than those that they were firing at. I couldnt disagree. 1: physical position (in the field / column) My friend May, I later learned, was doing the same thing in 2nd Platoon. Anxiously extending the bipod legs on the M60, I added a 100-round belt to the one I already had in the gun. Lt lost a finger, same time. I remember we were always short of replacements throughout 1968 because of the high Kia & wounded rate we suffered at that time ! 99% of infantry men will currently live to die of natural causes. The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. meaning what is the chance of me getting killed in combat. S/F, There were no door gunners on dustoffs. As some said, averages are meaningless. Still shaken, I grabbed the gun and crawled to the left inside the streambed. Wortman, another RTO never made it back to The World. Also, it would mean the killed RTOs died within seconds of the fight (it doesnt distinguish between ambush or regular fight, eg.