Gravesite Visit #3 – Sergeant Duane Johnson – Kerrville, Texas
October 4th, 2020 My son Micah and I left Petersburg at 3:00 PM, headed south on Alaska Airlines flight #64 to Wrangell, Ketchikan and finally Seattle, Washington, where we would stay the night before catching our next flight to San Antonio, Texas. This trip was the much anticipated beginning of a mission I gave myself […]
History Blog Post #5 – Phu Yen Province – December 1966
The soldiers of the 3-12 Infantry were also encountering an enemy that was the master of the booby trap. Punji stake traps, filled with wooden stakes sharpened and smeared with human excrement were common, and landmines and explosive devices littered the battlefield. But for Bravo Company, 3-12, and one soldier in particular, a peculiar and […]
History Blog Post #3 – Arrival to Vietnam – Tuy Hoa – September thru November 1966
ARRIVAL – TUY HOA – A SEASON OF FIRSTS As the Gordon pulled into port in Nha Trang on Wednesday, October 5th, the men aboard began to get their first glimpse of the lush green landscape that would be their battleground. Quickly moved off the ship, they experienced their first convoy of the war, and […]
History Blog Post #2 – U.S.N.S General W.H. Gordon – September 15th, 1966 to October 5th, 1966
The USS General W.H. Gordon was a 622’ General John Pope-class transport that had already made several trips across the Pacific, moving American men and material from the U.S. west coast to various ports in South Vietnam. At a top speed of just over 20 kts, it would take the fully laden vessel several weeks […]
Gravesite Visit #2 – Corporal Willie Danien Martinez – Santa Fe, New Mexico
Author’s note – I wrote this in September of 2019 while on a work trip to New Mexico. Keep that in mind as you read it, as I have not updated it to reflect current events. Imagine your country is at war. Which isn’t hard, since here in America we’ve been actively engaged in combat […]