History Blog Post #6 – 1967 – January & February – The Pond.
1967 – JANUARY & FEBRUARY 1967 started for the battalion much as 1966 had ended. Operation Adams continued, moving into the fifth and final phase of the operation, dubbed “Operation Rice Bowl”. The mission was simple, secure the rice paddies in the lowland coastal basin and let the civilian farmers harvest the crops free of […]
Gravesite Visit #40 – Specialist Fourth Class Robert J Larson – Minneapolis, Minnesota
After visiting the grave of SP4 John Lobsinger at Lakewood Cemetery, I headed southeast toward my next stop. Ft. Snelling National Cemetery, located on the south side of Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, is a sprawling National Cemetery, filled with tens of thousands of military markers. There were two 3rd Battalion, 12th Infantry soldiers to visit […]
Gravesite Visit #5 – Private First Class Sanders Key Stroud II – Corpus Christi, Texas
On the morning of October 8th, 2020, my then nine-year old son Micah and I met Frank Morrison and his wife Tracy at a small diner in Corpus Christi, Texas. Micah and I were on day four of a ten-day trip, having spent the previous day playing tourist at the USS Lexington Museum ship. He […]
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 […]