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Jerre (Gopher) Gamble. Jerre was injured on July 2nd when the platoon was attacked at dawn. The platoon leader, Lt. Edward Williamson, was killed, as was Sgt. Robert McGinnis. Also wounded that day was Ronald Zimmerman. |
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This is PFC Robert Clements, who died along with SP4 James McCarthy on 29 Nov 1969, due to friendly artillery fire caused by defective ammunition. Bob and Jim were in my squad, and were the only two men I lost during the year. In 2002 I met Bob's mother and brother, and was able to describe to them the circumstances of his death. |
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Platoon Leader LT Jeffrey Rogers stayed in the Army after Vietnam and rose to the rank of Colonel. He retired in 1994. It took me a while to figure out that LT stood for lieutenant. On the right was the Platoon Sergeant, Staff Sergeant James Grider. He was small and tough. He could carry more cans of beer when we got resupplied than anyone else I knew. Vietnam is where I learned to drink warm Coca Cola. |
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We called him "Hock", but his name is Robert T. Hochadel, Jr. He was almost shot by one of us when he went out beyond the perimeter one pitch-black night to answer nature's call. Luckily the rifle blew up and the bullet never left the chamber. That night was so dark that we had to tie string between the bunkers to move around. |
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Name unknown, but I seem to remember that he had trouble with his feet, and might have volunteered later to be a door gunner on a helicopter. Anyway, he talked about it a lot. |
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SSG Grider in the middle, with Hock facing away on the left, and Will? on the right. Stopping for the day, probably. |
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During the rainy season it rained every day. We went to bed wet, dried out during the night, then got soaked again in the morning. |
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Greg Gomez. I was told to watch him and to do what he did, because he was "short time". Greg's nickname was "Chief" (which he probably didn't appreciate), and I'm told that he was also called "Pancho". I assume that he was actually Mexican-American and American Indian. I think I learned to set out trip-flares from him. |
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Me. I didn't shave very often in the bush. And after a couple of weeks we didn't notice how bad we smelled. |
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Name unknown and 50 calibre machine gun. Actually an anti-aircraft gun, it was used on fire base perimeters, vehicles, etc. It was too heavy to carry, at least we didn't. I saw one cut down a tree once. We would fire for about 60 seconds every night at a different time, just to keep the VC off guard. I never saw an enemy aircraft, nor an enemy tank for that matter. |
