Guest Post by Fred Altum
The first time I had the privilege of walking the National Mall in 1995 I sat down under this statue. There’s a bench right next to it.
I sat and watched as people walked through the Vietnam War Memorial. I couldn’t bring the courage or the emotional strength to walk the wall. Setting next to these brothers felt safe.
My experience was nothing like the struggle these men faced.
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I spent 270 days in the “Indochina Theatre of Operations “, time that credited me with combat veteran status. I never feared for my life, I was never afraid, never shot at, didn’t spend days on end “humpin the bush” mostly terrorized.
We flew reconnaissance drones into North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The film was used for targeting.
I was assigned to a tiny little place in the central highlands of Thailand, the Royal Naval Air station Nakhon Phanom. We were a classified location in those days “we’re not here “ kind a place.
It’s right on the Mekong River, the fast boats (brown water sailors) would come up river, refuel and take on supplies before heading up river wherever they were going. They always carried heavily armed scary men heading north.
Project Buffalo Hunter was a joint AF / CIA operation, information can be had by searching. My third day in-country I was invited to fly along with the drone recovery helicopter. We had a C-130 Hercules and two Sikorsky CH-3 helicopters modified for drone launch and recovery.
I flew every day from that day; you can’t begin to imagine a young man, barely a man, flying 200 knots over the triple canopy jungles of Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and South Vietnam at treetop levels.
For years I felt very guilty that my Vietnam War experiences were nothing like what these men endured.
I couldn’t walk the wall…
So for years I sat by this statue and watched. Over time I came to understand that my experience, while not theirs, was mine.
I finally found the courage to walk the wall in 2005, and I couldn’t breathe by the time I reached the end.
We were just men doing what our nation asked.
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80B01495R001300070006-8.pdf
I don’t think your experience was any less valid simply because it was less traumatic. I think most people wish that all Veterans had less traumatic tours of duty. And that our military personnel weren’t used and abused constantly in foreign wars (invasions) of choice against people who pose ZERO threat to America while we import the ones that do under the flag of virtue signalling.
Thanks Fred. That was just the best wording I have seen for some time. Maybe a lot of us didn’t have to hump through the jungle, but we were all lied to and we all did our job none the less.
ANY veteran, whether put “in harms way” or “in the rear with the gear” has every right to be proud of his service. We, who “signed on the dotted line” did what we had to do to stay alive. Decisions were made FOR us…not by us. We followed orders, did what we were told, and made it back to the “world”. As far as I am concerned, ANYONE who served honorably has every right to be recognized as someone who went “above and beyond”…something that non-military service civilians will never know…
Briefly knew a guy that was in Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrol in Vietnam. This guy was very, very far from the sharpest tool in the shed, and you send him out in the jungle as part of a heavily armed small-team for scouting purposes.
My immediate thought when talking with him – they are giving this guy a weapon, holy crap. Him and others are not SEAL trained (to go to an extreme), but among the many that were breathing and rushed thru basic training. He told me a story that may or not be true and it wasn’t a happy story; about a boy on a buffalo, though he was smiling when he told the story.
I am going to share that with my twelve hillbilly friends.
OMG… that Angestray eyezerkay ooziesay tillsay earhay?
Can you see how easily the childhood language of piglatin came right back to me around my same age cousin? We took a picture with our rifles on the porch with coffee, then she decided to take my Remington 30 ought to the tree stand. I took the dog for a walk to remind the neighbors we are “on site and in sight” this deer season. The first years, while building, we let most of the people around hunt when they needed to. Now, we are large and in charge.
They probably hate us… see us as invaders. We bought a piece of ground that had been owned as a bankruptcy purchase by a real estate broker (my friend) who picked it up for a song and sold it at market value to us in 2009. The land sat here untended and mowed only occasionally for hay for over twenty years. The locals used to hunt this ground as if it was open to the public. We had to pay to have a mountain of trash and refuse destroyed and removed from the treehouse area, but it was worth it. To own a triangular section of land that has blacktop frontage and county gravel road frontage AND field road and ATV frontage makes us hillbilly land barons and they are probably hating our guts around here.
A Bit of Fred
My Friend, Now Dead
On the radio of my father’s car the Rolling Stones’ song played “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction…” from the album Out of My Head. I was on a blind date with Fred, the girls were from afar, Kittanning, PA. “So special” they were. My date was named Nell on the front seat beside me, an official and endorsed boundry by her sister (my 10th grade English teacher) and my mother, both named Georgia. My mother knew my teacher from doing her hair at my mother’s beauty salon. That is how the blind date was set up.
The girls were down for the summer and we were up for fun. I drove a 1957 Chrysler New Yorker, with a push button transmission, a 401 hemi and giant tail fins on the dirt road along side Poquito Bayou in Shalimar, Florida. That is when I first heard the anthem of boomers everywhere. Fred and our new found friends had already heard the song, released recently. If ‘exuberance is beauty’, then Fred was a 10 as he sang along to the lyrics. Where were you when you first heard it? In 1966 I would hear the anthem played live in San Bernardino, California during a performance by the iconic band.
The Summer of 65 Fred and I felt alive…with our parent’s fast cars with AM radios and the joy of seeking our future. We felt like we had pulled a coup d’état that night infiltrating the secret lives of Teachers…and females.
The Summer of 67 I spent on my own renting a room from another one of my former teachers, Mrs. Murtz. She also had been a client of The Beautyrama, the largest beauty salon in town.
I worked for $1.25 per hour at AAA Moving and Storage, a booming business in the military minded community. Those female “packers” teased me about being a ‘virgin’…with a wink and a grin.
Fred had his own apartment that summer behind his family’s home. We would hang out frequently, drinking an illegal beer now and then. Fred had an amazing love of knives. He juggled throwing knives for fun. We competed in knife throwing contests, he was good and my equal or better, with a blade.
When I recall Fred, he is always happy and always leading me and others onto the kind of person we wish to be. I have a picture from Jr. High of Fred and I making a play on the W. C. Pryor Junior High School’s basketball court; it had been published in the Playground Daily News. Fred had my back and I have his every Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day.
GASSMAN, FRED ALLEN Compiled by Task Force Omega Inc
http://www.taskforceomegainc.org
SYNOPSIS: MACV-SOG, or Military Assistance Command Vietnam – Studies and Observation Group (MACV-SOG) was a joint service unconventional warfare task force engaged in highly classified operations throughout Southeast Asia. The 5th Special Forces channeled personnel into MACV-SOG through Special Op
http://www.taskforceomegainc.org/g356.html
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