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Zippo Warfare in the Delta.
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One afternoon in June '69, we were
talking and wondering, trying to find the
perfect words to describe what we had
become, when the often used term
"Walking Wounded" flitted across the mind
and in the next micro second, "The
Walking Dead" came to us. Then in
November '82, we went to the dedication
of
The Wall and found the whole First Marine
Division with paper signs on their
backs calling themselves, "The Walking Dead".
Apparently a truly inspired thought can
be had by more than two persons at once,
separated by many miles and time. Or, this is simply the only way one can describe this feeling and it has been thought of by thousands when they reached this milestone in their numbing experience.
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First Platoon Sergeant for a Day, SFC Ron (Gramps)
Fillingham, lower right. The next day after this
photo was taken, Fillingham, the Lieutenant, and
several others were walking around the front of
the
1-4 Pony, coming back to their tracks after a
sweep, when a new man carrying the 60 accidentally
fired his short belt into the radiator as he was
trying to remove it from the gun with the gun off
safe and his finger on the trigger. The gun rose
into
the air, blasting rounds through the space occupied
by the men on the ground in front. Fillingham was
hit in the face. B 1-6 was hit in his bandoleer or
in the magazine in his CAR-15, right over his
heart. (See Sgt Fats Links, "The Three Amigos
Page"
for
update on Fillingham. Also visit "Gramps" site.) We need
help naming the
others in this picture. Back row, left and middle
are men from the 1-2 Pony (!?). Back row, right,
is
Bravo
1-6 from that time period, June and July '69, who
rode the 1-2 Pony on point, instead of the traditional First
Platoon Command Track, the 1-3 Pony. We remember
he was from Southern California, was a ROTC
grad. and a little nuts (like riding point with Dudley and refused to dismount even when Dudley had dismounted the fifty gunner so he could run a potentially mined canal or ram through a high dike with repeated hits he had to back up for to take a run, each hit threatening to squirt one's brains through one's eye sockets...). Lower left
could be Bravo 3-6 from that time period, also a
ROTC grad, from
Texas, but we are not
sure. Name? It is possible the man in the middle
in the back was Bravo 1-2 Squad Leader at that
time and rode the fifty while the LT rode the
Command Seat. We feel so foolish not being able to remember names of men we lived with day and night.
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THE BOB (slightly surreal pageantry) HOPE SHOW: Dong-Tam '68
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"You're already forgiven, Dummy!" --
auditory hallucination heard in our
living
room one night in July, 1972, from
somewhere over by the front door. Then
the
body
racking sobs stopped and we could get up
off the floor and sit in the chair again.
Soon, euphoria began to
overwhelm the body and the mind; a profound boiancy overtook the soul.
Something
profound had changed inside and The World
even seemed somehow completely different....
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Our deepest Gratitude for the Sounds used on Hotel Bravo. See the H.B. Credits page.
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