When A Battery was at Camp Carroll in early 1968, the mess sergeant came to me and said his son had joined the Marines. He said he did not want him to come to Vietnam, and asked if I could I help. I checked into it and told him there was nothing we could do if his son wanted to come over there, but both of them did not have to be there at the same time.
A few weeks later at the Rockpile he came to me and said that he had just gotten a letter from his son and he was not worried about him because he had a good job in the post office in Da Nang where it was safe. Just as he said that we were hit with incoming. We ran into a bunker and he said "I don't have to take this anymore, my son is over here, and I want out of the country." In 24 hours and he was gone.
A few weeks later I went to DaNang and went to the post office and asked for his son. The Marine Sgt there said that he wasn't there. I asked where he was. The Marine Sgt. replied "His father is up on the DMZ with an Army artillery unit, so we shipped him to Japan." That is when I thought to myself "How coincidental -- Japan is where the Army sent his father." | | |