To our Nam Rangers....

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BonesC75RVN
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Re: To our Nam Rangers....

Post by BonesC75RVN »

As a "Nam Ranger" , Charlie Company, 75th, I just would like to say that when I go to Benning and hang out with the Young Rangers. I'm impressed. I go home with my old boney chest puffed out, I walk a little taller and straighter and I'm damn proud to see the traditions being carried on by the toughest young men in the world. RLTW! 8)
BonesC75RVN
Charlie Ranger 75th, RVN 70-71
82nd Airborne, 1/504th, 71-72
Overseas Construction Worker 83-08
"If you ain't standing out here on the edge, you must be just taking up space"
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Steadfast
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Re: To our Nam Rangers....

Post by Steadfast »

BonesC75RVN wrote:As a "Nam Ranger" , Charlie Company, 75th, I just would like to say that when I go to Benning and hang out with the Young Rangers. I'm impressed. I go home with my old boney chest puffed out, I walk a little taller and straighter and I'm damn proud to see the traditions being carried on by the toughest young men in the world. RLTW! 8)

Your overdue BonesC75RVN - your 1st post should have been in Ranger introduction forum.
RLTW
Steadfast

4/325 82d DIV 68-69
2nd Bde HHC (LRRP), 4 ID
K Co (Rgr), 75th Inf (Abn), 4 ID
69-70
I cooked with C- 4
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garyedolan
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Re: To our Nam Rangers....

Post by garyedolan »

Brother Bones, it is great to finally see you here, Darryl. LRP1 & I can vouch for our LRP/Charlie Ranger Brother. And I'm gonna steal some of Bones' thunder by posting one of his stories I am certain all you "Baby Rangers" will love:
Surf's up in a War Zone by BonesC75RVN:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

No shit there I was………………………..OK, I gotta story……..it’s not your normal war story……….but, no shit this really happened.

I was evacuated out of Ahn Khe our last base camp with Malaria. We still had the rear in Tuy Hoa. Ahn Khe was just us on top a little hill; I know some of y’all were there too. Any way they took me down to a medic’s tent or something next to the airstrip and were trying to get my temperature down prior to putting me on a 130 on its way to Cam Rahn Bay 7 th evac hospital? Or something like that. All I remember is waking up and finding myself on a bed of ice with some round honey smiling down at me telling me I would be fine.

I do remember drifting off thinking, yep, I’m fine, you are fine darling and it sure is cold in here. Then I woke up in bed with yellow PJ’s on and just lay there for a few days and every once in awhile some dude was hanging over me wanting to borrow money and I kept saying ,I don’t even know where my pants are fellow, get the f-ck away from me.
As it turned out, the PJ’s were color coded. Yellow meant you could pretty much stay in your bed and sleep, unless you were well enough to wake up and sweep and clean around your rack. Blue Pj’s meant you could do light cleaning duties in other parts of the AO and like sweep the walkways, and you were allowed to go to this grassy place called the bowl and watch a movie on a big bed sheet…..great, some one might even hand you a bowl if you wanted a hit, if the medications would let you. I know for me everything I tasted, taste like freaking sulfur. Kind of sucked real bad.
Then there were the Green PJ’s, man if you had Green PJ’s you were allowed to walk to the PX room and buy shit, if you had money, or you could go to the bowl in the middle of the day and hang out and bullshit. However the down side to Green PJ’s meant that you had to pull guard duty on the bunker on the beach at night. I liked this because it reminded me of being home on the beach waiting for the swell to come up for another day of surfing.

Speaking of surfing. It happened that I had graduated to my new Green Pj’s and I walked down to the USO and there were four surfboards leaning on the wall. Now this was great news to me, this was almost as great as the round eyed girls dressed up like nurses back in the barracks. OK, maybe not exactly, but, almost.

You see my first day in country, at Cam Rahn Bay I went surfing. No shit my first day in country, right after they taught us how to brush our teeth in the field. I had old jungle fatigues because I had been in Ft, Bragg SF School and was issued Jungle utilities prior to shipping over. I grabbed this fellow named Steve Mantooth and said come on dude, I’m going over that sand dune, and I know I can hear waves breaking. We ditched detail formation and went up and over this dune. Sure enough because a typhoon had just passed through the waves were still lingering on at about 6 to 8 foot breaking right and left in the middle of the bay.

I spotted a white surfboard with a big red cross on it leaning on a Life guard tower? I ran down to the life guard and said hey fella I need to borrow this board. He shrugged his shoulders and said go for it, if you get in trouble I won’t be able to paddle out and help you. The only trouble I had was paddling out in these waves with out another sole in the water and trying not to be excited that every wave was mine. I surfed for about an hour. Then these choppers came flying in low and the guys in the doors started dropping colored smokes in the water around me. Next thing I know I’m surfing in the Nam in big colored smoke clouds….wow….I’ll never forget it.

Anyway, here I was back in Cam Rahn Bay and now 7 months later there were these three or four surfboards leaning on the wall. Damn if I did not borrow one and go surfing again for a few hours. The waves were not at all as big as that first day but I paddled around and had fun. It was the first time I had felt healthy again in awhile.

Upon putting the surfboard I borrowed, back, this guy walks up and says hey man I’m leaving in a week you want to buy that surfboard for $25 dollars? Shit yeah Man, off I went to borrow $25 dollars…..which did not take to long, because everybody there was drugged on something. The next day was my 2nd to the last day in the Hospital. I paid this guy and told him I would pick up the board in the morning on my way to the airport.

The next day I went down and picked up my new surfboard and marched off to hitchhike a ride to the airport. I never have had so many weird looks as I got when I walked in the airport in clean but tattered tiger fatigues, no unit patches or name tags, and a surfboard under my arm. I got on the list for the next C123 to Tuy Hoa and waited. A couple of hours later they called my name and across the tarmac I walked with my surfboard under my arm. When I got to my ride, this Air Force loadmaster was standing there looking at me and laughing his ass off. He strapped my board right on top the rack at the rear door.
I climbed up in the bird and here were these brand new FNG’s all sitting there proper like in their web seats looking at me like I was from another planet. Even their LT officer did not know what to make of me. I flashed him the ole Ranger, don’t ask, look. He looked the other way.

I showed up in Tuy Hoa with my new board and a pass that said I was recuperating from malaria…..I weighed 116 lbs a far cry from the hefty 142 lbs I arrived in country at.
I took my surf board down to the beach at Tuy Hoa and surfed again in some really small shitty waves but WTF over. That afternoon I took my board up to the hootches we were in and stashed it up in the ceiling rafters of my newly acquired room. That evening an officer, I don’t remember which one, came by looking through the hootches and looking for contraband. When he got to my room he looked up and saw that surfboard and said Bones what the fuck is that? I said it’s a surfboard sir. He told me to pack my shit and be on a chopper the next day going back to Ahn Khe. I sold the surfboard that night for 30 dollars to a remf in the air force. The next day, no shit there I was on a bird heading back to the forward AO and it all seemed like just a dream. It was a good dream; a dream I kind of hang on to, it helps me get past the shitty dreams and reoccurring thoughts of the less then stellar times.

However, No Shit There I Was, check it out Man, you ain’t surfed shit, till you can say you surfed in a War Zone, in the Nam, long ,long ago, in another galaxy……
Bones RLTW
Gary "28"
Co C (RGR), 75 Inf (ABN) '70-'71
USMA 69; RGR 4-70; RHOF-2011
http://oftheirownaccord.com

"Duty, Honor, Country. Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be." Douglas MacArthur
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al_2ndWolfhounds
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Re: To our Nam Rangers....

Post by al_2ndWolfhounds »

garyedolan wrote:Brother Bones, it is great to finally see you here, Darryl. LRP1 & I can vouch for our LRP/Charlie Ranger Brother. And I'm gonna steal some of Bones' thunder by posting one of his stories I am certain all you "Baby Rangers" will love:

However, No Shit There I Was, check it out Man, you ain’t surfed shit, till you can say you surfed in a War Zone, in the Nam, long ,long ago, in another galaxy……
Bones RLTW
Never got close enough to the coast to even think about surfing, not that I could. The Vam Co Dong River cut through my Battalions AO. Spent more than a few hours riding with the PBRs and the landing craft they used. Never thought I would be doing Amphibious Operations, that was for the guys in the 9th Inf Div. The only way we could cross the river was by boat or airlift.

For two months I was assigned as liaison to the Vietnamese District Chief. The MACV team had an engineer boat with a 40 HP engine. Didn't have water skis so we improvised and used a ply wood board attached to the tow rope. I had a lot of fun with that until one day as we were going down the river with me on the board and some asshole started shooting at us. The two guys in the boat jumped in the water to avoid the fire....me I just laid down on the board and let the boat pull me out of the ambush zone. River eventually curved and the boat ran aground so that I could get in it and go pick up the two MACV guys. Last time I did that with them. Yes I did go wake boarding again but with one of the guys on my team.
RLTW

Active service 01/67-12/73
Ranger Class 10-68
2/27 Inf 25th Inf Div Vietnam 01/69-01/70

"In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take." - Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)
“The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.” – Joseph Heller, Catch-22
BonesC75RVN
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Re: To our Nam Rangers....

Post by BonesC75RVN »

Ha! What can I say Dolan ? Except, "Charlie don't surf, Sir!!" .......and some people think this only happened in the movies..........

RLTW Bones 8)
BonesC75RVN
Charlie Ranger 75th, RVN 70-71
82nd Airborne, 1/504th, 71-72
Overseas Construction Worker 83-08
"If you ain't standing out here on the edge, you must be just taking up space"
BonesC75RVN
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Re: To our Nam Rangers....

Post by BonesC75RVN »

Wolfhound, water sking in those funky rivers sounds more dangerous to me, brother. All those little river critters hichhiking on your ass.

RLTW Bones
BonesC75RVN
Charlie Ranger 75th, RVN 70-71
82nd Airborne, 1/504th, 71-72
Overseas Construction Worker 83-08
"If you ain't standing out here on the edge, you must be just taking up space"
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al_2ndWolfhounds
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Re: To our Nam Rangers....

Post by al_2ndWolfhounds »

Nah, it was a tidal river almost always flowing one direction or the other. The canals that ran off of it were nasty we had to cross many of them.

Had a really bad encounter crossing a particularly bad one. We usually checked for leeches whenever we crossed a canal. Some guys only took their shirts off, most of our trousers were zippered and pretty much protected us from the waist down. Lucky me on this particular day I had buttons. When I drop trousers I had 3 leeches on my legs, nobody even seemed to notice but when I dropped my shorts and had one hanging off the end of the one-eyed-monster: I never saw a bunch of guys strip all the way down to the buff quicker.

Damned thing was when I used bug juice to get it to drop off I didn't stop bleeding and the pussy medic wouldn't help out other than to give me some antiseptic and a bandage. go figure!
RLTW

Active service 01/67-12/73
Ranger Class 10-68
2/27 Inf 25th Inf Div Vietnam 01/69-01/70

"In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take." - Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)
“The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.” – Joseph Heller, Catch-22
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colt1rgr
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Re: To our Nam Rangers....

Post by colt1rgr »

Zonk 1/75 wrote:Said it before, the FOG’s are the reason became a Ranger.

Gonna have to look into this "Ranger Rendezvous" thing….

X2! I tell you what at Rendezvous last year I was like a kid in the toy aisle at Wally World. I wore several of the FOGs out with my never ending questions. Anyone on this board who is NOT a member of the 75th RRA OR has not attended a Rendezvous, you are failing to meet the standard and depriving yourself of the comraderie of the guys who really did "Lead the Way".

You FOGs ROCK! God Bless you! You are and shall forever be my heroes! They tend to buy a lot of booze to :wink:
1st Ranger Bn 86-92, C Co, HHC, Bn COLT, RHQ 94-95 Ranger Class 14-87 MFF 05 May 88

"Life is like a drop zone, sometimes you just miss the whole damn thing!"
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Jim
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Re: To our Nam Rangers....

Post by Jim »

I spent most of my time in the southern areas. We had the Ba-Sac river where we used "Monitors" from the 9th ID Riverine Force to move the Vietnamese Ranger Battalions. Occasionally, we got PBRs (Hell, I thought that stood for Pabst Blue Ribbon) to support by fire. Fighting the Cong on the old Mekong...
Ranger Class 13-71
Advisor, VN 66-68 69-70
42d Vn Ranger Battalion 1969-1970
Trainer, El Salvador 86-87
Advisor, Saudi Arabian National Guard 91, 93-94
75th RRA Life Member #867
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Slowpoke
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Re: To our Nam Rangers....

Post by Slowpoke »

We got a three day pass to Vung Tao for bringing in a live prisoner and I got to do a little body surfing but the waves were for shit.

Besides being crazy, one of the requirements for being a Ranger (even back then) is being more intelligent than the average soldier and it's probably not a good idea to put all these crazy/smart motherfuckers together and give them too much extra time to get bored. While there was a LOT of scairy sit that happened in Vietnam, there was also a TON of really funny shit too!!!
I never wore a cape, but I still have my dog tags.

Experienced Peek Freak!!

173rd Abn LRRP...'66/'67
C/1/506 101st Abn
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al_2ndWolfhounds
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Re: To our Nam Rangers....

Post by al_2ndWolfhounds »

ZoneIV wrote:
colt1rgr wrote:Anyone on this board who is NOT a member of the 75th RRA OR has not attended a Rendezvous, you are failing to meet the standard
Well while I would love to go to a Rondezvous, I would certainly be out of my lane. Some of us aren't qualified to join such an organization or go to such an event. :oops: Heck, I just feel lucky to be allowed on this site.
colt1rgr wrote:You FOGs ROCK! God Bless you!
X2
I have never served with the Regiment either but as a Tabbed Ranger I was eligible for Associate Membership. I recently joined as a Life Associate Member. You too can support the Association in this way, you do fit in so get in the lane and go to the Rendezvous.
RLTW

Active service 01/67-12/73
Ranger Class 10-68
2/27 Inf 25th Inf Div Vietnam 01/69-01/70

"In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take." - Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)
“The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.” – Joseph Heller, Catch-22
panthersix
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Re: To our Nam Rangers....

Post by panthersix »

al_2ndWolfhounds wrote:Nah, it was a tidal river almost always flowing one direction or the other. The canals that ran off of it were nasty we had to cross many of them.

Had a really bad encounter crossing a particularly bad one. We usually checked for leeches whenever we crossed a canal. Some guys only took their shirts off, most of our trousers were zippered and pretty much protected us from the waist down. Lucky me on this particular day I had buttons. When I drop trousers I had 3 leeches on my legs, nobody even seemed to notice but when I dropped my shorts and had one hanging off the end of the one-eyed-monster: I never saw a bunch of guys strip all the way down to the buff quicker.

Damned thing was when I used bug juice to get it to drop off I didn't stop bleeding and the pussy medic wouldn't help out other than to give me some antiseptic and a bandage. go figure!

Um, I resemble that remark. Ranger Class 11-80 in city phase one of the guys from my company was in the same WWII barracks with me and he was in a big hurry to zip up and get to formation one day and zipped up his money maker while rushing to make formation. He went down. Everyone looked at me, I shrugged my shoulders, but by then an SF medic was on him unzipping his cod fish from the pants. :shock:
Doc Mac
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C.Co. WPNS 1/75 79-81
3rd Plt/498th Medevac 81-82
104th LRSD 92-93
422d CA BN (A) 94-97
118th ASOS 02-08
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garyedolan
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Re: To our Nam Rangers....

Post by garyedolan »

An excerpt from Chapter 5 of my book---yes, it did really happen:
"Just then, Forest, still looking as he did when he arrived from the field, and SP/4 Peter “Blue” McCormack in clean fatigues, approached and asked to speak with him.
“Sir, I think we need to send Blue on immediate sick call,” stated a serious-faced Forest.
“Blue, tell me, what’s the problem?” Dunn asked as he turned to face McCormack.
“Sir, I didn’t say anything but the last two days in the field I couldn’t go to the bathroom. I never shit in the field as I always wait till I get back to take a shit. But I couldn’t even piss. I didn’t think much about it while we were in the field and just figured it was my body waiting till we were back. But, sir, I still can’t take a leak and my bladder is fucking killing me now.”
“You’re telling me that you need to piss, but you can’t?” asked Dunn.
“Yes, sir. I have to go real fucking bad but I just can’t…and there’s no reason for it. I don’t fucking understand it.”
“Okay, Blue, but first there is something I want you to do. It is entirely possible that you picked up another leech and it is blocking your urinary tract. Go over to the side of my tent and thoroughly check yourself out.”
While Buck and Dunn waited, Blue went over to the side of the tent and did as instructed. “Holy shit!” exclaimed Blue in amazement. “How did this goddamn, blood-sucking mutha-fucka crawl up inside my dick? What the hell? Fuck!”
Dunn assured, “Don’t worry, Blue, they won’t have to amputate! Come on. I’ll go with you to TOC to authorize you for immediate sick call. Most likely, that leech is ready to fall off anyway after drinking its full of your blood.
“Sergeant Forest, you go ahead and clean up. I’ll take care of Blue.”
AFTER HE SENT BLUE TO GET MEDICAL ATTENTION for his penis, which had been invaded by an unlucky leach, Dunn went looking for his platoon sergeant. He found Wilson at the platoon conex speaking with SSG Lars “The Mad Swede” Swenson, patrol leader of Patrol 24, and with SSG David “Professor” Halloway, team leader of Team 23. The Professor had just returned from a beneficial reconnaissance flight that day and was working on the preparations to take his team into the field in the morning. The Mad Swede’s team was scheduled for insertion the day following.
“Hey, sir,” Wilson greeted him, “we heard the only Double Deuce blood spilled was by a horny leech!”
Gary "28"
Co C (RGR), 75 Inf (ABN) '70-'71
USMA 69; RGR 4-70; RHOF-2011
http://oftheirownaccord.com

"Duty, Honor, Country. Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be." Douglas MacArthur
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