Happy Thanksgiving. The one I remember the most is Vietnam. It was always a little funny to me that the war kind of stopped on holidays. We had this Lieutenant in Charley company. The greatest guy. Tall, blond, really handsome and he played a "mean" guitar. All those songs like "Gentle On My Mind." He sounded more like Glenn Campbell than Glenn Campbell. The Company was close into the FSB ( Fire Support Base) mainly so all the troops could be served a turkey dinner. Our Brigade commander a little of a nut to me,but I liked him. He insisted that the troops have a carcuss turkey, meaning that the troops could have actual slices of turkey right from the carcuss. A nice idea but we were at war even though not a lot was going on. Things were going pretty smoothly. I was planning make my rounds to one or two of the Companies (company is roughly a 100 men or so). Suddenly, there was this horrendous explosion. We knew immediately what it was: some troop had tripped a booby trap. It was the Lieutenant. A sadness gripped us. We were suddenly alert to war and less to a carcuss turkey.
War is awful! What a story. How sad. I know you're not the only one that remembers that day in detail. Of course, I am now wondering, "What happened to his guitar? Did they mail it to his family?" (the way my mind works)
Funny you should ask about the guitar. I kept up with the family for a long time and after I came back, I visited them in upper state NY. In their living room, they had mounted the guitar on the wall like a trophy but it had been smashed. Apparently the father was so angry that when the LT's personal effects arrived, he went crazy, smashed the guitar. Later on after he calmed down, he collected it all and pieced it together.
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