General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: 1968 (Your Help, Please!) [View all]pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)Nineteen years old--that part still gets me. I'd done my Basic and Advanced Infantry Training the year before as a draftee, and went on to complete the 6-month Officer Candidate School training at the Infantry School at Ft.Benning, GA. My mom came from CA for my graduation.
The next year I was a 20-year-old Army First Lieutenant leading an Infantry Rifle Platoon in combat in the jungles of Vietnam. My little brother was serving as a personnel specialist at my Division HQ. My mom got a telegram from the Army when I was wounded; my little brother got his telegram in Vietnam.
I'd nearly died, but after initial treatment in VN and a week in ICU in Japan I was medevac'd back to an Army hospital in San Francisco. It was toughest on my mom, who didn't come to visit right away. She was afraid to see me. And her youngest son still had another 9 months to go on his tour. He made it back, but it wasn't until many years later that he told me what mom had said about me in the first years after my return: "Bobby was never so angry before he went to Vietnam."