And you take this story at face value?
Sounds like a real winner.
So because two guys you know were horrible, drugged up Soldiers, that means most were as well? I think it says more about your quality of friends than the quality of Soldiers in Vietnam.
Are you positive about that name and date of death? A quick search of the Wall could not verify this.
Seems like our radars are well calibrated.
Matched by my experience in qualifying lo so many years back: constantly getting told to adjust our Point Of Aim and seeing in practice that lower was better.
Right, grunts are not taught aim-to-wound-rather-than-kill. They are taught that you should shoot at CoM because by hitting something you will *at least * stop him/slow him down, but you will not always get a one-shot kill.
The whole thing about “to wound, because that takes out two additional men, yadda, yadda…” is something I have also heard trying to explain some characteristics of Assault Rifle ammo, as opposed to the much simpler “we made the ammunition lightweight because that means lighter weight, duh”.
1961-2 Basic in Ft Carson Co.
Blah blah blah. In my platoon, me & one other guy had the only two M-1’s that had good barrels. All the rest of the guys had ones that sent the round through the target sideways. They had a hard time qualifying. All the instructors were interested in back there at that time was for us to just hit the target somewhere.
It’s getting late so I haven’t read every response, so if what I say had already been covered I apologize. I recall an interview with a WWII Vet and he was asked about the Marshall claim that only 15% of soldiers fired their weapons. He chucked a bit and then said that, in his experience, was hogwash. Then he said “What, do you think we clubbed the Germans to death?”.
I am certain of the name “Randy” - whether it was his birth name or not, I don’t know - did not get to know him well.
It may well have been plus or minus a year - I was told by my father on a ride home from college (1967-1971). I remember I was crashing from acid when I heard it.
That excludes 67 through first semester 68.
He was from Columbus IN
Yeah, BIL is a real charmer.
After getting married, he quit and tried college. That didn’t go well, so he spent the rest of the 80’s back in the USMC.
Once they got a new crop of soldiers “with real combat experience”, his commission was not renewed.
Sorry it doesn’t work that way. Commissions do not have to be renewed.
or maybe because he never made it past Major?
it is my understanding that it was what, in the private sector, is known as “involuntary separation”.
However that works/worked…
Did yo know him while he was in or did he become your BiL after?
“Know him” is a stretch. We met before they were married.
I was asking if you knew him before whole he was in the military. I won’t continue on with this just because its off topic and I doubt you have the answers anyway. I’m just letting you know what you have said about him raised huge red flags to me. Everything you have said fits the profile of Stolen Valor or an embellisher. I don’t want to speak for Bear but I think he is feeling it too. But I have no way of knowing for sure without a FOIA request. I certainly can’t know by asking you. Maybe he did everything he said and is just an ass.
No, but we did pound the crap out of them with artillery, shot a bunch up with tanks and other armored vehicles, and finally crew-served infantry weapons like machine guns and mortars probably did more damage.
Individual infantrymen aren’t the real killers in modern battle anyway, even if 100% of them are shooting to kill.
In the military, it’s called “Reduction In Force” or “RIF”. There are a couple of ways to do it.
B. After Y many years of service as rank R, an officer comes into a ‘promotion zone’. So, his record and evaluations are presented to a promotion board. Some officers are promoted and some aren’t (they’re passed over). If an officer is passed over 3 times, he’s never going to be promoted (ever hear of The Peter Principle?) . So, again, there’s that career counseling heavily weighted towards resignation or retirement if he’s got his 20 in.
III. There are officers with regular commissions and officers with reserve commissions. The former, as long as they don’t run afoul of situations 1, B, or a medical discharge, can pretty much stay in for 30 years if they want. Reserve officers can serve on active duty for 20 and MAYBE 30 years, but there’s a phrase “Exigencies of the service” which is one way of saying “We don’t want you anymore and will relieve you from active duty.” This happens with reserve officers who have reached their level of incompetence. They may or may not help this officer find a reserve unit.
He was commissioned, he resigned or transferred to the reserve, then TRIED college and, one assumes, failed to get a bachelor’s degree, then then went back into the Corps as a major? This sounds fishy to me. Sorry, usedtobe, I’m not calling you a liar; I figure you’re just retelling what you were told.
I have a gamer buddy who is a Major in the National Guard. When the promotion boards came out this last spring, around his 19 year mark, and he didn’t get Lt.Col, that was pretty much it. He’s working on his exit now. His last working day will be sometime this fall, but with accumulated vacation and other stuff, it will carry him into the spring.
was that flintlock muskets and rifles light a fire right under your nose! 
Blinking your eyes and jerking your head away from such a thing, at such a distance, is perfectly natural. In the 1700-1800’s, lmost nobody had the funds to do the sort of practice firing that became commonplace in the US since WW2
Ive seen documentaries of Nam and WACO, Tx wherein guys just held M16a’s above their heads (in foxholes) or around the side of cover and emptied the mag in the general direction of the enemy, mag after mag after mag. No attempt was made to see anything and they were often hitting their own men with richochets.
You know I recall a WWII vet’s reply to Marshall. He said "what a load of horseshit. Does he think we clubbed the Germans to death? "
Yep.
In Vietnam, a platoon of green troops would head into the jungle and wander around for a while. One of them would hear a noise, pop off a couple rounds in the direction of the noise, and moments later the entire platoon is blasting away and emptying their rifles in the same direction. Shortly thereafter, you’ve got a platoon of green troops stuck deep in the jungle with no ammo.
It wasn’t anything that happened deliberately. It’s just a well-known fact that green troops will spray the air in front of them in the hopes that “putting up a wall of lead” will deter or kill anything about to come running at them from the jungle. Thus, with foot patrols of that sort, the most important duty of the platoon commander and sergeants is to enforce “fire discipline” and slow down the rate of fire. You see it all the time in old war movies; the troops start blasting away at anything or nothing and the sergeant is running around yelling “Cease fire!” Then comes the next scene where they’re low on ammo and sharing the few remaining rounds while trying to send back a runner for more ammo.
Again, it’s nothing planned or deliberate. It’s just what green troops do. It results in lots of rounds fired with few resulting casualties.
The problem has become less urgent with desert warfare, where troops tend to patrol in vehicles and unlimited amounts of ammo can be carried along. (Then you have problems like troops melting their barrels from overuse.)