The picture is me on the deck of the USS Okinawa, an LPH (Landing Platform Helicopter) probably around September of 1967 . I still had an M-14 rifle, which I consider to be the best combat rifle ever made. I had traded my M-16 to a sergeant who didn't want to carry the weight. They took the M-14 away from me not long after this picture and made me get an M-16. I had three different M-16 rifles in Vietnam and they all jammed every third round and would only work with seventeen rounds in the magazine instead of twenty. The defects in those early versions were paid for with American lives. The picture also shows my second helmet. My first helmet had contained a morbid surprise. I had arrived in Danang from Okinawa aboard a C-130. I was assigned to the 1st Battalion 3rd Marine Regiment. The battalion rear was on Hill 327, but they were getting ready to go on float aboard the LPH. From Hill 327, we could see for what seemed like miles of super-heated ground in a hazy and humid mist.
My fiction, life in general, and war, with some pics from my Marine days in Vietnam.