That's the piece, Mark.

I traded for one, only kept it until the first time I fired it. We were really spoiled by the M-60 and M-16 with their rates of fire and all the other advantages.

I loved the M-60. My gunner knocked the flash suppressors and legs off all our barrels, and our 60s would spit about ten feet of flame with about a 4 to 6 foot halo right around the muzzle, must have been a fearsome sight. Was no reason to hide. We were sort of visible anyway, and figured anything we could do to keep the bad guys' heads down, we were gonna do it.

But waiting for that greasegun to cycle was like waiting for a bus.

Couldn't get a sidearm when I first started flying. Matter of fact, couldn't get an M-16 either. First few weeks flying I carried an M-14 with me; all the new M-16s were going to so-called "Vietnamization." Anyway, for sidearms they just didn't have anything in Supply but a blown-out .38 that you had to postion the cylinder by hand to fire. (No kidding. I'd cock it with my thumb, the cylinder would over-rotate, I'd turn it back to the stop and fire.) That made me sorta nervous. So I stole an ak from a pile of captured stuff, traded that to our supply officer for a Spanish Star 9mm. (NVA officer's piece, nice gun.) Carried that until he found me a good .45 a while later. (He wasn't screwing me, he was really trying. The Star trade was personal, the .45 was official.) Soon as I got the .45 I traded the Star for the greasegun. Fired that once, traded it to a tanker for a half-dozen M-60 barrels, which were real hard to get. I was a popular guy in the hooch until those '60 barrels were gone.

Bob