**I'm enjoying reading "Chickenhawk" **

Good one, Kathy. Just got to take Mason (and, uhh, most 1st Cav guys) with a grain of salt. What he talks about actually happened, usually, to somebody if not necessarily to him.

**Where you had Vietnamese working with you or when you had leave (did you go to Saigon or Pleiku from Camp Holloway?)how did you guys tell who was VC or not?**

I don't know if anybody from the 119th ever got to Saigon, but Pleiku was just down the road a piece. I'm not sure I ever saw a VC. (Actually, what I'm saying is I'm sure I did and did not know it.) Our overt enemy in the Highlands was the North Vietnamese Army, or NVA. A real army. We (the US Army in the Highlands) were positioned to block the main infiltration routes into the Highlands from North Vietnam, the "Ho Chi Minh Trail." Any VC that may have been around were mostly what they called "main force," or uniformed, organized units, as opposed to the so-called "guerilla" VC down south and along the coast.

Our job (the 119th) mostly boiled down to supporting 4th Div infantry and Special Forces in the area, and doing what we could to save lives, either by recon, resupply, combat support, or medevac. Amazing to think that so many of us were ready to put ourselves in front of a bullet in order to accomplish that, but we were... as you know better than most.

**Also did you very often have to fly lots of hours end on end just chasing VC around? (Maybe my simplified interpretation)**

Again, very different from the media presentation of the war. The 4th Infantry Division had no trouble finding NVA in early 1969. In fact, many times they were vastly outnumbered by numerically superior NVA forces. They were sending 4th Div companies into the hills after NVA regiments.

The thing to keep in mind is that Vietnam was not one war, it was many different wars. The war along the coast was different from the war in the Highlands; north different from south; 1965 different from 1966; 1966 different from 1967, etc.

And most important; the soldier's view of any war is limited to what he can see around him. Ron and I were in the same flight, at the same time; our experiences were similar yet very different. Also, I managed to stay at least semi-sane until just before I left. Best I can tell, Carey arrived crazy and left certifiably coo-coo.

Bob