Papasan-looks like it's you and me, Brother.
I hurriedly read your post and didn't comment. I'd checked for posts several times earlier in the day, and found none, and was in a hurry to get my butt to work.
No excuse, just the reason..I was already late for work.
This is an important event. I know how you feel when it comes to meeting true old friends, and folks who have "been there, done that, got the T-shirt and the tattoo"....
Before I met Gator 851, Tom Frankenfield, at the Wall on 5/6/02, I'd met up with two 119th guys, one just a year after my tour, and I never even knew his name. Still don't. He bopped into a 7-11 I worked in, and he was three sheets in the wind.
He absolutely exuded the musty smell of a well-known green, leafy substance...
(This is not stated to condemn or disparage those ((of us)) who did so) ((who didn't???))
He looked familiar to me, and I said "you're a
Gator, aren't you?" and he asked me how I knew, and I told him that his face was familiar, and it seemed like I knew him or of him in 'Nam. He said almost unintelligibly, that he was in the 119th, bought a coupla sixes of Colorado Kool-aid, and hurried out the door.
He was just about TT Sempek's size, and for all I know,... well, Hell- I just don't. I don't recall TT, but have seen his pic on the site, and in the '70 yearbook, I think, and the more I think of it, ........ who knows..??
I met another, Earl Whited, at Ft. Bliss about 23 years ago. He was a Captain at that time. I saw his 1st Bde patch, and asked him where he was assigned, and he told me that he flew with the 119th AHC. I intro'd myself and told him I was assigned to the Avionics shop, and it seems he knew some of the radioheads I worked with.
I met two more, Sandy Guynn and Mike Noschkin, at Rolling Thunder this year.
Ain't nothin' like it, except maybe someday findin' some of the guys I ran with, (and dodged a few rockets and mortars with, and pulled buku guard with, and partied t-t....
Gotta run...zzzz's time...
p.s.:
ANYBODY KNOW SANDY GUYNN OR MIKE NOSCHKIN ????
out here.
Lump