I found out a couple of days ago that we lost an old pal from the original Compuserve Military Forum two weeks ago. Donald Angus McBane, 60 yrs old, a New York Yankee fan and a Marketing professor at Central Michigan University, died Oct. 15, 2006 after a long, difficult illness.

Don was a 4th Infantry Div mortarman in the 1970 Cambodia invasion.

In the early 1990s, many of us from the Compuserve forum began to get together once a year to talk with the cadets at USMA, West Point NY. One of our number, Frank "Mickey" Maher, a former 1st Cav 1/9 LOH gunner who spent too long under a burning Loach one day in the A Shau Valley, was running the AG office at USMA, and each year we were given the red carpet treatment by the USMA Superintendent.

At the various gatherings, we had Wes Rumble, an F-4 driver who spent some time as a guest of the North Vietnamese; Larry Gwin, XO of A/2/7, 1st Cav; three ex-SF guys, Joe Hannon from TX, Virgil Carter from NY, and Jim Sorensen from CA; Joe Galloway, (just after the book was published); a Marine artilleryman named Tom Browne who lived through way too much time on the Rockpile; Max Nicholas, a Navy spook who came back to America each year from Marthas Vinyard. From the 119th we had Shakey, Jake Gilliland, Davey Silk, Al Mixer, and me. We had our pals from CT, Rick Hoxie, who had 3 tours with ASA, and John "Kraz" Krasnitski, former Americal LRRP and shake and bake grunt NCO; three 4ID guys, Don McBane the ex-mortarman professor, Bill Simonsen from Maine who was another shake-and-bake infantry NCO from our 1969 time, and an ex-company CO named Chuck Santose. And we had a retired Brigadier General named Alan Anger, an early Army aviator, and a few others.

Don McBane was a professor at Clemson when we met, then several years ago he went to Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant Michigan. None of us were aware that he had died until he was two weeks gone. What a good guy, I wish all of you guys could have known him; he was impossible not to like.

Bob