Aussie kiss and kindness still brings tears Published 2:08 pm Thursday, August 15, 2024 By Staff Report By Steve Stricker Columnist PTSD? First flight out of Southern Missouri, first jet flight St. Louis to Vietnam, July 1969, nervous about flying, nervous about dying, long 24 hour flight – miserable! Stops in LA, Seattle, Washington to have an engine worked on (stress), Alaska, Okinawa, Tokyo – flying past Mount Fuji on a beautiful clear day was one of the most wonderful sights of my life and in slow motion seemed to last for hours. Landed in Binh Hoa, no idea of day or time due to crossing time zones, early morning on a blue Air Force Bus, windows screened to knock down RPG’s , (Rocket Propelled Grenades), hot, humid, anxious, to Long Binh – I was here, a Soldier Abroad from July 1969-July 1970.
Week later transferred from Long Binh to assigned duty station – 18th Engineer Brigade Headquarters, Dong Ba Thinh, Vietnam across bay from huge Cam Ranh Bay Air Force Base. Letter to hero mom, Get, “One of the safest places in Vietnam.” Next day almost killed in a massive rocket, mortar, sapper attack directly on top of me that made all the news at home.
“I thought you said you were safe.” Day later, transferred back to Long Binh, attached to USAECV (United States Army Engineering Command Vietnam) 14 miles from Saigon. As “the most eclectic soldier in Vietnam,” there were so many moving parts as to what I did that year – amongst them had my own Jeep and was .