Thursday, July 21, 2011

Missed Engagement


Most who follow this blog have seen where I have said Santiago Peak reminds me of a mountain I was on in Viet Nam. That mountain was Nui Ba Den and I was on top of it for about 90 days. I had returned to the base camp from there about 2 weeks prior to the Massacre in the video above. I left Viet Nam on emergency leave I think on the day before this happened. (May 12th 1968) That mountain has haunted me every since I laid eyes on it for the first time. I always wondered what it would be like to be on top and finally found out. Very fortunate for me that my time was up on it before the massacre or my time might have been up for another reason. I can't help but feel bad for those killed up there and their families. For that matter anyone who was injured or killed in that Stinking war!

And for this thread's Zune list...

The Climg by Miley Cyrus

This is one of the ones I put on the Zune for my grand daughters and I got to like it. I'm by no means a Miley Cyrus fan, but the lyrics and music are good. Believe it or not this one usually helps when things are not going good and I'm down in the dumps. If you listen to the lyrics you can probably see why.

One of the granddaughters loved this song and loved to dance to it. I also got to like this song and found that it reminds me a lot of a movie called Some Kind Of Wonderful

Red Red Wine by UB40

First time I heard this song was at the Balloon Festival in Plano Texas many years ago. It was done by a local band there and I preferred their version very much over UB40's. We had a couple of the younger granddaughters with us and they began to dance to the song. (They being about 4 and 6 years old at the time) The youngest is going to Med school and should be a doctor in a few more years. The older one plans to be her nurse. I loved that bands version and wish I had a recording of it.

10 comments:

  1. I watched

    Had a heaviness in my heart afterwards.

    Thankful you included music videos for relief.

    ((( hug )))

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  2. ~mc~, most probably won't watch it thinking there is carnage in it, but as you saw it isn't that type video. Problem is its happening all over again in other countries for about the same reasons. Greed!

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  3. Got sprinkles for about 15 minutes and I sat out in it. Sure felt good. Maybe rain later?

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  4. Tffnguy

    We were warned about terrorist attacks when I was in the Persian Gulf.
    My ship was at anchor and I was on watch at an M-60 mount. The SBU's (special boat units) were supposed to guarding our ship when a fishing dow got way, way to close and I almost machine gunned the deck with five arabs aboard. I can tell you with definitive proof that when you point a deck mounted machine gun at someone and your finger is on the trigger, locked and loaded, you get thier attention real fast. (the entire time I was thinking of the marines in Beirut in '83)
    A few seconds later, while I was waiting on an order or a good excuse to open fire (If I saw an RPG or AK, it would have been game over)
    The arab in the wheelhouse threw one engine in reverse and turned the wheel as fast as he could and got out of there.

    When the U.S.S Cole was blown up in port in Yemen, I zoomed back to that moment. (It could have been me)
    There were a few other things that happened to, other old stories.

    Some things will be etched into my mind forever. The smells, the sounds, the images in exact detail, evan what I was thinking at the time.
    When I go out the beach (here on the gulf coast) and the water is perfect turquise in color with lots of Jellyfish, its just like the Persian Gulf and I my mind goes back to all the memories.

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  5. CC I hate flash backs and fortunately I don't have them too much anymore. Nothing down here to trigger that because nothing is like Viet Nam (Other than Santiago Peak reminding me of Nui Ba Den) Years ago it didn't take much to take me back.

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  6. tffn - Personaly, I'm very glad you missed that engagement

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  7. Dani, I am to most of the time.

    Frann, I only do the Funky Chicken.

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  8. Not long before you went in Vietnam wasn't happening and vets were remembering the Korean episode they survived, or WWII, while the older ones pondered surviving WWI. At that point there were still a couple who survived the Spanish American War.

    Today it's the Vietnam vets occupying top position. I count myself fortunate to have missed the war that was going to happen any day now with the USSR when I went in during the Berlin Crisis of 1961. As well as missing the one that actually did gear up immediately after my release from active duty.

    Timing's everything. Yours was good, missing what happened after you left. So was mine, I reckons.

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  9. oldjules, Yes the old soldiers keep dwindling and even the Viet Nam vets are thinning out real fast. I guess that's the way it will be as long as there are wars. Sad deal.

    I guess you could say so far I've always been luck at life (or keeping mine that is) I dodged my share of mortar and rocket attacks and dodged some bullets while over there, but didn't have to deal with being over run. Also narrowly escaped some snake bites and being lunch of a rather large python over there. I've been involved in at least two auto accidents that I shouldn't have lived through, quiet a few motorcycle accidents and and a few other things I shouldn't have survived, but I'm still here. I guess my luck will run out eventually.

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