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| Leeches, Dysentery and Tigers Saving Private Ryan Mail Call It's About Time Thanks | ||
So many
Marines and stories to remember, some I just remember the face, no name,
some stories I wonder if they really happened the way I remember them.
Like the Marine who became radioman from me when I left, he was a quiet
and small, a Mexican or Porto Rican guy, we just called him "Chicken
Man", he made the
 mistake of taking a likening to me, so as you know
that qualified him as the new radioman, I some how wound up with this
photo of his girl from R&R, I think she looks pregnant in the picture.
He wrote to me when I got back to the States, telling what happened to Sergeant
Lee Jarvis.
I was with Jarvis as radioman in his squad for some time, he would have
his sister talk into a cassette tape and send it to him, she was really
good looking, and I would talk to her on the tape trying to get her to go
for me. But I never thought much of Jarvis as a leader, he did a lot of whinnying
about everything, but he had the stripes. I remember his family sending a
photo of a new boat on a trailer as a gift for him, setting in his
driveway waiting for him. It was a shock to read Chicken Man's letter
about what the NVA did to him before they killed him, ( it's in the book).
I may not have liked him much, but he did not deserve to die that
way. Chicken Man said in the letter that Jarvis's parents would pay for any
Marine's way to their house, if they would sit and tell them about their
son in Viet Nan, I just could not go, and tell them at that time, what I
really thought of their son, but I would like to tell them that he was a
good person, and like most of us, not really cut out to be the fearless gung
ho leader that's expected of all Marines. |
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| Leeches, Dysentery and Tigers | ||
| The
things we had encounter over there in a foreign country were many, but
most of us disliked the word leech. These slimy things would crawl onto
any part of you that they could, and attach themselves to you, then suck
your blood until they could hold no more, then drop loose. You could not
pull one off, you had to either burn it with a hot cigarette or pour
salt on it. Out on long operations we would stop walking for some
reason, and with in seconds you would see them crawling, then up
your legs, or on your neck or anywhere they could find, I still have
dark marks on both shins from bites that would not heal and get infected
because of walking in water time and time again. Trying to get some
sleep out on ambush, cold and wet, laying wrapped up in our poncho, you
could feel them crawling on you, but you didn't want to move, so you
just let them do their thing, knowing that after it was done it would
fall off and leave. We all feared of one crawling up our private parts.
I remember getting dysentery along with others, what horrible cramps and
stomach pain, and how weak it made you with all the trips to the john. I
remember a guy on day patrol getting scared to death when he was knocked
down by a wild deer as it ran through us. I saw wild boar one time on
patrol, and how mad we were when a jeep on highway nine close to base camp
ran over a large snake, but did not kill it, and it crawled off into the
area we had to patrol at night. I talked about the spider monkeys, but
there was talk of really large rock apes out there, bigger than gorillas,
thank God we never came in contact with one. But the most famous story
of all is, when one night on ambush a tiger tried to bite the arm off
Cpl
David Schwirian You can read more about this and other stories if you go to the Links Page and click on Doc Jewett's web site. |
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| Saving Private Ryan/ Flags Of Our Fathers, and many other great war movies | ||
| For
those of you who saw it and were in combat you know all of the feelings,
but I must say I have the up most and greatest respect for all of the
World War II combat veterans. Any of us who think we had a rough time of
it, have to feel some guilt. We all had a date that we knew we could
leave and come home to, and that thirteen months may have seem like a
long time, but just think about going on battle after battle with
no end in site year after year, with all the enemy fire power that was
thrown at them, sure we had some, but not in the strength and length that they had to endure. I will admit that I cried like a baby during that movie, thinking about the huge waste of young lives lost, guys who never had a chance to enjoy the kind of life that I have enjoyed, the same feeling that I got when I first touched the Wall in DC. I think that it should be mandatory that every boy and girl in high school see that movie, and hope that a little of what all war soldiers died for gets to them, and they really learn to appreciate what it means to be a veteran, and live in this great place we call the United States of America. |
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| Mail Call | ||
 I know
if you ask any Service man away from home, what it means to him to get a
letter from anyone, he will tell you it means the world to him. I know
what it meant to me, I just could not get enough mail every day. I was
lucky, I had a girlfriend writing almost every day, thank you Nancy, and
my family wrote a lot, but I still wanted more. I found a name of a
girl from the Stars and Stripes pen pal list of names to write to me,
thank you Mary Ellen Simmons. When you were out for any length of time,
no matter how bad it got, you wanted to make it back to read what
letters might be waiting for you. For any of you that like to write,
here is a address where your letter will be forwarded to a service man
or women overseas.Any Service Member Operation Joint Forge APO AE 90397-0001 |
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| It's About Time | ||
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