Reading my old mans Vietnam diary I can imagine the feelings

I had them transcribed and this sticks out jump outs at me guns up guns up screaming over the radios for platoons m-60’s I read them from time to time , when my mother gave them to me they were lined hardback notebooks with printing and paper was kind of getting on with time I had no idea they existed . A operation called big spring he was humping with the 173rd the herd.

And what jumps out at me is we caught them in the open today a entry in describing contact with the vc. Now I read these over and over at times just to get inside my old mans head. At this time I was maybe ten months old.

The call came over the radio guns up they are in the open guns up. So they had be calling for the 60’s machine guns, maybe they was to far away for 5.56 so bring on the 7.62, we were trying to raise arty get tac air we forced them into the open.

I can imagine oh yea you fuckers the morale was up with the men of 2/503 abn because they squeezed them by the neck and now they can actually see bodies dropping. Maybe laughing smoking a c-rat cigarette because you been tired scared for days making contact and they fade away.

And now your making them pay , pay the price for being tired frightened so stressed out your wired so tight looking for booby traps ambushes at night humping all day in heat , so when I was ten months old filling diapers this is what my old man was living through . I think I will donate these to the army heritage museum at Carlisle army war college. People need to understand and read these words from a generation on the personal level that suffered this shit.