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Vietnam Veterans Issued Razors?

I consider this a heroes thread....thank you all Vets for contributing your time to it, and thanks for serving too.
 
Ron, That makes sense to me. Hobo woods was a damn nasty neighborhood wasn't it?
Thank you for serving.
Mike

Yeah it was Mike. I don't ever remember seeing more complex tunneling systems in all of Nam as I did in those damn woods. Speaking of sp packs, do you remember those nasty Tropical chocolate bars? We used to give them to the kids. Thanks for your service Mike.

Best Regards Ron....Bravo Co. 1/28th. 1ST. Inf. Div. 1968/69
 
its funny i see this thread, becuase last night i was watching a show about Rangers on the history channel. they talked about how the US rangers needed and developed sniper schools during WW II, Nam, Etc untill they made it a permanent school in i think Virginia and somewhere else. but they did share a few storys about the snipers and one of the guys carlos hathcock; the Vietnam army put a 30,000 bounty on him!! using a M1 Garand i think? he was pretty much unstopable. the history channel did say he passed in 99 due to illness, that guy had some nerves of steel :)


i appreciate everyone that served and or currently serving, you really do a good job! the stories i have heard are pretty harsh, including sleeping with your weapons, flashbangs and nades because you never know whats going to happen. (i have a officer co worker serving in iraq, but i think he might be back or on leave)
 
its funny i see this thread, becuase last night i was watching a show about Rangers on the history channel. they talked about how the US rangers needed and developed sniper schools during WW II, Nam, Etc untill they made it a permanent school in i think Virginia and somewhere else. but they did share a few storys about the snipers and one of the guys carlos hathcock; the Vietnam army put a 30,000 bounty on him!! using a M1 Garand i think? he was pretty much unstopable. the history channel did say he passed in 99 due to illness, that guy had some nerves of steel :)

i appreciate everyone that served and or currently serving, you really do a good job! the stories i have heard are pretty harsh, including sleeping with your weapons, flashbangs and nades because you never know whats going to happen. (i have a officer co worker serving in iraq, but i think he might be back or on leave)
The sniper school you refer to is at the Quantico Marine Corp Base in VA, and Hatchcock helped to establish it.

Carlos Hatchcock used a Winchester Model 70 rifle mostly but his longest kill, 2700 yards, was with a modified .50 Cal. Browning Machine Gun. He was known as "White Feather" by the VC/NVA and the enemy tried and tried to kill him. He got that name because he wore a white feather in his hat. It was not just that he had 93 confirmed kills, his missions were extremely dangerous and sometimes solo in harsh areas. Ultimately, it was the disease MS that took this legend down.
 
My aunt's fiance is about 60 or so, and was in the Army, I think right after Vietnam era? He wasn't in Vietnam, but was in the Army. He said he had a DE in the Army, issued to him, that he had to clean or else they'd get mad at him. Actually, I might be mistaking Army with Air Force or Navy, though, I'm not entirely sure of the branch, just I don't believe he saw combat.
 
Yeah it was Mike. I don't ever remember seeing more complex tunneling systems in all of Nam as I did in those damn woods. Speaking of sp packs, do you remember those nasty Tropical chocolate bars? We used to give them to the kids. Thanks for your service Mike.

Best Regards Ron....Bravo Co. 1/28th. 1ST. Inf. Div. 1968/69
Ron, same as you, we did it all for our brothers and for our outfit. I wouldn't given a week old pair of socks for whovever was running the guvmint in Saigon.
Yeah, I remember those chocolate bars. After a while the kids didn't even want them. Perhaps even worse, do you remember those square cubes of white gunk?
I think they were supposed to be some kind of vanilla fudge. They looked sort of like C4. The big joke was that we should leave some where charlie would find them an they would use them in their booby traps.
To be truthful, I never set foot in Hobo Woods or anywhere else around Cu Chi, but I talked to some electric strawberry(25th Infantry) guys that did. I spent most of my first tour riding tracks down in the dirty river delta region. Our HQ was up in Bearcat.
We surely didl enjoy showers and shaves when we occaisionaly did get to go up there. Hell, they even had a steam&cream.
Anyway,
Best Regards to you and all the other 11's past and present.
Mike
A Co,2/47 Mechanized
 
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It is a small world, Shyrlock. One of my neighbours was based at Bearcat with the 135th Assault Helicopter Company, a combined US/ Australian Navy unit. He was an airframe engineer, and one of the very few sailors in the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) that did a twelve month tour. (Some others were the Navy Clearance Divers and demolitions men). The Australian Task Force base was just to the South East of Bearcat at Nui Dat and we were often carried around and resupplied by Hueys from Bearcat.

It was startling to see a Huey pilot sporting a full beard, as many of them were RAN officers, and wearing beards is an old Navy tradition adopted from the British Navy.

Army, officers and enlisted, were not allowed to grow full beards, although moustaches were common.
 
Yes it is Bluey. I am trying to remember the helicopter companies that were there when I was (69-71) There was the 240th AHC. the Greyhounds I think, the 335AHC. Cowboys?. There were two companies of the big CH-47 Chinooks, I forget their outfits, but I think they were 1st Cav. There alsowas a 1st Cav Cobra outfit, "C battery somethig something Arial Rocket Artillery.
There were a lot of Royal Thai army soldiers and pilots there too. The Thais had the bases artillery batteries, 105s and 155s. Thai artillery was very very good.
I remember rolling past the Nui Dat area on a roundabout patrol down to Dong Tam. That would have been south of Xuan Loc and Long Thanh. I think there was a special forces camp and a big rubber plantation down that way too.
Do you remember the fixed wing base just South of Bearcat(maybe 1 mile) It was called Longh Thanh North?
It is good to find someone who was around that area.
Do you remember what the 135thAHC was called? I can't quite place them.
Very Respectfully,
Mike
 
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$fbrass012.jpg

Was the kukri a the standard issue razor for the diggers?
 
Was the kukri a the standard issue razor for the diggers?

It was not an issue item in Vietnam, Lenard, but many of the Australian soldiers who fought there were also veterans of the Malaya and Borneo "confrontation" (aka guerilla war) with Indonesia that went on from the mid 50's to 1966.

The British were leaving Malaya and Borneo and various factions were struggling for control prior to independence. The British Army had a large contingent of Gurkhas there and many of the Aussies acquired kukris (the Gurkha fighting knife) and carried them on operations in Vietnam in later years. They were a bit of a status symbol as well as a useful weapon, as it marked the owner as an old combat hand.
 
Bump because it's jam packed full of heroes. Google search brought me here and it was a great morning of reading.

Thank you gentlemen
 
Worth bumping. My father served in the USAF - drafted Canadian national. If you had a green card, you were subject to the draft (he said his 'green card' was orange). He wasn't in Vietnam, but he was in personnel transfer, so he probably saw a lot of things that weren't very nice.

I knew early on that I was a lousy candidate for military service - I don't take stupid instructions well, which is what the entire breakdown/buildup process is - but I have NEVER denigrated anyone for service, no matter where, or for what reason. The act of serving alone is worth all the kudos we can give.
 
I was in the army in 1966 and we were issued a travel size 3 piece Gillette double edge. They actually shaved quite nicely. I replaced it in 1987 with a Gliiette 109 Black Beauty that I still use today.
 
I was active USAF 1968-1970. We were never issued anything shaving related and most used techmatics. You could use one of the heads and keep it in your pocket, and place a new one on the handle for inspection. Some drill seargets were real pieces, others more calm and reserved. Mine was afraid of me, he learned that I had had two years or army ROTC, and was headed for OCS, and thought I would come back and chew him out, when all I wanted to do was get away from Lackland. Never made it to Vietnam but Uncle in his wisdom sent me to Turkey for two years instead, and was under blackout conditions for a short time in late summer of 74 when the Turks invaded Cyprus fighting the Greeks. I was stationed at Izmir a major NATO headquarters where we had multinational forces including some Greeks. The night of the invasion the Turkish high command had our staff send some senior NCO's and Officers to overlook the apartments where the Greek personnel, mostly officers and senior NCO's lived, until they could get a charter airliner in from Greece to pick them up, and to pack their belongings for shipment back to Greece. The Turks knew this would be short lived and did not want any Turkish citizen harming any of the Greek personnel stationed there harmed, basically fighting them off the southern Mediterranean coast and treating them with "kid gloves" up on the central western Aegean coast about 900 miles away.
 
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