I converse with my old friend Lt. Pat forester a.k.a. LT. Dan. He calls me Forrest for obvious reasons, being born and raised in La. and always living on the water. We were close friends in Vietnam, and he always liked my "just do it attitude" which sometimes wasn't always for the greater good. But, I digress, here is an email from him this afternoon. The Boiloi woods he refers to is an area that constantly gave us hell with so many NVA regulars and VC snipers it was just down the road from NUI BA DEN "black virgin mountain" special forces owned the top, gooks owned the middle and we owned the bottom. Sheridan is a special tank designed for jungle warfare, 155mm cannon(Piece of junk) you could stab a bayonet in the side of it. He is discussing a weapon I had called "Swedish k sub machingun" it is a 9 mm about 18 to 20" long, anyway we "tankers" were issued standard grease guns on tanks (my MOS 11e20 gunner tank m48a3) Lt Dan was a TC "tank commander" anyway grease guns because the way they look are 45 cal. and start to shoot like a 50 cal. like the train slow at first and when the barrel warms up, faster. Now Lt. Dan


We luckily had no grease guns when I was on line. M16s were in vogue by battalion decree. There was only one problem, mine was real old with the 3 finger tip. The guys "in the know" said they were better because you could break the wires that held C-rations together with that model. However mine never worked worth a shit because it fired two, sometimes 3 rounds and them it jammed. It didn't matter usually up at the TC's cupola because I had the .50 and the 90. However one time in the BoiLois (9DEC69) the gook hit my 50, jamming it, and they was a downed infantryman in front of my tank. I couldn't shoot the main gun because the shock would have killed the infantryman. The gook was in a hole 10 feet in front of my tank. So I grabbed my untrusty 16 and fired single shot into that hole. The first sgt from the 3/4 Cav pulled the leg soldier to the back of my tank. Then he returned to the right front fender of the tank, pointed to the main gun and the hole. I dispatched 5 round of HE into the hole-in about 20 seconds. The Cav men were impressed because they had turned in their M-48s for Sheridans and had to wait 1 1/2 minutes between firing conventional rounds. The firefight lasted 5-6 hours with air stikes intertwined with our moving up, taking fire, then moving back and waiting for F-100s to drop their ordnance. I got a lot of the napalm stikes with my super 8 camera and they are promenent in my Tay Nihn video. And that's the truth! Pat

That made me feel all warm and tingly inside.Thanks for sharing and thanks for your service.

thank you "dog walker" I should have probably posted this in the vet forum but sometimes s*** happens and I appoligize to the moderators for not doing the right thing. Again, Moderators I am very sorry if I did not post right.

I wasnt born till after Nam, but I bet shootin gooks in holes is about as fun as shooting ducks on the water

You got it brother. Me an LT used to set up some night ambushes withclaymores trip flares and just wait sitting on top of that bigass 48, I have pics. of shots at least 300 yards clean that me and Lt. Dan took after the fact. inside vietnam and (over the fence) Cambodia.Be glad to show um to ya but not on www. because of laws. Can show you a vc cadre standing and then not.
just doing my duty,forrest

Member 1 night when the gooks were so close you could actualy smell em, Lt got scared because he said someone had either died there or was very sick, he was right because ther was that smell. To this day he says "you did smell that didn't you" ?
LT. was a good shot wif a 50cal. when the times got tuff. I know of 2 times that he got my ar* out of a bad sit< God bless you LT. DAN and thanks for the army comendation medal , also my grandkids love ya.

LT. DAN is my hero

If you knew him he would be your'es too. This guy saved my ass in Nam. He will take your gaurd and always stand up for you.