Soldiers

mountains near czechoslavakia - jack - Friday, December 29th, 2006 : goo

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i scanned this photo i took in january of 1964.
we were training for mountain warfare. soldier at left is a nice boy from an italian family in north philadelphia, his name is chico, the other guy is ronny. it was pre-nam days in '64'. chico was the first to go to nam. i kept in touch with ronnie but i don't know where chico is. well anyway we had a mission to attack hill 509, being rangers meant we had to crawl, undetected, up a 6,000 foot hill. well we got to the top and radioed back to command and we were told it was the wrong mountain. (profanity here) we then ran off the mountain and up the next to complete our mission in due time. we were dam good soldiers. i took this photo with my agfa camera. we were cold, as you can see and would huddle around a jeep's engine to get warm. we killed foul for food and lived in the mountains for a month at a time. we slept in snow, which is a good insulation and washed (sometimes) in snowy rivers. i would find a pine tree and crawl under the lowest branches and sleep on dry ground where the deer slept. then two months later we were jumping out of copters training for nam. chico and ronnie were good friends and in my squad. soldiers become like brothers.

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hool: hey jack, i like the photo and i like your story.

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