Posted on 08/29/2020 11:12:00 AM PDT by ameribbean expat
Donohue took a job on the next ship headed to the war, the Drake Victory, a merchant vessel transporting ammo to the ’nam from New York. He got the names and units of a half-dozen guys in the neighborhood, grabbed a seabag, stuffed it full of PBR, threw on a pair of light blue jeans, a plaid shirt, and headed out. Two months later, in early 1968, he arrived in Vietnam — just in time for the start of the Tet Offensive against U.S. and South Vietnamese troops.
*****
Donohue ran through his beer supply in transit, but stocked up when they hit port in Qui Nhon harbor. “It took two months to get there, so I drank all the beer,” he told the New York Times.
Shortly after pulling in, Donohue noticed the unit insignia on a group of military police officers who were inspecting the Drake Victory. They were from the 127th Military Police Company, the same unit as one of the names on his list: Tom Collins. Donohue, known as a smooth and quick talker, pulled one of the MPs aside and spun a sob story about looking for his brother-in-law, gave the man Collins’ name, and then waited. Not long after that, Collins arrived.
“I said, ‘Chickie Donohue, what the hell are you doing here?’” Collins told the Times. “He said, ‘I came to bring you a beer.”
(Excerpt) Read more at taskandpurpose.com ...
If he drank all the Pabst on the boat going over, did he buy the beer in country?
Yes, according to the article
Did not read that when navigating through all the adds...just that he showed up with beer.
I was expecting Smokey and The Bandit...
So Jerry Reed wasn’t involved, then?
Would the ship hold 400 cases of Coors?
Pabst Blue Ribbon … not a great beer but I drank a lot of it in the Marines back in that era. Recently bought a six pack of Pabst for old times’ sake.
My great uncle was a surgeon in WWII. He met a wounded soldier in the hospital that was from his hometown. Of course he asked if there was anything he could do and the soldier mentioned how much he would live to have a beer.
Yep, the guy had a case of beer under his bed within 24hrs. After 80 years his family still talks about it.
Red neck, white socks, and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.
I liked Rheingold and Bud.
1971, I had just returned from Vietnam, had a 30 day leave, rented a brand new '71 Mustang GT and headed out to hang with an old HS buddy at Central Washington State college in Ellensburg, WA.
It was party, party, all day and night long and one day I found out that a good friend of his was getting married and wanted to have Coors beer at the reception.
Well, in 1971 Coors beer, for some damn reason wasn't sold in WA state.
Well now, I had a pocket full of money I had saved while overseas, my buddy's room mate had a private pilots license so I rented a little Cesna and he flew us 200 miles to Coeur d'Alene, ID. where I rented a car, we drove to the nearest grocery store, bought as many cases of Coors that the plane would carry back, drove back to the airport and flew back to the college and the Coors beer was a big hit at the wedding reception.
Not as cool as the thread's story but it's my classic beer run story.
Great minds think alike ;-)
You know perfectly well shipping Coors beer east of Da Nang is bootlegging.
An uncle of mine was in the Air Force in California in the 1970’s. He would come to Texas with two empty suitcases to fill with Coors to take back. He would also pick up 4 dozen James Coney Island hot dogs to take back.
Far East bound and down
For aircraft carrier-borne aviators in the Gulf of Tonkin, assignments taking them to DaNang and back were actually beer runs in disguise. Banning of alcohol aboard USN ships has been a very long standing myth. It’s a little known fact (except among the squids) that San Miguel helped fight the Vietnam War.
Ah, but Lucky Lager; squeezed from corn-fed panthers.
San Miguel?
Damn, we in-country had to rely on mostly Schlitz or Black Plague, (Black Label), but after a hard, hot day it tasted great.
We used to fill the boom pod of a KC-135Q Coors for our normal monthly crew rotations to Kadena AB, back in the early 80s. You could not get Coors on Okinawa. We could get all kinds of favors to include sewing of Velcro squares on our flight suits with the guys at the Base Parachute Shop.
One New Years Eve we had 3 crews flying the aircraft with about 40 passengers over to Kadena AB. As our portion ended getting the aircraft to Hickham AFB, HI we were dead heading the rest of the route. My Co-Pilot snuck into the back and started pillaging the stores from the boom pod. At 36,000 ft anything stored in the boom pod is nicely chilled. Needless to say he was hammered by the time we arrived at our destination. In today’s PC Air Force this would be a career ender.
Only thing worse than PBR was Carling Black Label. They had steel cans and the top was often starting to rust. We built ourselves an O’Club and sold ourselves beer. We drank a lot of beer.
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