Now my adopted daughter is trying to get in the Seabees to "honor" me and because I told her how much fun the training was.
Following a year with an Infantry division and the 10th Special Forces at Bad Tolz in Germany, which duty included four tours on the *Iron Curtain* 5km militarized zone of West Germany, a trip to an African war Zone as the radioman/bodyguard for a USAF Colonel military attache conducting an inspection of the way US-provided military aid was being used, and the trip to Italy to load onto ships in the event the evacuation of US citizens during the 1967 Arab-Israeli Six-Day War was required, I was en route to San Francisco just after New Years Day of 1968 when ordered to divert to Ft Riley, Kansas for an additional training session.
They'd constructed a marvelous replica of a Vietnamese jungle village along the riverbanks that flowed by the base, and we spent three days learning all the basics of the procedures for surrounding and clearing the buildings of such a village, of immediate action to be taken should we be in a convoy under attack, and the defense of a base camp or fire base perimeter during a day or night attack. It was all material I was very familiar with and had practiced before, though it was new to some of the support unit guys and REMFS, but the conditions were a bit different for me.
And if the VietCong or North Vietnames Army had ever attacked me during the time I was in Vietnam during a blinding snowstorm, I had practiced for it in Kansas and was ready.
I arrived at Vietnam's Tan Sohn Nhut airport at the end of January of 1968, the evening the Vietnamese celebrated their *Tet* lunar new year and the evening the NVA and VC launched their surprise offensive. It wasn't snowing.
Hope the Seabees works out okay for your daughter.
