Post No. 44 of my July 4th, 2000 Freerepublic.com Thread:
'WE WERE SOLDIERS ONCE..& YOUNG'...4 FREEDOM
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/forum/a39626542519c.htm
Quote:
NO GREATER LOVE HATH A MOTHER...as on my way to the Central Highlands of a then Free South Vietnam, in the Summer of 1965, I stopped by my mother's hillside grave. A Mother that I had lost after her long illness when I was 20. While standing over her grave I deeply asked...
.."Well Mother, I wonder what's going to happen to me. ...I want to live past this war but I do not want to have to shoot (KILL) anyone in order to do it?"
...My Mother's Loving Voice immediately came from above more clearly than when she was living on the Earth with the words...
.."HAVE NO FEAR, Ron, FOR YOU WILL SURVIVE THIS WAR and YOU WILL DO SO WITHOUT HAVING TO FIRE A SHOT."
...I shared this loving experience with fellow SkyTroopers while on the way by Navy Troopship to Vietnam. It was while aboard that I was chosen to be then Lt. Col. HAROLD G. MOORE's Radioman/Driver/Orderly in-country.
...Just before IA DRANG I was made our U.S. 7th Cavalry Headquarters S-1 Personnel Clerk carrying our Killed and Wounded Soldiers from Helicopter to Helicopter and thus witnessing at IA DRANG.
...In the weeks that followed that Battle I typed MOORE's Letters to the Families and Loved Ones of the 100's Killed and Wounded in Action in the Battles at LZ X-RAY and LZ ALBANY ...IA DRANG.
...The rest of my Vietnam Tour of Duty was in Headquarters S-2/3 Battalion Operations (you go where the need is) typing up After Action Reports upon our return from our Search and Destroy Operations but always as a witness. In a 1st Cavalry Division with over 400 Helicopters... we all went..!
...On my last mission in-country I was witness to my very own Purple Heart as I walked off a CH-47 Chinook Helicopter onto an Grass covered hilltop and right into the same Punjii Stake (a razor sharpened bamboo spear planted in the high elephant grass-coverd ground) that the Clerk ahead of me had just walked into falling away..!
...As you might imagine this became the Joke of the whole damned Division, as MOORE himself later related to me after I returned to that Hilltop after my recovery. "Is it true what I heard, Ron, Two Headquarters Clerks - One Punjii Stake..?" ..nearly falling to the ground laughing. It IS very funny stuff looking back on it now. During that particular Offensive Operation nearly 100 SkyTroopers were also Punjii Staked, but we were the only 2-for-1..!
...But again, my Mother's Loving words of comfort had all came true... as I had just been through every Major First of the Vietnam War... 1st Major Battle (IA DRANG), 1st Full Division-sized Offensive (BONG SON), 1st Communist Attack on an American Division-sized Camp-ours (AN KHE)... without my ever having to fire a shot..!
...Such is the LOVE of my Mother EVELYN who is now in Paradise so comforting Mother ELIZABET over her son ELIAN..!
...For LOVE is the ONLY Reality..and GOD is LOVE...for our Loving Mothers have told us so. NO GREATER LOVE HATH A MOTHER
Unquote
"There are NO Coincidences"