Vietnam -- My personal rendezvous with destiny

If someone were to come up to me and say, "So, okay, who are you and what do you do?" I'd have to tell them the simple truth and say that I'm an x-Microsoft employee working for Nuveen Investments as an IT - Consultant.

But if that same person came up to me and asked , "You were in the military for ten years, what did you do?", I'd tell them to come over to my blogs and start reading this one first, then the military intelligence center and school one; http://usaics7071.blogspot.com,  The Fort Huachuca one; http://huachuca72to73.blogspot.com, the Sanders and Luck one; http://2nd17th73to75.blogspot.com/ , the 3rd Combat Aviation Battalion one; http://2nd17th73to75.blogspot.com/ and, finally, going back to Fort Campbell blog; http://101stairbornefrom77to79.blogspot.com.

But I'm almost done with this blog and the others will have hundreds of stories behind them, too.

So, instead of having you go to all those blogs, imagine an E-5 who worked as a stringer from 1975 to 1979 for a battalion level units who had"

    5 stories accepted by Soldiers
  27 stories accepted by EurArmy Magazine
  60 articles published in the Fort Campbell Courier
100 images published in the Fort Campbell Courier
  12 photo-features published in Frontline
  12 photo-features published in Pillar and Post
  12 photographs published in AARES
    3 photo-features published in Army Aviation Magazine
    3 photo-features published in the Clarksville Leaf Chronicle
    3 photo-features published in the Hopkinsville New Era
    2 articles published in Stars and Stripes
    2 articles Army Aviation Digest
    1 photograph published in Army Magazine.
    1 photograph published in Lake Charles American Press
Add to that TV coverage from Hilery Brown of ABC News and photographic support for Time Magazine and you have some -- not all -- of the credits I generated for the Army.

As a stringer.

For a battalion.

There was a request for three ARCOMS over this period of time. I received 2.  I also received a Commander's Certificate and a personal letter from MG John N Brandenburg.

But the greatest honor that I could bestow on the military was when my article in 1980 was published in Saga Magazine.  The subject?  What else:  Aviation Tank Killers.