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You may recall my stories about Maj Guy in the two tales of Manos restaurant in Tokyo in the 1970s, My first adventure, and the time Maj Guy and I took our wives to Manos, just to prove out innocent intentions. It was very exclusive brothel of sorts, with only foreign women, which Japanese men at that time were very enamored with.
Earlier this week I did a long post on “Jefe”, who was Maj Guy’s boss in the ...
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(Note: I wrote this a few days ago under the assumption Jefe was no longer able to correspond and even have passed away. He wrote me yesterday from Hawaii that he was just fine, Thank you, and to correct a couple of errors in my retelling of our last discussion in 1975. I amended it accordingly. Don’t be surprised to see him writing a few stories here, his military career goes back to the 50s. Here’s to his good health.)
His ...
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About 18 minutes.
Speaks for itself. Courtesy of Mike Collins, a frequent contributor to Veterans Tales.
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The Beer of my Youth, 1964-1969
This story tells itself, and I know guys from Chicago, Philadelphia, who had pals from home that still get together.
(H/t to Mike Collins, regular contributor)
One of my best is a Marine. Remember, they never die. He was a Marine sniper in the early 60s. Served a short tour in Japan and another (one year) in Vietnam. I’m not sure how many enlistments he made it through, maybe two. He joined the Marines to avoid jail time from juvenile court judge (they still did that in those days) and probably left the Corps on the same terms. I believe he held the Corps record for ...
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Fix Bayonets! by Mustang
Urban areas (cities and large towns), are important centers of gravity —points of interest that involve a complex range of human activities. Throughout history military commanders have acknowledged that urban areas are either places that require protection, or they are centers that demand firm control. These are mankind’s centers of population, transportation and communications hubs, seats of government, the sources of national wealth, and concentrations of industry. Over the past three-hundred years, humans living in agrarian areas ...
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Seems you can’t turn your head without finding our friend SGM Fred Barnes in the middle of history. Last year we introduced Fred as an E-3 trooper whose unit was brought into to witness (as guinea pigs) the first and only firing of the Army’s famous atomic cannon in the Nevada desert in 1953.
(Fast forward six years, and Spec 5 Barnes found himself at the front of the history known in America as the “Vietnam War”, only four years before ...
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They’ve often claimed that Economics is the dreariest science, but for men in uniform you’d have to go some to match the drudgery of pouring over miles and miles of pages and pages of personnel files and the rules and regs that define them.
In the Army of the 60s-and 70s, before reorganization, it was called G-1, then DCSPER (Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel) and that was where they kept the records of every trooper. His 201-file, which he carried when he ...
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In October I promised you a second case-story about rape, the first story trying to give you some sort of idea about why neither good cops nor defense lawyers will take a female victim’s word as gospel.
This next case in about a rape charge that highlighted the difference in legal cultures (Japan and the United States) and the bias against foreign criminals there which I’ve never seen in America in my lifetime.
In March, I think, 1974, Mrs Minami showed in a ...
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