1st Battalion 22nd Infantry A Company 1969-70

1st Battalion 22nd Infantry

A Company 1969 - 1970

by Jim Flint

Jim Flint Jan-Feb 1970

I arrived in Vietnam by airplane in early June 1969, one year out of college
and already married to my high school sweet heart for nearly two years.

My first impression I remember to this day in leaving the plane at Da Nang was the heat and the humidity,
and a smell I did not then recognize and later discovered was burning human feces and diesel fuel.

The first night was reality in Vietnam. Sappers came through the wire and blew up a fuel depot.
Explosions and bullets were flying at some distance but us new in country people were sheep herded
into a standing room only bunker. I, never being able to be led by the nose, I spent a reasonably comfortable night
sleeping between the barracks and the sandbags. I understand one person in a nearby barracks was killed in bed
by a stray bullet when he refused to go to the bunker.

Another memory from Da Nang was green eggs. That will not happen again!

I eventually made it to Pleiku, the 4^th Infantry Division to Co. A of the 1/22 at a firebase South of KonTum.
I was assigned to Mike Platoon. Many nights we could see the flares and hear the high explosives of the activity at KonTum.

I do not recall the name given this fire base South of KonTum but I believe it was across the valley from LZ Ranger.
There I met Top Owens (David G. Owens), Dan Noland, “Birdman”, Sgt. Murphy, Dave Flanagan, and others.
This fire base had a 105 howitzer unit on it and we ate very well because of the artillery unit.
A Company was on this fire base through July and into August 1969.

After this firebase we were not stationary and after a stand down in October 1969 we moved to the An Loa River Valley
around LZ Beaver and then onto a Company Fire Base we named LZ Owens, North East of LZ Beaver.
We were on LZ Owens until January 1970 and then we were on the move again. The times on LZ Owens were long
and we lost good people in this part of Vietnam. My Company was part of the force inserted in Cambodia
and was support for the firebase there. I remember the chatter on the radio when the fire base was attacked.

It has now been 36 years since leaving Vietnam! It could have been yesterday.

I am now retired, but for the last ten years before I retired, I worked in Batavia, N.Y.
There is a painting on the side of a building I frequently went by. The painting is of a Huey Chopper with open doors
and infantry men sitting in the doorway. The inscription on the painting is “We were so young”.
Many memories were inspired in me each time I went by the painting.

The inscription on the painting, “We were so young”, reminds me of the book by Joe Galloway;
We Were Soldiers Once, and Young. Fortunately I, we-Company A, never had an experience of the magnitude
described in Joe Galloway’s book while I was there.

Over the years I consider myself fortunate to have served with the people I found myself with.
We were all different and yet all the same. I never will forget the bonds formed in my “Band of Brothers” in Mike Platoon,
A Company, of the 1/22, 4th Infantry Division.

We were and still are brothers whether we see or walk with each other ever again.

Jim Flint-----April 2006

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