Gary Rabideau - Page 6

Gary Rabideau -- C Company 4th Platoon -- 1970-1971

Safety pin from a hand grenade - probably smoke

Steak dinner at the company area picnic. After August stand-down at An Khe.
Ron Moran on left, me kneeling, Captain Caquino kneeling behind me.
Artie Linger, standing, facing camera. Artie was in Fire Direction Center (FDC)
for our mortars.

Me at guard bunker - chopper pad guard at An Khe, Sept 1970.
All night job, 7pm to 7am. This bunker was hit by a rocket one morning
when I was halfway to the pick up truck. I was passing my morning relief man
when it hit. He was taking my place for day guard. I guess we were both lucky.

Me by a Cobra gunship Sept 1970. We were still in the 4th Division at this time
before being given to the 1st Field Force.

View of a Cobra from the front. They sure are narrow.
Not much of a target to hit with a rifle.

Ron Jaketic and Rick Smith washing in a welcomed stream
(Blue line on maps) The triple canopy jungle made it hard to get a picture in the day time.
Oct 1970

Posing by the Christmas tree my mother-in-law sent -
top, left to right: "Coco" and "Tex"
bottom, left to right: "Spud" and Bill Kohner.
I think they were in a machine gun squad that was assigned to mortars a lot.
Dec 1970, Tent City, Tuy Hoa

SGT Jim Weimer (Pops) Dec 1970.
We called him "Pops" because he was a couple years older than the rest of us.
I think he was from Chicago.

Mike Bellamy (Bell) and Jack Case (Six Pack)

Rick Smith. He was from California. We hootched together a lot on
firebases and in the jungle. Rick was deadly with his fists if you got him mad
while drinking. He broke two guys' noses in Nam. He also was the third soldier in line
and got splattered with gore from the first two guys in line when they walked into
one of our mechanical ambushes.

Two Vietnamese men at Tuy Hoa. Locals who were given the job as "shit burners".
(You can see the black cloud in the background.)

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