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From: Francis Hamit
Date: 7/24/2004
Time: 11:03:54 PM
Remote Name: 209.179.134.56
Dear Terry (and the rest of you guys) I do not recall McMurtry. SFC krasse was the Flt Ops NCOIC, Sp Gross his assistant. They were RA guys rther than ASA. My OIC was Captain Jim Thompson, a really good guy who worried about my obvious lack of morals because I went to Ben Xe Moi every chance I got. (You stay sane your way, I stay sane mine). I used to fly coourier with WO Joe Cowan , who was also from Iowa City. Joe's little joke with the couriers was to ask them to take the controls while he looked at the map. Kistner nearly put one in a stall when Joe did it to him.
Yje job in Frankfurt was highly unauthorized but highly necessary. I was a 71l40 acting as a 71Q40 (Information specialist). The Pentagon used to send out an X team every year to ask why we had a function like that. We showed them the overseas weekly and reminded them that we had the brightest, best educated enlisted in the Army. An underground newspaper at any of our units would have been a big security breech and a bigger PR problem. I got the job because I was already a writer and photographer. I kept it because I lea4rned the regs cold on it and could advise the CG. Heady stuff for a mere E-5? Maybe. My opposite number at V Corps was a big help. He was an E-9. But if you thought we were short of clerks in 'Nam, Germany was worse. I ended up doing a few other things -- like being the reviewing officer for the Annual Historical Reports before they went up the chain. I also did some coordination and liason on the new Field Station in Augsburg. But none of that has anything to do with Can Tho, which is why I haven't gone into it earlier. Sometime I'll have to recount the nighttime run to the officer's hotel in Can Tho, after curfew. That was a very interesting episode.