My Dad, My Hero

   I adore my dad.  There are probably a million reasons why.  He is one of the kindest, most generous, thoughtful people I know.  This week when Veterans' Day rolled around, I posted a picture of him during his military service on my Facebook page.  My dad is a Vietnam veteran and I am so proud of his service there, even though he'd rather of been anywhere else at the time.  He served with Co. D 1/502nd Infantry of the 101st Airborne in the Army in 1970 & '71.  On that Facebook post, I had a really great discussion with a friend of mine who is also a Vietnam vet & it made me think of all the stories Dad would tell me about his time in 'Nam.  There was a period when I was young where he would tell me bedtime stories of all the good things - jumping out of airplanes, everyday camp life, marching through the jungle, etc... all the kid friendly things.  One story in particular was about one of the guys taking a picture of some of his 'Nam buddies.  The guy's brother made it into a poster with the title "The Dirty Dozen" & sent it back to the guy.  When it got to be too much to carry around, he was going to get rid of it, but Dad said he'd take it on but eventually he gave it up too.  Oh, how I'd love to see that picture!  I thought it would be fun to find it for Dad too.
   I wanted to start a quest on the internet to see if I could look up some of the guys in the troop & find a copy of that picture! I got my mom to dig out Dad's old pictures from Vietnam.  The quest eventually turned from one to find a picture to one of wanting to share his pictures.  While scouring the message boards that are out there for reconnecting veterans, I saw a post that said that one guy was looking for pictures because he hadn't had a camera when he was over there.  Dad had so many great shots of the guys in his group, now my quest is to see if I can find them so they can have some pictures they might not have.
  I've started a Facebook page dedicated to his group and I'll be posting a sampling pictures of each of the guys.  So far, I've found these names amongst the pictures: Tom Claunch, Sean Hurst or Hersch, "Davy" Crockett, Greg Clifton, Herb Collins, Bert Kriese, Ed Cobos, Richard "Bear" Sugamele, Wayne Sorrell, George Hinyer, Dave Trotter, Robert Gomez, Mike McNeary, and numerous others that are named with nicknames or just first or last names.
  My historian part of me has never gotten off on modern history, but I'm starting to warm up to the idea;) 

Drop me a note if you know any of those guys:)