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From: Daniel Webster
Date: 02 May 2001
Time: 13:39:04
Remote Name: 209.240.221.72
Thnks for the info, Joe. You have been a big help. I remember just as soon as a new barracks was completed, more guys were moved from downtown into them. Many of them had no GI issue wall lockers and either brought their "Kimchee", locally produced wooden cabinets from the hotel with them to their new billets or just plain did without. When I joined the unit and was placed in the E6 hootch, I enherited a wooden wall locker that once had been in the hotel. It would later be blasted away in an attacked after the E6s had to move into the new billets. I recall having to pull duty as a monitor at the Mekong's EM club at slot-machine coin-counting time. The hotel still had many young GIs living there. The time was just before Tet, '68. Most of the Commo Section's EM were some of the last to move out. Any way, it is no big matter. I recall my pucker factor climbing to a high level when I and the other E6s learned we were moving to the new two-story wooden barracks; seemed the new buildings were taking a lot of motar rounds about that time. It was less than 10 days later when the building I and three other SSGs had moved into was hit with both motar and recoiless weapons rounds. The four of us, along with many of the EM occupants, were wounded. SSG Jimmy James and SSG Daniel Campbell had to be medevaced while SSG Green, a Mess Sgt, and I only recieved minor wounds. At the Dispensary, Green and I sat waiting to be treated while the bodies of our good men were placed on strechers in front of us on the floor, waiting to be taken away. I tear up every time I recall that night.