Rod Farkas - E Co. RECON 9/70-12/70
After the 3rd BDE 9TH INF DIV redeployed, I was transferred to the 25th DIV (2/12th) Recon PLT as an F.O. with the Recon PLT. I was only with Recon from Sept. to Dec. 1970. We operated out of FSB Jamie. I was in Recon in the 9th after graduating from Recondo school in May. I was in Co. C 2/60 before that. FSB Jamie and the area around it was flat a hill 885 was within it on the Viet Cambodian Border. The trees off the road were killed by agent orange. In Recon in the 9th we worked in teams but in the 25th the squad of one half platoon worked together. Basically jungle area, some thick, some not too bad. The VC were moving through from Cambodia after the incursion. Usually in small groups, some large. We sometimes assaulted at night off PBRs with the 2/12th. That was rare with the 25th, common in the 9th. Sometimes water flooded were the areas we worked. Once I was on point and thought I saw a man swimming, at least a head and shoulder but watched as a large boa swam to shore. I had aimed my M16, later lowering it as I looked back and everyone had theirs pointed in the direction of the snake. - CLICK ON PHOTOS TO OPEN SLIDE SHOW
After the 3rd BDE 9TH INF DIV redeployed, I was transferred to the 25th DIV (2/12th) Recon PLT as an F.O. with the Recon PLT. I was only with Recon from Sept. to Dec. 1970. We operated out of FSB Jamie. I was in Recon in the 9th after graduating from Recondo school in May. I was in Co. C 2/60 before that. FSB Jamie and the area around it was flat a hill 885 was within it on the Viet Cambodian Border. The trees off the road were killed by agent orange. In Recon in the 9th we worked in teams but in the 25th the squad of one half platoon worked together. Basically jungle area, some thick, some not too bad. The VC were moving through from Cambodia after the incursion. Usually in small groups, some large. We sometimes assaulted at night off PBRs with the 2/12th. That was rare with the 25th, common in the 9th. Sometimes water flooded were the areas we worked. Once I was on point and thought I saw a man swimming, at least a head and shoulder but watched as a large boa swam to shore. I had aimed my M16, later lowering it as I looked back and everyone had theirs pointed in the direction of the snake. - CLICK ON PHOTOS TO OPEN SLIDE SHOW
Rod Farkas
Group
Far right - Rod Farkas
Pat Conway - HHC / C Co. 6/69-6/70 (roll mouse over photo to ZOOM)
Sgt. Haig is in the bunk above this group photo (hard to see)
Mike Hauser - D Co. 4th Plt (mortar) - 8/67-8/68
1LT Steve Slayton - Plt Ldr in C, B and A Companies, then the 25th Aviation Bn - 9/69-9/70
LT Turner, Medical Officer
Nov 69 at Cu Chi
1LT Steve Slayton
I did a bunch of things with HHC, originally a radio teletype operator 05C40...but they had plenty of those so I was sent to Charlie to work the Company CP and go out on long overnights when we set up antennas..or go to PB like Dees...also did the convoy for a month delivering the new commo codes ... mail and op orders...went to the TOC at FSB Pershing and at FSB Kein and did the night radios, for a month or two, also flew the LOH out to deliver OP orders or mail or commo codes after Sgt. Notter was WIA..never did make it back to CuChi for long...
SGT Pete Warenski - Charlie Co - 4th Plt - Mortars - 5/70-4/71
During the last few months the weapons platoon left the mortars behind and was more of a rifle platoon. Once and awhile we we would take an 81MM with us. From July through January the weapons platoon was down to about 6 of us. My nick name in the plt was grandpa since I was the oldest at 24 and married!
Sgt Pete Warenski
Steve was assigned to Charlie Co as a plt leader but was only there a month; was quickly moved to Bravo Co when they lost several officers in a firefight. Steve stayed with Bravo through October. He then moved again and spent time with Alpha Co from Nov to Jan 70 before moving on to 25th Aviation Bn.
CPT Dan Prall, 1/8th Artillery, 25th Div, HHC, G-3, 5/67-5/68
My association with the 12th Infantry Regiment was from 1950-52, at Ft Benning and Gelnhausen Germany, when my dad (Josef) was CO of the 3/12. My photos are of a parade at Benning about 1950, and field exercises at Baumholder in 1951, which Ike visited.
In my 6.5 year Regular Army career, I followed in others' footsteps. I spent about 2.5 years in Baumholder with the 1st Bn 2nd Field Artillery, 8th Inf Div, and about a year as BC of Battery A, which would be a direct descendant of Calef's Battery at Gettysburg. I actually chose Infantry branch at VMI, but when RA branch assignments arrived in Dec 1961, I was given Field Artillery.
Here's more about my time before G-3, and some about the organization of G-3. I didn't do a year in Vietnam, I got a one-day drop as noted then on my short-timer's calendar, so only 364 days. I flew out of San Francisco on 5 May 67, into Bien Hoa and then on to Cu Chi where I was assigned to the 1/8th Field Artillery. A day or two later I turned in the handwritten resignation from the Regular Army. After 5 years and a Bn CO I considered incompetent in Germany, and then saw him get promoted, I'd had it. I didn't seem the same army as I'd been raised with by my RA Colonel dad.
Check again "About Face" by Hackworth at Amazon used Very Good for as little as $2 plus $3.99 shipping. Hack and I spent tours in the 8th Inf, 25th Inf, and 101st Airborne, tho we only overlapped in the 101. The greatest soldier Hack ever met was Col. Glover S. Johns, who was Commandant of Cadets my first two years at VMI.
So the 1/8th CO sent me out to Bao Trai [Khiem Cuong] in the majorly-VC-controlled Hau Nghia swamps WSW of Cu Chi as Liaison Officer to the province HQ, where I and two assistants sat in a bunker around the clock in shifts clearing artillery fires with the province chief's staff. "Shoot" or "no shoot" was about it. I stayed with the Advisor team in their compound at one end of town. To get from there I had to walk about a block south down the main street to get into the Province HQ compound. One night the VC set up a machine gun and fired down that street a few minutes after I'd walked it, my first of many lucky near misses.
BTW, you can see the front porch of that Advisor compound main building in Neil Sheehan's "A Bright Shining Lie" with Daniel Ellsberg standing on the corner.
After about 2 months at Bao Trai, that site closed and I was sent overland in a convoy back thru Cu Chi, down toward Saigon, and then out to Duc Hoa where my redhead-ancestor pasty ass from well over two years in Germany got the worst sunburn of my life in the 30 minutes it took to put up a tent with my shirt off. Couldn't wear a shirt for days.
About 2 weeks later, the 1/8th CO, who couldn't stand a Quitter, swapped me for someone else, and sent me to 25th Inf Div HQ, where I wound up in Division G-3 on the night shift as "SITREP Writer". More below. Lots of the details of that time are fuzzy.
As an aside, when I took my RA commission out of VMI, I was committed to 3 years active and another 3 reserve, so I could have resigned anytime after about my first 8 months in Germany. I didn't decide to resign until about a year before I went to Vietnam, so why did I wait almost a year to write it on the Braniff flight from SF?
I was in the 1/320th FA in the 101st Airborne, and I went to Germany after almost 2.5 years in the fall of 1964. Many of my close friends there had their transfers frozen not long after that, and wound up going to Vietnam as direct support of the First Brigade of he 101, the first to be sent there in 1965. In spring of '64, I visited my parents while my dad was in DA HQ, and he took me over to Artillery Branch where they asked me what I wanted for my next assignment and I said Germany. I got it that fall, and most of my friends stayed longer, and they went to Vietnam and I didn't.
Long story short, I didn't turn in my resignation until I got to Vietnam because that visit to the Pentagon may have gotten me out early, and so I felt I owed my friends my year there. At the time, all RA officers resigning were "selectively retained for either 12 or 18 months, and I got 18, which is why I spent 6 months teaching Artillery Communications at Ft Sill, OK, and left the army after 6 years, 6 months, 21 days on 31 Dec 68, and started teaching chemistry at VMI 3 days later. But you know what? I'm glad it worked out that way because if not I'd be someone else.
Now, here's some info on how Division G-3 was organized and what I did; may be different now. G-3 is General Staff Operations, headed by an LTC. There were three sections under him:
Operations
Plans
Training
Each headed by a senior Major. I was in Ops, which ran the DTOC, Division Tactical Ops Center, in Cu Chi in a large quonset hut behind Div HQ along with G-2, Intelligence. In a hut next-door were reps of other elements; DivArty, Airforce, Signal, etc. In the center of the G2/G3 hut was the Ops Center, with a composite 1:50,000 map of the division area on one wall, covered by acetate so grease-pencil marks could be made or erased. DTOC was where we had radio-encrypted commo and land-lines inside base camp. Under the senior Major were two junior Majors, the day and night Desk Officers.
But every night at 1900, all Majors and above took off for the General's Mess for dinner and drinks with the nurses and Donut Dollies, leaving the DTOC in the hands of one Captain Sitrep Writer, with instructions "don't bother us unless it's something big", so I didn't. Of course, 1900 was about the time of day the VC and NVA ruled the country until dawn, so as I recall, I called them back once for the Battle of Suoi Cut in War Zone C in early Jan 68, and at the start of the Tet Offensive later that month, and took care of it the rest of the time.
So by my calculations, I ran an Infantry Division in combat about 2 hours every day for 9.5 months, or about a month of 8-hour days; a Captain's pay for a 2-star General's work. Where's my freakin' back pay?
After that gig was done I spent the rest of the night flogging brigade S3 staff and other units for the info I needed for the SITREP [Situation report,a daily summary of what happened, including units, places items destroyed or captured, and casualties on both sides]. SITREP staff consisted of me and one clerk-typist using legal-size blue mimeograph sheets. I'd write it out longhand and he'd type it, from about 8 to 16 double-spaced pages per day in a format with many standard abbreviations. Then I'd proofread it and send it to be run off and forwarded by chopper to II FFV, USAREUR, Hawaii, and the Pentagon. Finally at about 0700 on average, I could collapse into my bunk with fan on full, for about 3 hours's sleep before temp and humidity hit 100. Even grunts in the boonies sometimes got to sleep at night; I never did. Also,imagine how well a few window A/Cs cooled a big quonset hut about 100 feet long, even at night. The output even felt warm a few feet away. AC has come a long way since then.
Yeah, you know what? Catch about 3 hour's bad sleep during the day, skip many meals because I was too tired to go to the worst mess in the division [HQ Co mess] with baby roaches in the noodles. Yep, lots of others had it worse, but I don't feel bad about my 9.5 months as a relative REMF. Not like Long Binh or Saigon where the true REMFs lived.
So you know what? Good times, good times. It was my life and I wouldn't trade it. And happy to finally write it down as a cautionary tale for future generations, and past ones who want to presrve it.
Dan Prall
Note: Thomas Handy, a VMI graduate, became a 4 star general at the end of WWII, retiring from the Army in 1954.
In my 6.5 year Regular Army career, I followed in others' footsteps. I spent about 2.5 years in Baumholder with the 1st Bn 2nd Field Artillery, 8th Inf Div, and about a year as BC of Battery A, which would be a direct descendant of Calef's Battery at Gettysburg. I actually chose Infantry branch at VMI, but when RA branch assignments arrived in Dec 1961, I was given Field Artillery.
Here's more about my time before G-3, and some about the organization of G-3. I didn't do a year in Vietnam, I got a one-day drop as noted then on my short-timer's calendar, so only 364 days. I flew out of San Francisco on 5 May 67, into Bien Hoa and then on to Cu Chi where I was assigned to the 1/8th Field Artillery. A day or two later I turned in the handwritten resignation from the Regular Army. After 5 years and a Bn CO I considered incompetent in Germany, and then saw him get promoted, I'd had it. I didn't seem the same army as I'd been raised with by my RA Colonel dad.
Check again "About Face" by Hackworth at Amazon used Very Good for as little as $2 plus $3.99 shipping. Hack and I spent tours in the 8th Inf, 25th Inf, and 101st Airborne, tho we only overlapped in the 101. The greatest soldier Hack ever met was Col. Glover S. Johns, who was Commandant of Cadets my first two years at VMI.
So the 1/8th CO sent me out to Bao Trai [Khiem Cuong] in the majorly-VC-controlled Hau Nghia swamps WSW of Cu Chi as Liaison Officer to the province HQ, where I and two assistants sat in a bunker around the clock in shifts clearing artillery fires with the province chief's staff. "Shoot" or "no shoot" was about it. I stayed with the Advisor team in their compound at one end of town. To get from there I had to walk about a block south down the main street to get into the Province HQ compound. One night the VC set up a machine gun and fired down that street a few minutes after I'd walked it, my first of many lucky near misses.
BTW, you can see the front porch of that Advisor compound main building in Neil Sheehan's "A Bright Shining Lie" with Daniel Ellsberg standing on the corner.
After about 2 months at Bao Trai, that site closed and I was sent overland in a convoy back thru Cu Chi, down toward Saigon, and then out to Duc Hoa where my redhead-ancestor pasty ass from well over two years in Germany got the worst sunburn of my life in the 30 minutes it took to put up a tent with my shirt off. Couldn't wear a shirt for days.
About 2 weeks later, the 1/8th CO, who couldn't stand a Quitter, swapped me for someone else, and sent me to 25th Inf Div HQ, where I wound up in Division G-3 on the night shift as "SITREP Writer". More below. Lots of the details of that time are fuzzy.
As an aside, when I took my RA commission out of VMI, I was committed to 3 years active and another 3 reserve, so I could have resigned anytime after about my first 8 months in Germany. I didn't decide to resign until about a year before I went to Vietnam, so why did I wait almost a year to write it on the Braniff flight from SF?
I was in the 1/320th FA in the 101st Airborne, and I went to Germany after almost 2.5 years in the fall of 1964. Many of my close friends there had their transfers frozen not long after that, and wound up going to Vietnam as direct support of the First Brigade of he 101, the first to be sent there in 1965. In spring of '64, I visited my parents while my dad was in DA HQ, and he took me over to Artillery Branch where they asked me what I wanted for my next assignment and I said Germany. I got it that fall, and most of my friends stayed longer, and they went to Vietnam and I didn't.
Long story short, I didn't turn in my resignation until I got to Vietnam because that visit to the Pentagon may have gotten me out early, and so I felt I owed my friends my year there. At the time, all RA officers resigning were "selectively retained for either 12 or 18 months, and I got 18, which is why I spent 6 months teaching Artillery Communications at Ft Sill, OK, and left the army after 6 years, 6 months, 21 days on 31 Dec 68, and started teaching chemistry at VMI 3 days later. But you know what? I'm glad it worked out that way because if not I'd be someone else.
Now, here's some info on how Division G-3 was organized and what I did; may be different now. G-3 is General Staff Operations, headed by an LTC. There were three sections under him:
Operations
Plans
Training
Each headed by a senior Major. I was in Ops, which ran the DTOC, Division Tactical Ops Center, in Cu Chi in a large quonset hut behind Div HQ along with G-2, Intelligence. In a hut next-door were reps of other elements; DivArty, Airforce, Signal, etc. In the center of the G2/G3 hut was the Ops Center, with a composite 1:50,000 map of the division area on one wall, covered by acetate so grease-pencil marks could be made or erased. DTOC was where we had radio-encrypted commo and land-lines inside base camp. Under the senior Major were two junior Majors, the day and night Desk Officers.
But every night at 1900, all Majors and above took off for the General's Mess for dinner and drinks with the nurses and Donut Dollies, leaving the DTOC in the hands of one Captain Sitrep Writer, with instructions "don't bother us unless it's something big", so I didn't. Of course, 1900 was about the time of day the VC and NVA ruled the country until dawn, so as I recall, I called them back once for the Battle of Suoi Cut in War Zone C in early Jan 68, and at the start of the Tet Offensive later that month, and took care of it the rest of the time.
So by my calculations, I ran an Infantry Division in combat about 2 hours every day for 9.5 months, or about a month of 8-hour days; a Captain's pay for a 2-star General's work. Where's my freakin' back pay?
After that gig was done I spent the rest of the night flogging brigade S3 staff and other units for the info I needed for the SITREP [Situation report,a daily summary of what happened, including units, places items destroyed or captured, and casualties on both sides]. SITREP staff consisted of me and one clerk-typist using legal-size blue mimeograph sheets. I'd write it out longhand and he'd type it, from about 8 to 16 double-spaced pages per day in a format with many standard abbreviations. Then I'd proofread it and send it to be run off and forwarded by chopper to II FFV, USAREUR, Hawaii, and the Pentagon. Finally at about 0700 on average, I could collapse into my bunk with fan on full, for about 3 hours's sleep before temp and humidity hit 100. Even grunts in the boonies sometimes got to sleep at night; I never did. Also,imagine how well a few window A/Cs cooled a big quonset hut about 100 feet long, even at night. The output even felt warm a few feet away. AC has come a long way since then.
Yeah, you know what? Catch about 3 hour's bad sleep during the day, skip many meals because I was too tired to go to the worst mess in the division [HQ Co mess] with baby roaches in the noodles. Yep, lots of others had it worse, but I don't feel bad about my 9.5 months as a relative REMF. Not like Long Binh or Saigon where the true REMFs lived.
So you know what? Good times, good times. It was my life and I wouldn't trade it. And happy to finally write it down as a cautionary tale for future generations, and past ones who want to presrve it.
Dan Prall
Note: Thomas Handy, a VMI graduate, became a 4 star general at the end of WWII, retiring from the Army in 1954.
3/12th at Ft Benning 1950
LTC Josef Prall & Dwight Eisenhower
Letter from DDE
Josef Prall, Tom Handy, Dwight Eisenhower
CPT Dan Prall, Cu Chi 4/68
SGT Thomas Ferguson & Nick Delva - Charlie Co. Jul 67-68
We were both machine gunners for a time, then later, I took over as squad leader. Nick was injured in February or March 1968. I came home June 28, 1968.
Nick Delva - Tom Ferguson
Cleaning our M60's
Tom Ferguson
Leaving for R&R - Jan 68
Tom
On operation during TET '68
Nick & Tom
Meeting up - 2015
Sgt. Michael Kittle - D Co. - 1969
Mike served with Delta Co, as an 11B in 1969. Originally he was from Richmond, Virginia. Later, he left the field to become a driver. I assume he was back at Cu Chi division basecamp with that assignment. Mike must have had a bit of a funny bone because the photo of him in the jeep was taken at FSB Pershing, with him sitting in the hot sun. The jeep's name was "THINK SNOW". That photo of him appeared in the Tropic Lightning News (see below). The photo of his decorated helmet cover was done after he left the "line" to become a driver. He was awarded the BS/V, Air Medal and other decorations. Mike passed away recently in 2022,
Mike served with Delta Co, as an 11B in 1969. Originally he was from Richmond, Virginia. Later, he left the field to become a driver. I assume he was back at Cu Chi division basecamp with that assignment. Mike must have had a bit of a funny bone because the photo of him in the jeep was taken at FSB Pershing, with him sitting in the hot sun. The jeep's name was "THINK SNOW". That photo of him appeared in the Tropic Lightning News (see below). The photo of his decorated helmet cover was done after he left the "line" to become a driver. He was awarded the BS/V, Air Medal and other decorations. Mike passed away recently in 2022,
Mike Kittle
THINK SNOW
Photo by Jeff Hinman, TLN's reporter
Been Good Trooper? St. Nick Due Soon ---Tropic Lightning News, December 22, 1969
By SP4 GREG STANMAR
CU CHI - It's a busy time of year for him, but with a great deal of difficulty, this reporter managed to interview the rosy cheeked, white-bearded, jolly man whose bag happens to he a bag of gifts - Santa Claus.
"As you well know this work is strictly seasonal," Claus commented. "This is the season, however, so I'm pretty rushed at the moment."
"YOU SEE, in addition to visiting all the homes in America, Europe, South America and so on I have also got to hit base camps and fire support bases in Vietnam. Of course, most of the men in the 25th Infantry Division have been good so I'll have to bring them more gifts than to the other divisions," said Santa with a smile.
"SANTA," otherwise known as mild mannered Captain Fletcher Wideman of Huntsville, Ala., chaplain for the 2d Battalion, 14th Infantry Golden Dragons, got his start in the Christmas show a year ago while serving in Thailand.
"This year," Wideman explained, "I asked Lieutenant Colonel Gene Little, the division chaplain, if Santa Claus needed an experienced helper out in the Golden Dragon's area of operations. Instead I was given the responsibility for being Santa Claus for the whole division!"
SANTA CLAUS will be distributing about 10,000 gifts this Christmas throughout the division. It will be quite a task, but Chaplain Wideman will be getting by with a little help from his friends at the World Council of Churches. As a result there will be a gift for every man in the Tropic Lightning Division.
Captain Claus let it be known that the biggest problem would be delivering all the goodies. "I won't have a sleigh, eight tiny reindeer, chimneys or snow. A flak jacket doesn't go too well with my red suit either."
By SP4 GREG STANMAR
CU CHI - It's a busy time of year for him, but with a great deal of difficulty, this reporter managed to interview the rosy cheeked, white-bearded, jolly man whose bag happens to he a bag of gifts - Santa Claus.
"As you well know this work is strictly seasonal," Claus commented. "This is the season, however, so I'm pretty rushed at the moment."
"YOU SEE, in addition to visiting all the homes in America, Europe, South America and so on I have also got to hit base camps and fire support bases in Vietnam. Of course, most of the men in the 25th Infantry Division have been good so I'll have to bring them more gifts than to the other divisions," said Santa with a smile.
"SANTA," otherwise known as mild mannered Captain Fletcher Wideman of Huntsville, Ala., chaplain for the 2d Battalion, 14th Infantry Golden Dragons, got his start in the Christmas show a year ago while serving in Thailand.
"This year," Wideman explained, "I asked Lieutenant Colonel Gene Little, the division chaplain, if Santa Claus needed an experienced helper out in the Golden Dragon's area of operations. Instead I was given the responsibility for being Santa Claus for the whole division!"
SANTA CLAUS will be distributing about 10,000 gifts this Christmas throughout the division. It will be quite a task, but Chaplain Wideman will be getting by with a little help from his friends at the World Council of Churches. As a result there will be a gift for every man in the Tropic Lightning Division.
Captain Claus let it be known that the biggest problem would be delivering all the goodies. "I won't have a sleigh, eight tiny reindeer, chimneys or snow. A flak jacket doesn't go too well with my red suit either."
B Co 1st Plt - 1969 - Click on Photo
C Co 3rd Plt - 1968 - Percy Miller
Bravo Co - Ted Cox 1969
Bravo Co Point Team - 1969
Front:Mike Spurr, Dave Reagan, Ted Cox
Rear: Vol Stamey, Mike Czarnecki
Rear: Vol Stamey, Mike Czarnecki