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Dec.1967- Dec.1968 3rd Sq 5th cav. 9th Infantry div Vietnam. Had a number of Mos designations. Stay 3 years and got out as an E-5 specialist.

Illinois Army National Guard from 2001-2014. Toured Iraq for OIF III in '05-'06. 2/130th INF, 33rd IBCT, and 634th BSB. Served with the best of the best in Illinois.

Thank you to all who served or are currently serving. You mean more to US than you'll possibly ever know.

I have to be amused when i now read about people in the guard. when i joined i all the privileged families got their boys into the guard to avoid Viet Nam. nowadays the guard gets called up too. Yes, i tried to get in but did not have the pull to get it done so i enlisted and went to Viet Nam in December 1967. HQ company 3sq 5th cav, 9th infantry div, attached to the first marines at the DMV

Ron... so you were issuing license plates and driving tests???

Ron, for sure a lot of things have changed since then. The Illinois Adjutant General pushed for us to get a deployment. The current one is actually doing the same thing now. Basically what happened in our case was that our infantry battalion was attached to the 48th Infantry Brigade in Georgia in order for the 48th to be deployed. Once in Iraq, we Illinois guys outperformed the Georgia boys, so they pushed our battalion off to be attached to the 1st and 2nd Marine Expeditionary Forces for half of the deployment. The Marines liked us so much that they authorized us to wear their patches. As a guard battalion we ended up being under seven different commands all allowing us to wear 7 different combat patches, unlike the active duty guys who normally only get to wear their own division patches. As usual they had to take something simple and complicate the heck out of it.

One of my favorite sayings from the guard is that we crammed 30 days worth of work into two days a month.

US Army 1975-1979
VANG 1979-1982

Bill

You join many other veterans here on the bolt. Thank you for your service.

I was what the 11 Bravo types would call a REMF

Served from 72-78 as a 4815 Mechanical Maintenance Officer.
Officer's Basic School at Aberdeen Proving Ground, then assigned to Combat Development Experimentation Command in Fort Ord, but permanently TDY to Hunter Liggett Military Reservation (fondly known as the Hungry Maggot ) running a maintenance shop that fixed the tanks and trucks the guys broke. Then assigned to Ft Richardson, Alaska with the 172nd Support Battalion running the Direct Support Maintenance Shop, then as 172nd Infantry Brigade Maintenance Officer. Got tired of pushing paper at that point and hung up the uniform. Have been in Alaska since.

Dad was a Tech Sgt in the Nebraska National Guard Co D 134th Infantry Regiment. Got called up during WW2 and served in Patton's 3rd Army as a Weapons Platoon Sergeant. Was awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart (x2). His younger brother served in the Pacific and his youngest brother was a pilot in the Air Force after the war and was killed in a cargo plane crash during a snowstorm in Nevada in 1952.

Thanks to all the current service members for defending the country and Veterans for their service.

Thanks I appreciate it!

Bill