In the news today...

Nothing of note, unless you find that the government can't be trusted to be news. You shouldn't be concerned, after they forgive themselves and clean up the public opinion and media slants - the government will go back to being corrupt and worse - incompetent.

I had airborne dreams, again. Nice thing about dreaming of jump operations they are mellow dreams, I never had to jump into places they were trying to kill me and I them. Helicopters  or tracks are a different matter, and walking is scary in dreams because that in the end is really how one gets close enough to get killed. Although mines and booby traps were around and common enough in my wars, the IED thing is levels of ugly beyond my experience - so my nightmares are fine, thank you.

My wife will be cleaning clams today, and the fern tips she brought back from her hiking trip yesterday are drying on the back porch. I had fresh oysters on Monday - all I have to do is wait for her to return with the harvest and cook it up.

There aren't any old soldiers out there, we are dying off. But I made corporal on a blood stripe, another corporal was reduced to PFC for some transgression and I was given his stripes. It doesn't happen that way now, but when you could only promote to vacancies in your unit, that was one of the ways it was done. While a corporal they sent me off to the Advanced Combat Training Academy, a four week course north of the Imjin River but still south of the American portion of the DMZ. At the end of my second week the Battery Commander and his driver (the unit clerk) visited me and checked on my progress. After talking to me and checking with the cadre they left and drove back to the unit. I was second in the class at graduation, and had watched three people lower in class standings get promoted on stage by their battalion commanders, real promotions and a real pay raise. My battalion commander gave me acting sergeant stripes for my reward, the battalion headquarters always seemed so far from the battery in those days. No pay raise for Earl, but I would have spent it wildly anyhow. The top man in the class got a promotion to Staff Sergeant, a real one with the big bucks. If I told you the change in pay in 1968 dollars you would laugh. I was disappointed that my battalion hadn't been able to give me a real promotion but never mentioned it, kind of.

When I got back to the unit I had my orders for a real promotion in about a week. The date of rank was to two weeks earlier than my graduation so I out ranked all those except the Staff Sergeant promoted on that stage. The unit clerk/BC driver had put in the request for my promotion when he and the commander had returned and the commander had checked with the First Sergeant and signed it. So I proudly put the Imjin Scout patch on my fatigue shirt pocket and become the Fire Direction chief and stand by Forward Observer Sergeant for the FO team. Only three officers in the battery in those days, Vietnam ate up LTs.