Reply #4: O.K., re-uploaded them.

[UTUSN]

The LST (landing ship tank) was built in 1945 and, after a de-commissioning or two, we were using it in Vietnam. It had also served in Korea. It itself, quite apart from us crew, had 12 or 17 battlestars, one of the highest numbers. It was in bad shape during my year 1967-68, leaking into the tank deck, had been banged up the year before while trying to dislodge another ship from grounding. We called it the Benjo Maru, Japanese for "shit ship." So we earned our Combat Action Ribbons for activity in March '68, one of the three times being a rocket hitting the bridge and a sailor being wounded in the stomach and choppered out, this being in the up and down of the rivers in the Mekong Delta.

My 2nd one, an oiler ammunition (also supply) ship, was brand new, built in the Bremerton, WA, shipyard. We were the commissioning crew and did the shakedown cruise, taking it down from Seattle, stopping at San Diego, Acapulco, and Panama, then through the canal, then to more shakedown exercises off of Gitmo, with liberty in Haiti, N'Orlins, and Mayport, FL, before ending up in Norfolk, VA. I finished up my year before it took off for its working in the Med.

I expected the LST to be decommissioned and scrapped, but it was a total surpise that I would live to see the AOE meet the same fate.

I now have Wizard of Oz medals from a country that doesn't exist (South Vietnam) and am a plankowner of a ship that doesn't exist. What's funny is that a vet asked me whether I was Blue Water or Brown Water, and when I said, "Both," he clearly thought I was making it up.