33. IT HAS BEEN 33 YEARS

Jack,

What an incredible web-site!

I have only just begun reading about the Battle of Kontum but I was impressed with the amount of detail you were able to convey. Obviously when you were involved in the battle back in 1972, there was no intention to reveal the experience you and your men went through. How were you able to remember the course of events? Did you keep a journal at the time? It has been 33 years since I was in Vietnam and I would have a difficult time in recreating the events that took place. From what I have read, you have some good material for a best selling book. I know that your motivation for designing this web site was to tell a story that needed to be told and to pay tribute to your fallen comrades. I will continue reading and share the site with some of my friends. You are a hero to the many widows and soldiers that wanted to tell the story but didn't know how to go about it.

I will keep in touch.

God Bless

REFLECTIONS: Many have asked me when did I decide to build the web site. Why did I keep all the material - stuff - that I brought back with me from Vietnam in cardboard boxes and dragged around with me for all those moves and through all those assignments. I'd like to say I knew thirty years ago that I was going to build this web site - just not so. I did believe that The Battle of Kontum was a very significant event in the War and that I was fortunate enough to have had the experiences I had and that I was able to acquire a significant amount of information. I used some of the material I had when I was at the Naval War College and made the Battle of Kontum a chapter in one of my papers. I almost lost all the material two and a half years ago when my son and daughter-in-law were living with us and she - a recycling queen - started "helping" clean out my garage and recycle all those "old boxes of stuff". I woke-up one night in a cold sweat thinking that everything had gone to the recycling bin so I ran down to my garage at eleven o'clock that night and dragged all those boxes into my computer room - my wife understood. That did it. I knew I had to tell the "story" for those who never would be able to - I sleep better now.