ya know what, but even sour grapes have a taste of truth..even if there is too much whine in them.

Yes...just enough 'truth' to taste...but little else of substance.

El Rushbo sure the hell ain't perfect, but his stuff to me has a little more than a 'taste' of truth in it!

You should read ' The Way Things Ought To Be ' or ' See I told You So '.

Even if you approach it just as entertainment...it is still good reading. Give me quality grapes with taste than sour grapes with just a taste anyday.....

RIML, GA folks gave Max Cleland a "pass" when he ran for the Senate his first time! Jeez, I even bought into his campaign BS, since he was a fellow 1st Cav Div Bro in NAM! His second run, after Georgians found out what a radical leftist he really was, they weren't about to give him another chance.

I respect Cleland, immensely, because he lost both legs and one arm in Nam AND made something of himself afterwards rather than turn into a ward of the State!

BUT, Signal Corps Officers SHOULD really have learned how to SECURELY attach frags onto themselves, so they don't fall off, pulling dat pin, when exiting a Huey! It really IS that simple!

Yogi

Yogi, so you're saying Cleland fragged himself by being a dumbass ??

Thor...That term is something more akin to the way the Gang of Five on dat other site would put it. I consider it, from my sources, to have been an avoidable accident.
I knew how to carry LOADS of frags on me body, safely.

Yogi

quote:

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Originally posted by yogi1950:
Thor...That term is something more akin to the way the Gang of Five on dat other site would put it. I consider it, from my sources, to have been an avoidable accident.
I knew how to carry LOADS of frags on me body, safely.

Yogi

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RE: So did I, but the possibility of the little safety bails and pins coming out was real, especially in heavy bush.

On choppers, we were required to put all the frags, smokes and thermites in a sandbag, which one person had control of. Usually it was me because after nearly falling out once, I refused to sit in the door.

Yogi, et al.....

So where did the grenade come from??

Most google search references imply that it was not Cleland's own grenade that he picked up. Some do. Here's an interesting account:

"The State" news article

quote:

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Posted on Sun, Nov. 09, 2003

S.C. veteran’s revelation changed a life
Batesburg-Leesville man surprised ex-senator by correcting an old war story
By CHUCK CRUMBO
Staff Writer

All Steve Price remembers about an explosion on a hill in Vietnam is helping a badly wounded soldier.

“There was blood all over. I thought he was dead,” said Price, who was an infantryman in the Marine Corps back in 1968.

Three decades later Price — now a 54-year-old resident of Batesburg-Leesville — learned the soldier not only survived but went on to serve as head of the Veterans Administration and a U.S. senator. The soldier was Max Cleland of Georgia.

“I was aware of Max Cleland. I had seen him on TV,” said Price. “But I never had any idea it was the same person who was on the same hill where I was back in 1968.”

Price concedes “it’s a pretty wild story.” But it’s also illustrative of the coincidences of life in the military, something the Midlands and the nation will reflect on when Veterans Day is celebrated Tuesday.

On April 4, 1968, Price was with the Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines.

Charlie Company was opening up Route 9 going into Khe Sanh, near the demilitarized zone between the then-separate North and South Vietnams, and had secured a mountaintop.

Cleland, a captain in the Army Signal Corps, and his team flew by helicopter to the hill that Price and Charlie Company held to set up a radio relay tower.

When the helicopter landed, Cleland and his soldiers jumped off and the helicopter immediately ascended.

Then there was an explosion.

Price, who was digging a foxhole, thought the blast might have been an enemy mortar round. It was common for the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese to shoot at landing helicopters, Price said.

This time, a soldier was severely wounded. It was Cleland and he had lost an arm and a leg. His other leg was badly mangled.

David Lloyd, one of Price’s buddies in Charlie Company, was among those who rushed to help. He applied a tourniquet to one leg.

“I tightened that belt as best as I could,” Lloyd said.

Lloyd, Price and other Marines loaded the wounded captain onto a helicopter that hauled him to a field hospital.

The blast was caused by a grenade that had fallen on the ground. It exploded as Cleland reached to pick it up.

For years, Cleland believed he was the one who dropped the grenade, which led to the loss of his right arm and both legs.

Cleland retold the story in 1999 on a History Channel program. Lloyd, who was watching the show at his home in Annapolis, Md., picked up the phone and called Cleland’s office.

The story, Lloyd said, was wrong.

Lloyd said the blast was caused by another soldier’s grenade — not Cleland’s.

Lloyd said he knew because after Cleland was loaded onto the helicopter, another soldier, who had been hit by shrapnel, was crying. Lloyd tried to console the soldier, who said he had dropped the grenade.

The grenade exploded when its cotter pin had fallen out, activating the explosive, said the 57-year-old Lloyd. The soldier told Lloyd that he had straightened the pins so it would be easier to pull them when he had to throw a grenade.

Lloyd’s revelation, which checked out, changed Cleland’s life, Cleland has written. For 30 years, Cleland had blamed himself for his injuries.

Lloyd later tracked down Price and told him the story about Cleland.

“I remembered the incident. It stood out in my mind,” Price said. “But that was just about it.”

Price met Cleland when he came to South Carolina to attend a Labor Day rally in Charleston for U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, who was announcing his candidacy for the presidency. Lloyd had passed on the names of Price and other Marines to Cleland.

Price and Cleland, now an adjunct professor at American University in Washington, D.C., had dinner the night before the rally. The next day, during his speech endorsing Kerry, Cleland spotted Price in the audience.

Cleland paused and then told the crowd and viewers watching the rally on C-SPAN that one of the members of a team of “wonderful Marines” who had saved his life was present.

“Steve Price,” Cleland said, “stand up, brother.”

Price rose to a round of applause.

Today, Price considers himself a lucky man. He survived Vietnam, returned home, went to college, married and has raised three children.

Price shrugs off that there’s anything special about his link to Cleland on that bloody day in 1968.

“It’s just a coincidence,” Price said. “He was just another soldier to me.”

Maybe, but there’s another coincidence in Price’s life linked to that day in 1968.

Price’s oldest son is a captain in a Florida Army National Guard Signal Battalion.

It’s the same rank and job that Cleland had in the Army.

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Ann Coulter - Now there's a woman!

Me thinks shes on to somen there...

quote:

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Originally posted by RIML:

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Couldn wait ta start da schit I see…

Ya messen with my sunshine here

Well

How ya like dem apples..
ya can dish it out but ya cant take hu...

Hiya Cedarbird!

Looks like left and right agree! Ann Coulter is really a tranny on crack.

Thud...
She can sit on my face any ol day and twice on weekends.

Kiteria...THAT possibility, I never saw OR heard of when we humped along the Parrot's Beak along the Cambodian border near Tay Ninh, AND I'll say THAT was as THICK a BUSH as anyone in Nam had to hump! NEVER had a frag accident!

Now, during the Monsoon, we had ONE HELL OF A BAD incident with claymores coming back in from a night ambush, with some "plungers" IN DA MUD that someone "forgot" to disconnect while we were coming back in!!!

Nah, Cleland was believing TOO DAMNED MUCH of his "press" during his first run for the Senate. Georgians just WEREN'T buying into it after their look at his 6 years THERE! The BULLSHIT just wasn't going to work the second time around!

Yogi

Kiteria...LOL, I nearly forgot to comment about YOU having to carry da frags in the choppers...

We didn't do that kind of crap in the 1st Cav Div! They jes picked our asses UP and hauled us to another area...sometimes twice a day!

Maybe there WERE some really mentally-challenged folks in Nam who "straightened" out those cotter pins on frags to make it, uh, "EASIER" to pull da pin, but THAT sounds like something a "Signal Corps" Officer might think of doing, NOT a Combat Troop!!!

Yogi

RIML...I'll stand by my sources when it comes to Cleland's misfortune! Dunno if you got to play with frags in Nam, BUT I NEVER had ANY problems with pulling that cotter pin out and tossing em!!! In fact, I'd be willing to betcha I threw MORE of the bastards than anyone else in my Company, cause I noticed they weren't being utilized much, especially during ambushes!!! I was TERRIFIED of Gook grenades and figured I ought to get dat "jump" on em! All that was necessary was that YELLING that neat "FIRE IN THE HOLE" and I wuz lobbin' em!

Cleland WAS a "hotdog" while he was in Nam...there is NO disputing THAT!!!

Yogi

quote:

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Originally posted by yogi1950:
Kiteria...LOL, I nearly forgot to comment about YOU having to carry da frags in the choppers...

We didn't do that kind of crap in the 1st Cav Div! They jes picked our asses UP and hauled us to another area...sometimes twice a day!

Maybe there WERE some really mentally-challenged folks in Nam who "straightened" out those cotter pins on frags to make it, uh, "EASIER" to pull da pin, but THAT sounds like something a "Signal Corps" Officer might think of doing, NOT a Combat Troop!!!

Yogi

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RE: We were told that proceedure was based on some incident in the past where someone's frag went off and downed the chopper, but I don't know if that's true. Given some of the idiots the Army was taking in by then, it wouldn't surprise me.

We typically only rode birds going out and coming in, with those trips seperated by 2 or 3 weeks. The rest of the time, we walked. Anyhow, it never became a problem but once went we went into a semi-hot LZ.

It wasn't a major battle, just some heavy sniping as we offloaded on the first lift and gunships firing up the hilltops. I slid out with my sandbag full of frags and immediately buried up to my armpits in the mud. It turns out that the LZ was an old, unworked rice paddie and it was covered by a mat of thick, interwoven grass which supported everyone's weight but mine. I guess it was because of the extra weight of all those grenades.

Everyone else took off for the treeline, minus their frags, the birds left and there I was stuck in the middle of the LZ like a pop-up target at Ft. Polk.