PRESERVING A MILITARY LEGACY FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS
The following Reflection represents SP4 Tom Hirst’s legacy of their military service from 1969 to 1971. If you are a Veteran, consider preserving a record of your own military service, including your memories and photographs, on Togetherweserved.com (TWS), the leading archive of living military history. The Service Reflections is an easy-to-complete self-interview, located on your TWS Military Service Page, which enables you to remember key people and events from your military service and the impact they made on your life.
What Was Your Nickname or Callsign During Your Military Service? Can You Recall the Nicknames or Callsigns of Other Characters From Your Service and How These Were Earned?
When I climbed off the Huey on “log day,” I weighed in at 205 pounds and heard the LT. mumble something like “That’s our new gunner”……but it wasn’t to be. “Nope, I’m your new medic!” It wasn’t long before I was dubbed, “The Fat Quack”, not because I was really overweight, but because the rest of the “Grunts” in the platoon looked like they had been in a concentration camp! They were just “skin & bones”.
Soon, I realized that most of the guys in the platoon didn’t use their real names. There was Tom Johnson, “Point Man extraordinaire,” aka “The Black Prince”; Captain Mike Christy aka “SIX”; Rod Young, aka “Arkansas” [you knew why when he spoke]; Mike Tiernan, one of our snipers, aka “Sure Shot” ; Jim Barden, another sniper, aka “Cannonball”; Alberto Diaz aka “Cuban”; Ron Sauers aka “Shakey” [because of his “shake & bake” sergeants stripes] Terry from Wyoming aka “Laramie”, Dennis Palmer aka “Arnie” and so on…. No real reasoning for the most part.
Anyway, by the end of my tour as “Combat Medic“, I had been downsized to 175 pounds! Lean & Mean for sure! I hadn’t weighed 175 pounds since 10th grade!
However, at the 2012 Charlie Company Reunion in Las Vegas, I got the last laugh! I still weighed around 200 pounds, which is more than I can say for the other members of my platoon! That’s me, [3rd from the left] in the group photo.
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