IGX

Watched this 2010 documentary on netflix last night

There might be two or three members of this board that might find it interesting.

My roommate at TBS was a lawyer and he let me read a book about F. Lee Bailey. Bailey
defended Captain Ernest Medina and that book painted Medina as a conscientious Company
Commander who had the misfortune of having an incompetent Platoon Leader, Lt William
Calley.

The DVD does not focus on any one person involved, but the the thing that struck me
as "new information" was the portrayal as a couple of specific actions by Captain
Medina.

Dux can you move this to the review area?

This it?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o8q1KN1fJA[/youtube]

Phaedrus wrote:This it?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o8q1KN1fJA[/youtube]

Yes.

I started watching it last night and will finish this evening. I learned of Vietnam from the other perspective and it's fascinating there are so many sides to the same stories.

Another piece of trivia from wikipedia, so may or may not be true:

When Calley was convicted in 1971 the Governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, urged Georgians
to turn their head lights on when driving during the day in support of Calley.

I was at Twenty Nine Palms or Camp Pendleton then and had never heard of the above.

Off topic...what all was at 29Palms in '71? I was there in '79 and there wasn't all that much.

You mean besides the largest ( land area ) US Military base?

I was stationed there over four years fucker I know how big it is...932 square miles. My question was vague...like do you remember what units were there? Was the airfield there also? What bars out in town? Country Palace? The Virginian? I think the National Training Center at Fort Irwin is a little bigger but it's mainside area is somewhat centered reducing the actual fire/maneuver area below what's available at the combat center. I went back in '99 to visit a friend that I served with that was living in Joshua Tree and not much had changed from when I left in '83. I would imagine it blew up in size after 9/11. Just wondering what it was like back then.

Comm School had just completed the move from San Diego.

There was a huge area that was off limits to most of us.

That time period was before the first noticeable pay raises for non rates. It was rare for any non rate to have a POV.

They had a great olympic sized swimming pool, nice gym, and a marked three mile course in the sand with climbing ropes near the start.

That was before the running craze had made it to the Corps and a few SNCOs were on a weight control program. They made them run 3
miles or so several days a week until they shaped up. I had a conversation with an physical fitness instructor at the gym. He said he
had to make multiple runs a day supervising different fat body groups. He complained that he couldn't keep up his weight no matter
how much he ate.

I'm not sure when the two infantry battalions deployed there, but don't recall seeing them at that time.

There was something called LAAM battalion that was in the secret area. I think that acronym is right. Light Anti Aircraft Missile.

I didn't party a bit then. Lifted weights 3 days a week and ran at least 3 miles every day.

The chow was good, which was a bit unusual for those days. The word was the brass knew life wasn't too exciting for non
rates, so they figured they owed us decent food and PT facilities.

You could ride horses in the hills on the weekends, but you had to follow some experienced horseman unless you could
pass an academic test that asked questions like naming all the parts of the horse and riding gear.

Excellent Bob...thanks for the write up. I was an EOD tech there from Jan '79 to May '83...as Charles Dickens said, "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times." I enjoyed my time there but the end was a little bittersweet. One of my best pals crashed a motorcycle up in the Joshua Tree nat'l park area and ended up paralyzed. Just an awesome guy who's dead now. We were gonna leave the Marine Corps, conquer the world and and slay all the dragons.

I was at the Palms exactly 26 weeks. I was ready to leave it, but I have fond memories of the place.

In the June '92 I took a group of Reserve Ammo Techs for our annual training. The SNCO in charge
of the advance party had a tough time and decided to make excuses instead of straightening out
the mess. The worst thing he had done was sign for a shitload of artillery shells he didn't get.

For the above and some other reasons I was busier than a one legged man in an ass kicking contest.

You won't believe this, but the reservists were usually getting a couple of days to fuck off during
that time period. Even the field grade Officers were apparently doing that too.

I didn't take any days off for two reasons. One I didn't believe in a two day liberty in a 15 day annual
training stint and two thw dump was fouled up when I arrived and this was during a CAX when the
Ammo dump needs to be as close to zero defects as possible.

I did get to the Colorado River once, but is about it for tourist stuff.

One very cool thing, in hindsight, was that the Summer of '71 I was in a lot of formations for retiring
SNCO's. many of them were 25-30 year men and had served in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. It seems like
the majority had broken time. Several did a tour in WWII then got out. Either got called up or joined
for Korea and just stayed in. Salt of the earth men.

I was at that ammo dump on a regular basis. Almost killed myself in a sensitive fuze bunker...idiot. One of my EOD brothers got caught driving off the base in his Dodge Dart with about 5k rounds of 5.56/7.62 that he was going to sell and got away with it but he got booted off the team for awhile for it.

Those would have been some great men to know.

That fucking high desert could get to you...I loved running around out in that shit after awhile.

I had the rifle range record for awhile...my only claim to fame if you could call it that. And I was a bit lucky...should have been dead on about three occasions.

When we arrived we were told it was either 3 miles to the main gate then 5 miles to town or vice versa.

Some of the guys would try to hitch a ride to town. I did it once with a buddy, but once we got there there
wasn't fuck all to do.

The place probably built up a bit by the late 70s and a bunch by 1992, but I didn't get to enjoy it.

The base theater and to a lesser extent the library were about the only other things I recall that weren't
already mentioned.

I was stationed in 29 Palms from 2001 to 2003. I was sent there from Okinawa. There wasn't much there, but at least I had cable and the Internet. Las Vegas and San diego were within driving distance on long weekends.

DPR wrote:I was stationed in 29 Palms from 2001 to 2003. I was sent there from Okinawa. There wasn't much there, but at least I had cable and the Internet. Las Vegas and San diego were within driving distance on long weekends.

The tempo must have been pretty fast there after 9/11.

Seems like a pretty good place to train for parts of Iraq.