[Vhfcn-l] Vietnam trip

[Richard Lewis]

Thank you for posting these pictures.  I had about forgotten how pretty it was over there when not being used as a battlefield. And I think it is fantastic what you guys do to try and bring more of our lost home. Richard lewisMsg, USA {ret} 

    On Thursday, September 21, 2017 1:17 PM, Julie Kink <kink100 at att.net> wrote:
 

 (NOTE: for some reason my posts end up with question marks in them instead of some of the paragraph breaks - disregard - I'm not questioning anything!)
Thought I would update the list on our trip to Vietnam. Mike and I returned 3 1/2 weeks ago. We were mostly around Da Nang, Hue, and the A Shau Valley (beautiful downtown A Luoi!).  

It's taken a while to pull out of the post-trip exhaustion (emotionally and physically)! Mike visited the site of the ongoing excavation and search for his MIAs out in the hinterlands (A Shau Valley & Tiger Mountain). No news on that yet. We made some progress on another couple of MIAs from a B/2/17 CAV helicopter loss (LOH, 1971) near the same area in the A Shau Valley. We were with a B/2/17 CAV helicopter pilot who knew them. Found a local farmer who dug up some small items out of his backyard that appeared helicopter-related. I'll never forget standing there just yards from what is most likely the crash site where two Americans lost their lives, and pulling up the Wall web site on my iPad for a picture of the pilot who crashed there and disappeared into the earth. Showed his picture to the people who live there now, a former enemy "guard" and his wife who had also been in the military. She remarked he was a handsome young man. They were very helpful. Talked to a lot of villagers. It was a good trip but it takes a lot out of you. We are now doing a bunch of follow up. 

I spent an unanticipated 5 hours with some Montagnard (village) kids, who were just delightful even though we didn't know each other's language very well. They know how to use an iPhone! They were messing around with my iPhone and happened to pull up a 2-minute recording of the National Anthem that I'd made at the U.S. Presidential Inauguration in January, and started marching to it. Talk about mindblowing. Seeing kids washing the family laundry by hand in a big metal bowl and hanging it on the stick fence to dry gives one a unique appreciation for what's important in life. 
I also got a chance to hike up a hill with Mike and see, on the opposite mountainside, the site of the ambush where he earned his MOH, where his life literally changed forever. How many spouses get a chance to do that? It's breathtakingly beautiful now. As you know, not so, in 1968.
As before, I took my list of names of all the "dead guys" whose families or friends I've crossed paths with. While we were winding our way into the A Shau Valley on that bumpy, beautiful road with all its hairpin turns, I read all their names to myself, so they would be remembered in that country in a time of peace. I had 483 names on my list this time.
Here's where I put my photos in case anybody is bored with nothing to do. It should say at the top of the page that there are 186 of them. If it says only 96, try again. Something funny has been happening with the site. 
http://s346.photobucket.com/user/ThisIsAbsurdAndAnnoying/slideshow/
Little Sis,
Julie Kink
sister of WO David Kink C Troop 1/9th CAV 
KIA 8-3-1969
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