Re: Railway Operating Batt., Please let me comment on my.....
Author: Nudge
Date: 07-26-2017 - 16:52
Okay, I guess in your eyes, I was full of BS. Well, let me explain:
Nobody wanted to go to Nam, me included. When I got to Eustis after boot camp in 67, it was on everybody's mind. "Now What!"
The 714th was the last Railway Battalion in the US Army. My MOS was 65H20, Locomotive Engineer. The First Shirt, Perry explained it to us this way. "Unless we "Won" and we had to put the country back together, we wouldn't be going over." Well, we all know what happened. The quote about the French and 64 came from the Bird Col. that ran the Battalion. I didn't think he would put out bum dope. So that is where I heard it.
Now as far as people being sent from the 714th to Nam, I knew of about 4. For some reason, there MOS was changed to Truck Driver and off they went. I can't say who or what about Co. A or Co. B, Just Co. C. 3 of them made it back and I ran into them on the SP in Oakland, Guadalupe and K Falls years later.
We did have a few that were screw ups and the discipline was to bust them and send them over with a different MOS. Those guys didn't last 6 months and usually came home in a bag.
I apologize if I said something wrong. If you were there, fine. I was not trying to spread BS, just the facts that were told to me. After my 2 years, I headed back to the west coast in 69 and never looked back.
I did gain the knowledge of operating a steam locomotive for those years. Oh, we also went TDY all over the country when the civilians railroad operators went on vacation for a few weeks.
Nudge