Posted 2:14 am Sunday, May 27, 2012
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Tyler Duo In Vietnam, May 27
REMEMBRANCE: 1968 was the bloodiest year of the Vietnam War. I spent every one of those months except December in it. A 105 Artillery Battery is a small group made up of 55 officers and men and six cannons. My job was to crunch the numbers necessary to adjust artillery fire. I did that with a slide rule, in spite of the F I made at John Tyler High School in geometry. I also flunked algebra. Whatever we were shooting at had to be no more than seven miles away or they were out of range. I spent all of June and part of July at a base called Khe Sahn. You might have heard of it. I heard it was on the news a lot. More than 500 Marines died there.
I spent all of September of that year on top of a small hill a couple of miles from Laos. I and another Marine snapped two ponchos together and it made a tent. That was our home. No running water but a terrific view. Here, a blond-hair, blue-eyed young lieutenant joined us. He was from Tyler. I knew him at Robert E. Lee High School. He was a couple of years ahead of me. His name was Pete Lake. He smoked cigars. We wondered what were the odds of two boys from Lee being assigned to the same small Marine outfit in Vietnam. Pete made it back to Tyler and became a gas and oil man. He still lives there. If any of you know Pete Lake, you could call him and tell him an old friend would like to buy him a drink.
Robert McLane
Shreveport, La.
I spent all of September of that year on top of a small hill a couple of miles from Laos. I and another Marine snapped two ponchos together and it made a tent. That was our home. No running water but a terrific view. Here, a blond-hair, blue-eyed young lieutenant joined us. He was from Tyler. I knew him at Robert E. Lee High School. He was a couple of years ahead of me. His name was Pete Lake. He smoked cigars. We wondered what were the odds of two boys from Lee being assigned to the same small Marine outfit in Vietnam. Pete made it back to Tyler and became a gas and oil man. He still lives there. If any of you know Pete Lake, you could call him and tell him an old friend would like to buy him a drink.
Robert McLane
Shreveport, La.
