A photo packed with memories

The late Art Marin, a squad leader in Vietnam, snapped the 1969 photo of Second Platoon, Charlie Company that I used in my first blog post (scroll to the bottom of this page). Grady Myers, aka Hoss, is the red-headed dude, fourth from the left in the back row.

After the war, Art became a teacher and remained friends with fellow soldier Bob Robbins, who also served in Second Platoon. Bob was very kind and helpful when I told him in 2011 that I planned to publish Grady's memoir.

In the 2004 picture above, Bob is at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. The plaque that he's leaving there features Art's Second Platoon photo.  Bob says of the photo:. "Art brought me a copy of it many years ago and we tried to look at each face. We decided the over 1/2 of these soldiers had been wounded or killed during their tour. This was a group of men seasoned in combat."

The picture, he added, contains "more memories then we can understand."

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