Playing Walter Cronkite

In "Boocoo Dinky Dow," Grady -- known in Vietnam as Hoss -- tells lots of passed-along stories. One has to do with platoon mate Teddy Fisher holding a microphone to record sounds of a battle at a previous firebase and being wounded as a result. Here's a version of that 1968 story from Patrick Flanagan, who was there when it happened. Patrick was assistant machine gunner to Andy Day, the fellow whose M-60 Hoss inherited. After reading Grady's memoir, he wrote to say:

"On page 78, the account where Fisher was holding a microphone was actually me.  I was outside taping and pretending to be Walter Cronkite as the jets were dropping bombs and we were getting hit by mortars.  Fisher might have been outside with me; I can't remember.  All I remember is the sound of an incoming mortar and jumped into the bunker.  I got grazed slightly.  Fisher might have gotten a bit more.  You could hear on the tape "I got hit."  We put in for Purple Hearts but were rejected as word got out that we were taping outside and endangering government property, us.  Court martial offense so we gave up on the Purple Heart.  This was way before the major battle on FSB29.  Wish today I had that tape.  It was great."

Patrick sent the photo here, showing In the back, left to right: Andy Day, Brent Longest and Steve Stotka; he doesn't know the soldier in front.

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Here's Patrick in front of that bunker at Fire Support Base 29; it was later blown away. He writes: "After the battle on FSB29, we escaped and built FB25.  I left the unit then to start the first mobile PX and pretty much stayed at Dak To or Blackhawk where most of the survivors of the ambushes ended up.  There weren't very many left at that time."

Patrick, who lives in Virginia City, Nev., shares stories of his own on the Charlie Company website.

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