Disclaimer: If I have posted this story before, my apologies. This has nothing to do with the cruise and is the rambling of an auld dawg.

THANKSGIVING MEMORY
November 24, 2011
Permit a bit of a memory that happens every now and then about a Thanksgiving day some forty years ago. It took place on an unnamed hilltop west of Hue, Vietnam. It involved twenty two infantrymen of the 101st and it made a permanent mark on my soul. Grunts in that war walked a lot more than they rode. We carried everything we used for days on end. At least in our division that was the case. We typically rode to some location on Hueys to conduct what at one time was called “search and destroy” missions. Toward the end of the war, political correctness took over and they were renamed “harass and interdict” but they were the same thing. The idea is to wonder around the triple canopy jungle looking for bad guys. Those missions were usually several weeks in duration. The grunts stayed in the jungle with resupply from the air. Those missions tested the troops in many ways and usually resulted in little contact and much physical distress. Each day melted into the next and as boots and clothes rotted, so did the physical condition of the grunts. We cared less for what day of the week it was. The food consisted of the same 12 meals from cans and we learned to eat them cold, right out of the can and seldom at one time.
Thanksgiving Day was different. It almost always was in the Army. By that I mean that we actually got hot food if we were willing to do a bit of work for it. Said work on the particular day in question was to prepare a landing zone for the chopper that was to bring the “feast” to us. For hot food, we would do anything. Preparing a landing zone in triple canopy jungle is a bit of magic and usually involved explosives, lots of explosives. That was something I enjoyed doing immensely, blowing stuff up. We usually carried a good deal of C4 which we used for all sorts of stuff including cooking and warming. It would not explode if simply set on fire with a match but it would burn very hot. Anyway, we mustered all we had on the promise that the chopper would bring in more with the meal. After a couple of ear splitting bangs, we had a world class landing zone and lots of splinters and stumps.
The chopper confirmed that we had a good perimeter, meaning free of the bad guys, and landed. They brought a number of large thermos type square cans called Mermite cans (I think). In those cans came a full turkey meal with all the trimmings and stuff like shrimp cocktail and pies. There was so much food that we barely made a dent in the volume. We could not eat the rich foods in volume because we were used to bland canned foods of little volume. That was not because it was not available but because we did not want to carry it. Anyway, before us was a grand layout. To the credit of the Army, we were well served. We even had a Chaplain in the visiting party. The most remarkable part of all of that was that for a brief moment, we were home. We were back in the “World” as we called the US. About thirty minutes into it an explosion took place somewhere in the distance and that meant it was time for the chopper (and the food) to leave. We did our best at the time and we also did something that might seem strange, we stuffed all sorts of food in our pockets. Jungle fatigues have lots of pockets and since we were wet most of the time, food stains would soon disappear. There were no zip lock bags so the food, including pies and shrimp cocktails went directly into the pockets for later consumption. One grunt had the shrimp cocktail, another had pie and another had turkey. We munched all day. It was one of the most vivid memories I have about Thanksgiving. It was, for that brief moment, the finest meal I ever had and in spirit I was home with Bear and the family. That memory will always surface on this day and on Christmas. There is much to be thankful for and moments like that make them sweeter.