Tank birthday, 47+ years

[Subsea]

I read the entire thread. It took me a couple days since I didn't have the time to sit and read in its entirety at one setting.

I know this is a "fish" related thread, however, I feel the need to pay respect. The contributions he has made to this hobby and obviously this thread, are second to none. His insight, humor, dedication and most of all, honesty made the read quite entertaining. I laughed. I took a moment to pause reading his Viet Nam experiences. I felt sympathy. I smiled. I may have wiped a tear from my eye as well. Some of the experiences Paul has endured, brought back memories, some happy, some sad...

I must add, it is an honor to have read what Paul has written and the responses from the many contributors to this thread.

My hat is off to you Paul and I salute my friend as a fellow Veteran. You are a true Patriot!!

I had the honor and privilege to volunteer for the Honor Flight that flew out of Michigan, the same one Paul was invited to. I volunteer as medical staff with the Talons Out Honor Flight organization and assist the Veterans at the airport prior to departing and then upon returning. I was unable to go on that flight, I wish I had and I may have been able to meet Paul in person.

Any way, I feel as if I am rambling. I hope all that are reading this thread have a blessed day, keep your heads up and most of all... REEF ON!!

Rock,
Kudos to your salute to Paul. While I never meet Paul during Vietnam Era, I was in Cambodia when he was in the highlands of Vietnam.
I did have the good fortune to meet Paul & his lovely wife at their home on the North Fork of Long Island.

He is an officer & a gentleman.

 

[Rocks reef]

Rock,
Kudos to your salute to Paul. While I never meet Paul during Vietnam Era, I was in Cambodia when he was in the highlands of Vietnam.
I did have the good fortune to meet Paul & his lovely wife at their home on the North Fork of Long Island.

He is an officer & a gentleman.

Subsea,

Welcome home brother and thank you for your service!

I served from 1989 - 2010. I was involved in every conflict between. Saw a lot of the world, most of which I never care to see again. I decided to get out after my 4th tour in Afghanistan, I'm sure I used up 8 of my 9 lives and didn't want to risk leaving my, at the time, 4 year old daughter without a father. Now I proudly serve Veterans as a Registered Nurse working for the VA.

 

[Paul B]

Rocks Reef. That is the nicest thing anyone has ever said. Thank you and you Sir are a true Patriot. I know you spent much more time in the service that I have and I really appreciate the things all you Veterans who came after me did for this, "OUR" country.

I also don't know how you guys did all that for us Veterans on that Honor Flight. That was well above and beyond.

Have a great day Sir.

 

[Paul B]

Subsea is also a Patriot. He did come to my home I think 2 years ago. I was waiting outside on my deck for him, and I had never seen him before, but I saw this guy across the grassy plaza in front of my condo and he looked like a fish Geek, so I knew it was him.

He is also a Patriot and served in Nam/Cambodia.

Vietnam and Cambodia look exactly the same and we often went back and forth across the border, and I never saw a line, fence or anything else to let you know it was another country.

I looked for that line like you see on maps, but I guess when you are actually crossing it, the line in real life is much too wide to allow you to see it from the ground. Sort of like those Nasca Lines in the American desert.

 

[Paul B]

I just returned from my morning walk. The last few days it has been a little cold, around 12 or 18 degrees. Today it was 27 degrees, so I almost went in the pool due to the heat, but it is still covered, and the ice is kind of thick

As I walked in the dark, I heard a loud noise from the forest next to the road.


You can't really see the forest for the trees. Or in this case, the antique oil tank from when this used to be a farm

I immediately went into my Rambo Stance like I used in Nam..........OK, I didn't do that....I didn't do that in Nam either. I jumped back in fear thinking it was a rabid bear, mad squirrel or a horse with no name.

I quickly aimed my flashlight at it and to my chagrin. (I actually never used that word before and am just writing this post to interject it in here but I also never used the word "interject")

It was a deer. But a big deer, more like a Moose Deer, much bigger than even the largest squirrel. He looked at me and I looked at him,. We were both focused on each other to see who would make the first move.



All of a sudden, in a quick flash of teeth. OK it had a white fluffy tail, he turned around and ran which is exactly what I was "planning" on doing. But that deer was probably 4 years old and in 4 years I will be 80 so I figured I had way more arthritis than he did and in the time it took him to sprint 50 yards, I blinked 5 times because my eyelids work fine and that is the only part of me that doesn't have arthritis.

 

[Rocks reef]

Glad you survived your close encounter of a third kind sir!

Have a great day

Keith

 

[Subsea]

“I immediately went into my Rambo Stance like I used in Nam..........OK, I didn't do that....I didn't do that in Nam either. I jumped back in fear thinking it was a rabid bear, mad squirrel or a horse with no name.”

“A horse with no name” is a verse I know well from the group, America.

Thank you for your humor. It’s always refreshing.

Paul,
Do you have pictures of you riding on helicopter skids while flying “too close to the ground”. I like the one when you guys loaded up a Duce & a half with too much beer and soft crashed into a rice paddy.

An older brother, was a C123 Caribou Air Force pilot in Vietnam and they flew so close to the ground that they didn’t wear parachutes, but they sat on their flak jackets. Their montra was “the fall don’t hurt; it’s the sudden stop”. I was a crew chief on Puff the Magic Dragon, an AC47. When Nixon said that there were no boots on the ground in Cambodia, the Apache scouts for 82’nd Airborne Rangers said “Pass out the mocassans”.

 

[Paul B]

Thank you Keith. This week is my wife's birthday so I am taking her to a hotel. I think it's Hotel California.
Even though this is New York.

 

[Paul B]

Paul,
Do you have pictures of you riding on helicopter skids while flying “too close to the ground”. I like the one when you guys loaded up a Duce & a half with too much beer and soft crashed into a rice paddy.

Sub as you know, we didn't have cell phone camera's then and if I wanted that picture taken I would have had to had one of the Viet Cong take the picture and I am sure that after he took the picture, he would have shot me.

That was a Huey. I used to fly on this LOH a couple of times a week and if I sat on the skid of this one, it would have turned over as these were tiny plastic birds.



This was the one I crashed into the rice paddy in. I doubt it was the same "exact" one as that one is probably still in that rice paddy and they are growing tomatoes in it.

I think I also included that in my book.

 

[Rocks reef]

On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air

Ahh... Hotel California. You know, Hotel California is a little hotel about 40 minutes north of Cabo on the Baja Peninsula. I went there about 10 years ago when a couple friends and I went Sailfin fishing down there.

Tell her that your fish tank thread followers wish her a blessed birthday and many more birthdays to come!

 

[Paul B]

Thank you for your humor. It’s always refreshing.

What humor? That story is totally true....Almost.

When Nixon said that there were no boots on the ground in Cambodia, the Apache scouts for 82’nd Airborne Rangers said “Pass out the mocassans”.

Actually Sub. That battle I was in (Fire Support Illingworth) was our first foray into Cambodia. We were put there on the Cambodian border as bait just so we would get attacked and almost massacred. They killed about a third or quarter of us. They did that so we had an excuse to enter Cambodia. Which we then did.

(That is also in my new book)

The military is not allowed to place men in a bait situation but we didn't really have any lawyers to sue anyone.

Here is that firebase from the air. All firebases are just clearings in the jungle many miles from civilization and no roads. That tree line is where 400 hardened NVA troops emerged and charged us.



Now I sit in front of my fish tank and smile. It's what I do.

 

[Subsea]

What humor? That story is totally true....Almost.


Actually Sub. That battle I was in (Fire Support Illingworth) was our first foray into Cambodia. We were put there on the Cambodian border as bait just so we would get attacked and almost massacred. They killed about a third or quarter of us. They did that so we had an excuse to enter Cambodia. Which we then did.

(That is also in my new book)

The military is not allowed to place men in a bait situation but we didn't really have any lawyers to sue anyone.

Here is that firebase from the air. All firebases are just clearings in the jungle many miles from civilization and no roads. That tree line is where 400 hardened NVA troops emerged and charged us.



Now I sit in front of my fish tank and smile. It's what I do.

Your Airborne Calvary battalion was indeed bait and our US artillery was called for inside the perimeter.

The Mel Gibson movie, “We Were Soldiers” highlights that battle.

PS.
Paul,
When I discharged on November 29, 1970 after four 90 day tours in Cambodia, I was not fit to be around people and I spent 6 months hiking in the Canadian Rockies to be alone in a cold climate.

Yes, I look at my reef tanks often. While I have never scuba dived, as Subsea Engineer on offshore drilling rigs, I was in charge of marine riser & underwater blowout preventer inspections. If we were moored, then I operated camera and lowered it to wellhead using four guidelines to a template at the wellhead on the sea floor. I would often lower camera to a depth of 200’ and pan up to see our semi submersible floating in a school of many sized fish and silhouetted against a blue sky.

 

[Rocks reef]

Subsea,

Welcome home brother and thank you for your service!

My reef tank is calming for me as well. Allows me to clear my mind.

I bet that image of looking up through the ocean is still vivid in your mind sir. Great memory to have!

 

[Paul B]

So 2 weeks ago I bought a small urchin. It croaked. Then I bought another one...It croaked. Urchins normally live forever in my tank and this one lived about 12 years.



So I figured something was wrong. Like Duh. Everything else looks fine, but I also can't find two Harlequin shrimp. And I like harlequin shrimp.

So, it was time to pull out the test kit. I rarely test anything, and my test kits are old, so they came in wooden boxes. Most of them, I can't get the reagents out of the bottles because they turned to tar.

But I found an alkalinity test kit that looked OK. I tested the water, and the alkalinity was about 4. It's supposed to be about 8 or 9. I doubt urchins care about alkalinity, but since I have a ton of the stuff, I figured I needed to raise it.

I have been dumping a bunch in the tank for a couple of days, and I will probably test again tomorrow. I ordered a new Alk test kit just to make sure my vintage test kit is correct or at least close.

 

[vlangel]

How long since you got new sea water Paul? It has been extremely cold here in the north east so I am guessing that it's probably been 3 months anyway. As soon as it warms up a bit, I wonder if that would help?

 

[Paul B]

Vlangel, I don't remember but my last 3 changes was with fake water. It was probably the beginning of last summer since I used real water.

If I get the time (I doubt it) I will drive east to the end of the Island about 25 miles and take water right from the Atlantic instead of the Sound. I feel it may be better.

I also should test the water there just for kicks. I'm sure mine is way off which is why I lost a couple of urchins.

My wife is not well and she takes almost all of my time so tank stuff has to wait, maybe forever.

 

[Paul B]

Today is my Main Squeeze of over 50 years birthday.

This picture is a "little" old.

 

[Minifoot77]

E-4 stripes?

 

[Rocks reef]

E-4 stripes?

Sergeant E-5

 

[Paul B]

E-4 stripes?

Those are E-5. Army ranks are different than other branches. That was before I went to Nam and before I was in the First Cavalry unit.

Here in Nam I have my First Cav patch on and my Sargent stripes. In Nam our insignia was in black.
You don't want bright yellow Sargeant stripes there as you may as well paint a target on your back.