Posted by Robert Friedhaber
on 12/17/2008, 7:11 pm, in reply to "viet nam tour 66-67"
69.205.126.112
I am sorry to say that there were no combat operations ashore by Norris crew. The Captain and a few others went ashore in Saigon when we first arrived to get orientation about our duties. This trip ashore certainly did not involve any combat. I can't say for certain that there were no other trips ashore, but I do not recall any for any purpose and can say definitively that there were no combat operations or any of the sort of activities that the individual recalls. Because one of my collateral duties was "Naval Gunfire Liason Officer" (meaning that I was supposed to go ashore as a spotter for naval gunfire support) (as you can imagine I was not looking forward to doing that!) I would almost certainly have been a part of a shore party going ashore for any kind of combat activity, and I definitely did not do so.
Norris was involved in a tragic "friendly fire" incident in which a plotting error in CIC during an indirect (meaning that we could not see the target and were firing at a location identified by coordinates on a map) gunfire support mission resulted in errant 5" gunfire. This resulted in deaths ashore. An investigation of that incident is the reason we made a brief, unscheduled visit to Hong Kong during our deployment. I wonder if the individual you are writing about recalls this incident and over the years has augmented his memory of it with other details that did not happen.
Can you tell me the name of the individual? Since I was First Division officer, I may remember him. Obviously I do not have any knowlege of his current situation. But I do know that it is very difficult to recall things that happen in war. My minister was a Navy chaplain with a Marine unit in Viet Nam at the same time that I was there on a Swift Boat. He and I often reminisce about the war and both of us agree that we can't really separate truth from imagination when we think about the war. We think about it often, and we have lots of other sources of information and after a while actual experiences get merged/blurred with extraneous information. Others veterans have told me the same. I certainly would not consider the fact that someone recalls things about the war that may never have happened to be a serious problem, if that is the only problem the individual has.
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