Sgt Steve Gorecky

I arrived in Viet Nam during Tet. [Feb 68] I had just been reassigned from the 3rd ACR in Germany and was the FDC chief. I was E-5 & did not know shit from shinola as in Germany all we did was play war games. After a week of Jungle training in Pleiku I was assigned to "A" btry that was currently in standdown at Bong Son {LZ English}. The old vets there had some fun with me the cherry boy & I fell for some of the tricks - the best being looking for "lanyard grease" never having been on the "guns' what the hell did I know. After "English" it becomes a bit sketchy until we got air lifted to Kontum international {I will never forget just how agile a loaded C-130 could be }.

Kontum was just recovering from some serious action from Tet and we were informed by one of our officers [Lt. George??] that we would be going to a "Hot LZ" & he actually said that some of us may not come back. Surely what we needed to hear.. We loaded ourselves unto several "shithooks" and proceeded to FB 14 which was fondly renamed to LZ Incoming. What a snafu.

We got hammered In other narratives Bert Landau sums it up extremely well. {Even more so in his bit about one of our officers that was less than noble & brave.}

I know that upon leaving "Incoming" I was requested to write a statement about just how brave this LT was -for the purpose of receiving a Bronze Star. I was not able to write such a false statement. Burt was right when the shit hit the fan this guy burried himself out of sight - great leader. When the mortars hit the powder bags & so many guys got burned he was not to be found.

I am embarrassed to say I cannot remember any one persons name except George Skulzacek {sp} Nick name "Caesar".

After being on "Incoming" for a few weeks the "brain trust" moved us to "MileHigh" where we had to hack out some sort of a fire base from a tangle of trees & stumps. Filling sand bags was near impossible as the ground was so hard we could not hardly get a shovel in it to dig. But at least we were not mortared day in & day out.

Mile High was ok as we were able to have some good results from a lot of fire missions. Contrary to popular belief, I had some luck with running the FADAC. It was the frikken generators that were the pain . I know I can attribute my severe hearing loss to working on a generator during a fire mission.

We stayed on MileHigh until the monsoons started then I got transferred to a Liaison job with the 1/35. At that time I really lost contact with the A Btry 2/9th. I do not remember LT. Landau and if you are out there give me a call. I have lots of blanks that need to be filled. You can reach me at horsepower@centurylink.net