Vietnam 1st Battalion
Neil Murphy
B Company 1967
I was drafted in July ’65, and began Special Forces Training in ’66. Got court martialed for smoking MJ and kicked off SF in late ’66. I was sent to the Nam, got there in January of ’67 and was assigned to “B” CO, 1/327/101 ABN. I was 23 then, one of the old men, and I was short from the day I arrived, because my ETS was July ’67.
I got hit lightly, with secondary shrapnel, when Elwood (?) Smith, our squad leader stepped on a personnel mine. A couple of months later, I got hit again, this time a little harder. A piece of shrapnel pierced my left cheek and extracted one of my teeth. One of the other guys, a black kid named Ford, got hit same spot left cheek same day.
I remember two guys from my platoon that got killed, Randy Minor and ‘Acid Man’ Williams. Lots of guys got hit, but not too many died.
I was sent home late June, and discharged from the state of Washington (SEATAC). Came home angry, and stayed that way. Have been working in NYC as an Architect since Sept ’67, never married. Drawing disability (40%) on medication for PTSD, recently had the VA remove some cancerous lesions from my back and chest (Basal on the back, Melanoma on the chest).
