Art Haberland wrote:Lusty,
where were you at? My father was in Vietnam from 68 through 69 as part of the Riverine Forces. First in PBRs and later Romeo boats.
I was on the USS Mansfield (DD728). We were everywhere from the Makong Delta all the way to north of the DMZ. I was there from November 1966 to July 1968. To be honest most of the time I had no idea where we were actually at, just "off the coast". We were generally about a half mile out to sea and provided gunfire support for the ground troops. Occasionally we would go north of the DMZ and there although we were further out from the coast we were more likely to come under attack from shore batteries..
I have a lot of respect for those guys on the PBR's. We saw one in Danang once with its entire bow blown off where it had hit a mine. Those guys saw a lot more of the war than we did on our destroyers.