It is strange that the original four of us in the engineer hooch at MACV, Ba Xuyen Province, ended up within a couple hours of each other in 1969.

At that time, Butch and Joel were going to the Engineer Officers' Advance Course at Fort Belvoir, and I saw them from time to time. I was operations officer of the Army Engineer School, Department of Mechanical and Technical Equipment, Construction Equipment Division.

They were already underway with their studies when I arrived.

Butch had divorced his wife, and received custody of his kids. Liliane and I and the two oldest boys went to his quarters for dinner one time, and that was only OK. He was being assigned to Germany, and we gave him Liliane's brother's address and phone number, and the two hit it off pretty good. Wladimir introduced Butch to a Turkish gal, and they got married. A few years later, I ran into Butch at Phase X of the reserve components Command and General Staff College at Ft Leavenworth, Kansas. We palled around for two weeks. After that, for the last 23 years, we have not maintained contact.

Joel and I played one round of golf at Fort Belvoir, and we went to his house for dinner, once. He spent the evening brow beating his wife, which turned my wife off. Turned me off, too. (What do you expect of a guy who named his son, William C. Westmoreland xxxx). I never saw him again.

Billy was stationed at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, and we drove up their during the spring of 1969, and spent a nice Sunday afternoon with him and his family. And, I have never seen him again. Of my three hoochmates, he is the only one I would contact.

Major Mong, my counter-part, was supposed to come to the advance course, but in the three years I was stationed there, he never showed up at Fort Belvoir.

The dip-shit Province Senior Advisor ended up in Tucson, at the University of Arizona. I saw him in 1982 at a regional meeting of the Reserve Officers Association, where he greeted me like a long lost friend. The feeling hasn't been returned.