20th Engineer History -- 20th Engineer Battalion

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Subject: 20th Engineer History

Author:
Mike Young

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Date Posted: 21:20:16 08/31/02 Sat

Terrific site. I applaud your effort. I'd like to help in any way I can. I might be able to find a few pictures. I only took a few. Also, I can fill in some of the history on the last months of the 20th. I arrived in Dec 1970 and stayed thru the end in August 1971.

One piece of corrected history is most vivid in my memory. This statement is, I suppose, technically correct in that the guy in my platoon killed on the day we left LZ Lonely was not exactly KIA. We were detonating dud mortar rounds in the woods outside the berm, but one of the rounds must have been pointed back toward the compound. When the pile exploded, a piece of shrapnel flew over the berm and severed half of the head of the kid standing beside me. We couldn't have been more that three feet apart. That's one incident that I'll never forget.

Also, I believe that there were casualties among the rtillery battery, wounded and perhaps one KIA. There were definitely casualties among the ARVN who supported us. I distinctly remember one of my hop heads (the other was the one killed) commandeering the medivac helicopter at gunpoint and deserting. He had been without his heroin for too long and couldn't take it any more. He never came back while I was the platoon leader.

However, on 1 April 1971 the road was once again severed by NVA units.

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