Vietnam War

How incredibly different our lives can be. My friend Tim Crump in Las Vegas, who is only 6 - 7 years older than me was on board ships in Vietnam when I was in my first years of secondary school with not really a care in the world,apart from getting beaten up by the school bullies for refusing to play in the School Rugby team. - still puzzles me how they found out I'd played for my previous school. Lost interest in most sport by this time........as girls and music etc took over. 
  Anyway,Tim decided to sign up for Navy college in 69' rather than be drafted into the Army or Marines which would have meant fighting in the jungle.
   Here's some of his personal photo's from that time

On board his first ship.
Beard and glasses wouldn't look out of place with
today's current trend

Gunners Mate Training School

A seasoned sailor and on board his second ship,the Cruiser
USS Chicago 

His ship (pics taken from another) being fired upon from
Vietcong shore batteries 

Sailing into Hong Kong

Three months in hospital with a plaster cast from his bum
 down both legs.
He also got a nurse to teach him how to knit so he could make this blanket for
his daughter,who still actually has it.(the needles were also the perfect tool for scratching any itches inside his plaster cast)
I should say that the hospitalisation wasn't due to the war,but on leave to see his wife in Tijuana,Mexico and in the early hours of the morning nearing San Diego on his Guzzi Eldorado riding in 'Pea Soup' fog Tim came across a car with no lights, in his lane. The owner was at the rear of the car and as he headed for the gap between the car and the person  he stretched out to stop Tim causing the Fairing/windshield to hit him on the chest which in turn brought Tim off the bike.
Tim was relatively ok and looked around to see,in the lights of a oncoming car the chap lying in the road.
He ran over to pull him out of the way  of anything else only for another car to clip the back of the broken down car
spinning it around. This clipped them both pushing them aside and Tim ended up with a dislocated left knee.
Because he couldn't walk as he was crawling to still try and get the other chap out of the way the knee popped back in.
However,he was left with ligaments that needed stapling together hence the spell in hospital.
Quite some Story !!