Letters_Yell

My name is David Yell and I served with the 218th from June 67- June 68. My daughter did the initial investigation and discovered the website. Dick thank you so much for putting in your time and effort into this worthy cause. I have spent the last 41 years wondering what happened to my many friends and comrades after I left the country in 68. Maybe you could help me with one thing that has been driving me crazy. I was good friends with John Nagy and even said goodbye the morning they left on convoy. After we found out that he had been killed and the other guys that were with him were evacuated, I never found out how they did or even if they survived. If my memory serves me right, one of the names I remember was James Rifenberg. I don't recall the other names but I do remember one of them was an African American. If you could find out anything about these guys please let me know. I took a look at the roster and I didn't see several names of men that I served with. I will list them and maybe you could list them on the roster. 1. Bobby Hatton from Kentucky, a guy that I would have followed thru hell. 2. Mark Meltzer, a Jewish fellow from New York. 3. Another Jewish guy whose last name was Lisnick, I think his first name was Leslie and he was from Michigan. 4. Anthony Piliggi from Hatboro, Pa.. 5.Ronald Bowman from Seattle Washington. 6.Carter Dickey from Tucson, Arizona. 7.Alann Elftmann from Torrance, Ca. 8.Larry Hellnbrandt from Hillside N.J. 9.Austin Lutz from Cedar Springs, Michigan 10.John Thompson from River Rouge, Michigan 11. Bart Weinkouf from Lincoln Park, Michigan. 12 Milford Bowman from Detroit, Michigan. Now you're probably thinking that I have a pretty good memory, actually I found my old address book from Vietnam. I just remembered our platoon Sgt's last name was Novitch. One of the fond memories was the time we were having one of our great beach parties and a bunch of us decided to throw Lt. Blankenship into the South China Sea. We failed, I have never seen anyone fight like he did, he was a real scrapper. Yes I remember stopping fellows that worked at the ration breakdown station and being offered steaks and beer to overlook the small infraction they had committed. They always preferred for us to take pallets instead of individual cases, this made it less obvious to their leaders. We would go by the village and pick up girls to cook while we went swimming and participated in a little beer drinking. Those were the good times mixed in with a lot of bad times. I was with the first groups to leave Cam Rahn Bay in the move to Nha Trang. Cpt. Blankenship was a first Lt. back then and was promoted after we did an outstanding job for him. Well Dick this is becoming lengthly so I'll close for now. I'm looking forward to the reunion and definitely plan to attend along with my wife and maybe my older son. Once again thanks for all the time you are putting into this project. I'm sure it will be a great sucess!

David Yell