Bill "Wendy" Wendover - 67/68 - Basecamp
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BW-56:Specialist in back is Robert M. "Bob" Kirsten. He was also a very capable RTO assigned to S-3 TOC fo the whole year. Kirsten and Woody, trained by Maj. MacDonald, helped all us young Lts.get what we needed fast, paticularly when we were under combat. Specialist in front (cannot remember name) was assigned the whole year to 1/6 S-3 as artillery RTO along with Sgt in preivous picture
Robert Kirsten
on April 21, 2009Lt Wendy,
How amazing to see these photo's after so many years. The guy on the left is O'brien. We just called him OB, and I seem to recall that he was wounded in the knee at some point. When I left Vietnam, and went thru all the exit stuff at Ft Lewis Washington, I wound up at the bus stop in the middle of the night to catch a ride to the airport and fly home. Who is standing there by OB. We ride in together. He came from Boston, but still wasn't sure where he would go, whether home or to his brother somewhere in California. I was flying back thru Chicago to Detroit and had some time to kill so we both hit the airport bar, and order a beer. The bartender pauses, and says he has to see ID for OB (he can see from my bald head that I am already old). OB shakes his head and says he won't be 21 for a couple more months, so the bartender refuses to serve us. I commented that he had just come back from Vietnam, had been wounded, and still didn't qualify for one lousy beer. Nope, no beer. It just didn't seem right. We shook hands, and that's the last contact I have had with him.
Bob Kirsten